Gartner believes that software and hardware companies do better in 2013 than last year. I hope so this happens, it would be good for the industry. Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending Forecast to Reach $3.7 Trillion in 2013. That would be 4.2 percent increase from 2012 spending. At the moment uncertainties surrounding prospects for an upturn in global economic growth are the major retardants to IT growth. According to the IT market research form Forrester IT market will grow globally by 3.3 per cent this year in U.S. dollar terms. Europe continues to decline (except Nordic countries, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), and growth is slower in Japan and India.
Worldwide IT spending increases were pretty anemic as IT and telecom services spending were seriously curtailed last year. Gartner believes that this uncertainty is nearing resolution and thus Earth’s anemic IT budgets to bounce back in 2013. Wall Street Beat: 2013 IT Spending Forecasts Look Upbeat article mentions that fiscal cliff deal will help unlock spending on mobility, analytics, collaboration and security technology.
According to the EPA, the average office worker uses about 10,000 sheets of paper each year. There is again a Campaign To Remove Paper From Offices. A campaign started by HelloFax, Google, Expensify, and others has challenged businesses to get rid of physical paper from their office environment in 2013. The Paperless 2013 project wants to move all documents online. The digital tools that are available today. The paperless office technology is here – we just need to use it more than our printers.
Intel x86 and ARM duopoly will continue to dominate this year. Both of the processor will sell well on their own main application fields, and they try to push to each others territories. This means that ARM tries to push to servers and x86 is trying to push more heavily to mobile devices.
Software manufacturers aim to hardware business: Microsoft, Valve, Google etc..
Still IT buyers expect too much from software they buy. This has happened earlier for long time and I expect that to continue. IT systems are easier to develop than user brains, but still system that are hard to learn are pushed to users.
IT service companies sill “sell air”. It is a good business to sell promises first and then when you get money try to do make the promised product with it. And are you sure that the backups your service provider makes can really be restored?
This year will not be a year for Linux on desktop. The fact that currently Amazon’s top selling laptop runs on Linux does not change that. Linux is more heading to smart phones and tablets that to win normal desktop.
Gaming on Linux gets boost. Valve released Steam gaming system for LinuxUbuntu users have run to use Steam game service (at the moment 0.8% of Steam users use Ubuntu, the service was started to as beta on December 2012). Valve will release this year it’s own Linux based Steam Box gaming console. Exclusive interview: Valve’s Gabe Newell on Steam Box, biometrics, and the future of gaming.
Windows 8 slow start continues. Windows 8 sales are well below projections. Computer sales dropped after release of Windows 8. U.S. consumers hesitant to make switch to Windows 8. Uncertainty could turn Windows 8 into the next Vista. Independent report says that Windows 8 Even Less Popular Than Vista and Microsoft voice says that its new OS are chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much, in much the same fashion as Windows 7 before it. Who to believe? Let’s wait and see what happens. I expect that some users will get Significant booting challenges on EFI systems when upgrading to Windows 8.
Interest in Java will decrease compared to other languages for various reasons, recent security issues playing part on that. C Beats Java As Number One Language According To TIOBE Index. It happened already.
Software optimization becomes again talked about when CPU usage on cloud system is easily measured and costs money. Cost-Aware Architectures will be talked bout. Keeping control over cost, architecturally, is just plain hard. Usually engineers we are remarkably badly trained in thinking about cost, but corporate bean counters can now start to ask how we save cost in running the software in cloud. Pinterest Cut Costs from $54 to $20 Per Hour by Automatically Shutting Down Systems.
The world of smart connected devices (desktops, notebook, tabs and smartphones) is becoming bigger and bigger on the expense of traditional PC manufacturers. At the end of 2012 HP is still top of PC league, but trailing fourth in all-devices rankings. Samsung leads the pack in terms of device shipments and Apple is next. Lenovo is the third biggest shifter of devices on the planet. The bets for increased sales are being placed behind smartphones and tablets.
It’s deja vu all over again. You see the phrase “any time, any place, anywhere” in relation to mobile access. Mobile devices bring back that old client-server feeling. The realization dawned that client-server brought with it as many problems as it solved. Following a period of re-centralisation using Web-based architectures, it looks as if we are beginning to come full circle. When the next generation is getting all excited about using mobile apps as front-ends for accessing services across the network, we can’t help noticing parallels with the past. Are HTML5 and cross-platform development and execution environments are now with us to save us? In the real world, the fast and reliable connectivity upon which this model depends just isn’t there in most countries at the moment.
End of netbooks as we know it. Netbook sales go to zero. All major manufacturers in this category has ended making netbooks. They have been replaced with booming tablet sales.
Tablet PC shipments are expected to reach more than 240 million units worldwide in 2013, easily exceeding the 207 million notebook PCs that are projected to ship, according to NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report. The market that has been dominated by one major player, Apple, but Android tablets are quickly getting more market share.
Thin client devices seem to be popping up here and there. Dell introduces HDMI stick that turns any screen into a thin client PC. And so will several other small stick computers coming. Raspberry Pi pocket computer is selling like hot pies (nears one million milestone).
Directly soldered to board CPUs are already norm on smart phone, tablets and some laptops. There will be more and more questions when manufacturers start to drop CPU sockets on the computers. Rumors about Intel Corp.’s plan to abandon microprocessor sockets in the future has been flowing and official response has been:
Intel to Support CPU Sockets for Foreseeable Future. AMD Vows Not to Drop Microprocessor Sockets in Next Two Years. Question is still when transition to BGA starts to happen on desktop PCs.
USB speed will increase again this year. So there is again a new USB version. The future of USB 3.0 coming mid-year with data speeds doubling to 10Gbps. USB 3.0 speed to DOUBLE in 2013 article tells that USB 3.0 – aka SuperSpeed USB – is set to become 10 gigabits per second super-speedy, with a new specification scheduled for a mid-2013 release. The aim is to brings USB closer to the class-leading Thunderbolt standard. It is expected that the new specification ends to consumer hardware a year later.
Higher resolutions will become commonplace. Earlier full HD was a target. Now high end devices are aiming to “retina” and 4K resolutions. Panasonic shows off 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with insane 4K resolution Qualcomm outs Snapdragon 800 and 600: up to 2.3GHz quad-core, 4K video, due by mid 2013.
Solid state storage becomes cheaper and cheaper. You can get ssd-storage at as low as less than one dollar per gigabyte. Moore’s Law may not be running out of steam in memory as we have an insatiable appetite for memory these days. Nowadays our tastes are changing from DRAM to nonvolatile flash memory used in SSD device. For example Kingston just unveiled the world’s first 1TB USB stick and SSD drives are also getting bigger every day. We are already encountering floating-gate scaling problems for NAND flash and answer to the scaling problem appears to be growing devices “up”.
2013 in storage is dominated by flash and file systems. We will finally see some all-flash arrays starting to ship from the big boys – and this will bring credibility to some of the smaller players. Management tools are going to be big again. Expect a lot of pain as infrastructure teams try to make things just work.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM’s new CEO: You’ll get no ‘glorious new strategy’ from me
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/22/arm_new_ceo_no_change_like_change/
Almost every smartphone on the planet contains a chip running an ARM-authored chip. Intel, which – unlike ARM – makes its own processors, remains overwhelmingly saddled with a PC-centric business going through a slump.
Now, ARM’s eyeing up mobile computing – the plan is for more than half of all tablets, mini-notebooks and other mobile PCs sold in 2015 to use ARM. Servers, too, are another possibility, with systems coming from Hewlett-Packard and Samsung. Canonical’s already tuning its Ubuntu Linux to run on ARM servers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hadoop: “It’s damn hard to use”
http://gigaom.com/2013/03/21/hadoop-its-damn-hard-to-use/
Former Yahoo Chief Cloud Architect Todd Papaioannou said his difficulties building a consistent, stable Hadoop platform at Yahoo directly led him to found his startup Continuuity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IE11 to appear as Firefox to avoid legacy IE CSS
http://www.neowin.net/news/ie11-to-appear-as-firefox-to-avoid-legacy-ie-css
Microsoft have replaced the “MSIE” string, which identifies the browser to the website as Internet Explorer, with just “IE,” meaning host websites won’t be able to use their current CSS hacks on IE11. To further ensure IE11 users don’t receive an odd version of the site, Microsoft also included the command “Like Gecko” which instructs the website to send back the same version of the website as they would to Firefox.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD thinks most programmers will not use CUDA or OpenCL
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2257035/amd-thinks-most-programmers-will-not-use-cuda-or-opencl
CHIP DESIGNER AMD believes that most software developers won’t use CUDA or OpenCL to create code that runs on the GPU.
“What we’re trying to do is go a level higher”
While AMD has worked hard to drive OpenCL, as Nvidia has with CUDA, both companies are now looking at delivering the performance advantages of using those two languages and incorporating them into languages such as Java, Python and R.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows Blue: a video preview of what’s next for Windows 8
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/25/4144618/windows-blue-video-preview-screenshots
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Official Microsoft Blog
Looking Back and Springing Ahead
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/03/26/looking-back-and-springing-ahead.aspx
Now, the look ahead. With a remarkable foundation of products in market and a clear view of how we will evolve the company, product leaders across Microsoft are working together on plans to advance our devices and services, a set of plans referred to internally as “Blue.” – N.B. chances of products being named thusly are slim to none. And don’t start with the “so you’re telling me there’s a chance” bit.
Pat Rubow says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Spanish Linux group files antitrust complaint against Microsoft
Claims UEFI Secure Boot is anticompetitive
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/hispalinux_microsoft_antitrust_suit/
A Spanish open source software users’ association has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, claiming that the company’s implementation of UEFI Secure Boot stifles competition.
In it, the group alleges that Microsoft has used UEFI Secure Boot, the feature of the Universal Extensible Firmware Interface that requires operating systems to be digitally signed before they will boot, as an “obstruction mechanism” against non-Windows systems, including Linux.
Microsoft requires all hardware OEMs to ship their devices with Secure Boot enabled by default if they want to receive Windows 8 compatibility certification, using a key provided by Redmond. As a result, Linux users must resort to clumsy workarounds to install the OS, particularly if they want to dual-boot.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Android Tablets Challenge iPad on the Factory Floor
iPads have become a staple in many factories, but cost-conscious plant managers are opening up to cheaper, and increasingly popular, Android tablets.
http://www.cio.com/article/730782/Android_Tablets_Challenge_iPad_on_the_Factory_Floor
Android tablets are getting down and dirty on factory floors, and taking a bite out of Apple iPad’s dominance there, according to GE Intelligent Platforms, which provides solutions primarily for industrial environments and municipalities.
“At the tail end of last year, we started to see an increase in request for Android devices,” says Mark Bernardo, general manager of the automation software business at GE Intelligent Platforms. “It’s probably in the order of 80 percent Apple, 20 percent Android.”
It’s a significant shift considering that requests for GE Intelligent Platforms apps to run on Android tablets were nearly non-existent only a year ago.
A couple of years ago, plant managers saw the potential of mobility and seriously began looking at iPads.
Android tablets continued to lag far behind the iPad in industrial adoption. The problem was a cultural one: Plant managers have a tradition of quality assurance and strict processes, which plays well with Apple’s rigorous app-approval process and iPad’s walled garden, but not so well with Android’s openness.
“When you’re talking deploying hundreds of these things, the iPad gets expensive,”
“We’ve seen industrial customers prefer cheaper Android tablets over the iPad because of the cost.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
I’ve got a super free multi-petabyte storage box for you: /dev/null
Tape archives can’t grow forever, so try our solution
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/storagebod_petascale_archives/
As data volumes increase in all industries and the challenges of information management continue to grow, we look for places to store our hoarded bytes. Inevitably the subject of archiving and tape comes up.
It is the cheapest place to archive data by some way; my calculations give tape a four-year cost of something in the region of five-six times cheaper than the cheapest commercial disk alternative. However tape’s biggest advantage is almost its biggest problem; it is considered to be cheap and hence for some reason no-one factors in the long-term costs.
So although tape might be the only economical place to store data today but as data volumes grow; it becomes less viable as long-term archive unless it is a write-once, read-never (and I mean never) archive…if that is the case, perhaps in Unix parlance, /dev/null is the only sensible place for your data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scan your branes LIVE IN REAL-TIME, thanks to GPU-surfin’ boffins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/real_time_full_motion_mri/
At last week’s GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, researchers from Cal Berkeley and the Max Planck Institutes showed how MRI images can now be processed so quickly and accurately that they can be shown as full-motion, real-time videos instead of static, printed output.
While it’s a complex computation, it’s highly parallel in nature, which makes it a great candidate for using accelerators such as graphics processor chips to speed up the number crunching
In working through multi-GPU optimisation, they realized that they needed a multi-GPU programming library. So they built one, and now it’s available to the world. It allows users to write identical code to run on one, two, four or more GPUs – and according to the researchers, “it just works”.
Full motion, real-time MRI has a huge range of medical benefits
MGPU Library
The MGPU library strives to simplify the implementation of high performance applications and algorithms on multi-GPU systems. Its main goal is both to abstract platform dependent functions and vendor specific APIs, as well as simplifying communication between different compute elements. The library is currently an alpha release containing only limited yet already useful functionality.
http://www.biomednmr.mpg.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=43
Tomi Engdahl says:
GTK+ 3.8 Released With Support For Wayland
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/03/27/0014217/gtk-38-released-with-support-for-wayland
“Version 3.8 of the GTK+ GUI framework has been released. A new feature in GTK+ 3.8 is support for Wayland 1.0, the display server that will replace X on free desktops.”
Comment:
Wayland allows the running of X11 applications through an X server, with work being done to support this on Intel and AMD graphics:
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most IT Admins Have Considered Quitting Due To Stress
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/03/27/208215/most-it-admins-have-considered-quitting-due-to-stress
“The number of IT professionals considering leaving their job due to workplace stress has jumped from 69% last year to 73%. One-third of those surveyed cited dealing with managers as their most stressful job requirement,”
“80% of participants revealed that their job had negatively impacted their personal life in some way,”
Most IT admins considering quitting due to stress
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=14666
One-third of those surveyed by GFI Software cited dealing with managers as their most stressful job requirement, particularly for IT staff in larger organisations, while handling end user support requests, budget squeeze and tight deadlines were also singled out as the main causes of workplace stress for IT managers.
The top three sources of stress for IT admins are: management (35%), tight deadlines (19%) and lack of budget (17%).
Interestingly enough, users dropped from the second biggest stress cause in 2012 (21%) to only the fourth biggest cause (16%).
The most common issues were users complaining of hardware not working, only for IT to find the device was either not switched on or not plugged in, along with users spilling tea, coffee and other beverages over their computer or keyboard and then denying they had done it.
Of great concern is the impact that work stress is having on health and relationships. While a total of 80% of participants revealed that their job had negatively impacted their personal life in some way, the survey discovered some significant personal impact
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat revenues rise but not enough for Wall Street
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/redhat_q4_2013_numbers/
Red Hat is growing like a weed, and thinks that in a few years open source cloud computing could be worth more to it than the entire Linux market.
The open source firm reported revenues of $348m on Wednesday for its fiscal Q4 2013
Profits came in at $43m
Red Hat is previewing a version of OpenStack for enterprise customers at the moment, and plans to eventually release a commercial version, allowing the company to apply the same tactics to OpenStack that it so successfully applied to Linux.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dead database walking: MySQL’s creator on why the future belongs to MariaDB
MySQL’s creator, Michael “Monty” Widenius, is scathing on database’s future with Oracle
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/457551/dead_database_walking_mysql_creator_why_future_belongs_mariadb/
The day the Sun purchase was announced, Widenius responded in the tried and true open source fashion — he forked MySQL, launching MariaDB, and took a swathe of MySQL developers with him.
“Many of the original MySQL core developers, including me, didn’t believe that Oracle would be a good owner of MySQL and we wanted to ensure that the MySQL code base would be free forever,” Widenius explains.
“Instead of fixing bugs, Oracle is removing features,” Widenius says.
“The MySQL documentation was never made open source, even [though] it was promised in the MySQL conference in April 2009,” he adds.
“Flagship features promised for MySQL 6.0 have never been released, even if they were fully developed and ready to be released,”
“Why is the price for a MySQL OEM license higher than for Oracle Express?” Widenius asks.
MariaDB was created to be a drop-in replacement for MySQL. Widenius says that as long as MySQL has a larger user base than MariaDB, remaining drop-in compatibility will be essential, in order to make the transition between the databases trivial.
“However, being a drop-in replacement doesn’t stop us from changing the underlying code to make it faster and better or add new features,” he says.
Monty Program, the company established by Widenius to push MariaDB forward, has been focussed on feature development, delivering support for companies such as SkySQL and developer support for MySQL companies.
“You could say that Monty Program Ab plus SkySQL is very much like MySQL, except that the MariaDB is now always open source.”
adoption says:
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Tomi says:
China Builds its Own National Operating System Around Ubuntu
http://micgadget.com/34304/china-builds-its-own-national-operating-system-around-ubuntu/
The Chinese government is building an operating system based on the open source OS Ubuntu. The software department of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, announced that Ubuntu would be a new reference architecture for an OS targeted at the Chinese market. Working with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, the authorities plan to release the Ubuntu 13.04-based Kylin desktop OS next month, with plans to extend the Kylin OS to other platforms at a later date.
The announcement is part of the Chinese government’s five year plan to promote open source software and accelerate the growth of the open source ecosystem within China.
Tomi says:
Framework Benchmarks
http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/28/framework-benchmarks/
How much does your framework choice affect performance? The answer may surprise you.
Whoa! Netty, Vert.x, and Java servlets are fast, but we were surprised how much faster they are than Ruby, Django, and friends.
Tomi says:
World’s top supercomputer from ‘09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled
IBM Roadrunner, the first petaflop machine, goes offline today.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/worlds-fastest-supercomputer-from-09-is-now-obsolete-will-be-dismantled/
Five years ago, an IBM-built supercomputer designed to model the decay of the US nuclear weapons arsenal was clocked at speeds no computer in the history of Earth had ever reached. At more than one quadrillion floating point operations per second (that’s a million billion, or a “petaflop”), the aptly named Roadrunner was so far ahead of the competition that it earned the #1 slot on the Top 500 supercomputer list in June 2008, November 2008, and one last time in June 2009.
Today, that computer has been declared obsolete and it’s being taken offline.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ex-NASA OpenStackers launch Nebula cloud control freak appliance
Forget OpenStack software disties, says OpenStack co-founder Kemp
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/02/nebula_one_openstack_controller_appliance/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the iPad ruined the lives of IT architects
The problem of defining solution availability in 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/02/it_architects_deliver/
For IT architects, one of the most important non-functional requirements to determine is the availability needs of a system’s users.
It’s often expensive and risky adding availability features to an already deployed solution, so getting it right first time is important. In current times however, we’re being asked to regularly provide levels of solution availability that until recently were reserved for the largest of enterprises, and perhaps more worrying, the business justification for these grand expectations is getting stronger and more un-deniable by the day.
With their iPads always working and Facebook always being online, business users increasingly have the same expectation of the IT systems they use.
To conclude with then, the problem architects now have is the delivery of infrastructures to support these expected levels of 24/7 availability. Quoting 99.5per cent availability SLAs these days suggests to me that we want the business to feel grateful for whenever the solution is available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM says GPGPUs could lower overall chip costs
GPU offload can replace other hardware
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2258012/arm-says-gpgpus-could-lower-overall-chip-costs
CHIP DESIGNER ARM has said that chip vendors could cut down on costs by offloading processing to the GPU.
ARM has been pushing its Mali GPU architecture both as a graphics engine and as a GPGPU accelerator through its support of OpenCL.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT spending will increase this year by 4.1 per cent in the world to 3.8 trillion dollars (about 2.96 trillion Euros) estimates research firm Gartner.
About $ 718 billion (about 560 billion Euros) will go to buy hardware. Growth since 2012 has been about 7.9 per cent.
Trends:
- transition from PC to mobile computers
- from own servers to cloud storage
- from software licenses to cloud services
- from fixed voice and data to mobile data connections
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/itinvestoinnit+eivat+jaady+4/a891119?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02042013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Windows Blue looks to be named Windows 8.1
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-windows-blue-looks-to-be-named-windows-8-1-7000013391/
Summary: The Windows Blue operating system update is likely to be named “Windows 8.1″ when it hits later this summer, according to sources.
Tomi says:
Some bubble burst?
Although social networking technologies used in 70 per cent of organizations, only a few cases of them are real benefits, says research firm Gartner.
According to Gartner, only one out of ten cases of community service will bring good benefits.
“Without well-constructed and convincing use of the majority of the community service projects do not produce business benefits,” said Gartner analyst Anthony Bradley.
The tool would have to provide a reason why employees stick to it. For no apparent reason, users do not have the motivation to take advantage of community service.
The company’s goal should be to benefits that are actually measurable and distributed to service users.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/poks+somekupla+puhkesi/a891447?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-03042013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
My Opinion on Testing Without ATS
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=261132
Automated test software, or ATS, is nothing new. But as systems grow in complexity, the need for automated testing, and likewise automated testing software, grows correspondingly. The data points of current systems are becoming so immense that it’s not feasible to deploy anything other than automated testing.
It’s no surprise that there’s a correlation between increased system complexity and the need for a greater focus on test software quality.
As the folks at NI will tell you, “Software engineering best practices ensure that test systems meet increasingly demanding feature and performance requirements.”
One of the keys to automated test software is that it can execute tasks, especially repetitive tasks, very quickly. The downside to that phenomenon is that if you have set up the wrong test, or are testing for the wrong variable/characteristic/criteria, you’ll get a ton of data — useless data.
Another aspect of automated test software is that it won’t necessarily reduce the costs associated with your testing process. It can make immense improvements in the process, but isn’t likely to save you any money, at least in the short term. This is a common misnomer. The real key is the savings you’ll reap in the long term.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft threatened as smartphones and tablets rise, Gartner warns
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/04/microsoft-smartphones-tablets
PC market begins to slip and tablets will outsell desktops and laptops combined by 2015, as Android ascendancy means challenge to relevance of Microsoft, research group warns
Microsoft faces a slide into irrelevance in the next four years unless it can make progress in the smartphone and tablet markets, because the PC market will continue shrinking, warns the research group Gartner.
It says a huge and disruptive shift is underway, in which more and more people will use a tablet as their main computing device, researchers say.
That will also see shipments of Android devices dwarf those of Windows PCs and phones by 2017. Microsoft-powered device shipments will almost be at parity with those of Apple iPhones and iPads – the latter a situation not seen since the 1980s.
For Microsoft, this poses an important inflexion point in its history, warns Milanesi. “Winning in the tablet and phone space is critical for them to remain relevant in this shift,” she told the Guardian. “We’re talking about hardware displacement here – but this shift also has wider implications for operating systems and apps. What happens, for instance, when [Microsoft] Office isn’t the best way to be productive in your work?”
For Microsoft, income from Windows and Office licences are key to its revenues: per-PC Windows licences generate about 50% of its profits, and Office licences almost all the rest.
But while it dominates the PC market, it is a distant third in the smartphone and tablet markets.
“Android is going to get to volumes that are three times those of Windows,”
“From a consumer perspective, the question becomes: what software do you want to have to get the widest reach on your devices?”
The laptop was more mobile than the desktop, but with the tablet and smartphone, there’s a bigger embrace of the cloud for sharing and for access to content. It’s also more biased towards consumption of content rather than production.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.
EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
The new service will bring the educational consortium into a growing conflict over the role of automation in education.
“There is a huge value in learning with instant feedback,” Dr. Agarwal said. “Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback.”
Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedback.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Has Europe finally passed Peak Disk?
Tablets, cloud, THAT Thai flood mentioned as platters spin down
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/04/futuresource_emea_hdd_tracker/
Disk drive sales in the EMEA region have showed falls in both units and capacity according to research from Futuresource Consulting.
HDD unit sales peaked in 2010 at 28.06 million units, falling to 25.91 million in 2011 and 21.48 million in 2012, a 17 per cent decrease between the latter two years.
HDD capacity actually shipped shows a different trend as the capacity per disk has been rising. Total capacity shipped peaked in 2011 at 25.4PB, a year later than the highest number of units shipped, and declined to 23.6PB in 2012.
This will surely be caused by an increase in the number of 2.5-inch disk drives shipped, compared to a fall in 3.5-inch disk drive shipments.
We might suppose this is due to a fall in PC sales and a rise in notebook computer sales.
A look at the shipped capacity bands from 2008 to 2012 shows two main sweet spots in capacity terms. One is the 500GB to 600GB area, and the other is the 1TB to 1.5TB area.
The 2TB to 3TB capacity band is a third, but smaller, sweet spot.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Revolution in online services: tailored just for you
The Internet revolution is visible, which can greatly affect the operation of web services. The site can be customized just for you personally. Such a technique is seen in commercials and in major online services, but now, personalization is becoming more widely on the Internet.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/teknologia/mullistus_nettipalveluissa_raataloidaan_vain_sinulle
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner: RIP PCs – tablets will CRUSH you this year
Bad luck, Windows – you’ll do better in 4 more years
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/05/gartner_2012_pc_sales/
PC sales are in terminal decline thanks to the continued popularity of tablets and there’s nothing an anticipated surge in ultramobiles can do to stop it.
That’s according to beancounters at Gartner, who reckon the outcome will be anaemic growth rates for Microsoft’s Windows in 2013 as Google’s Android blows the doors off.
Gartner has estimated that this year will see 2.4 billion devices shipped – that’s PCs, tablets and mobile phones combined – growing nine per cent over 2012.
The analyst said 2017 would see 2.9 billion units moved but what people will be buying between now and then will change substantially. Starting this year, the news is bad for desktop PCs and notebook OEMs and good for tablet and smartphone makers – at least according to the analysts.
The number of PCs sold in 2013 will fall 7.6 per cent compared to 2012, to 315 million units, with the only bright spot being ultramobiles, which will increase 140 per cent to 23 million units.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Devices To Outsell Windows For First Time Ever In 2013
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/05/2311216/apple-devices-to-outsell-windows-for-first-time-ever-in-2013
“research firm Gartner shows just how important the mobile market has become. According to the firm’s estimates for 2013, Apple devices will outsell Windows devices for the first time this year.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
What is TheBigDB?
http://thebigdb.com/
TheBigDB is a very loosely structured database of facts,
free and open to everybody.
Anyone can create, upvote or downvote a statement.
There are no datatypes, namespaces, lists or domains. Just nodes, one after the other, with a simple and easy to use API to search through them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wikidata (www.wikidata.org) aims to create a free knowledge base about the world that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike. It will provide data in all the languages of the Wikimedia projects and allow for the central access to data in a similar vein as Wikimedia Commons does for multimedia files. Wikidata is a new Wikimedia hosted and maintained project.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Linux Inside Stigma
http://www.linuxadvocates.com/2013/04/the-linux-inside-stigma.html
It’s remarkable how Google doesn’t mention the word Linux anywhere in their marketing of the Google Chromebook.
I mean, it’s running the Linux Kernel, so shouldn’t it be Google Linux instead of ChromeOS?
Why did Google carefully avoid references to Linux?
It’s all a very carefully crafted, well executed plan of elegant branding and image making.
Google didn’t mention Linux because they know it will scare buyers away.
That’s unfortunate, but true. And we need to come to terms with that fact and work towards improving the ‘Linux Inside’ brand image.
Yes, it seems clear we have a branding image issue here which we at Linux Advocates hope to elevate and improve with time and your help.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner: RIP PCs – tablets will CRUSH you this year
Bad luck, Windows – you’ll do better in 4 more years
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/05/gartner_2012_pc_sales/
PC sales are in terminal decline thanks to the continued popularity of tablets and there’s nothing an anticipated surge in ultramobiles can do to stop it.
That’s according to beancounters at Gartner, who reckon the outcome will be anaemic growth rates for Microsoft’s Windows in 2013 as Google’s Android blows the doors off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/08/0115216/set-your-watches-for-the-end-of-windows-xp
“In one year today exactly, Microsoft will shut down support for Windows XP. The deadline will prove a challenge for many of Australia’s largest users of IT, all struggling to migrate to new Microsoft environments.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
E-TeX: Guidelines for Future TeX Extensions – revisited
http://latex-community.org/know-how/latex/55-latex-general/475-e-tex
Professor Donald Knuth developed the first version of the TeX program in 1978-79
became known as TeX 82.
This was the first widespread version of TeX, with documented source code [19] and a published manual [18], and people all over the world started using it.
in 1989 a delegation of TeX users from Europe came to the Stanford meeting
This new version of TeX was called TeX 3.0, and shortly afterwards Don publicly announced that there would be no further version of TeX (except for bug fixes)
While TeX was thus officially frozen with version 3.0, other people started to build TeX engine variants to resolve one or another issue.
5 Conclusions
In 1990 the author attested that “the current” TeX system is not powerful enough to meet all the challenges of high quality (hand) typesetting.
Two decades later the successors offer significant improvements in that they provide machinery to resolve most of the issues identified.
tomi says:
Whatever happened to self-service computing?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/08/cloud_self_service/
According to Gartner’s Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle for 2012, cloud computing has passed the peak of inflated expectations and is heading for the trough of disillusionment at full speed. Cloud computing didn’t live up to the overblown hype.
We have to get over the disappointment before we start to rationally accept the benefits that cloud can bring. Among the under-fulfilled promises, self-service stands out as one of cloud computing’s least adopted features.
This is a shame: self-service has helped drive down costs in many other industries.
There is hardly a glut of virtualisation administrators with the requisite 10 years’ experience in a five-year-old technology stack, so a lot of companies are “waiting for the technology to mature”.
The far more important reason for the slow adoption of self-service is that for years the marketing of cloudy self-service has been overhyped and poorly targeted.
Self-service was sold as the technological hammer that would break departmental dependence on IT.
That didn’t quite work out. You will find few end-users playing with virtual infrastructure. Those making use of cloud computing are systems administrators who already have a solid grounding in the theory behind what happens when they push a given button.
Cloud computing was to be so simple it would abstract the difficulty of IT away from end-users. Today we are seeing an increase in companies that offer to abstract away the difficulty of managing cloud computing. Where did this all go sideways?
In the truest sense of the concept, this is cloud computing: software as a service (SaaS) running on a distributed, virtualised infrastructure abstracted from the end-user.
The problem is that only a handful of these services are anywhere close to consumer-ready.
SaaS may be the end-goal of cloud computing
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) are the nuts-and-bolts self-service elements of a cloud infrastructure that underlie SaaS applications.
Despite the availability of the technology, we don’t seem to take advantage of it much. PaaS is around in numerous forms and yet most developers I know would still prefer provisioning, configuration and maintenance to be taken care of by IT.
Even if most of that is automated and provisioning has been reduced to filling out a form, there is a psychological barrier there that is hard to overcome.
The same is true of attempting to push IaaS out to the world.
Our tools and technology have provided automation and standardisation of our working environments.
In the end, however, we still have the desire to understand what we are doing when we hit that button.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Xbox gaffe reveals cloudy arrogance
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/05/microsoft_twitter_cloud_gaffe/
“Sorry, I don’t get the drama around having an always-on console,” Orth tweeted. “Every device is ‘always on’. That’s the world we live in. #dealwithit.”
When it was pointed out to him that not everyone lives in a world where internet access is guaranteed – such as Janesville, Wisconsin or Blacksberg, Virginia – Orth’s response was tactless
shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the timescale and scope of cloud computing for the masses.
His comments struck a chord because they come at a time when the mind of the gaming community is very focused on the shift to the cloud. The utter fiasco of SimCity’s online launch showed that while software houses might love the idea of games that need an internet connection, users are less enamored – and crackers have shown there’s no logical reason for the practice.
But despite user antipathy, “always on” gaming is set to become the norm. Orth’s comments are merely a private statement about what the big gaming companies are presenting in an almost united front: gaming will be an online thing from now on.
That’s good news for software providers, but not for users – and there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between those in gilded ivory internet bubbles and the real world. It’s easy to see why.
Cloud computing looks to be a large part of the future of how we use technology, but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are worrying signs that the industry isn’t getting this.
If your game relies on you being logged in online, then the slightest break in connection can lose the benefits of some desperately skilled play.
Microsoft, Adobe, and others are actively pushing users onto the cloud in their business models. This makes sense from a corporate point of view, where a hardwired connection comes with a 99 per cent contract guarantee, and that market is being addressed.
In February, Google launched a $1,500 Chrome Pixel that without internet access is basically a stonkingly well-designed slim doorstop.
Many of us would prefer to have code that they own and control without an internet connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Touch screens users complaining of pain
More and more Finnish physician has recently been conducted entirely new groups of patients, revealing Lääkärilehti (Medical Journal).
The new patient group consists of users of touch screen phones and tablet computers.
- Many people use smart phone constantly, and with both thumbs. The thumbs are fatigued.
- Stretch your finger on the joint surface had opened.
Villanen estimates that the stretching exercises, in addition to the use of the touch screen with the stylus could help.
Thumb of the importance of the growth anticipated in the Lääkärilehti in 2002, the Journal was told the New England Journal of Medicine, the magazine wrote nintendiniiti, or playing video games thumb caused by stress.
Sources:
http://www.itviikko.fi/uutiset/2013/04/05/laakarilehti-kosketusnayton-raplaajat-valittavat-kipua/20135000/7?rss=8
http://www.laakarilehti.fi/uutinen.html?opcode=show/news_id=13259/type=1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner Says Worldwide PC, Tablet and Mobile Phone Combined Shipments to Reach 2.4 Billion Units in 2013
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2408515
Traditional PC Market Predicted to Decline 7.6 Percent as Change in Consumers’ Behavior Drives Transition to Tablets and Ultramobiles
the traditional PC market of notebooks and desk-based units is expected to decline 7.6 percent in 2013
This is not a temporary trend induced by a more austere economic environment; it is a reflection of a long-term change in user behavior. Beginning in 2013, ultramobiles will help offset this decline, so that sales of traditional PCs and ultramobiles combined show a 3.5 percent decline in 2013.
Tablets are not the only device type that is seeing aggressive price erosion. Smartphones are also becoming more affordable, driving adoption in emerging markets and the prepay segment in mature markets. Of the 1.875 billion mobile phones to be sold in 2013, 1 billion units will be smartphones, compared with 675 million units in 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does WebKit face a troubled future now that Google is gone?
Aggressive streamlining of Blink, WebKit causes headaches for all.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/does-webkit-face-a-troubled-future-now-that-google-is-gone/
Now that Google is going its own way and developing its rendering engine independently of the WebKit project, both sides of the split are starting the work of removing all the things they don’t actually need.
This is already causing some tensions among WebKit users and Web developers, as it could lead to the removal of technology that they use or technology that is in the process of being standardized. This is leading some to question whether Apple is willing or able to fill in the gaps that Google has left.
Since Google first released Chrome in 2008, WebCore, the part of WebKit that does the actual CSS and HTML processing, has had to serve two masters. The major contributors to the project, and the contributors with the most widely used browsers, were Apple and Google.
While both used WebCore, the two companies did a lot of things very differently. They used different JavaScript engines (JavaScriptCore [JSC] for Apple, V8 for Google). They adopted different approaches to handling multiple processes and sandboxing. They used different options when compiling the software, too, so their browsers actually had different HTML and CSS features.
The WebCore codebase had to accommodate all this complexity.
Google said that the decision to fork was driven by engineering concerns and that forking would enable faster development by both sides. That work is already under way, and both teams are now preparing to rip all these unnecessary bits out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Til heftier engines come aboard, HP Moonshot only about clouds
And those engines will come – as will FPGAs, DSPs, GPUs …
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/09/hp_moonshot_server_analysis/
Analysis The HP Moonshot hyperscale servers are not even fully launched, and Intel and Calxeda are already bickering about whose server node is going to be bigger and better when they both ship improved processors for the Moonshot chassis later this year. Other engines will be coming for the Moonshot machines, too, HP execs tell El Reg, and they will be sorely needed if the Moonshot boxes are to do real work across a wider range of software.
With the fairly limited performance of the dual-core “Centerton” Atom S1200 processors that were used in the initial “Gemini” server nodes announced on Monday, the machines are at this point relegated to dedicated hosting for very small server workloads and for modest web application serving.
HP may be running a portion of its hp.com website, which gets 3 million hits a day, on the Moonshot Atom S1200 iron, and it may be only burning 720 watts doing so, but this is a fairly tiny portion of the entire HP web site.
El Reg has no doubt that a single rack of Moonshot machines, which comes in at 47U because the Moonshot 1500 chassis is a non-standard 4.3U high, can do the webby or hosting work of eight racks of 1U rack servers with two Xeon or Opteron processors.
The day will come, however, when HP has the right engines to run heavier workloads.
Part of that speedup that Ganthier is talking about is an illusion that comes from having more than one or two processor suppliers, as is the case with HP’s servers these days. When you broaden the compute engines to include various ARM processors as well as digital signal processors, field programmable gate arrays, GPU coprocessors, and hybrid CPU-GPU chips, it is no wonder that the pace of innovation has to pick up.
It is not clear why HP needed that extra bit of space that pushed it into an oddball server chassis size and therefore a non-standard rack size, but it is far more likely that HP figured out it could get away with 47U racks and worked backwards to come up with a server cartridge and chassis spec that provided the maximum density of wimpy compute nodes.
So call it 144 nodes in 4U, or 36 servers per rack unit.
With the Moonshot 1500 chassis, the backplane slides into the bottom of the chassis from the front and snaps into the dual 1,200 watt power supplies in the back of the chassis.
The Moonshot 1500 chassis has two switch modules that run the length of the backplane, back to front. These are redundant Ethernet switches based on Broadcom Trident+ ASICs
The two Moonshot 45G Ethernet switch modules – known as A and B – are meant to be redundant for high availability and for load balancing, and together they provide an aggregate of 3.6Tb/sec of bandwidth. These Ethernet switch modules run at Gigabit Ethernet speeds, and each server cartridge can do four links to each of the two switches.
The chassis actually implements a bunch of different networks across the backplane
The backplane also implements a storage interconnect for linking to storage cartridges.
Some of the pins on the PCI-Express slots in the Moonshot chassis are used to provide power to the server nodes
At the moment Canonical’s Ubuntu Server 12.04, Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 6.4, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2 are supported on the Atom S1200 nodes. Support for Windows Server 2012 is expected in a few months
“While Intel is first with Atom, rest assured the ARMy is right behind them in the queue,” writes Freund. “And really not far enough behind to matter – one to two quarters at most.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux fatware? These distros need to slim down
http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/linux-fatware-these-distros-need-slim-down-215757
We need bare-bones Linux distros tailored for virtual machines or at least the option for installs
What I’d like to see is sanctioned and supported VM-only cuts of major Linux distributions, perhaps tailored for specific hypervisors. This would not necessarily increase the number of distributions available, but could be made possible through a single install option. You can already do this manually on, say, RHEL, by going through every default package and tossing the unnecessary stuff, then potentially installing a custom kernel. That could all be scripted through Kickstart, but then we’re back to the one-off approach.
I found it interesting that a Google search for “redhat vmware optimize install” returns a top link on how to install Red Hat Linux 7.3 on VMware. Another search of “RHEL vmware optimized install” at least shows a relatively helpful blog link from three years ago, but not much else. This is hardly rocket surgery.
I suppose one argument might be that it’s hard to define a universally accepted list of packages that a VM-only install needs. But that’s perfectly OK because it’s usually easier to craft a list of required packages that need to be installed after the base than it is to prevent the default installation of a ton of packages you don’t need. After a reboot, it’s a one-liner to install whatever tools you need on top of a minimal base layer.
It’s also much more daunting to start cutting an already-installed system.
Lastly, there’s the “who cares?” concept. Most admins won’t bother to hoe out a default installation and remove the unnecessary stuff. Yes, we have tons of storage, but slimming down a VM install from 2.5GB to 500MB without losing any functionality becomes a very big deal at scale, especially when backups are factored into the equation. Further, it greatly reduces the time required to move these VMs around between storage arrays.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel announces next-gen Thunderbolt with 20 Gbps throughput, 4K support
http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/08/intel-announces-next-gen-thunderbolt-20-gbps-throughput/
Here at NAB, Intel just introduced the next generation of its Thunderbolt interface, which promises a data rate of 20 Gbps in both directions (on each of the two channels) as opposed to 10 Gbps for the previous version.
the next-gen Thunderbolt tech (code-named Falcon Ridge) enables 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously in addition to running at 20 Gbps. It will be backward-compatible with previous-gen Thunderbolt cables and connectors, and production is set to ramp up in 2014.
Tomi says:
Intel shows off 20Gbit/s Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt controller
Doubles the bandwidth for those that can afford it
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2260257/intel-shows-off-20gbit-s-falcon-ridge-thunderbolt-controller
CHIPMAKER Intel has announced an update to its Thunderbolt bus boosting bandwidth to 20Gbit/s while introducing 10Gbit/s controllers with lower power consumption.
Intel’s Thunderbolt bus was first seen on Apple’s machines but it was last year before chipsets supporting the bus started to appear on other machines.
With Intel promoting Thunderbolt as a Firewire replacement, it is not surprising the firm chose the National Association of Broadcasters’ show in Las Vegas to make the announcement. The firm said the chipset, known as Falcon Ridge, will have enough bandwidth for 4K television resolution, a resolution that content creators are increasingly working in as the broadcast industry starts to move on from the ageing HD 1080p standard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Gets Ready to Pull the Life Support on Windows XP
http://www.webmonkey.com/2013/04/microsoft-gets-ready-to-pull-the-life-support-on-windows-xp/
Today marks the first day of the last year of Windows XP’s long and storied life.
On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows XP, meaning there will be no more security updates or other patches. When April 2014 rolls around Microsoft will have supported Windows XP for nearly 12 years.
According to NetMarketShare, just over 38 percent of PCs connected to the web are still running Windows XP. Given that current XP users have already ignored three OS upgrades, it seems reasonable to assume a significant number of XP diehards still won’t upgrade even now that Microsoft is no longer issuing security updates — all of which adds up to a potentially huge number of vulnerable PCs connected to the web.
With so many suddenly vulnerable PCs on the web, it’s really only a matter of time before unpatched vulnerabilities are identified and exploited, which could mean a serious uptick in the amount of botnet spam or worse — imagine even a small percentage of those 38 percent of PCs being harnessed for distributed denial of service attacks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PCs sales plunged
Home Computer sales figures are not as weak recently in 1994.
PCs sales have plummeted this year. Economic research firm IDC, the PC sales fell 14 percent in the first quarter.
Computer sales figures have been so weak recently in 1994, tells the BBC . IDC estimates that smartphones and tablet computers appeal to more consumers at the moment.
The world’s largest computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard’s deliveries have fallen 24 percent in the first quarter.
Source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/pc-tietokoneiden_myynti_romahti/6574164
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC Shipments Post the Steepest Decline Ever in a Single Quarter, According to IDC
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24065413
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The extent of the year-on-year contraction marked the worst quarter since IDC began tracking the PC market quarterly in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.
Despite some mild improvement in the economic environment and some new PC models offering Windows 8, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago.
“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,”
Fading Mini Notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to divert consumer spending.
The impact of slow demand has been magnified by the restructuring and reorganizing efforts impacting HP and Dell. Lenovo remains a notable exception as it continues to execute on a solid “attack” strategy.
“Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome,”
HP’s worldwide shipments fell more than -23% year on year in 1Q13, with significant declines across all regions, as internal restructuring continued to affect commercial sales.
Dell saw shipments decline by more than -10% globally and -14% in the United States
Acer Group continued to see substantial declines in shipments across region