Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
2,130 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t look at Maria’s SQL, look at MY SQL, pleads Oracle
MySQL 5.7 ‘development milestone’ release
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/02/mysql_release/
Oracle says it has doubled the performance of its open source MySQL database when running over large datasets across more than 40 cores, as it strives to preserve its lead in a market thronging with credible contenders.
Oracle gave details of a “Development Milestone” release of version 5.7 of its MySQL database on Monday, alongside rival MariaDB going into version 10 of its eponymous system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA chief’s legacy is shaped by big data, for better and worse
Gen. Keith Alexander, who just retired as NSA director, achieved ‘absolutely invaluable’ results with digital spying but failed to anticipate how the public would feel about privacy.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-alexander-nsa-20140331,0,6256842.story#ixzz2xht8O7Qe
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apache Allura™
http://allura.apache.org/
Apache Allura is an open source implementation of a software forge, a web site that manages source code repositories, bug reports, discussions, wiki pages, blogs, and more for any number of individual projects
Tomi Engdahl says:
White Paper: Database Persistence, Without The Performance Penalty
http://www.mcobject.com/imds-nvdimm-paper
What is the cost of database durability? In-memory database systems (IMDS) accelerate performance by storing records in main memory, but DRAM is volatile. Transaction logging can be used to keep a record of changes to the database, but risks reducing speed by re-introducing persistent writes. Another solution: deploy an IMDS using DRAM that is backed up by battery power. But introducing a battery entails restrictive temperature requirements, leakage risk, long re-charge cycles, and other drawbacks.
In a new approach, AgigA Tech, a Cypress Semiconductor subsidiary, has introduced its AGIGARAM Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) solution, which combines DRAM with NAND flash and an ultracapacitor power source.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pivotal goes after Oracle with ‘all-you-can-eat’ pricing model
Flat per-core subscription fee regardless of software
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/02/pivotal_pricing_change/
Pivotal is going after enterprise incumbents by rejigging its own pricing scheme to make buying its technology simpler for its customers.
The revamped pricing scheme was announced on Wednesday and will see Pivotal license the software within its portfolio on a flat per-CPU pricing model as long as customers buy capacity for two to three years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tips for Using SSD in the Cloud
http://www.theenterprisecloudsite.com/author.asp?doc_id=270446&cid=sem_ob_pv_rss_nc
Many cloud installations consist of virtualized servers with no local storage space, except perhaps for a small boot drive for the hypervisor. All the data is in the networked storage, so that if a server fails recovery is swift. This works fine for essentially static app images, such as website servers, but it falls down in more dynamic use cases.
An example is the virtual desktop. VDI is an environment where the run time is limited to about eight hours, where the virtual desktop is turned off every evening, and where everyone with VDI tries to start at the same time in the morning. It is episodically disk intense. The boot storm is a notorious problem.
The OS image is typically standard across many users in a company. This cries out for in-memory deduplication on the VDI server, where one OS image services all the virtual desktops.
Providing the SSD is properly sanitized between users, file system or cache usage will make the instances much faster.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Predict IT Spending to Increase
http://www.cio.com/article/750533/CIOs_Predict_IT_Spending_to_Increase
Mobile apps and tablets are the areas identified most frequently for investment, according to CIO Research’s poll of IT executives. However, analytics, cloud and enterprise security spending aren’t far behind.
More than half of CIOs (53 percent) say they plan increases to their overall IT budget in 2014
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox surrenders second place browser position to Google Chrome
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2337697/firefox-surrenders-second-place-browser-position-to-google-chrome
IN WHAT HAS ALREADY been a bumpy week for Mozilla, its Firefox web browser has ceded second place to Google Chrome for the first time, according to usage figures.
Mozilla has received some criticism after its newly-appointed CEO
Firefox’s market share has declined year on year by more than three percent while Chrome saw a two percent rise
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chin up, tech world. Gartner says it’ll be OK
Worldwide spend to reach $3.6 TREEELLION in 2014
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/04/02/gartner_survey_shows_increased_tech_spend/
The good news for anyone selling tech to pay the bills is that market demand is bouncing back, although retailers in particular will need to run faster to stand still as customers opt for cheaper devices.
“Globally businesses are shaking off their malaise and returning to spending on IT to support the growth of their business,” said Richard Gordon, managing veep at Gartner.
PC, ultra mobiles, mobile phones and slablets are estimated to grow 4.4 per cent, but the boxcounter reckons demand for highly priced premium phones is slowing, with punters buying mid-range device and low-end Android basic phones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FTC Halts Massive Tech Support Scams
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/10/ftc-halts-massive-tech-support-scams
Tens of Thousands of Consumers Allegedly Tricked Into Paying for Removal of Bogus Viruses and Non-Existent Spyware, and Allowing Scammers to Remotely Access their Computers
“The FTC has been aggressive – and successful – in its pursuit of tech support scams,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “And the tech support scam artists we are talking about today have taken scareware to a whole other level of virtual mayhem.”
The FTC charged that the operations – mostly based in India – target English-speaking consumers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.K. According to the FTC, five of the six used telemarketing boiler rooms to call consumers. The sixth lured consumers by placing ads with Google which appeared when consumers searched for their computer company’s tech support telephone number.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Barking and Dagenham switches from Windows XP to Google Chromebooks, saves around £400,000
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2337542/barking-and-dagenham-switches-from-windows-xp-to-google-chromebooks-saves-around-gbp400-000
Google has scored a major win on the back of Microsoft’s Windows XP support cut-off, as the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has started a major migration project to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes ahead of the 8 April deadline.
The council was previously running 3,500 Windows XP desktops and 800 XP laptops, and is currently in the process of retiring these in favour of around 2,000 Samsung 303Cs Chromebooks and 300 Chromeboxes, mainly for meeting rooms, reception areas and libraries across the borough.
It expects to make savings of around £400,000 compared with the cost of upgrading to newer Windows machines, from a combination of the lower hardware costs, lower support costs and more energy-efficient devices.
Hay-Campbell noted that the move to Chromebooks was helped by guidance from the government’s IT security body CESG, which was published in the autumn of 2013. “This clarified how to do this kind of stuff securely. It gave us confidence that the Chromebooks weren’t going to give us problems in terms of connecting onto the central government networks,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sales of streaming media devices such as Roku are expected to grow 24% this year, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics. Apple today leads the market, followed by Roku and Google, the firm said.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247389/First_images_of_reversible_USB_cables_emerge
The USB Type-C Connector is a new design created to work with emerging product designs with smaller ports.
The new USB cable and plug is similar in size to existing USB 2.0 Micro-B plugs now used in some smartphones and other mobile accessories.
The Type-C connector and cable will support scalable power charging in order to grow with future USB bus performance requirements. The first iteration will have a 5 volt power transfer rate, but that is expected to deliver up to 100 watts for higher power applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
That’s it, we’re all really OLD: Google’s Gmail is 10 ALREADY
They just wanted to beat off Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/01/gmail_tenth_anniversary/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Microsoft can keep Win XP alive – and WHY: A real-world example
Redmond needs to discover the mathematics of trust
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/02/the_mathematics_of_trust/
How Microsoft chose to handle the Windows XP end-of-life is a great starting point for a discussion about the ethics and obligations of high-tech companies.
To understand what kinds of decisions destroyed my faith, let’s examine Microsoft’s handling of XP end-of-life: the decision to discontinue support, security patches and other updates from April 8, 2014.
If it were a simple matter of upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8, I would be entirely willing to point to those clinging to XP and say “get your act together.
The truth is that things are rather a lot more complicated for a lot of people.
Of the 57 clients I work with, 43 of them are in positions where they simply cannot upgrade all their Windows XP systems in use. The choices for them are “run an insecure operating system” or “go out of business.” There are countless businesses around the world facing similar issues; indeed, Windows XP still accounts for more than 20 per cent of all detected Windows computers connected to the internet.
Microsoft can offer affordable security to these companies. It chooses not to.
I have been told by people I trust to know such things that it should take no more than 25 full-time programmers to provide ongoing patching support for Windows XP. Let’s double that number to 50 just to be on the safe side.
Based on the above we get 50 x $500,000 x 2 = $50m as the cost of ongoing yearly Windows XP support for Microsoft.
If there are 1 billion PCs, and 20 per cent of them are XP powered, we have 200 million WinXP boxes still floating about
If all 2 million XP boxes that have a good reason to be XP boxes pay the cost of a Windows Professional license every three years, in order to obtain ongoing support, Microsoft would bring in $130m a year.
It would take Microsoft a day, OK maybe a month, to crank out a patch that would tie XP systems to a subscription service somewhere, and thusly enabled them to receive ongoing support.
Such a move would start to rebuild trust. The total cost of support for XP is a minor marketing expense.
Microsoft is a company, and companies exist to make profit. Still, there are ways to go about making a profit that don’t alienate the developers, partners and customers Microsoft depends on for tactical revenue and strategic ecosystem development.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Need a refresher on virtualisation?
This one’s smothered in GPU gravy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/03/virtualization_101_with_a_gpu_spin/
This year at GTC, NVIDIA was pushing its Kepler-based GRID GPU tech to virtualise desktops, enabling a “anything, anywhere, anytime, on any device” usage model, but as a side effect delivered lots of guidance for VDI and virtualisation newbies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft open sources Windows Library for JavaScript
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2139480/microsoft-open-sources-windows-library-for-javascript.html
Potentially helping developers more quickly build cross-platform applications, Microsoft is releasing as open source its WinJS JavaScript library for building Windows-styled controls.
Now that the library is open source, developers can use it to build and design Windows-like Web applications for other browsers and platforms, including Chrome, Firefox, Android, and iOS.
Such cross-platform capability could save developers time by eliminating the need to code the same app multiple times for non-Windows platforms and browsers other than Internet Explorer, according to the company.
Microsoft first released this library in 2011 so developers could build Windows applications both for Windows Phone and the Windows 8 Modern interfaces using JavaScript, along with HTML, CSS and other Web development tools. It was one of two ways Microsoft offered to build interfaces for its new Windows 8 platforms, the other being XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language).
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Is What You Build to Juggle 6,000 Tweets a Second
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/twitter-manhattan/
Twitter juggles tweets from more than 240 million people across the globe, with about 5,700 of these mini-messages sent every second, and this enormous stream of digital information gets stored on thousands of servers inside the company’s vast network of data centers.
In the beginning, Twitter did this with help from software systems that are widely used across the web — things like the open source databases MySQL and Cassandra. But much like Google and Facebook, the microblogging outfit reached a point where its operation had grown so large and so complex, ordinary software just didn’t cut it. Twitter needed a new type of software that could juggle massive amounts of information in new and more efficient ways. So it started building its own.
Cassandra is what’s known as an “eventually consistent” database. Basically, this means you can store and retrieve data without delay. You needn’t wait for data to be available, at least not in theory. The rub is that you can’t always be sure that the data you’re retrieving is completely up-to-date.
there are cases where Twitter needs a “strongly consistent” database
But about two years ago, Goffinet, Schuller, and Avital created Manhattan.
Though they have yet to see Manhattan in action, some database engineers outside the company stress that it doesn’t appear to be a vast leap forward in database design. “This isn’t revolutionary,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
USB driver software reduces power usage with selective suspend mechanism
http://www.edn-europe.com/en/usb-driver-software-reduces-power-usage-with-selective-suspend-mechanism.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=10003773&vID=44#.Uz1SJ1dM0ik
FTDI Chip has updated its USB driver portfolio to include a selective suspend feature. The revised drivers have passed Microsoft certification and are available to download free of charge from the FTDI Chip website.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows XP thrown last-minute lifeline with £5.5m UK government deal
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2337930/windows-xp-thrown-last-minute-lifeline-with-gbp55m-uk-government-deal
THE UK GOVERNMENT has bought a lifeline for Windows XP ahead of its 8 April cut-off date, handing Microsoft £5.5m to continue supporting the operating system for an additional year.
“Agreements such as these do not remove the need to move off Windows XP as soon as possible.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/04/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/
Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not Everyone Is Happy That Mozilla’s CEO Was Forced Out For His Anti-Gay Views
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mozilla-ceo-anti-gay-views-2014-4#ixzz2xuUIaD1g
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to respond to a data breach
GAO: Data breaches have more than doubled since 2009, how should government, companies respond?
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2014/040214-data-breach-280311.html?page=1
Establish a data breach response team
Train employees on roles and responsibilities for breach
Prepare reports on suspected data breaches and submit them to appropriate internal and external entities
Assess harm
Offer assistance to affected individuals (if appropriate)
Analyze breach response and identify lessons learned
Tomi Engdahl says:
An SSD for Your Current Computer May Save the Cost of a New One (Video)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/03/2013225/an-ssd-for-your-current-computer-may-save-the-cost-of-a-new-one-video
Obviously, the first performance enhancement you do on any computer you own is max out the RAM. RAM has gotten cheap, and adding more of it to almost any computer will make it faster without requiring any other modification (or any great skill).
The next thing you need to do
is move from a “platter” hard drive to a Solid State Drive (SSD).
Tomi Engdahl says:
NET Native Compilation Preview Released
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/04/03/1949232/net-native-compilation-preview-released
“Microsoft announced a new .NET compiler that compiles .NET code to native code using the C++ compiler backend. It produces performance like C++ while still enabling .NET features like garbage collection, generics, and reflection. Popular apps have been measured to start up to 60% faster and use 15% less memory.”
Announcing .NET Native Preview
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/04/02/announcing-net-native-preview.aspx
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft in OPEN-SOURCE .Net love-in with new foundation
Compilers, libraries, and tools released with full source code
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/04/microsoft_launches_open_source_net_lovein_with_new_foundation/
Build 2014 Microsoft has opened its .Net programming framework to the developer community by releasing the code for a broad range of .Net-related software as open-source projects under the stewardship of a new, dedicated foundation.
The surprise announcement came during the Thursday keynote at Redmond’s annual Build developer conference, taking place this week in San Francisco.
The announcement that the newly rechristened .Net Compiler Platform – formerly known as Project Roslyn – would be handed off to the .Net Foundation as open source drew particularly appreciative applause from the audience at Build.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco edges away from VMware, tries Red Hat on for size
Drives nails forged with Red Hat iron into VCE’s coffin
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/04/cisco_vce_vs_red_hat_kv/
From co-operation to co-op-etition and then competition: it’s happening in front of our eyes with EMC and Cisco. The choreography involves Cisco working more and more with Red Hat and its KVM server hypervisor and less with EMC subsidiary VMware’s ESX.
Red Hat is joining in with Cisco and working with its OpFlex protocol in Netzilla’s ACI take on nearly but not quite open software-defined networking. Red Hat sees ACI involvement as a way of spreading its KVM technology and outflanking VMware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Is Facebook Page Reach Decreasing? More Competition And Limited Attention
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/the-filtered-feed-problem/
Every Page on Facebook wants everything they post shown to everyone. But people only read a limited amount of News Feed per day. There simply isn’t room for everything, and the competition for feed space is intensifying. The total number of Pages Liked by the typical Facebook user grew more than 50% last year — a new stat that came from a 45-minute interview with Facebook’s head of News Feed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google plans significant overhaul of many of its native and web apps in ‘Google 2.0′/wearable push
http://9to5google.com/2014/04/03/google-plans-significant-overhaul-of-many-of-its-native-and-web-apps-in-google-2-0wearable-push/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft is bringing the Start Menu back
A major desktop revamp will also see apps run in their own windows again
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/2/5574830/windows-9-start-menu-new-desktop-experience
Millions asked for it, and Microsoft is providing it: the old Start Menu is coming back. Kind of. At its Build conference today, Microsoft announced a new Start Menu that looks like a hybrid of the best of Windows 7 and Windows 8. It’s around the same size as the Windows 7 menu, but also features miniature Live Tiles along one side.
In the same demonstration, Microsoft also showed a new mode that allows modern Windows 8 apps to run in the desktop environment inside their own windows. It’s a return to Windows’ roots for Microsoft, and will make a lot of keyboard and mouse users very happy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook open sources code for managing A/B tests
http://gigaom.com/2014/04/03/facebook-open-sources-code-for-managing-ab-tests/
Facebook has released part of its code that helps its data scientists and other staff easily build, manage and verify A/B tests, which are an important task for any website or application.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Almost Completely Open Source Laptop Goes on Sale
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/novena/
Andrew “bunnie” Huang and Sean “xobs” Cross want to sell you a laptop you can completely trust.
Earlier this year, the two Singapore-based engineers fashioned a laptop made almost entirely from open source hardware, hardware whose designs are freely available to the world at large. They called it Project Novena. Anyone could review the designs, looking for bugs and security flaws, and at least in theory, that meant you could be confident the machine was secure from top to bottom, something that’s more desirable than ever in the post-Edward Snowden age.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Holy Grail: How to develop seamlessly in the cloud
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/31/the-holy-grail-how-to-develop-seamlessly-in-the-cloud/
In the wild kingdom of cloud computing, there are still a few mountains to summit. Development in the cloud is a big one.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/3d-printed-car/
an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo.
The printers he uses create ABS plastic via Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The printer sprays molten polymer to build the chassis layer by microscopic layer until it arrives at the complete object.
“The thesis we’re following is to take small parts from a big car and make them single large pieces,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aftermarketfailure: Windows XP’s End of Support
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2421047
Abstract:
After 12 years, support for Windows XP will end on April 8, 2014. Microsoft Windows XP’s end of support, combined with a collective action failure stemming from individual users’ failure to realize or internalize the costs of failing to migrate or upgrade their operating systems, could be catastrophic. The attached essay briefly sketches out the argument for why software monopolists should be legally required to help other companies provide ongoing support for their products. First, it describes the conceptual and economic theories that would support such a requirement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds rails at Linux developer: ‘I’m f*cking tired of your code’
Kay Sievers banished to fuming Finn’s doghouse
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/05/torvalds_sievers_dust_up/
Never one to mince words, Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds has once again handed a verbal smackdown to a Linux developer, this time for failing to address a serious bug that could prevent systems from booting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The market suddenly hates tech stocks and no one knows why
http://qz.com/195890/the-market-suddenly-hates-tech-stocks-and-no-one-knows-why/
Seemingly out of nowhere, technology stocks have started selling off hard. Despite a solid report on US jobs Friday, hot US technology companies such as Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter limped into the weekend.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Garamond Won’t Save The Government $467 Million A Year
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028436/why-garamond-wont-save-the-government-467-million-a-year
A 14-year-old’s plan to save the U.S. government almost half a billion a year is too good to be true. Font nerdery ahoy!
Last week, media outlets from CNN to the Economic Times reported on a story that pretty much everyone could feel good about: a 14-year-old font nerd in Pittsburgh crunched some numbers and figured out how to save the U.S. government nearly half a billion dollars a year, just by printing all of its documents exclusively in the light-stroked typeface Garamond. One problem: There’s very little reason to believe that Garamond would save the government any money at all.
For his middle-school science project, Mirchandani measured four different fonts–Times New Roman, Garamond, Comic Sans, and Century Gothic–and discovered that Garamond’s thin, light strokes resulted in a font that required 24% less ink.
the biggest issue with his argument is that he measured Garamond at the wrong size! Therefore, the ink cost savings of switching to Garamond is largely imaginary
Garamond’s letters are significantly smaller at the same font size than those of Times New Roman, Comic Sans, and Century Gothic. As Phinney notes, in fact, Garamond is about 15% smaller
What this all means is that if you printed any of the other fonts to match Garamond’s actual size, you’d get almost the same savings in ink cost, at the same expense of readability.
Not All Printer Ink Is As Expensive As Chanel (Especially For The Government)
For one, while printer ink is undeniably a racket, it’s largely a consumer racket. The government doesn’t pay for ink the same way we do. Rather, like many offices, it strikes deals with outside companies that charge per page printed, regardless of how much ink or toner is used.
Second, inkjet printer ink may be how most consumers print at home, but the government supplements inkjets with laser printers, which use toner. Toner costs about half as much as printer ink per page, but Mirchandani’s study assumes they cost the same.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WebOS Mochi gifted to the open source community
Mochi do about nothing
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2338379/webos-mochi-gifted-to-the-open-source-community
OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS behind the Enyo Javascript framework have released the unfinished Mochi version of WebOS to the coding community.
The Apache 2.0 licenced source code covers the major overhaul for WebOS that was in development at Enyo around the time that HP bought, and months later abandoned, support for the operating system.
WebOS is now owned by LG, which uses it to power its smart TVs, with HP retaining underlying patents.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LaCie bigs up 2big, 5big, 8big… WHOMP: Lands big data on your desk
What happens in Vegas…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/07/big_data_on_the_desktop/
Seagate sub LaCie has announced 2big, 5big and 8big products using 6TB disks and Thunderbolt connects for stonking big fat and fast performance.
It has a hardware RAID controller and a pair of hot-swap 6TB Seagate drives spinning at 7,200rpm.
LaCie suggests up to five 2bigs can be Thunderbolt 2 daisy-chained with a 4K display to a MacPro to create a fabulous 4K video workstation with 72TB of raw storage capacity.
The 1u rackmount 8big will cost even more. LaCie says forget Fibre Channel, Thunderbolt 2 is better, and the box can deliver up to 1,330MB/sec
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s open sourcing of .Net: The back story
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-open-sourcing-of-net-the-back-story-7000028109/
Summary: Microsoft’s decision to open source more of its .Net platform didn’t happen overnight, or even in the past few weeks. It was a move years in the making.
Microsoft’s move to open source key chunks of its .Net platform was one of the biggest announcements at Microsoft’s Build 2014 show last week.
A year ago, Somasegar said he began talking with Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and Roslyn lead Anders Hejlsberg about whether and when Microsoft should make Roslyn available as open source. In the fall of 2013, the decision was made to open source Roslyn once it was in preview/end-user shape (which happened last week) and to accept contributions from the community, Somasegar said. Somasegar championed the idea of crreating a separate foundation, the .Net Foundation, dedicated to overseeing the new open-sourcing effort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comments from http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-open-sourcing-of-net-the-back-story-7000028109/
MS only open sources half of .NET this means that it gives inferior products under leadership of likes of Xamarin and if you want the real .NET capabilities you have to exclusively develop for MS platforms!
…makes complete sense. The way they are doing it allows them to obtain enough input to implement the features that makes sense for the community without loosing control over the technologies. Microsoft’s .Net MVC is the perfect example.
MS doesn’t need to fully open source .NET What they are doing is a third way between proprietary and Open Source projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP exec: ‘CYOD’ will TEAR APART the IT dept as we know it
Bring out yer device, bring out yer device… (as long as you don’t work at HP, Dell, Cisco)
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/04/07/byod_cyod_lets_call_whole_thing_off/
Corporations are close to handing staff credit notes to buy or choose their own technology in a trend that will bust classic IT departments and supply chains, HP’s top boss for Europe reckons.
BYOD has morphed into Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) but the impact will still be just as dramatic, said Herbert Koeck, HP’s joint head of the Europe region and senior veep for the Printing and Personal Systems division.
More Reading
What does people-centric IT mean, anyway?Microsoft UK seeks infrastructure guys for BYOD workshopsBYOD for our staff? ‘Career limiting’ move, says Dell execBYOD is a PITA: Employee devices cost firms £61 a monthBYOD for our own staff? That would be ‘embarrassing’ – HP exec
“Large enterprises in Europe,” he told The Channel, “very soon will get to the point where they are handing over a voucher to an employee for €500 to go out and buy [a device]“.
He said employees will be somewhat restricted to a menu of certified options that will be permitted onto the network, but unlike the past, where a procurement head placed one order, Koeck predicts there will be multiple orders going in from individuals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Releases Standard, EVO and PRO SD Cards
by Kristian Vättö on April 7, 2014 10:05 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7928/samsung-releases-standard-evo-and-pro-sd-cards
With the rapid decrease of NAND prices in the last few years, the SD card market has more or less become a commodity with very little differentiation.
Samsung’s goal with the branding is to make it as easy as possible for the customer to select an SD card that fits their needs because oftentimes SD cards are marketed using the class system (like class 10), which may not tell much to an average SD card shopper.
As one would expect, the PRO is of course the fastest offering available and provides rather impressive transfers rate of up to 90MB/s. Most SD card use scenarios don’t require that high throughputs but as 4K video is steadily making its way into the hands of consumers, the storage media has to evolve as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The decline of the mobile web
http://cdixon.org/2014/04/07/the-decline-of-the-mobile-web/
People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop:
This is a worrisome trend for the web. Mobile is the future. What wins mobile, wins the Internet. Right now, apps are winning and the web is losing.
Moreover, there are signs that it will only get worse. Ask any web company and they will tell you that they value app users more than web users. This is why you see so many popups and banners on mobile websites that try to get you to download apps. It is also why so many mobile websites are broken. Resources are going to app development over web development. As the mobile web UX further deteriorates, the momentum toward apps will only increase.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows XP still has 27 per cent market share on its deathbed
Windows 7 making some gains on XP Death Day
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/08/windows_xp_istilli_has_27_per_cent_market_share_on_its_deathbed/
Remember where you were once your patch Tuesday downloads end, because today is Windows XP death day.
Users other than the well-heeled and well-organised won’t receive so much as another byte of code to update the operating system as of today, bringing to an end an era that started with the operating system’s release to manufacturing on August 24th, 2001.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The… Windows… XPocalypse… is… NIGH
DON’T PANIC, listen to Trev – you’ll be fine
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/08/microsoft_winodws_xp_operating_system_patch_tuesday/
The XPocalypse is upon us, gentlebeings, and those of us who must keep XP around are doomed! Or so some very expensive marketing pushes would have us believe.
Ask yourself how that Windows XP computer is actually being used. If it is sitting there accepting some files from the internet, processing them and then spitting the results out elsewhere, do you need to have USB enabled or CD drives hooked up? Consider – and I am not joking here – just gluing the USB ports up
Conversely, if the thing doesn’t need to be on the internet to do its job, ruthlessly block it from such. Put it on its own subnet and VLAN, wall it off from everything but the exact systems with which it will need to communicate and get a third-party firewall installed that will only talk to the systems you need to talk to.
Consider an inline firewall/ intrusion detection system operating as a separate appliance between your XP subnet and anything else they need to talk to.
If at all possible, lock XP up in a virtual machine. There are lots of reasons why this isn’t always possible – hardware dongles, the need to power proprietary hardware cards and so forth, but where possible, try.
You need to know not only when something is awry, but be able to rebuild that system from scratch at the drop of a hat.
The ultimate goal is a completely non-persistent copy of Windows XP.
Start from BartPE if you need a clean environment and from Hirens if you need one packed full of jam. Strip out what you don’t need and customise to your requirements. Test, retest, build and rebuild. Get yourself a version of XP that can last a decade because the only writeable locations the system talks to are the locations it absolutely needs to talk to in order to run its software and update its configuration.
Microsoft is committed to patching an XP descendant OS – POSReady 2009 – for some time to come. Any halfway competent blackhat could reverse-engineer the patches for that OS and exploit the now unpatched Windows XP classic.
Anti-malware programs are absolutely not going to save you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/serious-reading-takes-a-hit-from-online-scanning-and-skimming-researchers-say/2014/04/06/088028d2-b5d2-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html
Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to.
“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.
But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why won’t you DIE? IBM’s S/360 and its legacy at 50
Big Blue’s big $5bn bet adjusted, modified, reduced, back for more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/07/ibm_s_360_50_anniversary/
IBM’s System 360 mainframe, celebrating its 50th anniversary on Monday, was more than a just another computer.
The S/360 changed IBM just as it changed computing and the technology industry.
Where the S/360 was different was that it introduced a brand-new way of thinking about how computers could and should be built and used.
The S/360 democratised computing, taking it out of the hands of government and universities and putting its power in the hands of many ordinary businesses.
Banks, insurance companies, retailers and power companies – the great and the familiar from the City mile to the high street run many operations on an IBM mainframe: RBS, Nationwide, EDF, Scottish Power, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and John Lewis. There’s the Met Office and Land Registry, too.
Ninety-six of the world’s top 100 banks run the S/360 descendants with mainframes processing roughly 30 billion transactions per day.
These transactions include most major credit card and stock market actions and money transfers, manufacturing processes and ERP systems.
Fifty years after the first S/360 was announced and 30 years after the rise of distributed systems that were supposed to replace them, the mainframe is smaller in market share, but its principles are being embraced once again.
Google and Facebook run tens of thousands of distributed x86 servers but these servers are clustered, use fast networking and virtualisation and are managed centrally to ensure near-continuous uptime of mission-critical tasks.
Searches on Google and status updates on Facebook are the new mission-critical: back in the day a “mission critical” was ERP and payroll.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Citrix has signed a cooperation agreement with Google for business-critical Windows applications to import Chromebook laptops.
Windows applications used for delivery of Citrix XenApp virtualization solution and HTML5 receiver.
“Windows XP approaching the end of the life cycle of all types of organizations is an excellent opportunity to reconsider its IT solutions and move your Chromebook users. This will facilitate the management, improve security and save money, “Google boss Amit Singh paints.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/windowssovellukset+tunkevat+chromebookeihin/a980613
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study: Video Gamer Aggression Result of Game Experience, Not Violent Content
http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/04/09/008214/study-video-gamer-aggression-result-of-game-experience-not-violent-content
“A new study published in the March edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that a gamer’s experience of a video game and not the content of the game itself can give rise to violent behavior. In other words, ‘researchers found it was not the narrative or imagery, but the lack of mastery of the game’s controls and the degree of difficulty players had completing the game that led to frustration”
Tomi Engdahl says:
GameFace Labs Has the First VR Headset on the Block with a 2.5K Display—And It’s Mobile
http://www.roadtovr.com/gameface-labs-first-vr-headset-block-2k-display-mobile/
GameFace Labs may very well be the furthest along in the quest to create a mobile VR headset. Based on Android, GameFace Labs has been working hard to iterate on their prototypes, their latest is the first VR headset (mobile or tethered) to include a 2.5K display, with 78% more pixels than 1080p based VR headsets like the Oculus Rift DK2. And they’ve got even more surprises up their sleeve.