Patrick Thibodeau

Author Archives: Patrick Thibodeau

Envisioning a 65-story data center

Two Italian architects have designed a data center that challenges how the structures are built. Instead of constructing a flat, sprawling complex, they are proposing a data center that reaches skyscraper heights.At this stage, the data center designed by Marco Merletti, who works in Paris, and Valeria Mercuri, who is in Rome, is just an idea. But it's gotten recognition. The pair, who are both 28, recently received third place honors in the annual Skyscraper Competition held by architecture and design journal eVolo.From a visual perspective, the circular, futuristic-looking "Data Tower," as Merletti and Mercuri call it, almost seems like something out of Star Trek. But it incorporates sustainable technology for efficiently cooling hundreds of thousands of servers, while increasing reliance on automation. Its ideas are grounded in existing technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Consider the Panama Papers breach a warning

An MIT conference this week about the Internet of Things was fun until the topic of security came up. The audience stilled and focused at the mention.Sanjay Sarma, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, told this mostly startup crowd that he expects "a few disasters." Power plants will be taken down, as will a chemical plant. "I'm terrified of this," he said, about the cybersecurity risk.[ See infographic below for more on the scale of the Panama Papers breach. ] This week's hack of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is an illustration of how much damage can be caused by a breach. Law firms are valuable and vulnerable targets, and they attract people interested in making money.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

At MIT, a glimpse into our techno future

In the future, you may use aeroponic systems at home to bring in water mixed with nutrients. You'll use this water to grow vegetables, home-grown food that can cut your produce costs in half.Your commute to work may be on a covered, quasi-bike vehicle that uses battery power to assist the pedaling rider (who gets healthier from the effort).And the era of the large suburban homes will end. Why have multiple rooms for various purposes?"The cost of transformable furniture is much less than a mortgage," said David Rose, a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab and author of Enchanted Objects: Innovation, Design and the Future of Technology. Rose was at Tuesday's MIT "Connected Things" Enterprise Forum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New York company profited by sending state records to India

A New York IT contractor "swelled its profits" by outsourcing government work offshore that should not have left the state. A major part of the work was sent to India in violation of state security rules, New York investigators said.The contractor, Focused Technologies Imaging Services in Albany County, was working under a $3.45 million contract to scan and index 22 million fingerprint cards maintained by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.Focused Technologies, in turn, hired an India-based company that performed about 37% of the work and was paid $82,000.The fingerprint cards are associated with arrests and incarcerations, and with applications for jobs or licenses where a criminal history background check is required. The cards, which were all dated before 2009, contained sensitive data including signatures, Social Security numbers, physical characteristics and dates of birth. Focused Technologies employees were required to pass criminal background checks to work on it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

For IT, climate change means preparing for disaster

IT managers understand the hazards of heat inside data centers. But what about outside it?Cordell Schachter, the CTO of the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), who went through Hurricane Sandy in 2012, says climate trends will increasingly impact IT operations."At one time, you could go through a whole career without facing one of those situations" -- something like a Sandy -- said Cordell. But he now believes if "you have a career spanning more than a decade" you may see one or two major weather events.Scientists are increasingly connecting extreme weather events to man-made climate change. Insurance claims are rising.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Defense Dept. wants your help in imagining the worst

Uncle Sam wants your brain power, technical expertise and imagination to help defend the U.S. No enlistment required.The Department of Defense says it needs to understand how everyday objects and available technologies can be used by terrorists.The range of technologies is so vast that the military's main scientific agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), says it needs input from as many technical people as possible.The agency has put out an open call for anyone from a credentialed professional to "skilled hobbyist" in all technical areas, including IT.INSIDER: 5 ways to prepare for Internet of Things security threats DARPA, in its announcement, wants people to show it "how easily-accessed hardware, software, processes and methods might be used to create products or systems that could pose a future threat."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cities, not cornfields, draw data centers

Google built a data center in an Oregon town with a population of about 15,000. Yahoo established chicken-coop style data center in New York state farm country. And Apple runs an iCloud data center in rural North Carolina.But building big data centers in rural areas may be more the exception than the rule. Most data centers are located in, or at least close to, major Metro areas, acording to a new study. flickr/Tony Webster Google Data Center - The Dalles, OregonTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. offers supercomputing help to manufacturers

Five of the top 12 high performance computing systems in the world are owned by U.S. national labs. But they are beyond reach, financially and technically, for many companies, even larger ones.That's according to U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials, who run the national labs. A new program aims to connect manufacturers with supercomputers and the expertise to use them.This program provides $3 million, initially, for 10 industry projects, the DOE announced Wednesday. Whether the program extends into future fiscal years may well depend on Congress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data center tax break ignites political battle in Michigan

The U.S. data center industry is now operating just like a sports franchise. When a local NFL football team wants a new stadium, it can threaten to move to a city promising a bigger and better stadium.Michigan now faces the data center version of this dilemma.The state's data center industry is growing at about 12% a year, thanks to a shift to cloud computing. Life has been good for commercial data center operators, and they haven't been pushing for tax breaks. But that changed once Nevada-based Switch, a data center facilities firm, arrived with a plan to build a mega data center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Extreme tech positions of the presidential candidates

This is an election where extreme positions have become the norm, and the implications for science and technology may be huge.In some cases, the Republican and Democratic candidates have stated positions with clarity. But many of ideas are still vague, roughly sketched out and incomplete.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Techies back Democrats in Presidential race +These emerging proposals, the ones with the most impact on technology, deserve attention. The surviving candidates are certain to refine them in the months ahead. But here's a look at some tech implications of the 2016 contest.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Machines will learn just like a child, says IBM CEO

ORLANDO – Technology is shifting to intelligent machines with a capability to reason, said IBM Chairman and CEO Virginia Rometty. These machines won't replace humans, but will augment them. It is a technology that will transform business, she said.This technology is the basis of IBM's work on Watson, its cognitive or thinking system.Rometty, interviewed Tuesday by Gartner analysts at the research firm's Symposium ITxpo, said cognitive systems understand not only data, but unstructured data, which includes images, songs, video, and then goes a step further: "They reason and they learn."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gartner’s top 10 emerging trends

ORLANDO -- The No. 1 problem, or trend, facing IT departments today is nonstop demand, according to Gartner. As more devices connect to the Internet, the need for more computing capability, storage and networking is increasing at a rapid rate.For instance, 39 million terabytes of storage is currently deployed globally; by 2019, that figure will more than double to 89 million terabytes.The demand for data center capacity is "relentless," said David Cappuccio, and is creating problems for IT. "It's not about how many systems I have, it's how efficiently I use that resource."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Memo to Carly: HP is shifting more work offshore

Carly Fiorina, surging in the polls thanks to her performance in the Republican presidential debate last week, is not to be underestimated or believed.Fiorina was crisp, sharp and quick in the debate -- all characteristics that helped her become Hewlett-Packard's CEO from 1999 to 2005. But she also used her opportunity before a national audience to distort her history at HP by omitting key facts.[ Get the latest tech news with Computerworld's daily newsletters ] "Yes, we had to make tough choices, and in doing so, we saved 80,000 jobs, went on to grow to 160,000 jobs. And now Hewlett Packard is almost 300,000 jobs," said Fiorina, during the debate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A bad debate for tech

Most of the references to technology in the so-called main-stage GOP debate Wednesday night were around protecting U.S. borders. There were calls for drones, visa entry and exit tracking systems, and overall more reliance on electronics to deter illegal crossings. It was all about building a better fence, and not about government's role in advancing technology.There was no discussion about the H-1B visa except at the margins. There was no mention of the federal government's role in science investment. Space exploration? Not discussed. Technology hardly came up in the three-hour debate, the same as what happened in the first debate on August 6.Climate change, bypassed in the first debate, did come up in Wednesday night's debate. It's a subject that offers much opportunity to talk about science, government investments in basic science including supercomputers, alternative energy systems and energy storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mother Nature teaches Google a lesson

Four successive lightning strikes on a local utility grid in Europe caused a data loss at Google's Belgium data center. For Google, a company with a self-described "appetite for accuracy" in its data center operations, admitting an unrecoverable data loss as small as 0.000001% -- as it did -- likely came with a little bit of pain.The lightning strikes occurred Aug. 13 and the resulting storage system problems weren't fully resolved for five days. Google's post mortem found room for improvement in both hardware upgrades and in the engineering response to the problem.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Computer fires requiring a 911 call rare

Computer fires severe enough to prompt a 911 call are so unusual that when it does happen, local media sometimes makes note of it. That was the case in Arlington, Va., recently, when firefighters found a computer burning on the balcony of an apartment complex.According to the Arlington County Fire Dept., the resident of the apartment had built his own desktop computer. The computer wasn't in use, but was plugged in -- and the resident was in another room when it caught fire."He was alerted to the fire by the sound of the smoke alarm and then found smoke coming from his hard drive," said department Lt. Sarah-Maria Marchegiani.The resident carried the computer out to the balcony after it caught on fire, according to a local media report on Arlington Now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM has first 7nm chip and leapfrogs over competitors

IBM says it has produced the world's first 7nm (nanometer) chip, arriving well ahead of competitors, thanks to advances in its chip technology.Chip makers are now producing 14nm processors, and the next big project for Intel and other chip makers has been the 10nm chip. IBM, in its announcement today, has upended the chip industry's development path.A 7nm chip will hold about four times as many transistors in the same area as a 14nm chip, said Richard Doherty, research director of Envisioneering, a technology assessment and market research firm. In terms of chip development, IBM has "moved the field goal out," he said.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers "For IBM to conquer 7nm without stopping at the 10nm that Intel is supposedly tackling, means that IBM has secured the future two steps out," Doherty said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

All hail the next big job, the Chief IoT Officer

In the near future, you may hear about the appointment of a Chief Internet of Things (IoT) Officer. Before you roll your eyes and chortle at the thought of another chief-of-something, consider the problem.First, companies are beginning to make and implement smart, connected, data-producing products. That can be anything -- automobiles, assembly line robots, washing machines and even coffee makers. This data can be used in predictive analytics to avoid product failures, as well as to schedule maintenance around when a product actually needs it. These products, mechanical and electronic, will likely get ongoing software updates.INSIDER: 5 ways to prepare for Internet of Things security threats Second, connected products are now part of a broader system. Or as Michael Porter, a Harvard economist, pointed out at this week's ThingWorx conference, you aren't just selling a tractor, you are selling a tractor that is becoming part of a smart farm, a system. Things have to be able to work together.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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