Happy 47thImage by Reuters/Pascal RossignolThe 747 truly ushered in the Jumbo Jet era when it first flew for the first time this week – Feb. 9 -- in 1969. “The fuselage of the original 747 was 225 feet (68.5 meters) long; the tail as tall as a six-story building. Pressurized, it carried a ton of air. The cargo hold had room for 3,400 pieces of baggage and the total wing area was larger than a basketball court. Yet, the entire global navigation system weighed less than a modern laptop computer,” Boeing wrote of the aircraft. The massive airplane required construction of the 200 million-cubic-foot 747 assembly plant in Everett, Wash., the world's largest building by volume. Here’s a brief look at the giant of the skies:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's a good time to be in IT. Job seekers have the advantage as employers struggle to hire tech talent in key areas such as cloud computing, mobility, security and data analytics. Companies are raising salaries and piling on the perks -- but not for every IT role.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
The month marks the 42 anniversary of the last manned occupation of the US’ first big attempt to live in outer space – Skylab.+History in pictures: Skylab: NASA's first space station marks 40 years+Launched on May 14, 1973, the Skylab saw three crewed manned missions—the last being concluded in February 1974.
In terms of technology the lab was pretty advanced for the time. According to IBM, two Big Blue computers controlled the orientation of the laboratory throughout the mission. The onboard computers, which were arranged redundantly, were models of IBM's System/4Pi, a computer designed for the special weight and environmental requirements of aerospace applications. Each of the IBM computers aboard Skylab weighed 100 pounds and measured 19 by 7.3 by 31.8 inches. They were capable of handling more than 100 signals to Skylab attitude control equipment, IBM says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the biggest challenges for any tech professional is keeping up with change. But sometimes you’re so focused of advances that affect your particular job, industry or strategic goals that you lose sight of the bigger picture.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow. Spark-Redis connectorKey features: The Spark-Redis connector package is open source and provides a library for writing and reading from a Redis cluster with access to Redis' data structures – String, Hash, List, Set, Sorted Set, bitmaps, hyperloglogs – from Spark as RDDs. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ultimate hideawayImage by ReutersYou say you’ll need an escape route should the presidential candidate of your nightmares prevail come November? Perhaps a spacious and lavishly equipped nuclear fallout bunker will do the trick, provided you’re OK with a move to Northern Ireland and can pony up the quite reasonable $840,000 asking price. Built in 1987 at the end of the Cold War, the bunker sleeps 235, and while its technological trimmings may be in need of modernization, such will be the least of your worries once President Nightmare has a finger on the button. The Guardian has details and a Reuters photographer shows the place off here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco this week says it fortified its SAN switching lineup for the next 10 years. The company launched the MDS 9718 – or “the beast” as it was referred to internally -- a high port density, programmable director that’s ready for 32G.The switch supports 10G, 16G, 40G today, and with future support for 32G Cisco claims it should be around for the next decade. FibreChannel tops out at 16G today.It scales to 768 line rate 16G FibreChannel or 10G FibreChannel-over-Ethernet (FCoE) ports, or 384 40G FCoE. Brocade's DCX 8510, by contrast, supports up to 512 16G FC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The International Trade Commission has made an initial determination that Arista Networks infringed on three Cisco patents in its switches, the latest development in a 13-month-old suit.The ITC said Arista violated patents associated with a central database for managing configuration data (SysDB) and private VLANs. As part of its 2014 suit alleging patent and copyright infringement, Cisco sought an injunction on Arista product from the ITC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Western Digital in October announced plans to acquire SanDisk for some $19 billion in a deal that -- once finalized -- will marry leaders in the traditional hard drive and the emerging flash memory markets. Sumit Sadana, SanDisk's chief strategy officer and general manager of its Enterprise Solutions unit, spoke recently with IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant to share insights on the merger and to explore the evolving role of flash in corporate data centers. What continues to hold enterprise back with flash? Just the price perception issue?Is the cloud a threat to your consumer device business? More and more, consumers use the cloud for photos or other things that they're saving. Is it such that the better the cloud opportunities get, the weaker the consumer opportunity gets?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Underwater communications networks are excruciatingly slow, and that's hampering oil and gas exploration and scuba communications, among other businesses.The communications technology needs upgrading to more closely match high-speed, through-air radio networks, say experts.One answer may be to adapt software-defined radios and couple them with special underwater acoustic modems, according to electrical engineers at the University of Buffalo.Radio too slow
Sound-waves—like those used by whales and dolphins—as opposed to radio-waves, are the best media for communicating underwater, the scientists say.Traditional radio methods don't work properly. The problem is that radio doesn't function well underwater. Commercial underwater modems are slow, and voice solutions are limited by distance and clarity, the scientists say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two SDN vendors have enhanced their offerings to improve visibility into virtual networks.Midokura this week unveiled an upgrade of its Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) network virtualization software to provide visibility into encapsulated traffic in OpenStack clouds. And Pluribus Networks rolled out software designed to provide an operational view of the data center network for insight into application performance and troubleshooting, and enhancing forensic analysis and security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies are finding some of the oddest locations for data centers these days.Facebook, for example, built a data center in Lulea in Sweden because the icy cold temperatures there would help cut the energy required for cooling. A proposed Facebook data center in Clonee, Ireland, will rely heavily on wind energy locally available. Google's data center in Hamina in Finland uses sea water from the Bay of Finland for cooling.Now, Microsoft is looking at locating data centers under the sea.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies are finding some of the oddest locations for data centers these days.Facebook, for example, built a data center in Lulea in Sweden because the icy cold temperatures there would help cut the energy required for cooling. A proposed Facebook data center in Clonee, Ireland, will rely heavily on wind energy locally available. Google's data center in Hamina in Finland uses sea water from the Bay of Finland for cooling.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier
Now, Microsoft is looking at locating data centers under the sea.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're trying to convince your management to beef up the organization's security to protect against data breaches, an interactive infographic from Information Is Beautiful might help.Built with IIB's forthcoming VIZsweet data visualization tools, the World's Biggest Data Breaches visualization combines data from DataBreaches.net, IdTheftCentre, and press reports to create a timeline of breaches that involved the loss of 30,000 or more records (click the image below to go to the interactive version). What's particularly interesting is that while breaches were caused by accidental publishing, configuration errors, inside job, lost or stolen computer, lost or stolen media, or just good old poor security, the majority of events and the largest, were due to hacking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Think differentImage by Steve SauerFlowers, jewelry, candy – we've found geeky versions of today's go-to Valentine's Day gifts for sweethearts who dig science, math and technology.MORE IDEAS: Check out our Valentine’s Day gift guides from 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the face of relenting network attacks and it seems that the government’s chief weapon for combatting the assault lacks some teeth.That weapon – the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS)—also known as Einstein has is intended to provide DHS with capabilities to detect malicious traffic traversing federal agencies’ computer networks, prevent intrusions, and support data analytics and information sharing. A tall tale no doubt but one that is imperative to protecting the gargantuan amount of government intelligence and personally identifiable information the feds watch over.+More on Network World: 26 of the craziest and scariest things the TSA has found on travelers+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the face of relenting network attacks and it seems that the government’s chief weapon for combatting the assault lacks some teeth.
That weapon – the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS)—also known as Einstein has is intended to provide DHS with capabilities to detect malicious traffic traversing federal agencies’ computer networks, prevent intrusions, and support data analytics and information sharing. A tall tale no doubt but one that is imperative to protecting the gargantuan amount of government intelligence and personally identifiable information the feds watch over.
+More on Network World: 26 of the craziest and scariest things the TSA has found on travelers+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
US researchers at Sandia National Laboratories say they are working on a design for gigantic wind turbine blades that are longer than two football fields which could support 50-megawatt-- more than six times the power output of the largest current turbines --offshore wind farms in the future.+More on network World: Energy Dept. wants big wind energy technology in all 50 states+Sandia researchers said most US wind turbines produce power in the 1- to 2-MW range, with blades about 165 feet (50 meters) long, while the largest commercially available turbine is rated at 8 MW with blades 262 feet (80 meters) long. A 50-MW turbine requires a rotor blade more than 650 feet (200 meters) long, two and a half times longer than any existing wind blade, the researchers stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There will be bonding. There will be splicing. And there will be firestopping.Yes, it’s time to roll up your sleeves, de-fog your goggles, climb your ladder and get ready for the 9th annual BICSI Cabling Skills Challenge next week in Orlando, where the Installer of the Year will be crowned and awarded a $5K prize (not to mention a towering trophy). This will definitely beat the NFL’s Pro Bowl as a competition fix during the seemingly endless lead-up to Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7.The Installer of the Year needs to be versatile, good with his or her hands, and smart to boot. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the scramble for SDN supremacy, Cisco and VMware usually bark about users who opt for one of their solutions over the other.In all the noise, it’s rare to hear from one that plans to implement both.But that’s what SugarCreek, a $650 million, privately-held food processing and packing company based in Washington Court House, OH, is doing in its software-defined data centers (SDDC). VMware’s NSX network virtualization software will be used to secure and automate the VMware-virtualized server environment, while Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) will be deployed to manage the physical network infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here