Whether it’s food, beverages or automobiles, I want options and don’t want to be told what to do. I feel the same way about networking equipment. I’ve resented the fact that select vendors have had too much control in dictating choices over the years. I don’t think users should be told what, when and how they should buy, deploy and upgrade their network equipment. Luckily, those days are numbered thanks in part to the good work of the Open Compute Project, whose mission is to design and enable the delivery of the most efficient server, storage and data center hardware designs for scalable computing. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Businesses have more data than ever about their operations, supply chains and customers. The problem is often they can’t see it, don’t know where it is, and don’t have an easy want to pull it all together and analyze it. So, they are unable to make smart decisions and can lose thousands of dollars a year. It’s a challenge restaurant franchisors such as CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries Inc. face. CraftWorks has found a solution, though—OnDemand software from ArrowStream. + Also on Network World: 8 big data predictions for 2017 +
OnDemand does the “dirty work” of collecting data from food distributors, cleaning the data, analyzing it and putting the information front and center for supply chain restaurant managers, said Jeff Dorr, chief customer officer of ArrowStream. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The IT vendor landscape is constantly in flux, with mergers, acquisitions, new technology developments and the growth of the cloud having a huge impact on which companies might be the most strategic partners for organizations looking to enhance their technology infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Remote monitoring and management (RMM) can be a great way to keep tabs on workstations, servers, and other IT infrastructure and also automate some maintenance and remediation tasks. This can help save time and resources in the IT department.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Web-based information displays such as dashboards, have become a popular way to present summaries of complex data and in this issue of the Gearhead Toolbox I have two killer JavaScript libraries for creating and editing diagrams, and another equally great library for creating gauge displays. Enjoy ... Mark Gibbs
GOJSTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's rumor mill sometimes works in mysterious ways. With Apple's next-gen iPhone, for example, a sketchy report that surfaced in mid-2016 claimed that Apple's upcoming iPhone was such a huge upgrade that Apple was going to skip the iPhone 7s nomenclature and simply call its 2017 iPhone the iPhone 8. And from there, the iPhone 8 naming convention stuck.More recently, reports surfaced indicating that Apple was still planning on releasing three brand new iPhone models, an iPhone 7s, an iPhone 7s Plus, and a newly redesigned iPhone dubbed the iPhone 8. This of course never made much sense given that releasing an iPhone 8 alongside an iPhone 7s would not only cause widespread confusion, it might also stifle overall iPhone sales. After all, who would want to buy an iPhone 7s when an iPhone 8 is already out on the market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple just might whet our appetites for a September unveiling of the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) with an event later this month or early in April regarding some new iPads and maybe some low-end iPhones. But we won’t be distracted: On to the iPhone 8 rumors! KINDER, GENTLER CURVES
The word is that Apple and Samsung are going to hogging up most of the shiny, energy-efficient OLED displays being pumped out this year, leaving poor Huawei and others on the outs. And after all that, it turns out that Apple’s OLED displays on its anticipated 5.8-inch iPhone 8 will have a “gentler” curved screen than that found on the rival Samsung Galaxy S7 (and likely, the S8). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel's first Optane storage modules came out in early January, but were only 32GB. Larger Optane drives with up to 1.5TB of storage capacity are on their way, and we now have a better understanding of how they're going to perform.The first large-capacity Optane SSD drive is the DC P4800X, which has 375GB of storage and started shipping on Sunday. The $1,520 SSD is targeted at servers. (Intel didn't provide regional availability information.)Intel says an enterprise Optane SSD with 750GB will ship in the second quarter, and that a 1.5TB SSD will ship in the second half of this year.These SSDs will fit as add-in cards in the PCI-Express/NVMe and U.2 slots. That means they could work in some workstations and servers based on AMD's 32-core Naples processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When governments turn to private hackers to carry out state-sponsored attacks, as the FBI alleges Russia did in the 2014 breach of Yahoo, they're taking a big risk.
On the one hand, it gives them a bit of plausible deniability while reaping the potential spoils of each attack, but if the hackers aren't kept on a tight leash things can turn bad.
Karim Baratov, the 22-year-old Canadian hacker who the FBI alleges Russia's state security agency hired to carry out the Yahoo breach, didn't care much for a low profile.
His Facebook and Instagram posts boasted of the million-dollar house he bought in a Toronto suburb and there were numerous pictures of him with expensive sports cars -- the latest an Aston Martin DB9 with the license plate "MR KARIM."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We have seen it all before: This will be the year of (blank). Pick any technology—augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets, wearables, social networks, etc. The hype cycle starts three to five years early, and everyone—vendors, Wall Street and venture capitalists—is disappointed when last year was not the year.It is early days for VR and even earlier for AR. Sales of VR headsets were graded disappointing after the close of the Christmas season and seemingly confirmed when BestBuy closed half of its in-store Oculus demo stations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An auction house in May will look for the highest bidding fanboy or fangirl who'd like to get his or her hands on what it claims is just one of 8 functioning Apple I computers.
Auction Team Breker, which is based in Germany and specializes in what it calls "technical antiques", has set an auction date for the Apple I on May 20.
MORE: iPhone 8 rumor rollup
The collector's item could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars based on sales of past such items, such as an Apple I sold by Sotheby's in 2014 for about $375K and a prototype of the Apple I that sold for $815K last year. Auction Team Breker estimates its item will go for between $190K and $320K.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Oracle’s third quarter financial results continue to show that the company’s future is in the cloud. On Wednesday, the company reported massive growth in its software- and platform-as-a-service businesses, promising further gains as its customers do away with their data centers.The company’s SaaS and PaaS revenue from December 2016 through February 2017 was a little over US$1 billion, up from $583 million during the same period a year prior. Its infrastructure-as-a-service business brought in $178 million during the same period, bringing the company’s total cloud revenue for the quarter to almost $1.2 billion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An unpatched command injection vulnerability could allow hackers to take over enterprise networking products from Ubiquiti Networks.The vulnerability was discovered by researchers from SEC Consult and allows authenticated users to inject arbitrary commands into the web-based administration interface of affected devices. These commands would be executed on the underlying operating system as root, the highest privileged account.Because it requires authentication, the vulnerability's impact is somewhat reduced, but it can still be exploited remotely through cross-site request forgery (CSRF). This is an attack technique that involves forcing a user's browser to send unauthorized requests to specifically crafted URLs in the background when they visit attacker-controlled websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Qualcomm's plea this week to start referring to its Snapdragon processors as the Qualcomm Snapdragon Mobile Platform reminds me of my early days at Network World when every vendor insisted it was selling a "solution" and not a switch or router or server.Interviews often went something like this:"So what is your company announcing today?""A solution""Yeah, but what is it? Is it a router? Is it a switch? Is it software? Is it hardware? Is it a service?""It's a solution."Qualcomm's solution to people underestimating all that its Snapdragon processors do, and to distinguish them from lower-end products in its line, is to introduce a "new naming structure" to, you guessed it, "represent [our] full suite of solutions."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bug hunters have gathered again to test their skills against some of the most popular and mature software programs during the Pwn2Own hacking contest. During the first day, they successfully demonstrated exploits against Microsoft Edge, Apple's Safari, Adobe Reader, and Ubuntu Desktop.The Pwn2Own contest runs every year during the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada. It's organized and sponsored by the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), an exploit acquisition program operated by Trend Micro after its acquisition of TippingPoint.This year the contest has a prize pool of US$1 million for exploits in five categories: virtual machines (VMware Workstation and Microsoft Hyper-V); web browser and plugins (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Flash Player running in Edge); local escalation of privilege (Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu Desktop); enterprise applications (Adobe Reader, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and server side (Apache Web Server on Ubuntu Server).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Machine learning systems maybe be smart but they have a lot to discover.Innovative researchers with DARPA hope to achieve superior machine learning systems with a new program called Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) which has as its primary goal to develop next-generation machine learning technologies that can learn from new situations and apply that learning to become better and more reliable than current constrained systems.+More on Network World: DARPA fortifies early warning system for power-grid cyber assault+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Whether used for camping, trick or treating, or power outages, this lantern will provide up to 12 hours of bright omnidirectional LED lighting to see your surroundings. When the battery power of the lantern runs low, the brightness will dim to an energy saving mode to provide longer lasting illumination (up to 4 hours of low power usage). It's lighter, brighter and more portable than most flashlights while still featuring the rugged durability to withstand the outdoors. The military grade exterior is water resistant for more practical use in a high range of environments. Ideal for children, the lantern needs no setup or prepping with fires and oil. The design provides full omnidirectional lighting for clear vision no matter where you may turn. The fold-out collapsible handles make for easier portability and hanging. This lantern averages 4.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews) and the 4 pack's list price of $79.99 has been reduced 75% to $19.99. Check it out on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If riding a roller coaster with a virtual Superman isn’t your thing, Six Flags New England has an alternative pitch – get sent into space and fight alien invaders.The Agawam, Mass.-based amusement park today announced that its second coaster will get VR when it opens this spring. Partnering up with Samsung, the company said its Mind Eraser steel coaster will include the “Galactic Attack Virtual Reality Coaster” option, which will include a mixed reality feature that initially will let riders see the real world (including the rider next to them) in addition to the VR graphics. Like the Superman coaster, riders will put on a VR headset while enjoying the physical roller coaster’s drops and spins.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I couldn’t attend the RSA Conference this year but many cybersecurity professionals and my ESG colleagues told me that incident response automation and orchestration was one of the hottest topics in the halls of the Moscone Center, through the bar at the W hotel, and even at the teahouse on the garden at Yerba Buena. Was this rhetoric just industry hype? Nope. This buzz is driven by the demand side rather than suppliers. In truth, cybersecurity professionals need immediate IR help for several reasons:1. IR is dominated by manual processes. Let’s face it, IR tasks like fetching data, tracking events, or collaborating with colleagues depend upon the organizational, communications, and technical skills of individuals within the security operations team. These manual processes ultimately get in the way of overall IR productivity. In a recent research project, infosec pros were asked: ‘Do you believe that your organization’s incident response efficiency and effectiveness are limited by the time and effort required for manual processes?’ Fifty-two percent of cybersecurity professionals responded, “yes, significantly” while another 41% said, “yes, somewhat.” Furthermore, 27% of cybersecurity pros say they spend 50% or more of their Continue reading
The CBRS Alliance, which promotes LTE services in the shared 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service band, is riding high after signing up all of the Big 4 U.S. carriers, plus Samsung, and then seeing a slew of CBRS activity at the recent Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.Neville Meijers, VP of business development at Qualcomm Technologies and chairman of the board for the CBRS Alliance, says “there’s a lot of interest in the combination of unlicensed and shared spectrum” for a number of use cases being tested for public and private services.I caught up with Meijers shortly after MWC to get up to speed on the latest CBRS action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here