Dayton Superior is a global B2B company that has turned to analytics and optimization to align its prices with local markets.You may not be familiar with Dayton Superior, but you know its work. Headquartered in Miamisburg, Ohio, the 115-year-old global nonresidential concrete construction company has supplied the concrete and other materials for bridges, canals, buildings and stadiums around the world, including the Panama Canal, new World Trade Center Towers and Trump Ocean Club.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 15 big data and analytics companies to watch
"We're very much involved in all the big, cool buildings going up," says Dayton Superior CEO James McRickard, noting that the company has been heavily involved in the Hudson Yards project on Manhattan's West Side — a 26-to-28 acre mixed-use real estate development over the West Side Rail Yard that will consist of 16 skyscrapers, a school and more than 14 acres of public open space. "We make the stuff that holds it all together."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While the BlackBerry 10 operating system will live on for at least a couple more years, we’ve likely seen the last of its hardware.Speaking to Gulf News and The National—two English-language newspapers published in United Arab Emirates—BlackBerry CEO and Executive Chairman John Chen said the company has stopped producing BlackBerry 10 smartphones. The company is now focusing on its Android phones, with the goal of being the “most secure Android smartphone for the enterprise,” Chen told Gulf News.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Unix command line users around the world rejoiced when Microsoft announced recently it would be bringing the popular Bash shell to Windows 10 with a forthcoming update. Last Wednesday, the company released a beta build of its operating system that finally had support for the new functionality.To get it working, users have to jump through a few hoops. First, the system is only available right now for users who have build 14316 of Windows 10. To get it, a PC has to be a part of the Windows Insider Program's Fast ring.
After installing the beta, users have to toggle Developer Mode on in Settings > Updates and Security > For Developers. From there, they have to open up another settings pane, check the "Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta)," restart their computer, and open a DOS command prompt and run the bash command.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The new features for Windows 10 keep on coming, and it can be hard to keep track of them all, especially for enterprises that want to decide whether to allow the update that installs these new features on their PCs.Credit Microsoft for keeping people well-informed as to what is coming because between all the preview builds of Windows 10 and individual feature additions, it can get really confusing. So, the company has published a roadmap of upcoming features for Windows 10.The list is broken down by Recently Available, In Public Preview and In Development. Recently Available and In Public Preview are features that users have access to through the Production ring or the Insider Program, respectively.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security experts have devised a method that allows users to recover data from computers infected with the Petya ransomware program without paying money to cybercriminals.Petya appeared on researchers' radar last month when criminals distributed it to companies through spam emails that masqueraded as job applications. It stood out from other file-encrypting ransomware programs because it overwrites a hard disk drive's master boot record (MBR), leaving infected computers unable to boot into the operating system.The program replaces the drive's legitimate MBR code, which normally starts the operating system, with code that encrypts the master file table (MFT) and shows a ransom note. The MFT is a special file on NTFS volumes that contains information about all other files: their name, size and mapping to hard disk sectors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wearables are rapidly invading the workplace in much the same way that smartphones did. Fitness trackers, smartwatches, head-mounted displays and other new form factors are beginning to capture the public imagination. Sales of wearable electronic devices topped 232 million in 2015, and Gartner forecasts they’ll rise 18.4% this year, when another 274.6 million devices are sold.These wearable devices represent some appealing opportunities for businesses to increase efficiency and gather data, but in the rush to win market share, security concerns are taking a backseat for many manufacturers and app developers. The potential ramifications of unchecked wearable device usage within the enterprise are alarming.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There’s nothing particularly new about new products being shipped with malware, but if you are in the market for surveillance cameras and are looking for a good deal, then a security researcher warned that even products sold on Amazon come with embedded malware.Security researcher Mike Olsen found a decent deal on an outdoor surveillance CCTV setup, specifically six Sony HD IP cameras and recording equipment which are being sold on Amazon by a seller with “great ratings.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Imagine if your router could detect a user’s location to within a few inches? For one thing, hotspot password protection becomes redundant because geographic authentication takes over—the router can be configured to only allow access from within a location, an apartment, say. In-café users could be allowed access without passwords, yet freeloaders on the street get blocked.Researchers think they’ve worked out how to do it.The system “locates users by calculating the ‘time-of-flight’ that it takes for data to travel from the user to an access point,” says Adam Conner-Simons in a recent MIT News article. And it does it with a single access point. That’s unlike other setups that require four or five access points for triangulation-like measuring. One access point determining a user’s position means costs should be lower, and individuals or small businesses can take advantage of the tech.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. consumers are slow to embrace home-based Internet of Things products, with many wary of their cost and usefulness, according to a new survey.Many consumers are skeptical about the value proposition behind home IoT products, according to the survey from market research firm IDC.Reliability was the top concern among those people who expressed interested in home IoT devices. On a one to 10 rating scale, reliability rated nearly a nine when people were asked what home IoT issues needed to improve before they would purchase a system.Following close behind were concerns about cost, with equipment costs, ongoing costs, installation costs, overall value, all scoring above 8.75. Ease of use and security or privacy concerns were also major concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new partnership being announced today sees Sysdig and Mesosphere getting cozy to enable a more consistent way of developing and delivering applications.These are two interesting vendors in different spaces. Sysdig calls itself a "container visibility company." Essentially what that means is that it offers a container-specific monitoring solution. One can think of it like New Relic and Boundary but with containers as a primary focus. Mesosphere, on the other hand, is the company that commercializes the Mesos open-source project to help scale and automate applications. Mesosphere offers the data center operating system (DCOS), which delivers a simpler administration model for data center operators.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google released more information about Android N (referring to N as Not the real name). The preview of the mobile operating system gives the impression of a more in-depth system and user-level polish that has been Google’s obsession since Android 4.4 Kitkat.Multi-Window Support
Multi-Window support stands out as the most important feature for users, consumers and developers. It allows apps to be opened in two separate windows and used on a split-screen display. User interest in Multi-Window has become increasingly important as mobile devices replace PC apps with mobile apps. When work moves to a mobile app, users want many of the same PC features, keyboards, split screens, drag and drop, etc.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Talk of blockchain technology is everywhere, it seems -- but what is it, and what does it do?1. Don't call it "the" blockchainThe first thing to know about the blockchain is, there isn't one: there are many. Blockchains are distributed, tamper-proof public ledgers of transactions. The most well-known is the record of bitcoin transactions, but in addition to tracking cryptocurrencies, blockchains are being used to record loans, stock transfers, contracts, healthcare data and even votes.2. Security, transparency: the network's run by usThere's no central authority in a blockchain system: Participating computers exchange transactions for inclusion in the ledger they share over a peer-to-peer network. Each node in the chain keeps a copy of the ledger, and can trust others’ copies of it because of the way they are signed. Periodically, they wrap up the latest transactions in a new block of data to be added to the chain. Alongside the transaction data, each block contains a computational "hash" of itself and of the previous block in the chain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve been following Google’s BeyondCorp project for a while. In fact, I was recently quoted in a Wall Street Journal blog on this topic. If you are not familiar with BeyondCorp, it is Google’s spin on what’s become known as a software-defined perimeter (SDP). SDP, also called a “black cloud” originated at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and is now being driven by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Now that Apple is officially in its 40s, you might think the company would settle down a bit and douse all those silly rumors about iPhone 7 smartphones and so forth. But no, it looks like the Apple rumor mill isn’t hitting any sort of midlife crisis.Exclusive to 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus?
Fretting has already begun, and now has intensified, that the much anticipated dual-lens camera Apple is believed to be working on will only be available in the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus model. And not everyone wants to lug around such a big iOS device (isn’t that part of the reason so many have ditched their portable digital cameras and just use their smartphones for picture taking now?).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In my last post I discussed a Web-based programming environment for the Raspberry Pi. Today, for your further Raspberry Pi delectation, I have another RPi-compatible programming tool but this it’s rather more specific: It’s called Sonic Pi and it’s for programming music in real time.Created by Sam Aaron at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, Sonic Pi is a free, open source, live coding synthesizer released under the MIT License. Better still, it not only runs on the Raspberry Pi as its name suggests, it also runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Where is IoT going in the long run?... To cash in on the treasure trove of “everything it knows about you,” data collected over the long term, at least it is according to a post on Medium about the “dirty little secret” of the Internet of Things.A company can only sell so many devices, but still needs to make money, so the article suggests the “sinister” reason why companies “want to internet-connect your entire house” is to collect every little bit of data about you and turn it into profit. Although the post was likely inspired in part by the continued fallout of Nest’s decision to brick Revolv hubs, there could a IoT company eventually looking for a way to monetize on “if you listen to music while having sex.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's Mac Pro is aging fast, especially with screaming fast Windows desktops being announced in recent weeks.Introduced in 2013, the Mac Pro was a top-of-the-line desktop at that time. It looked exquisite in its sleek cylindrical design, and it sported new features like Thunderbolt 2 ports, plus the latest CPUs, GPUs and NVMe storage.More importantly, it was a signal that Apple had not abandoned the professional computing market. The latest Mac Pro was a relief to those clamoring for an upgrade from an older version of the computer, which last received a face-lift in 2010.But the Mac Pro is again falling behind the competition, with powerful new workstations from Lenovo, Dell and HP carrying superior technology. The PC companies are waging an active campaign to tempt Mac Pro users, many of them creative professionals, to move over to Windows PCs with better CPUs, GPUs, and memory. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft made a mistake at its recent developers conference when it didn't use the opportunity to push customers to buy new hardware, an analyst said today."On behalf of the Windows 10 team, we're happy to welcome all of these customers to Windows 10, whether they have a new PC, a five-year-old PC, or a Mac [emphasis added]," said Terry Myerson, the executive who leads the company's devices and operating systems group, after touting a new number of active Windows 10 users.Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, picked up on Myerson's "five-year-old PC," and didn't like what she heard.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10
"While Microsoft stated it is fine with some of those users having five-year-old PCs, a clear response to Phil Schiller's recent comment on the topic during Apple's last launch event, we strongly believe Microsoft should actually be concerned about the issue," Milanesi wrote in an analysis published on Creative Strategies' website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Publishing hyperlinks to photos from, say, Playboy magazine is legal -- even if the website linked to doesn't have permission to publish the images, a top European Union judge has said.That's because hyperlinking to a document does not constitute a fresh publication, according to Melchior Wathelet, advocate general of the Court of Justice of the EU, in a legal opinion issued Thursday.But his opinion, on a case brought by the publisher of Playboy magazine, is only advisory, and it still remains for the CJEU to make a final ruling on the matter. The question of whether hyperlinking constitutes publication is important to copyright and libel law. It was last addressed by the CJEU in 2014, when it found that Swedish media aggregation site Retriever did not need a newspaper's permission to link to stories. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Siemens and Airbus teamed up today to develop electric and hybrid electric/combustion engines for commercial and private aircraft.The companies said they would amass a joint development team of about 200 employees that would jointly develop prototypes for various propulsion systems with power classes ranging from a few 100 kilowatts up to 10 and more megawatts, for short, local trips with aircraft below 100 seats, helicopters or unmanned aircraft up to classic short and medium-range flights.+More on Network World: The most magnificent high-tech flying machines+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here