Releasing 60 million genetically modified mosquitoes a week sounds just wrong, but in theory the mutant mosquitoes will mate with normal mosquitos so the offspring will have a genetic flaw that causes them to die quickly. There is no mention of whether or not the millions of mutant mosquitoes to be released weekly will feed on the people of Brazil. If that’s not just wrong, then the three examples below surely are.Saddam Hussein…really Apple?Apple refused to issue a male customer a refund for an iPhone 7 unless he could prove he was not Saddam Hussein – you know, the Iraqi dictator executed by hanging in 2006 – basically a decade ago. Apparently, someone working for Apple was unaware of that fact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This multi-functional camera lens kit works on most standard sized smartphones including the iPhone 7 (excluding Plus), and brings even more life to your photos with 180-degree fisheye, 0.65x wide angle and 10x macro lenses. It currently averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon, and its list price of $20 has been reduced 30% to just $14. See the lens kit now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.K. government will spend £1.9 billion (US $2.3 billion) over the next five years to pump up its cybersecurity defenses and pay for new research, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said.
The goal of the spending, part of a new national cybersecurity strategy, is to make the U.K. one of the "safest places in the world to do business," with a world-class cybersecurity industry and workforce, Hammond said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon has quietly released another good set of deals on its popular Kindle series of e-readers. For a limited time, Kindle's price sinks from $80 to $60, Kindle Paperwhite from $120 down to $100, the Kindle Voyage drops from $200 to just $180, and the worry-free Kindle for Kids Bundle is reduced from $125 to just $80. The Kindle discounts are being offered for a limited time, so if you're in the market for one, you may want to consider the deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Following similar decisions by Mozilla and Apple, Google plans to reject new digital certificates issued by two certificate authorities because they violated industry rules and best practices.The ban will go into effect in Chrome version 56, which is currently in the dev release channel, and will apply to all certificates issued by certificate authorities WoSign and StartCom after October 21. Browsers rely on digital certificates to verify the identity of websites and to establish encrypted connections with them.Certificates issued before October 21 will continue to be trusted as long as they're published to the public Certificate Transparency logs or have been issued to a limited set of domains owned by known WoSign and StartCom customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The future of Windows phones...might not be phones?
Rumors and hopes for a category-defining Surface phone were not satisfied at Microsoft's press event last Wednesday. The company didn’t even mention Windows 10 Mobile. With the collective market share of Windows phones stagnant at about 1 percent, customers and partners have to wonder why anyone should bother investing in Microsoft’s mobile strategy.
In an interview with ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft executive vice president of Windows and Devices Terry Myerson was asked just that. But instead of committing wholeheartedly to Windows phones—or declaring that product line dead—Myerson tried a different tack: obscurity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're ready to kick-start your organization's efforts to embrace digital technologies, this editor-curated selection of Computerworld in-depth stories is the place to start. We identified some of our most targeted content on IT-led digital projects, chock-full of fresh ideas for making your organization more digitally competent. You'll read how savvy organizations in industries across the spectrum got serious about using digital technologies to gain a competitive edge, connect better with customers and improve efficiency.What's Inside: Stories from Top Organizations
Transformation That's All About the Customer
Part business process redesign, part agile development, the new re-engineering is endless — just like customer demands. Smart companies are learning to please customers one at a time, all of the time. Read how the CIO at Valdosta University, for example, turned IT's focus to the school's students, upgrading the campus wireless network, redesigning and repurposing some of its computer labs, and offering after-hours support service staffed by IT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SafeguardsImage by PexelsWith an ever-expanding mobile workforce, infosec teams are increasingly tasked with extending cybersecurity safeguards beyond the physical and virtual walls of their organizations. With endpoints not only increasing but on the move, the challenge is real. In addition to implementing the appropriate technical defenses, there is an important aspect to protecting corporate data and systems: Asking end users to get involved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not everyone has a typical career trajectory where titles, skills and promotions all line up into a neat, concise story. That was the case with Keith Evans. He held varying CIO roles with the same company and had skills that set him apart from other CIOs, which caused some confusion and resulted in a dense resume. Laura Smith-Proulx, career and resume expert, knew that the goal with re-writing Evan's resume was to organize the existing information to build a clear picture of his extensive skills and experience as a CIO.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Unconscious and implicit biases are a major barrier to diversity and inclusion efforts in the workplace, and they can have far-reaching implications on the success of individual employees and the company as a whole. The key, says Katherin Nukk-Freeman and Suzanne Cerra, employment law attorneys and co-founders of SHIFT HR Compliance Training, is not to say, "are we unconsciously biased?" but rather, "What can we do about our implicit biases?"Nukk-Freeman and Cerra offer five bias-busting strategies HR teams can implement in their organizations to create a more diverse and inclusive culture.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For most of us, pagers went out when cell phones came in, but some companies are still using them and when the messages are sent without encryption, attackers can listen in and even interfere with the communications.According to two new reports by Trend Micro, pagers are still in use in hospital settings and in industrial plants.Stephen Hilt, Trend Micro's lead researcher on the project, said they don’t have a concrete percentage on the number of encrypted messages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HALF MOON BAY, CALIF. - If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed much in sports it’s that winning cures a lot of ills. Fans generally don’t want to follow or pay to see a team that’s always losing, but competitive teams with a shot at a championship typically attract more fans and can generate more revenue via merchandise, media and other ancillary deals.But one thing that has changed, sports are not the only game in town. From live performances to outdoor activities and the many choices in big and small screen entertainment, consumers have more options as to how to spend their free time and money than ever before.As a result, professional sports teams are investing in new ways to attract and engage fans both inside and outside the ballpark or stadium and technology is a big part of those investments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Retailers, hotels and restaurants have all been victimized through the same Achilles' heel that cybercriminals continue to attack: the point-of-sale system, where customers' payment data is routinely processed. These digital cash registers are often the target of malware designed to steal credit card numbers in the thousands or even millions. This year, fast food vendor Wendy's, clothing retailer Eddie Bauer and Kimpton Hotels have all reported data breaches stemming from such attacks.Security experts, however, are encouraging a variety of approaches to keep businesses secure from point-of-sale-related intrusions. Here are a few to consider:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Mirantis - two of the most instrumental companies in the open source cloud computing project OpenStack - have each laid off employees in recent weeks, according to the companies.The full extent of the layoffs at HPE is unknown but ComputerWorldUK last week quoted Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth as saying that HPE had laid off their “entire OpenStack team.” An official with HPE confirmed there has been a restructuring but would not say how many OpenStack workers were cut, adding that Shuttleworth’s statement is exaggerated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a previous series of blogs, I talked about why your network is the critical foundation of the digital transformation and of the business benefits of moving to a new IP network architecture. I talked about how networks help you control time, how the effects of Metcalfe’s and Reed’s Laws result in wealth creation, and why there is such a tension between your dumb pipes and your smart business. But it’s not just the technology that matters in this coming digital transformation; it’s also your skills and ultimately your career.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apcera is an interesting company. Its founder, Derek Collison, was one of the key people behind Cloud Foundry back when it was a small platform project within VMware. Since then Cloud Foundry has gone on to become, arguably, the most important platform as a service (PaaS) organization on earth.+ Also on Network World: PaaS vendors draw battle lines over containers +
Collison has moved on as well and founded Apcera, a company focused on giving large enterprises the certainty that comes from using a platform with security and policy baked in. In a world were organizations are hearing more and more about containers and cloud-native applications, having a platform that allows them to use these technologies within the context of tight policy is an attractive proposition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google and Microsoft are butting heads over the disclosure of vulnerabilities. On Monday, Google revealed a critical flaw in Windows after it gave Microsoft a ten-day window to warn the public about it.Google posted about the zero-day vulnerability on its security blog, saying Microsoft had yet to publish a fix or issue an advisory about the software flaw."This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited," Google said. It lets hackers exploit a bug in the Windows kernel, via a win32k.sys system call, to bypass the security sandbox.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You want to be more responsible about IT security in your organization, but where do you start? May I suggest your first step be understanding these topics more thoroughly. This is list isn’t exhaustive. It’s only a beginning:1. DNS and DNSSEC: The biggest games in cyber war are hitting DNS providers. DNS can be compromised in many simple ways, but Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) thwarts these—at the cost of understanding how it works, how to deploy it and how it’s maintained. There are ways to understand if your own organization is threatened with DDoS attacks. Study them. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ohlfs family
Keith Ohlfs
Keith Ohlfs, a talented software UX designer whose claims to fame included working on the operating system at the heart of Steve Jobs' NeXT Computer systems, has died at the age of 52 from a heart attack.Ohlfs five years ago posted the video seen below in which NeXT Computer debuts in 1988, 8 years before Apple bought the company and adopted many of its concepts in OS X/macOS. Ohlfs created the animation that the computer used to introduce itself and Jobs wrote the text. "Steve was a huge inspiration in my life and his passion was for uncompromising form and function that has shaped my vision for the future of design and technology," Ohlfs wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced earlier this year that it would remove applications from the Windows Store that do not comply with the age rating policies the company had adopted. The age rating policy is based on appropriate age and content ratings administered by the International Age Ratings Coalition (IARC) rating system. Microsoft said these ratings are about the suitability of the content in the app, rather than the age of the target audience for your app.
Well, it meant what it said. A large number of applications have been removed from the Windows Store, with reports ranging from 90,000 apps and games to more than 100,000. Given the Windows Store has (or had) 329,000 apps, that's about one-third of the total apps. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here