Organizations today need speed and reliability, but also want flexibility and freedom to adjust their services levels and costs to meet changing needs. As health care providers shift to electronic records and files, they’re finding the need to scale up network performance but in a cost-conscious environment are wary about locking themselves into expensive options they need only for high-peak periods.For the Austin Cancer Center, huge imaging files can be a vital component of diagnosis and treatment. But moving large data sets such as digital PET scan images of a gigabyte or more between the 12 campuses in the system would create a huge bottleneck over most enterprise Ethernet LANs, or a huge expense to create peak capacity that is often underutilized.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two of the main IoT standards groups have merged, probably bringing consumers closer the day when your lights, your refrigerator, and the power company can all talk to each other.On Monday, the Open Connectivity Foundation and the AllSeen Alliance announced they would merge under the OCF name. The two groups include companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, Cisco Systems, GE Digital, and Haier -- possibly a critical mass of IoT component and product makers. OCF's scope even extends beyond home IoT into some industrial technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The SanDisk Connect wireless stick is a flash drive with a unique twist -- you can access it wirelessly. Whether it's in your pants pocket, in your bag, or on the picnic table at your campsite, the Connect wireless stick lets you stream media or move files wirelessly with up to three computers, phones or tablets simultaneously. Connections are made via built-in wifi (think "hotspot"), so no external wireless or internet services are needed. A USB connection is also available, if desired. Storage on this model is a generous 200GB. Reviewers on Amazon report at least 8-10 hours of battery life on one charge. This model is currently discounted 27%, from $119.99 down to $87.56. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone's demise has been swift: Introduced in early August, the phablet is now off the market due to it being a fire hazard.
Early reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 phablet were generally positive. Headlines described the latest Apple iPhone 7 rival as a "Pricey phablet made for power users" and "an excellent phone for the high-price market." But batteries that burn too hot and burst into flames have resulted in much less glowing headlines and a full-fledged business disaster for Samsung, which has now issued a recall of both the original and replacement Note7 phones. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sales of Windows PCs fared better than Apple Macs during the third quarter this year.Third-quarter PC shipments declined by 3.9 percent compared to the same quarter last year, but Mac shipments dropped by 13 percent. PC shipments totaled 68 million units, according to IDC.The declines weren't as bad as expected, and were roughly 3.2 percent ahead of IDC's initial projections, the research firm said.In the top five PC companies, fourth-placed Apple registered the largest decline, with the 13 percent drop in Mac shipments. Apple's Mac sales totaled 5 million units during the quarter, declining from 5.76 million units in the same quarter a year ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were handing over data to a monitoring tool that law enforcement agencies were using to track protesters, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.The social media analysis tool, called Geofeedia, had been harvesting posts from the social media networks for surveillance purposes, and more than 500 law enforcement and public safety agencies have been using it, the ACLU said in a Tuesday report.Through a public records request, the ACLU found that Geofeedia had entered into agreements with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for their users' data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung formally stopped production, sales and exchanges of its Note7 smartphones early Tuesday, after several weeks of reports that the devices -- and even their replacements -- overheated, smoked and caught fire.The death of the Note7 will be costly, according to many analysts.Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy has pegged the overall cost to Samsung at $5 billion to $7.5 billion, not including the hard-to-estimate impact on the Samsung brand. Some analysts, including Credit Suisse, said the lost sales on up to 19 million Note7 phones is about $17 billion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google's Go language, which anchors projects like Kubernetes and Docker, keeps climbing the charts in language popularity.Ranked 65th a year ago in the Tiobe Index of language popularity, it has climbed to 16th this month and is on track to become Tiobe's Programming Language of the Year, a designation awarded to the language with the biggest jump in the index.[ Find out how to get ahead with our career development guide for developers. | The art of programming is changing rapidly. We help you navigate what's hot in programming and what's going cold. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ]
"Google's Go language seems to be unrivaled, probably boosted by the immense popularity of Docker, the container application that is written in Go," said a report accompanying the index, which gauges popularity based on a formula assessing searches on languages in popular search engines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung’s next phone-tablet hybrid device has officially landed. The company introduced the sixth-generation Galaxy Note 7 phablet in New York City on Tuesday. It features the latest hardware, a pressure sensitive stylus, and a spruced up interface, all packaged into a shiny metal-and-glass, water-resistant shell. And for the virtual reality-obsessed, Samsung has announced a new GearVR headset designed just for the Galaxy Note 7. Meet the new phablet
You might be wondering why there’s no Galaxy Note 6 this year. That’s because Samsung opted to skip that number and jump straight to the number 7 so that its phablet line and flagship family—the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge—are directly aligned. Frankly, it makes sense to have both device types on the same page, so to speak. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It is the first month for Microsoft’s new patching model. Older Windows OSes will be treated like Windows 10, with the patches all rolled into a big bundle meant to fix security and non-security issues. However, there will also be a monthly security update that is supposed to resolve that month’s issues without the previous month's fixes as well. On the third Tuesday of the month, the week after Patch Tuesday, Microsoft will release a preview of the upcoming patches so the non-security fixes can be tested to make sure the big rolled-up patch doesn’t blow anything up on some systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, hearing arguments in a long-running Apple and Samsung patent dispute on Tuesday, seemed to question a 19th-century law that allows huge infringement damages in design patent cases.Questioning lawyers for the two companies, the justices repeatedly referred to a law that instructs courts to award patent damages based on the total profit from the infringing device, instead of from just the infringing pieces of the device.The total-profit rule for design patents may work for simple products, but not for complex ones like smartphones, Justice Stephen Breyer said. "For wallpaper, you get the whole thing," he said, according to Fortune.com. "A Rolls-Royce with the thing on the hood? No, no, no you don’t get profits on the whole car."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung Electronics has discontinued production of its Galaxy Note7 smartphone, which has been plagued since its introduction in August by battery problems that caused fires and even explosions.The company confirmed Tuesday that it is discontinuing production, a day after it said that it had advised carriers and retail partners worldwide not to sell or exchange the replacement Note7 phones that were intended to solve an issue of overheating batteries in the previous version.U.S. carriers including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile announced over the weekend that they would stop the exchange of the smartphone after reports of fires and explosions involving the replacement smartphones, including a report of a Note7 that caught fire on a Southwest Airlines flight. Samsung said last week it was investigating the reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Rich Santalesa, a programmer turned writer and lawyer, brought an interesting turn of events to my attention last week. We need to pay heed: A litigant can have standing in a U.S. Federal breach case where no personal fraud or identity theft has yet occurred.Usually, a litigant has to have suffered injury—a breech caused them identity theft or other fraudulent activity based upon information released in a security breach. This means if you’re cracked, you can be liable if personally identifiable information is released, exfiltrated, absconded, whatever. It also means that should you believe the axiom that currently most of us are hacked, we’re in for a litigious treat. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. accusations that WikiLeaks is helping Russian hackers influence the upcoming election hasn't stopped the controversial website from dumping emails allegedly stolen from a Hillary Clinton aide.On Monday, WikiLeaks released an additional batch of 2,000 emails stolen from Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, which could fuel negative press coverage of her candidacy.This came after the site dumped the first batch of emails last Friday, the same day U.S. intelligence agencies publicly blamed the Russian government for hacking the emails of U.S. officials and political groups earlier this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It may sound paranoid, but the next time you enter a highly confidential meeting, leave your smart watch behind. It's possible the device could be spying on you.That's what ministers in the U.K. are reportedly being told. They've recently been banned from wearing Apple Watches during cabinet meetings on fears that the devices could be hacked by Russian cyberspies, according to The Telegraph.Mobile phones have already been prohibited from cabinet meetings, but the U.K. government has reportedly taken the extra step of also banning smart watches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I was at a conference recently and came across Dawie Olivier, CIO of Westpac Bank and Australasian-operating bank. That it took a trip to Texas to discover someone who lives in the same country as me was an ironic reflection on why industry conferences are still useful events.Notwithstanding the weirdness that we’d never met previously, I was interested to hear of Olivier’s experiences within three different banks in different geographies. After the event, I caught up with him (and thanks must go out to Chef’s awesome PR company for arranging the conversation) to get deeper insight into how banks operate and what it means to innovate within their traditionally constrained environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The top management of StartCom and WoSign will be replaced and the two certificate authorities will undergo audits after browser vendors discovered that they mis-issued many digital certificates, violating industry rules.
The investigation launched by Mozilla led to the discovery of 13 instances where China-based WoSign and its subsidiary StartCom issued certificates with various types of problems. Evidence was also found that both CAs issued certificates signed with the SHA-1 algorithm after Jan. 1 in violation of industry rules and intentionally backdated them to avoid being caught.
As a result, Mozilla said that it has lost faith in the ability of WoSign and StartCom to correctly carry out the functions of a CA and announced that it will stop trusting new certificates from the two companies. Apple followed suit and announced its own ban for future WoSign and StartCom certificates last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To observe Hate Crime Awareness Week, the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is cracking down on internet bullies and trolls. Actions like posting humiliating photoshopped images of people on social media platforms, creating derogatory hashtags and doxing can get cyber bullies prosecuted.CPS published new social media guidelines to help prosecutors determine which online actions are illegal. The guidelines take aim at doxing, inciting virtual mobbing – encouraging others to participate in online harassment – and fake social media profiles used for online abuse to name but a few.Retweeting something the CPS considers “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false” can also land a person in legal hot water. Yet Alison Saunders, CPS director of public prosecutions, stressed to the BCC that prosecutors can’t use the guidelines to “stifle free speech.” People in the UK better check out what actions are now illegal since saying you didn’t know it was illegal just won’t cut it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Healthcare facilities are heavily regulated environments. From electronic health records to how fire doors in a hospital need to be installed, many different organizations and government agencies regulate the healthcare industry.Medical alarms are one aspect of healthcare that is heavily standardized. The IV pump will “ding” if a tube becomes kinked. And because of movies with melodramatic scenes in the hospital, most people are aware of the heartbeat in the background beeping over the actors’ voices.What patients, healthcare providers and family members may not realize is all alarms are required to meet an international standard. The international standard for medical electrical equipment (IEC 60601-1-8) from the International Standards Organization (ISO) specifies performance and alarm categories and sound specifications. All manufacturers design and build to the standard for their individual devices. The standard was created to help make the alarms discernible from other sounds in the hospital, but the device manufacturer will not know which alarm is most important, so a healthcare professional needs to be able to hear all of the alarms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
These days, more than ever before, the terms “game changer” and “disruptive” are thrown around with abandon. Everyone is fighting to be known as the Uber of X.
But whenever a game changes, the need to learn new rules arises. And when something is disruptive, the routines we’ve picked up over the years are thrown off kilter. The need to teach a new way of doing things becomes vital. It’s one thing to go through the implementation of a new system, infrastructure or standard. It’s another thing entirely to get everyone used to a whole new system. It is a case of “adapt or die.”
+ Also on Network World: The IT skills gap is a reality, but doesn’t have to be +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here