Software-Defined Networking Reaches Down to the Access Network

Yay, another acronym! Software-Defined Access (SDA).

Google wants to add AI to gadgets made using Raspberry Pi

Google wants to bring smarts to cool gadgets and devices made using Raspberry Pi 3 or Intel's Edison.The company is chasing makers with open-source tools needed to add artificial intelligence to consumer, industrial, and retail devices made using board computers.The plan may include machine-learning tools, which are central to AI. AI helps Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana answer questions, and also helps self-driving cars cruise the streets safely."We don't have any specifics to announce right now, but we're excited to keep sharing open-source machine learning tools with the community -- stay tuned for more this year," a Google spokesman said in an email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open Networking Options Grow

Nasuni CEO: ‘We’re going to liberate you from the bottleneck around your files’

When it comes to file systems, scale is the enemy, according to Andres Rodriguez, CEO of Nasuni. And the best weapon in the battle for scale is the cloud. Nasuni claims to have developed the first cloud-native file system, delivering not only virtually unlimited scale in the cloud but rapid access to files from locations around the world. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Nasuni CEO: ‘We’re going to liberate you from the bottleneck around your files’

When it comes to file systems, scale is the enemy, according to Andres Rodriguez, CEO of Nasuni. And the best weapon in the battle for scale is the cloud. Nasuni claims to have developed the first cloud-native file system, delivering not only virtually unlimited scale in the cloud but rapid access to files from locations around the world. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

As Baby Boomers retire, the shortage of mainframe professionals grows more acute  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  For years we have been hearing about critical IT skills shortages. Companies just can’t find enough (or the right) people with expertise in mobility, cybersecurity, data storage, networking, cloud and other important areas.There’s one area, however, where the shortage is becoming acute, and affected companies that don’t act now might soon find themselves in a world of hurt. I’m talking about the business-critical discipline of mainframe stewardship.Experts have been warning about this for at least a decade, and the days of reckoning are here, driven largely by the fact that mainframe champions are retiring from the workforce in droves. People who started their IT careers in the 1970’s and 1980’s – when the mainframe was king – are now baby boomers at the end of their careers. The generations behind them took up different computing platforms, meaning there are few people to pass the mainframe torch to. By some estimates there will be more than 84,000 open positions in this field by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Citrix Beats Q4 but Starts 2017 on a Weak Note

GoTo is nearly gone, and that makes the math complicated.

Worth Reading: IPv6 server addressing strategies

In this post, I’ll discuss configuration approaches for systems that usually have been configured with “static” IP parameters in the IPv4 age/context (for example, servers in data centres). When it comes to IPv6 there are more options and we’ll have a look at their implications and potential advantages/disadvantages. —APNIC

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Gmail will block JavaScript attachments, a common source of malware

Starting Feb. 13, Google will no longer allow JavaScript attachments on its Gmail service, killing one of the main methods of malware distribution over the past two years.Users will no longer be able to attach .JS files to emails in Gmail, regardless of whether they attach them directly or they include them in archives like .gz, .bz2, .zip or .tgz. For those rare cases when such files need to be shared via email, users can upload them to a storage service like Google Drive and then share the link.The .JS file extension will be added an existing list of other banned file attachments that includes: .ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSP, .MST, .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF and .WSH. Most of these file types have long been abused by cybercriminals to send malware via email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gmail will block JavaScript attachments, a common source of malware

Starting Feb. 13, Google will no longer allow JavaScript attachments on its Gmail service, killing one of the main methods of malware distribution over the past two years.Users will no longer be able to attach .JS files to emails in Gmail, regardless of whether they attach them directly or they include them in archives like .gz, .bz2, .zip or .tgz. For those rare cases when such files need to be shared via email, users can upload them to a storage service like Google Drive and then share the link.The .JS file extension will be added an existing list of other banned file attachments that includes: .ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSP, .MST, .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF and .WSH. Most of these file types have long been abused by cybercriminals to send malware via email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Seagate’s roadmap includes 14TB, 16TB hard drives within 18 months

Seagate is getting closer to reaching its goal of making 20TB hard drives by 2020.Over the next 18 months, the company plans to ship 14TB and 16TB hard drives, company executives said on an earnings call this week.Seagate's hard drive capacity today tops out at 10TB. A 12TB drive based on helium technology is being tested, and the feedback is positive, said Stephen Luczo, the company's CEO.The demand for high-capacity drives is mostly in enterprises and for consumers who can afford the drives. The drives are mostly used in NAS configurations and storage arrays.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ericsson CEO Ekholm Cuts Dividend as Company Tries to Regain Financial Footing

It's the company's first dividend cut since 2008.

Wine 2.0 brings MS Office 2013 compatibility to Linux

This week, Wine—the project that allows you to run many Microsoft Windows applications on non-Windows platforms—hit a rather huge milestone: version 2.0. From the Wine 2.0 release notes:  “This release represents over a year of development effort and around 6,600 individual changes. The main highlights are the support for Microsoft Office 2013 and the 64-bit support on macOS.”  I’ll be honest. The Mac OS tidbit isn’t all that interesting to me. But the support for Microsoft Office 2013 is, almost certainly, of interest to a number of people. (I don’t use it personally, but I know plenty of organizations that do.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On the ‘net: Considerations in Moving to an SDDC

There are two basic models to consider when moving data centers: running the old and new in parallel during some form of transition phase, or integrating your existing equipment with the newer SDDC. The second, integrating existing equipment within a single data center fabric, is not one, but two answers: integrating at the pod level, or running the SDDC over the top of existing equipment. —Tech Target

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Commuting Chelsea Manning’s Sentence Was Just and Proper

Before leaving office, President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea (Bradley) Manning.  At the time, Manning was serving a sentence of 35 years for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in 2010.  This material was subsequently published by WikiLeaks, embarrassing the US government and exposing several previously undocumented war crimes that took place in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The President’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence was extremely controversial.  The verdict was made over the objection of Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, while other military and government officials quickly criticized Obama’s pronouncement.   Just today, President Trump referred to Manning as an “ungrateful traitor” who should have never been released from prison on Twitter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Commuting Chelsea Manning’s sentence was just and proper

Before leaving office, President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea (Bradley) Manning. At the time, Manning was serving a sentence of 35 years for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in 2010. This material was subsequently published by WikiLeaks, embarrassing the U.S. government and exposing several previously undocumented war crimes that took place in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The President’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence was extremely controversial.  The verdict was made over the objection of Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, while other military and government officials quickly criticized Obama’s pronouncement.   Just today, President Trump on Twitter referred to Manning as an “ungrateful traitor” who should have never been released from prison.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Commuting Chelsea Manning’s Sentence Was Just and Proper

Before leaving office, President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea (Bradley) Manning.  At the time, Manning was serving a sentence of 35 years for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in 2010.  This material was subsequently published by WikiLeaks, embarrassing the US government and exposing several previously undocumented war crimes that took place in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The President’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence was extremely controversial.  The verdict was made over the objection of Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, while other military and government officials quickly criticized Obama’s pronouncement.   Just today, President Trump referred to Manning as an “ungrateful traitor” who should have never been released from prison on Twitter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Commuting Chelsea Manning’s sentence was just and proper

Before leaving office, President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea (Bradley) Manning. At the time, Manning was serving a sentence of 35 years for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in 2010. This material was subsequently published by WikiLeaks, embarrassing the U.S. government and exposing several previously undocumented war crimes that took place in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The President’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence was extremely controversial.  The verdict was made over the objection of Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, while other military and government officials quickly criticized Obama’s pronouncement.   Just today, President Trump on Twitter referred to Manning as an “ungrateful traitor” who should have never been released from prison.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Digital disrupts traditional outsourcing market in 2016

The traditional IT and business process outsourcing market declined 25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 compared to the same period last year, producing a total of $9.6 billion in total contract value, according to data from Information Services Group (ISG). The value of traditional infrastructure, applications, and business process deals in the fourth quarter was down eight percent over the previous quarter, according to ISG.[ Related: Outsourcing trends to watch in 2017 ]“These results, we believe, reflect uneven global demand,” says John Keppel, partner and president of North EMEA and Asia for ISG. “The traditional sourcing sector is in the midst of a structural change, as more and more services move to the cloud and many service providers try to adapt their business and sales models to meet these changing market conditions.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 of the most anticipated smartphones for 2017

It's become an annual tradition that we await tech companies to debut the latest smartphone hardware. Smartphone rumors fly every year as experts and consumers  speculate about the features they think -- and hope -- will be included in their favorite devices.And if it's time for an upgrade, there are plenty of new exciting smartphone features that your old device probably doesn't offer. Whether you want more screen real estate, a waterproof smartphone or a fresh new design, you'll want to keep an eye on these five smartphones.iPhone 8 Apple Once released, the iPhone 8 will mark the 10th anniversary of the popular Apple smartphone and industry experts anticipate a completely redesigned iPhone. MacWorld reports a possible return to stainless steel, an all-glass design, a curved OLED display, new color options, wireless charging, a foldable design and a third, smaller model of the iPhone 8.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here