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Category Archives for "Networking"

Reaction: Standardization versus Innovation

Should the Docker container image format be completely standardized? Or should Docker not be held back from evolving the format ahead of the open specification? This was the topic of a heated Twitter tussle last week between Google evangelist Kelsey Hightower and the creator of the Docker itself, Solomon Hykes. —New Stack

What is at stake here is the standardization versus innovation. Should Docker standardize their container technology or not?

On the one side is the belief that standardizing squashes innovation. Once you’ve standardized something, and other people start building on it, you can’t change the standard without a lot of agreement and effort—after all, other people are now depending on your product remaining the same across many cycles of development. This certainly kills innovation, as implementing new things both exposes your ideas to public view before you can implement them, and slows down the pace at which new ideas can be deployed in the real world.

On the other side is the belief that standardizing is necessary for the market to mature, and for a healthy ecosystem to develop that’s better for the entire community. How can customers and other vendors build products around a particular product if the Continue reading

Lenovo crams 48TB of SSD storage on a board

Lenovo is developing an SSD storage board with a monstrous 48TB capacity, and the company plans to release it by the middle of next year.The board is basically a collection of high-capacity SSDs. It provides an efficient way of cramming more SSD storage into computer slots, instead of using individual drives.The 48TB storage capacity will fit in a space for two standard 2.5-inch storage drives. That's significantly more storage than available in two Samsung PM1633A SSDs, which are now the largest capacity SSDs at 15.36TB and will fit in the same slots.Lenovo, known more as a PC and mobile device maker than a storage company, is developing the board in its research labs. Companies like Seagate, Toshiba, NxGn Data, and Amphenol are helping Lenovo develop the technology, part of a program called Project Spark.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Brands, take note: Customers still struggle to reach you

There's plenty of lip service paid today to the importance of customer service, but a new study suggests brands are failing miserably at delivering it. Social media, it turns out, isn't making things any better.In any given year, more than 80 percent of consumers try to reach a brand, and for most of them, it's an exercise in frustration, according to new data from The Northridge Group. Fifty-five percent say they need to use two or more communication channels to contact a company or brand before an issue is resolved. In general, 44 percent of consumers say companies don't make it easy to contact them.As for social media, 77 percent of consumers say they use social channels to contact companies at least as much as they did a year ago, but one in five never even get a response, Northridge found.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 tips to master the art of the career humblebrag

In today's hyper-connected social media-centric culture, there aren't many topics that are off-limits. People seem comfortable sharing the most intimate details about meals, travel, kids, pets and personal drama, not to mention their feelings and opinions on politics, current events and religion. But there's one subject that seems to render even the most outspoken people mute: their professional success. And that's a big problem.Social stigma "People are so comfortable sharing their personal lives with a broad swath of people, but when it comes to work, that's when they get shy -- and that's exactly when they shouldn't be. Whether you're an active or a passive job seeker, it's important to have a strong sense of who you are, what you've accomplished and where you want to go next in your career and be able to broadcast those facts to your network," says Catherine Fisher, senior director, member marketing and communications at LinkedIn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Many bluetooth smart locks open easily for attackers

Security researchers used the recent Def Con hackers’ convention to show just how easily some Bluetooth-based smart locks can be opened.Researchers Ben Ramsey and Anthony Rose of Merculite Security took a look at 16 smart locks from companies such as Ceomate, Elecycle, iBlulock, Mesh Motion, Okidokey, Plantraco, Quicklock, and Vians. Ramsey and Rose discovered that of those 16 locks, 12 could be hacked. Several of them could also be hacked with little to no effort. The researchers’ presentation slides are available on GitHub; the presentation was first reported by Tom’s Guide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Many bluetooth smart locks open easily for attackers

Security researchers used the recent Def Con hackers’ convention to show just how easily some Bluetooth-based smart locks can be opened.Researchers Ben Ramsey and Anthony Rose of Merculite Security took a look at 16 smart locks from companies such as Ceomate, Elecycle, iBlulock, Mesh Motion, Okidokey, Plantraco, Quicklock, and Vians. Ramsey and Rose discovered that of those 16 locks, 12 could be hacked. Several of them could also be hacked with little to no effort. The researchers’ presentation slides are available on GitHub; the presentation was first reported by Tom’s Guide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Holy Batman! Look at how IoT has transformed police cars

The Batmobile is the ultimate crime-fighting vehicle. Today’s police cars aren’t far behind, thanks to IoT and new connectivity solutions.Meeting the needs of both public safety and law enforcement on a tight budget is challenging. Four major requirements first have to be met. How do you respond quickly to a wide range of incidents that might occur over a large area at any time with limited police resources? How can information (such as car license plates) be collected and referenced against online databases while traveling at high speeds? How can sensors capture and process information in order to give police officers more time? How can encounters between the police and public be easily recorded in detail? Multi-WAN routers, IoT systems, vehicle scanners, body cameras and a crime database all come together to make this possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Setting up vSRX and Space in VMware Fusion

I’m going to be travelling a bit in the near future and wanted an easy, laptop-based Juniper device and Junos Space instance to mess with. I’ve recently made some headway with CLI configlets and wanted to build on what I’ve got working.

I already run VMware Fusion on the Mac in order to run Ubuntu and Windows, so I figured that was the best thing to use. What I wanted was two VMs that could see each other and be accessed from the host machine, but without them being dependent on the host’s interfaces being up. Wifi access would be chargeable, and wired impossible – without making an ethernet loopback plug to bring the Mac’s interface up artifically, that is. So that ruled out both bridged and NAT type connections. What I needed was some kind of internal network within the host – Fusion seems to call this a ‘Private to my Mac’ connection.

My version of Fusion is 7.1.2 – it doesn’t seem to be the ‘Pro’ version, but I can’t confirm this. For some reason, the help isn’t vey helpful. You do some Googling and VMware Workstation information comes up, or help pages about what appear to be Continue reading

7 top apps for sharing large files

These days, it's common for people to get work done using more than one device -- whether you're sending out an email on your smartphone, checking Slack on your tablet or crafting spreadsheets on your PC. And it's created a demand for storage options that let you easily access files -- especially oversized files -- across numerous devices and operating systems, no matter where you are. The good news is that just one quick Google search will uncover an overwhelming number of companies that want to help you painlessly share large files.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 12 Free Cloud Storage options But with so many options, it can be hard to figure out which ones offer the best features at a reasonable price for your specific needs. If you just need a way to store and share your smartphone pics, then you're going to need different storage options than a freelancer, small business or large corporation. Luckily, there is an option for everyone. Here are seven of the best apps to share, store and edit large files no matter what device you're on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Micron’s super-fast 3D Xpoint SSDs will ship through storage partners

Intel won't be the only company gearing up to sell super-fast SSDs based on the new 3D Xpoint storage and memory technology; other storage companies will also offer them with technology provided by Micron. Micron detailed its 3DXpoint plans Tuesday at the Flash Memory Summit conference in Santa Clara, California. Intel and Micron are taking divergent paths to bring 3D Xpoint to customers. Intel will sell its own 3D Xpoint SSDs and memory DIMMs, while Micron is partnering with well-established storage companies to sell 3D Xpoint SSDs. SSDs and DRAM will run much faster with 3D Xpoint, which essentially unifies storage and memory. Intel claims 3D Xpoint will be 10 times denser than DRAM, and it has shown the technology being 10 times faster than current SSDs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

An engineer uses IoT to tackle illness

Daniel Strabley's day job is helping to protect the U.S. from weapons of mass destruction. He works on a software suit that interacts with sensors to detect chemical and radiation threats. The sensor information, as you may imagine, is complicated, and one of his tasks is to make it understandable to users.This means that anyone, from an Army private not long out of high school to a Ph.D.-holding nuclear physicist, needs an interface that is meaningful to their knowledge level.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 12 most powerful Internet of Things companies The work on detecting weapons of mass destruction is similar in concept to what Strabley is doing to help his wife's grandfather, who is suffering from dementia. He has written software that can help people with varying degrees of cognitive issues, and is using sensors such as Amazon's new IOT buttons, to improve communication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Global IT challenges: Privacy, standardization, transformation top the list

It's one of an IT leader's biggest nightmares: Imagine you've got a division in Russia, which has very strict privacy laws regarding employees' rights to control their information, and there are 12 employees who refuse to allow their information to leave company walls.Whether it's introducing new UPS products or services such as My Choice to the marketplace, or implementing large-scale integrated capabilities like World Wide Express Saver Freight -- which rely on multiple systems -- "we choreograph the deployments across our teams and systems. We would first beta-test the releases in the individual markets such as the U.S., Europe and Asia, prior to executing the global deployment, testing all facets of the solution including the installation and functionality," Costides says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IT managers critique enterprise flash-storage products

The market for enterprise flash array storage is highly competitive, with traditional storage vendors battling against innovative startups. Tech buyers are typically looking at factors such as ease of use, improved data management, performance, deduplication algorithms, a small footprint and low power usage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

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