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Big Flowering Thing

This is a rant. It borrows emotional (and some verbal) inspiration from Lewis Black’s “Big F**king Thing” bit. However, in order to keep things light and professional, I will be using the term “flower” in lieu of the four-letter word that I am using in my head.

It’s not unreasonable that ongoing operations for existing applications, and as a result, remaining profitable, have been and always will be the priority. It’s easy to sit atop an ivory tower and critique all of the shortcomings of the industry (applies anywhere, not even just IT), but the reality is, IT (and specifically network infra) is kind of a mess. And that’s okay! It’s the nature of growing organically - and few disciplines have had to learn this the hard way like network infrastructure. Most importantly, we’re all running businesses here. Nothing takes priority over the need to provide ongoing products and services to customers, and to be honest, the rant contained in this post actually points out the need for changes in our industry to be more conducive to this imperative.

All of that said, I feel like the entire networking industry (as well as other, seemingly better-off disciplines to some degree) Continue reading

Big Flowering Thing

This is a rant. It borrows emotional (and some verbal) inspiration from Lewis Black’s “Big F**king Thing” bit. However, in order to keep things light and professional, I will be using the term “flower” in lieu of the four-letter word that I am using in my head. It’s not unreasonable that ongoing operations for existing applications, and as a result, remaining profitable, have been and always will be the priority.

Big Flowering Thing

This is a rant. It borrows emotional (and some verbal) inspiration from Lewis Black’s “Big F**king Thing” bit. However, in order to keep things light and professional, I will be using the term “flower” in lieu of the four-letter word that I am using in my head. It’s not unreasonable that ongoing operations for existing applications, and as a result, remaining profitable, have been and always will be the priority.

US Defense Secretary to renew call for cooperation with tech industry

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will renew his appeal to businesses to work more closely with the military on Thursday when he speaks to an audience of top executives at the Sun Valley conference in Idaho.The event is put on by investment bank Allen & Co. and usually attended by a host of big-name CEOs. Among the executives expected this year are Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk.Carter’s appearance at the secretive conference will be closed to media, but the DOD said he will speak about “the importance of a strong partnership between private sector innovators and government.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Glitch brings major disruption to NYSE trading

The New York Stock Exchange suffered its biggest outage in more than 10 years on Wednesday when an unspecified technical glitch forced a 3.5-hour long suspension of trading.The cause of the problem was not immediately disclosed, but the exchange quickly ruled out a cyberattack.Problems began during the morning and at 11:32am EDT the NYSE halted all trading to prevent the effects of the “internal technical issue” from affecting the overall market.“NYSE has temporarily suspended trading in all symbols,” the market said in a message to traders. “All open orders will be cancelled.”Updates for the public were few and far between during the duration of the outage, although the NYSE was said to be in constant contact with the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A ‘black market’ for wireless cell service has popped up in Canada

Two articles at iPhoneInCanada.ca and AlphaBeatic.com tell the story of one enterprising Canadian who takes advantage of a loophole to provide substantially cheaper wireless cell service for a one-time $100 payment.How exactly he does it appears to be unclear, but it involves pricing discrepancies in Canada, where lower-populated provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan see much cheaper cell service. Basically, the scheme involves signing up for an account in one of these regions, where Canadian wireless service provider Koodo offers a 5GB monthly data plan for $48, then selling the account to people who live in more populated regions of the country, where the same plan typically costs at least $90, according to the reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft shrinks smartphone ambitions with mobile restructuring

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just unveiled the latest of the “tough choices” Microsoft is making to streamline its business, and it’s a doozy: the company is significantly cutting back its smartphone ambitions almost two years after announcing it would acquire Nokia’s Devices and Services business in an attempt to play a greater role in this market. In an email to employees, Nadella said that the company was moving away from being a phone manufacturer and towards creating a “vibrant Windows ecosystem” that includes a group of first-party devices. As a result, the company will be dismissing around 7,800 employees, with the majority of job cuts impacting people in Microsoft’s phone hardware business. The restructuring also included another aftershock from the Nokia acquisition: Microsoft will take a massive $7.6 billion write-down on the acquisition itself along with a restructuring charge of between $750 and $850 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft shrinks smartphone ambitions with mobile restructuring

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just unveiled the latest of the “tough choices” Microsoft is making to streamline its business, and it’s a doozy: the company is significantly cutting back its smartphone ambitions almost two years after announcing it would acquire Nokia’s Devices and Services business in an attempt to play a greater role in this market. In an email to employees, Nadella said that the company was moving away from being a phone manufacturer and towards creating a “vibrant Windows ecosystem” that includes a group of first-party devices. As a result, the company will be dismissing around 7,800 employees, with the majority of job cuts impacting people in Microsoft’s phone hardware business. The restructuring also included another aftershock from the Nokia acquisition: Microsoft will take a massive $7.6 billion write-down on the acquisition itself along with a restructuring charge of between $750 and $850 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft writes off $7.6B, admits failure of Nokia acquisition

Microsoft today wrote off billions of dollars related to its Nokia acquisition, saying it's taking an "impairment charge" of $7.6 billion, or nearly the full amount it paid for the Finnish firm's smartphone business and patents last year.The announcement slapped the failure sticker on the last major move made by former CEO Steve Ballmer, who pushed for the Nokia deal in his final months in office against objections by, among others, Satya Nadella before he was elevated to the chief executive's chair.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier "It was a mistake to begin with," said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. "A monumental mistake. Microsoft had no business being in the cut-throat, low-margin phone business. Who's making money in phones besides Apple?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hacker group that hit Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft intensifies attacks

The hackers that targeted Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft developers two years ago have escalated their economic espionage efforts as they seek confidential business information and intellectual property they can profit from.The group, which security researchers from Kaspersky Lab and Symantec call Wild Neutron or Morpho, has broken into the networks of over 45 large companies since 2012.After the 2013 attacks against Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft were highly publicized, the group went underground and temporarily halted its activity. However, its attacks resumed in 2014 and have since intensified, according to separate reports released Wednesday by Kaspersky Lab and Symantec.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA’s $4M cyber-threat clash down to seven challengers

When it began a year ago, there were 104 teams competing for $4 million in prize money in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s ambitious tournament -- known as the Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) -- to see who can build the best fully automatic network defense system.+More on Network World: NASA’s cool, radical and visionary concepts+This week DARPA said that after a couple dry runs and a significant qualifying event the field of CGC teams is down to seven who will now compete in the final battle slated to take place at DEFCON in Las Vegas in August 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch’s nose-dive predictions suggest Apple needs a new way to innovate

Slice Intelligence's Apple Watch estimates confirm that Apple needs a different narrative for innovation in new product categories. The company's Wizard of Oz –like assertion that it knows everything that consumers might ever want hamstrings its ability to introduce an Apple version of an evolving product category that's not perfect.Business Insider and MarketWatch have both announced the death of the Apple Watch, with data from Slice Intelligence pointing to a 90% decline in Apple Watch sales since the device's opening week on the market. It might just be a bad case of schadenfreude due to the ingestion of bad data. Literally translated from German, schadenfreude means damaging joy, but often is interpreted to mean evil glee. Apple, the most valuable brand, is under a microscope because of its success compounded by persuasive marketing. Now that a marketing survey may indicate a drop in Apple Watch sales, many observers are rejoicing with evil glee that the hugely successful company might fail. But the shipment data hasn't been verified by Apple, and no one knows the company's expectations for Apple Watch sales over the entirety of its debut year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please Continue reading

United Airlines flights grounded by ‘network connectivity’ issues

United Airlines passengers were facing major travel delays on Wednesday after the carrier suspended all U.S. flights due to computer problems.In an emailed statement, United said it had a “network connectivity issue” and is working to resolve the situation. The airline didn’t elaborate on the exact nature of the connectivity issue nor did it provide a timeline for when the problem would be fixed.Separately, the Federal Aviation Administration said United flights were grounded because of ”automation issues.” The FAA didn’t immediately reply to a request for more information on the problem.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fighting Cancer: The Unexpected Benefit Of Open Sourcing Our Code

Recently I was contacted by Dr. Igor Kozin from The Institute of Cancer Research in London. He asked about the optimal way to compile CloudFlare's open source fork of zlib. It turns out that zlib is widely used to compress the SAM/BAM files that are used for DNA sequencing. And it turns out our zlib fork is the best open source solution for that file format.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Shaury Nash

The files used for this kind of research reach hundreds of gigabytes and every time they are compressed and decompressed with our library many important seconds are saved, bringing the cure for cancer that much closer. At least that's what I am going to tell myself when I go to bed.

This made me realize that the benefits of open source go much farther than one can imagine, and you never know where a piece of code may end up. Open sourcing makes sophisticated algorithms and software accessible to individuals and organizations that would not have the resources to develop them on their own, or the money pay for a proprietary solution.

It also made me wonder exactly what we did to zlib that makes it Continue reading

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