Accessibility Needs to Be at the Heart of Internet Policy, Planning and Design

The Internet Society’s 2017 Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future shows that new digital divides are emerging. It’s not just about accessing the Internet, but our ability to make the most of it.

One only has to look at the UN DESA 2015 Global Status Report on Disability and Development to start putting the pieces together. Not only does the report show a significant gap between people with and people without disabilities when it comes to things like education, employment, and health, but also, that those who are doubly disadvantaged (women, refugees, indigenous communities) experience the lowest level of inclusion and participation in society.

What does this mean for the Internet and information communication technology (ICTs)? They’re tools that help us bridge space and time, can start a business with the spark of an idea, and help kids stay in school.

If we want to build a digital future where people come first, accessibility needs to be at the heart of Internet policy, planning and design.

This means accessibility is first in. Not last out. It is always smarter, less expensive, and more functional to build accessibility into technology at the start rather than as a second-class add Continue reading

More ways to examine network connections on Linux

The ifconfig and netstat commands are incredibly useful, but there are many other commands that can help you see what's up with you network on Linux systems. Today’s post explores some very handy commands for examining network connections.ip command The ip command shows a lot of the same kind of information that you'll get when you use ifconfig. Some of the information is in a different format – e.g., "192.168.0.6/24" instead of "inet addr:192.168.0.6 Bcast:192.168.0.255" and ifconfig is better for packet counts, but the ip command has many useful options.First, here's the ip a command listing information on all network interfaces.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More ways to examine network connections on Linux

The ifconfig and netstat commands are incredibly useful, but there are many other commands that can help you see what's up with you network on Linux systems. Today’s post explores some very handy commands for examining network connections.ip command The ip command shows a lot of the same kind of information that you'll get when you use ifconfig. Some of the information is in a different format – e.g., "192.168.0.6/24" instead of "inet addr:192.168.0.6 Bcast:192.168.0.255" and ifconfig is better for packet counts, but the ip command has many useful options.First, here's the ip a command listing information on all network interfaces.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why the fight over IoT data is just getting started

As the social and financial buzz around the IoT continues to grow, many savvy executives and eager entrepreneurs alike are chasing IoT investment opportunities with high expectations. In this investing frenzy, few things have garnered more attention that IoT data and its business applications, and for good reason. In big data, investors from all over the world have found their next digital gold mine.So how exactly is the fight for control over lucrative IoT data playing out, and who are its biggest movers and shakers? How can companies small and large alike benefit from IoT data, and is this valuable resource really worth all of the hubbub it ceaselessly generates? A quick dive into the world of the IoT reveals the true value of its data, and shows that this new industry is only just getting started.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

If you haven’t found the tradeoff…

This week, I ran into an interesting article over at Free Code Camp about design tradeoffs. I’ll wait for a moment if you want to go read the entire article to get the context of the piece… But this is the quote I’m most interested in:

Just like how every action has an equal and opposite reaction, each “positive” design decision necessarily creates a “negative” compromise. Insofar as designs necessarily create compromises, those compromises are very much intentional. (And in the same vein, unintentional compromises are a sign of bad design.)

In other words, design is about making tradeoffs. If you think you’ve found a design with no tradeoffs, well… Guess what? You’ve not looked hard enough. This is something I say often enough, of course, so what’s the point? The point is this: We still don’t really think about this in network design. This shows up in many different places; it’s worth taking a look at just a few.

Hardware is probably the place where network engineers are most conscious of design tradeoffs. Even so, we still tend to think sticking a chassis in a rack is a “future and requirements proof solution” to all our network design Continue reading

How the internet of sound eliminates billions of IoT sensors

The Internet of Thing’s dirty little secret is the cost of deployment. For example, adding a low-cost motion sensor and radio to a traffic light to count passing vehicles before it leaves the factory is easy and inexpensive. The incremental cost of deployment is near zero, especially if low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) coverage or other low-cost communications coverage is available. But retrofitting the traffic light with sensors and radios will cost the municipality a public works truck roll, a crew, an electrician and a police traffic detail. Retrofits are expensive.Also on Network World: IoT standards battles could get messy Retrofitting the world for IoT is a data science and a sensor engineering task to study the IoT problem and find the simplest way to acquire the data. The question for the data scientist is what minimum data resolution will provide the desired result: How many sensors per unit of area and how many readings per time interval are necessary to solve the problem? The engineer must trade off sensor costs, radio costs and network availability, and power consumption versus available power sources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco snaps up streaming-data startup Perspica

Cisco today announced plans to acquire San Jose-based startup Perspica, a company that specializes in using machine learning to analyze streams of data.Cisco says it will integrate the Perspica technology into its AppDynamics product, which provides network and application monitoring and analytics.One of the reasons it was attracted to Perspica is because of the company’s ability to monitor data in real-time, Cisco says. Being able to process data as it's created or very soon afterwards can speed the time that end users are able to gain insights from the data, the company says. “Perspica is known for its stream-based processing with the unique ability to apply machine learning to data as it comes in instead of waiting until it’s neatly stored,” says Bhaskar Sunkara, VP of Engineering at AppDynamics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco snaps up streaming-data startup Perspica

Cisco today announced plans to acquire San Jose-based startup Perspica, a company that specializes in using machine learning to analyze streams of data.Cisco says it will integrate the Perspica technology into its AppDynamics product, which provides network and application monitoring and analytics.One of the reasons it was attracted to Perspica is because of the company’s ability to monitor data in real-time, Cisco says. Being able to process data as it's created or very soon afterwards can speed the time that end users are able to gain insights from the data, the company says. “Perspica is known for its stream-based processing with the unique ability to apply machine learning to data as it comes in instead of waiting until it’s neatly stored,” says Bhaskar Sunkara, VP of Engineering at AppDynamics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ENOG 14 in Minsk

The 14th Eurasia Network Operator’s Group (ENOG 14) that was held on 9-10 October 2017 in Minsk, Belarus featured 234 participants from the host country, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Eastern Europe who came together to discuss operational issues and share expertise about evolving the Internet in the region. This was the second event of the year and was supported by the Internet Society, the RIPE NCC and hoster.by, with participation from our Deploy360 colleague Jan Žorž.

The first morning featured a couple of useful tutorials – one in Russian on DNSSEC operations that was led by Philipp Kulin and Dremuchij Les, and the other on Best Practices in IPv6 BGP led by Nathalie Trenaman and Massimiliano Stucchi (RIPE NCC).

The opening trio of talks focused on network security, starting with a general overview of how to operate a secure network from Ignas Bagdonas (Equinix). Kirill Malevanov (Selectel) then offered up his experiences of IPv4 prefix hijacking whereby network traffic is erroneously routed due to incorrect BGP announcements that are advertised either accidentally or deliberately. Alexander Azimov (Qrator Labs) followed-up with an overview of BGPsec that has recently been published as a RFC standard, and which aims to provide cryptographic verification Continue reading

Worth Reading: Stop Blaming Open Source

Despite the known threats, many organisations continue to point fingers at open source platforms for poor security practices. But do you really think these platforms are the ones that need to be blamed? Coming back to the Equifax example, soon after this, the company began to examine how the breach occurred, many unsubstantiated reports and theories surfaced in an attempt to pinpoint the vulnerability. One such theory included was the software (an open source framework) to be responsible for the breach. This gave rise to some of the most unwarranted open source shaming. —Nishtha Singh @ opensourceforu

The post Worth Reading: Stop Blaming Open Source appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Scotty Isn’t DevOps

I was listening to the most recent episode of our Gestalt IT On-Presmise IT Roundtable where Stephen Foskett mentioned one of our first episodes where we discussed whether or not DevOps was a disaster, or as I put it a “dumpster fire”. Take a listen here:

Around 13 minutes in, I have an exchange with Nigel Poulton where I mention that the ultimate operations guy is Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of the USS Enterprise. Nigel countered that Scotty was the epitome of the DevOps mentality because his crazy ideas are what kept the Enterprise going. In this post, I hope to show that not only was Scott not a DevOps person, he should be considered the antithesis of DevOps.

Engineering As Operations

In the fictional biography of Mr. Scott, all he ever wanted to do was be an engineer. He begrudging took promotions but found ways to get back to the engine room on the Enterprise. He liked working starships. He hated building them. His time working on the transwarp drive of the USS Excelsior proved that in the third Star Trek film.

Scotty wasn’t developing new ideas to implement on the Enterprise. He didn’t spend his time figuring out Continue reading

25% off Dyson V6 Motor Head Cord-free Vacuum – Deal Alert

The powerful, portable and wire-free Dyson V6 Motorhead vacuum is currently discounted by a generous $100 on Amazon, where it averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,000 reviewers. The Dyson V6 Motorhead cordless vacuum has an overall cleaning performance that beats most full-size corded vacuums -- without the hassle of a cord. Compared to the upright market, the Dyson V6 Motorhead vacuum has one of the highest geometric average pickup performances, dust loaded, when hard floor, creviced hard floor, and carpet results are combined. Its Direct-drive cleaner head provides 75% more power on carpets than the Dyson V6 vacuum. The V6 Motorhead's typical list price has been reduced 25%, or $100, so you can pick it up for $299. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2018 FOSDEM & DEVCONF Events – Call for Proposals

On behalf of oVirt and the Xen Project, we are excited to announce that the call for proposals is now open for the Virtualization & IaaS devroom at the upcoming FOSDEM 2018.

This year will mark FOSDEM’s 18th anniversary as one of the longest-running free and open source software developer events, attracting thousands of developers and users from all over the world. FOSDEM will take place in Brussels, Belgium, February 3 & 4, 2018.

Also coming up is DEVCOM, The 10th annual, free community conference for developers, admins, and users of free and open source Linux, JBoss technologies. DEVCONF will take place in Brno, Czech Republic, January 26-28, 2018.

About FOSDEM

This Virtualization & IaaS devroom at FOSDEM is a collaborative effort, organized by dedicated folks from projects such as OpenStack, Xen Project,, oVirt, QEMU, and Foreman. Featured sessions will include topics such as open source hypervisors and virtual machine managers such as Xen Project, KVM,bhyve, and VirtualBox, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service projects such as Apache CloudStack, OpenStack, oVirt, QEMU, OpenNebula, and Ganeti.

This devroom will host presentations that focus on topics of shared interest, such as KVM; libvirt; shared storage; virtualized networking; cloud security; clustering and high availability; interfacing with Continue reading

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