IDG Contributor Network: The myth of technology analyst independence

Recently passing my 15th anniversary as a technology industry analyst caused me to reflect on the evolution of our business, and I'm disappointed to share that amid some positive developments, one significant ethical shortcoming still persists.If you had asked me 15 years ago—when the world was reeling from an equities collapse aggravated in part by conflict-of-interest shenanigans on Wall Street—I would have predicted that the tech analyst community would split neatly between sell-side research and buy-side research.But that has not happened, and you the customer are the worse off for it.The financial industry analyst model In financial research, the industry makes a clear distinction between sell-side analysis and buy-side analysis. A sell-side financial analyst relies on information often spoon-fed from public companies to drive activity to trading desks (i.e., works primarily on behalf of sellers), while a buy-side specialist strives to inform better investor performance (i.e., works primarily on behalf of buyers). The same advisory or investment firm can employ both buy- and sell-side analysts, but they must isolate themselves behind "Chinese Firewalls" designed to prevent buy- and sell-side specialists from even talking to each other without a lawyer present.To read this article in Continue reading

FCC rolls back net neutrality ISP transparency rules

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to roll back some net neutrality regulations that require broadband providers to inform customers about their network management practices.The Republican-controlled FCC on Thursday suspended the net neutrality transparency requirements for broadband providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers. Critics called the decision anticonsumer.The transparency rule, waived for five years in a 2-1 party-line vote Thursday, requires broadband providers to explain to customers their pricing models and fees as well as their network management practices and the impact on broadband service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple opposes Trump’s transgender rights rollback

The Trump administration on Wednesday announced plans to roll back Obama protections for transgender kids in schools. Apple quickly responded with a forceful statement against the move.“Apple believes everyone deserves a chance to thrive in an environment free from stigma and discrimination,” the company said in a statement it provided to Politico. “We support efforts toward greater acceptance, not less, and we strongly believe that transgender students should be treated as equals. We disagree with any effort to limit or rescind their rights and protections.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC rolls back net neutrality ISP transparency rules

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to roll back some net neutrality regulations that require broadband providers to inform customers about their network management practices.The Republican-controlled FCC on Thursday suspended the net neutrality transparency requirements for broadband providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers. Critics called the decision anticonsumer.The transparency rule, waived for five years in a 2-1 party-line vote Thursday, requires broadband providers to explain to customers their pricing models and fees as well as their network management practices and the impact on broadband service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

33% off NETGEAR N300 Wi-Fi Router with High Power 5dBi External Antennas – Deal Alert

Currently discounted 33% and selling for just $19.99, the NETGEAR N300 WiFi Router with external antennas (WNR2020) offers high-performance wireless speeds of up to 300 Mbps, and for the current price is a good consideration for the internet needs in your second home, apartment, dormitory, or as a drop-in replacement of your legacy router. It also features external 5dBi antennas for improved WiFi coverage and Push 'N' Connect for easy WiFi connections. The scheduled WiFi on/off button allows for convenient power savings by scheduling times for WiFi to be turned off. It's currently rated 4 out of 5 stars from over 7,600 customers (read recent reviews here) on Amazon, where its been recently discounted 33% to a very reasonable $19.99. See the discounted N300 Wi-Fi router from Netgear on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

33% off NETGEAR N300 Wi-Fi Router with High Power 5dBi External Antennas – Deal Alert

Currently discounted 33% and selling for just $19.99, the NETGEAR N300 WiFi Router with external antennas (WNR2020) offers high-performance wireless speeds of up to 300 Mbps, and for the current price is a good consideration for the internet needs in your second home, apartment, dormitory, or as a drop-in replacement of your legacy router. It also features external 5dBi antennas for improved WiFi coverage and Push 'N' Connect for easy WiFi connections. The scheduled WiFi on/off button allows for convenient power savings by scheduling times for WiFi to be turned off. It's currently rated 4 out of 5 stars from over 7,600 customers (read recent reviews here) on Amazon, where its been recently discounted 33% to a very reasonable $19.99. See the discounted N300 Wi-Fi router from Netgear on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T grows, testing on tap from UNH lab

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) said it would begin offering testing and standards conformance services 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet products.The broad testing services safeguard that Ethernet products and services are interoperable and will help customers boost network speed up to five times without requiring cabling infrastructure changes.The Ethernet Alliance in September wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T grows, testing on tap from UNH lab

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) said it would begin offering testing and standards conformance services 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet products.The broad testing services safeguard that Ethernet products and services are interoperable and will help customers boost network speed up to five times without requiring cabling infrastructure changes.The Ethernet Alliance in September wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T grows, testing on tap from UNH lab

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) said it would begin offering testing and standards conformance services 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet products.The broad testing services safeguard that Ethernet products and services are interoperable and will help customers boost network speed up to five times without requiring cabling infrastructure changes.The Ethernet Alliance in September wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T grows, testing on tap from UNH lab

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) said it would begin offering testing and standards conformance services 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet products.The broad testing services safeguard that Ethernet products and services are interoperable and will help customers boost network speed up to five times without requiring cabling infrastructure changes.The Ethernet Alliance in September wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: AppDirect’s survey rings true, albeit self-serving

I quite like Henry Ford's approach toward choice: You can have any color you like so long as it's black. Too much choice makes for (in my case, at least) increased stress as choices from a bewildering array of automobile options become ever more difficult.And this situation of consumers being spoiled for choice occurs in our own sector: technology.When I started out on this tech commentary lark over a decade ago, it was still the early days of SaaS. Only a few vendors -- Salesforce and NetSuite among them -- existed at that time. At the small and midsize business (SMB) end of town, there was a similarly limited choice of tools. Indeed, the start of my blogging journey coincided almost exactly with Rod Drury founding Xero, a SaaS company offering accounting for SMBs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch Series 3 Rumor Rollup: New display, more energy & watchOS beta 3.2

iPhone 8 rumormongers don't get to have all the fun: Speculation has started to swirl about the Apple Watch Series 3, expected to arrive around the same time as the 10th anniversary Apple smartphone in the fall.The next Apple smart watch, which competes with products from LG, Samsung and others, is expected to boast performance and battery life improvements. The Series 2 watch came with improved performance, a brighter display, better water resistance, a built-in GPS and more. (Apple Watches start in under-$300 range and rise in price into the thousands, depending on model, and are available from Apple as well as retail partners like Best Buy and Walmart.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Six common DevOps myths busted

Even though the DevOps movement has begun to take hold, plenty of misperceptions about DevOps still exist. Is DevOps a set of absolute beliefs? A miracle cure for anything that ails an organization? Does it require particular software tools? Can only the unicorns of the world get it right? Because it can be hard to pin down, some people mistrust the benefits of solid DevOps methodologies. And they forget that at its heart, DevOps is about responding more quickly to business and customer needs. It’s about continual learning and improvement rather than an end state. A new Puppet ebook, DevOps Mythbusting, sets the record straight, and shows how you can benefit from DevOps practices, even if you think you don't have the time or resources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: AI and being left out

It is often argued that technological progress always leads to massive shifts in employment but that at the end of the day the economy grows as new jobs are created. However, that’s a far too facile way of looking at the impact of AI and automation on jobs today. Joel Mokyr, a leading economic historian at Northwestern University, has spent his career studying how people and societies have experienced the radical transitions spurred by advances in technology, such as the Industrial Revolution that began in the late 18th century. The current disruptions are faster and “more intensive,” Mokyr says. “It is nothing like what we have seen in the past, and the issue is whether the system can adapt as it did in the past.” —Technology Review

The post Worth Reading: AI and being left out appeared first on 'net work.

Ansible Is 5 Years Old Today!

Ansible birthday

Five years ago today, Michael DeHaan created this commit:


commit f31421576b00f0b167cdbe61217c31c21a41ac02
Author: Michael DeHaan
Date:   Thu Feb 23 14:17:24 2012 -0500

    Genesis.

When you create something you intend to release as open-source software, you never know if it will be something others are actually interested in using (much less contributing to).

Michael invited me to join Ansible when it was just over a year old as a project, and I have seen it grow from an already wildly popular project into something used by people around the world. The thing that makes Ansible the strongest though, by far, is its community of users and contributors. So join us in wishing Happy Birthday by sharing how you innovate with Ansible!

twitter-logo.png Tweet #AnsibleBirthday


Eleven-year-old root flaw found and patched in the Linux kernel

Linux system administrators should be on the watch for kernel updates because they fix a local privilege escalation flaw that could lead to a full system compromise.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-6074, is over 11 years old and was likely introduced in 2005 when the Linux kernel gained support for the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP). It was discovered last week and was patched by the kernel developers on Friday.The flaw can be exploited locally by using heap spraying techniques to execute arbitrary code inside the kernel, the most privileged part of the OS. Andrey Konovalov, the Google researcher who found the vulnerability, plans to publish an exploit for it a few days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Eleven-year-old root flaw found and patched in the Linux kernel

Linux system administrators should be on the watch for kernel updates because they fix a local privilege escalation flaw that could lead to a full system compromise.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-6074, is over 11 years old and was likely introduced in 2005 when the Linux kernel gained support for the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP). It was discovered last week and was patched by the kernel developers on Friday.The flaw can be exploited locally by using heap spraying techniques to execute arbitrary code inside the kernel, the most privileged part of the OS. Andrey Konovalov, the Google researcher who found the vulnerability, plans to publish an exploit for it a few days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Is DevOps security about behavior or process?

One of my main roles is improving the security of the software produced by my employer, and it was in that role that I attended the annual gathering of the security industry in San Francisco last week. The RSA Conference is one of the two global security conferences I attend, the other being Blackhat. While Blackhat has become more corporate, it’s still dominated by hackers and focuses more on vulnerabilities, whereas RSA is very much a corporate event focused on enterprise security and security policy.RELATED: Machine learning offers new hope against cyber attacks Several of the tracks at RSA this year covered the area of security in the development process. I was most interested in the Advanced Security & DevOps track. DevOps is a hot topic in the industry, and now we have SecDevOps, or perhaps DevSecOps as the new security buzzword spinoff. Behind the buzzwords, however, I learned some useful lessons, a few of which I’d like to discuss here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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