Oracle outlines plans to take on Amazon in cloud

Oracle executives today revealed the results of years’ worth of engineering and development efforts on its IaaS public cloud and announced a new bare metal cloud database service and an international geographic expansion. Oracle is typically not considered one of the top IaaS public cloud leaders, but the company has hopes of competing in the market by combining its infrastructure services – which focus on its core database services – with a suite of application development and software as a service offerings. At its Cloud World event in New York today, company executives laid out their vision of how they will take on competitors such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Salesforce.com.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft labels Windows 7 ‘outdated’ as it stumps for 10

Microsoft on Monday reminded customers running Windows 7 that they have just three years of support remaining, told them that the aged OS was "long outdated" and urged them to upgrade to Windows 10.Windows 7 will exit what Microsoft calls Extended Support on Jan. 14, 2020; at that point, the company will stop all security updates.Microsoft used the three-years-and-counting milestone to simultaneously denigrate Windows 7 and promote its successor. "Windows 7 is based on long-outdated security architectures," said Markus Nitschke, the head of Microsoft Germany, in a post to a German-language company blog, adding that the OS "does not meet the requirements of modern technology, nor the high security requirements of IT departments."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free Software Foundation shakes up its list of priority projects

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation Tuesday announced a major rethinking of the software projects that it supports, putting top priority on a free mobile operating system, accessibility, and driver development, among other areas. The foundation has maintained the High Priority Projects list since 2005, when it contained just four free software projects. Today’s version mostly identifies priority areas, along with a few specific projects in key areas:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 really cool network and IT research projects

Researchers at top universities, backed by funding from federal and other outfits, are pumping out loads of research on network security, wireless networking and more. Here's a recap of 7 impressive projects from recent months.1. Not that you trust mobile apps in the first place… Carnegie Mellon University researchers took a deep dive into about 18,000 popular free apps on the Google Play store and found that not only about half of them lacked a privacy policy but a good number of those that have policies aren’t adhering to them. As many as 4 in 10 apps with policies could be collecting location information and nearly 1 in 5 could be sharing that data without getting your permission to do so, To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 really cool network and IT research projects

Researchers at top universities, backed by funding from federal and other outfits, are pumping out loads of research on network security, wireless networking and more. Here's a recap of 7 impressive projects from recent months.1. Not that you trust mobile apps in the first place… Carnegie Mellon University researchers took a deep dive into about 18,000 popular free apps on the Google Play store and found that not only about half of them lacked a privacy policy but a good number of those that have policies aren’t adhering to them. As many as 4 in 10 apps with policies could be collecting location information and nearly 1 in 5 could be sharing that data without getting your permission to do so, To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: We’re all responsible for fake news

In an era of public opinion polls, we rarely turn our criticisms back on the public. Maybe that should change. Many people are angry with the press right now, and that’s very understandable, but we also need to acknowledge this truth: media outlets today are subject to ruthless competitive pressure. … Ask yourself: What kinds of pieces do I look for, and which do I share with my friends? … So, what does the public want? Are they interested in solid reporting and honest, careful reasoning? Or do they just want people to massage their sensitivities and confirm all their pre-existing views? If it’s mainly the latter, righting the ship will be very difficult indeed. —The Federalist

The post Worth Reading: We’re all responsible for fake news appeared first on 'net work.

The Great Domain Debacle

For those who are interested—this weekend I got into a “discussion” with my old/current DNS provider, Network Solutions. I’ve been using them for years, but there have apparently been recent changes at the company. Part of their “new” terms of service say—

We may, at any time, activate the auto-renew service for eligible services in your account. Further, we may provide you with an opportunity to “opt in” to our automatic renewal process in accordance with the instructions (and subject to your agreement to the terms and conditions pertaining to that process) on our Website. You agree that if you are enrolled in or otherwise utilizing our auto-renew service, we will attempt to renew your service at some point less than ninety (90) days prior to its expiration. Such automatic renewal for your service(s), if successful, may be for a shorter term than the term for which you originally purchased your service(s), but in no event shall such term be longer than the term then-currently in place for the service(s). Such automatic renewal for your service(s), if successful, shall be at the then-current price for the service(s). You further agree that, to turn off the auto-renew service for any of Continue reading

Microsoft awarded patent for multiple folding phone

There have been several efforts on the part of handset makers to create a folding device, so the large chocolate bar design of the phone will fit more easily in the pocket. Well, Microsoft has one-upped them with a patent for a mobile device that can be unfolded not once, but twice—turning it into a tablet-style device.The company initially filed the patent application Oct. 16, 2014, and was awarded the patent (US 9,541,962 B2) by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Jan. 10, 2017. The news was first spotted by MSPoweruser. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker for Windows Server and Image2Docker

In December we had a live webinar focused on Windows Server Docker containers. We covered a lot of ground and we had some great feedback – thanks to all the folks who joined us. This is a brief recap of the session, which also gives answers to the questions we didn’t get round to.

Webinar Recording

You can view the webinar on YouTube:

The recording clocks in at just under an hour. Here’s what we covered:

  • 00:00 Introduction
  • 02:00 Docker on Windows Server 2016
  • 05:30 Windows Server 2016 technical details
  • 10:30 Hyper-V and Windows Server Containers
  • 13:00 Docker for Windows Demo – ASP.NET Core app with SQL Server
  • 25:30 Additional Partnerships between Docker, Inc. and Microsoft
  • 27:30 Introduction to Image2Docker
  • 30:00 Demo – Extracting ASP.NET Apps from a VM using Image2Docker
  • 52:00 Next steps and resources for learning Docker on Windows

Q&A

Can these [Windows] containers be hosted on a Linux host?

No. Docker containers use the underlying operating system kernel to run processes, so you can’t mix and match kernels. You can only run Windows Docker images on Windows, and Linux Docker images on Linux.

However, with an upcoming release to the Windows network stack, you will be Continue reading

Think employers must protect workers’ personal info? Think again

There’s good news for security pros worried that their organizations may be liable if their employees’ personal information gets hacked: a panel of judges in Pennsylvania says workers can’t collect damages from their employer if things like Social Security numbers, bank account information, birth dates, addresses and salaries are compromised in a data breach.Even though the stolen data was used to file phony tax returns in order to get the refunds, the workers at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) had no reasonable expectation that the data would be safe, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled recently.The case, known as in Dittman v. UPMC, pertains solely to employee records, not customer records, and not patient records, which are protected by HIPAA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Think employers must protect workers’ personal info? Think again

There’s good news for security pros worried that their organizations may be liable if their employees’ personal information gets hacked: a panel of judges in Pennsylvania says workers can’t collect damages from their employer if things like Social Security numbers, bank account information, birth dates, addresses and salaries are compromised in a data breach.Even though the stolen data was used to file phony tax returns in order to get the refunds, the workers at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) had no reasonable expectation that the data would be safe, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled recently.The case, known as in Dittman v. UPMC, pertains solely to employee records, not customer records, and not patient records, which are protected by HIPAA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Essence Of Multi-Threaded Applications

In the prior two articles in this series, we have gone through the theory behind programming multi-threaded applications, with the management of shared memory being accessed by multiple threads, and of even creating those threads in the first place. Now, we need to put one such multi-threaded application together and see how it works. You will find that the pieces fall together remarkably easily.

If we wanted to build a parallel application using multiple threads, we would likely first think of one where we split up a loop amongst the threads. We will be looking at such later in a …

The Essence Of Multi-Threaded Applications was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

SDxE: Engineer Focused

As an engineer, you’ve probably asked yourself a thousand times—what does all this software defined stuff mean for me? Answers are out there, of course; it seems like everyone is writing about it. Some of the answers out there are even useful, of course, but some of them are not. Most folks writing about the software defined craze are either unrealistic, or they’re focused on the large scale network you probably aren’t working on. Which leaves the question lingering: how does software defined apply to me?

SDxE—Software Defined Enterprise—is a new show designed to answer those questions for the engineer. I’ll be there; the full schedule isn’t in place, but I am currently pulling together a panel about the end of the (appliance) router. I plan to have folks from Cumulus, 6Wind, and at least one independent expert (Jeff Tantsura), sitting down to chat with me about disaggregation and the future of the router market. Specifically, are the tools in place that will allow you, the average engineer, running the “average” “enterprise” network, to take advantage of disaggregation?

Shawn Zandi will be there discussing the LinkedIn data center, and Pete Lumbis will be there talking about network automation. Continue reading

AI should enhance, not replace, humans, say CEOs of IBM and Microsoft

Artificial intelligence should enhance human workers, not replace them, at least according to the CEOs of IBM and Microsoft.Ginny Rometty and Satya Nadella made clear their view of the role of AI in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, just a few hours after Rometty circulated IBM's three guiding principles for the development of cognitive technologies to company staff.Less dramatic and snappily expressed than Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics, IBM's three principles are nevertheless intended to limit the harm the introduction of AI technologies causes.The first thing to understand is the purpose of these technologies. For IBM, Rometty said, "it will not be man or machine: Our purpose is to augment and be in service of what humans do."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Report: Samsung probe blames Galaxy Note7 fires on faulty batteries

After months of recalls, scares, and device-killing software updates, Samsung is finally ready to reveal the results of its investigation into the exploding Galaxy Note7s. According to a report from Reuters, the electronics giant will detail its findings on Jan. 23, and to the surprise of no one, it has concluded that the battery is the culprit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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