5 core topics Trump needs to address in Silicon Valley leaders meeting

As some of the tech sector’s heaviest hitters prep for a meeting this week with president-elect Donald Trump, they need to make sure they get answers to critical questions about issues that could affect not only their businesses but the U.S. economy in general.While the meeting has been called by Trump, the Silicon Valley executives should be prepared to set some of it themselves so they aren’t blindsided by policy shifts that can affect their success. Items of interest range from encryption to China policy.Here are some of the issues important to Trump and that are important to the interests of technology vendors and service providers.Where does Trump stand on encryption?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sleeping giant Qualcomm awakens with aim to crush Intel at its own game

Last Wednesday was historic for Qualcomm. In one day, the company jumped beyond its comfort zone of mobile chips and entered the PC and server markets.With the expansion, Qualcomm now has chips for most computing products. It wants to outcompete even Intel, which dominates in PCs and servers but gave up on markets like smartphone CPUs earlier this year.Qualcomm on Wednesday announced its Centriq 2400 server chips, which started shipping to test customers. Later that day, Microsoft revealed that first PCs based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 chip would come next year. The chip will also be used in high-end smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Politics bog down US response to election hacks

U.S. efforts to get to the bottom about Russia’s role in hacking this year’s presidential election may very well end up mired in politics, hampering any response.On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was the latest U.S. lawmaker to call for an investigation into Russia’s possible involvement. “This simply cannot be a partisan issue,” he said during a press conference.A growing number of lawmakers, in addition to U.S. intelligence agencies, also assert that Russia was behind the high-profile hacks that were intended to influence this year’s election. Among the targets were Democratic groups and figures whose emails were stolen and later leaked online.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Politics bog down US response to election hacks

U.S. efforts to get to the bottom about Russia’s role in hacking this year’s presidential election may very well end up mired in politics, hampering any response.On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was the latest U.S. lawmaker to call for an investigation into Russia’s possible involvement. “This simply cannot be a partisan issue,” he said during a press conference.A growing number of lawmakers, in addition to U.S. intelligence agencies, also assert that Russia was behind the high-profile hacks that were intended to influence this year’s election. Among the targets were Democratic groups and figures whose emails were stolen and later leaked online.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The top 10 tech stories of 2016: Post-PC, post-reality

Evolution inevitably involves the creation of new problems, and the big tech stories of the year show that this goes for IT just like anything else.  While the internet has brought the world closer together, it also paved the way for fake news and new forms of espionage. The rise of AI has humans worried about being replaced. Chip makers are consolidating and scrambling to retool to meet the demands of virtual reality and the internet of things. And while Apple removed legacy ports on its new devices, a lot of users are grumbling about needing adapters for their favorite headphones and other peripherals. It's been a big year for trade-offs like this. Here are the IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The top 10 tech stories of 2016: Post-PC, post-reality

Evolution inevitably involves the creation of new problems, and the big tech stories of the year show that this goes for IT just like anything else.  While the internet has brought the world closer together, it also paved the way for fake news and new forms of espionage. The rise of AI has humans worried about being replaced. Chip makers are consolidating and scrambling to retool to meet the demands of virtual reality and the internet of things. And while Apple removed legacy ports on its new devices, a lot of users are grumbling about needing adapters for their favorite headphones and other peripherals. It's been a big year for trade-offs like this. Here are the IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft extends the lifecycle of Windows Server and SQL Server

In recent years, Microsoft has made enormous efforts to get people to migrate off products that had reached their end of life. In 2014, it was Windows XP. In 2015, it was Windows Server 2003. This year it was SQL Server 2005. So, knowing what the company went through to make people migrate makes this latest bit of news somewhat baffling. Microsoft has quietly announced the addition of a third tier to its product lifecycle, expanding the lifespan of both Windows Server and SQL Server by an additional six years. Microsoft usually offers two tiers of lifecycle support covering a 10-year lifespan. The first five years, known as Mainstream support, include new features as well as security and non-security updates. The last five years, covering Extended support, has security and non-security updates, but no new features are added to the product. After that, all support ceases. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft extends the lifecycle of Windows Server and SQL Server

In recent years, Microsoft has made enormous efforts to get people to migrate off products that had reached their end of life. In 2014, it was Windows XP. In 2015, it was Windows Server 2003. This year it was SQL Server 2005. So, knowing what the company went through to make people migrate makes this latest bit of news somewhat baffling. Microsoft has quietly announced the addition of a third tier to its product lifecycle, expanding the lifespan of both Windows Server and SQL Server by an additional six years. Microsoft usually offers two tiers of lifecycle support covering a 10-year lifespan. The first five years, known as Mainstream support, include new features as well as security and non-security updates. The last five years, covering Extended support, has security and non-security updates, but no new features are added to the product. After that, all support ceases. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: As Workplace Collaboration Evolves, Wireless Audio Conferencing Plays a Key Role

The nature of the workplace is changing dramatically. Project teams are typically more geographically dispersed and more mobile. And yet, in some ways they remain more connected than ever. More than 8 in 10 managers in a 2016 Millward Brown survey, conducted on behalf of Sennheiser, said meetings aimed at flexibly bringing together experts from different sites helped their business, in terms of saving time and other factors. While the cloud and mobile technologies have made it easier for team members to collaborate virtually using group chat and similar tools, audio conferencing remains one of the most effective ways for teams to communicate. The challenge is that legacy conferencing technology has not kept pace with the changing needs of organizations. Who doesn’t have a horror story of a conference call featuring team members huddled around a speaker phone, straining to hear remote team members speaking over a poor-quality connection? Other times, it can be difficult to simply find a room with the proper conferencing setup.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Network Time Protocol

Of these most important Internet protocols, NTP (Network Time Protocol) is the likely least understood and has the least attention and support. Until very recently, it was supported (part-time) by just one person — Harlen Stenn — “who had lost the root passwords to the machine where the source code was maintained (so that machine hadn’t received security updates in many years), and that machine ran a proprietary source-control system that almost no one had access to, so it was very hard to contribute to”. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: Network Time Protocol appeared first on 'net work.

Video: ONUG Fall 2016 – Part 1- People, Place and Stuff

I did a video blog and published it to Youtube.

The post Video: ONUG Fall 2016 – Part 1- People, Place and Stuff appeared first on EtherealMind.

IT Spending Expected To Pick Up In 2017

Paper in a digital world: Time to eliminate the inefficiency and waste

Every day we are reminded that we live in a digital age. We read the news on our smart phones. We read books on our Kindles. We do our banking online. Yet we’re still drowning in paper.  In 2016, humans created more than half a billion tons of paper, and U.S. offices use more than 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year. It’s no wonder that more than a quarter of all landfill waste is paper. Not only is this an environmental tragedy, but it is also a monument to inefficiency because paper does not give enterprises the business intelligence and insight they need to succeed. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Paper in a digital world: Time to eliminate the inefficiency and waste

Every day we are reminded that we live in a digital age. We read the news on our smart phones. We read books on our Kindles. We do our banking online. Yet we’re still drowning in paper.  In 2016, humans created more than half a billion tons of paper, and U.S. offices use more than 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year. It’s no wonder that more than a quarter of all landfill waste is paper. Not only is this an environmental tragedy, but it is also a monument to inefficiency because paper does not give enterprises the business intelligence and insight they need to succeed. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

snaproute Go BGP Code Dive (14): First Steps in Processing an Update

In the last post on this topic, we found the tail of the update chain. The actual event appears to be processed here—

case BGPEventUpdateMsg:
  st.fsm.StartHoldTimer()
  bgpMsg := data.(*packet.BGPMessage)
  st.fsm.ProcessUpdateMessage(bgpMsg)

—which is found around line 734 of fsm.go. The second line of code in this snippet is interesting; it’s a little difficult to understand what it’s actually doing. There are three crucial elements to figuring out what is going on here—

:=, in go, is a way of appending the information in a data structure with more information. So, for instance, if you do something like this—

a-string = "this is a"
a-string := " string"

The result, in a-string, is this is a string. Whatever else this snippet is doing, then, it is taking something out of the data structure, and appending it to the bgpMsg structure. What, precisely, is it taking from the data structure?

The * (asterisk) is a way to reference a pointer within a structure. We’ve not talked about pointers before, so it’s worth spending just a moment with them. The illustration below will help a bit.

Each letter in the string “this is a string” Continue reading

6 strategies for becoming a digital business

If your company’s digital transformation has stalled, gone off-track or hasn’t even started, it’s time to kick it into high gear. According to a Forrester Research report, “by 2020, every business will become either a digital predator or digital prey.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Gates, Bezos, others launch energy tech VC fund

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son are investors in a new clean energy technology venture firm launched Monday.Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a US$1 billion venture capital fund, will focus on "next generation technologies to provide reliable, affordable, zero-carbon energy, food, and products to the world," according to its website.Other investors include Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Chairman John Doerr.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Ventures launches AI-focused fund

Microsoft Ventures has launched an artificial intelligence investment fund, signaling its parent company's growing focus on the emerging technology.The VC arm of Microsoft has also funded Element AI, an incubator to help organizations embrace an AI-first strategy, Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president of Microsoft Ventures, said Monday in a blog post."AI holds great promise to augment human capabilities and improve society by tackling some of the world’s biggest problems," Kashyap wrote. "We’ll make investments in startups that are responsibly harnessing the promise of AI to empower people and businesses."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey: Despite costly attacks, 85% of business leaders confident in preparedness

Eighty-five percent of organizations believe they have the right controls in place to protect against such attacks. Yet, 40 percent of them have been victims of cyber attacks within the last six months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Survey: Despite costly attacks, 85% of business leaders confident in preparedness

Eighty-five percent of organizations believe they have the right controls in place to protect against such attacks. Yet, 40 percent of them have been victims of cyber attacks within the last six months.That’s the finding of a recent survey sponsored by BAE Systems.Why the disconnect?[Related: 3 ingredients of a successful attack] It’s one thing to believe you have the right protections in place; it’s another thing to test those beliefs. The survey of 600 business leaders across five countries found that “only 29% of organizations tested their attack response in the last month. On average, organizations last tested their cyber attack response 5 months ago.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)