How sports execs use tech to improve fan engagement

HALF MOON BAY, CALIF. - If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed much in sports it’s that winning cures a lot of ills. Fans generally don’t want to follow or pay to see a team that’s always losing, but competitive teams with a shot at a championship typically attract more fans and can generate more revenue via merchandise, media and other ancillary deals.But one thing that has changed, sports are not the only game in town. From live performances to outdoor activities and the many choices in big and small screen entertainment, consumers have more options as to how to spend their free time and money than ever before.As a result, professional sports teams are investing in new ways to attract and engage fans both inside and outside the ballpark or stadium and technology is a big part of those investments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s how businesses can prevent point-of-sale attacks

Retailers, hotels and restaurants have all been victimized through the same Achilles' heel that cybercriminals continue to attack: the point-of-sale system, where customers' payment data is routinely processed.  These digital cash registers are often the target of malware designed to steal credit card numbers in the thousands or even millions. This year, fast food vendor Wendy's, clothing retailer Eddie Bauer and Kimpton Hotels have all reported data breaches stemming from such attacks.Security experts, however, are encouraging a variety of approaches to keep businesses secure from point-of-sale-related intrusions. Here are a few to consider:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s how businesses can prevent point-of-sale attacks

Retailers, hotels and restaurants have all been victimized through the same Achilles' heel that cybercriminals continue to attack: the point-of-sale system, where customers' payment data is routinely processed.  These digital cash registers are often the target of malware designed to steal credit card numbers in the thousands or even millions. This year, fast food vendor Wendy's, clothing retailer Eddie Bauer and Kimpton Hotels have all reported data breaches stemming from such attacks.Security experts, however, are encouraging a variety of approaches to keep businesses secure from point-of-sale-related intrusions. Here are a few to consider:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Mirantis cut OpenStack staff

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Mirantis - two of the most instrumental companies in the open source cloud computing project OpenStack - have each laid off employees in recent weeks, according to the companies.The full extent of the layoffs at HPE is unknown but ComputerWorldUK last week quoted Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth as saying that HPE had laid off their “entire OpenStack team.” An official with HPE confirmed there has been a restructuring but would not say how many OpenStack workers were cut, adding that Shuttleworth’s statement is exaggerated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Setting Community Values

The oVirt community is made up of a diverse mix of individuals using and contributing to all aspects of the project from all over the world, and we want to make sure that the community is a safe and friendly place for everyone.

This code of conduct applies equally to founders, mentors, and those seeking help and guidance. It applies to all spaces managed by the oVirt project, including IRC, mailing lists, GitHub, Gerrit, oVirt events, and any other forums created by the project team which the community uses for communication.

While we have contribution guidelines for specific tools, we expect all members of our community to follow these general guidelines and be accountable to the community. This isn’t an exhaustive list of things that you can’t do. Rather, take it in the spirit in which it’s intended—a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us and the technical communities in which we participate.

To that end, some members of the oVirt community have put together a new Community Code of Conduct to help guide everyone through what it means to be respectful and tolerant in a global community like the oVirt Project.

We're not looking for a Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Is your personal relevance gap growing faster than your waistline?

In a previous series of blogs, I talked about why your network is the critical foundation of the digital transformation and of the business benefits of moving to a new IP network architecture. I talked about how networks help you control time, how the effects of Metcalfe’s and Reed’s Laws result in wealth creation, and why there is such a tension between your dumb pipes and your smart business. But it’s not just the technology that matters in this coming digital transformation; it’s also your skills and ultimately your career.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Is your personal relevance gap growing faster than your waistline?

In a previous series of blogs, I talked about why your network is the critical foundation of the digital transformation and of the business benefits of moving to a new IP network architecture. I talked about how networks help you control time, how the effects of Metcalfe’s and Reed’s Laws result in wealth creation, and why there is such a tension between your dumb pipes and your smart business. But it’s not just the technology that matters in this coming digital transformation; it’s also your skills and ultimately your career.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First Speakers in the Spring 2017 Data Center Course

It’s only two weeks since the last live session of the Autumn 2016 Data Center course in which Mitja Robas did a fantastic job describing a production deployment of VMware NSX on top of Cisco Nexus 9000 network, and we already have the first speakers for the Spring 2017 event:

  • Scott Lowe (now at VMware) will talk about the role of open source in data center infrastructure;
  • Thomas Wacker (UBS AG) will talk about their fully automated data center deployments;
  • Andrew Lerner and Simon Richard (Gartner) will participate in a panel discussion on data center and networking trends.
Register now

IDG Contributor Network: Apcera rolls out its container management platform

Apcera is an interesting company. Its founder, Derek Collison, was one of the key people behind Cloud Foundry back when it was a small platform project within VMware. Since then Cloud Foundry has gone on to become, arguably, the most important platform as a service (PaaS) organization on earth.+ Also on Network World: PaaS vendors draw battle lines over containers + Collison has moved on as well and founded Apcera, a company focused on giving large enterprises the certainty that comes from using a platform with security and policy baked in. In a world were organizations are hearing more and more about containers and cloud-native applications, having a platform that allows them to use these technologies within the context of tight policy is an attractive proposition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Debunking Trump’s “secret server”

According to this Slate article, Trump has a secret server for communicating with Russia. Even Hillary has piled onto this story.

This is nonsense. The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain "trump-email.com", nor has access to the server. Instead, the domain was setup and controlled by Cendyn, a company that does marketing/promotions for hotels, including many of Trump's hotels. Cendyn outsources the email portions of its campaigns to a company called Listrak, which actually owns/operates the physical server in a data center in Philidelphia.


In other words,  Trump's response is (minus the political bits) likely true, supported by the evidence. It's the conclusion I came to even before seeing the response.

When you view this "secret" server in context, surrounded by the other email servers operated by Listrak on behalf of Cendyn, it becomes more obvious what's going on. In the same Internet address range of Trump's servers you see a bunch of similar servers, many named [client]-email.com. In other words, trump-email. Continue reading

Google clashes with Microsoft over Windows flaw disclosure

Google and Microsoft are butting heads over the disclosure of vulnerabilities. On Monday, Google revealed a critical flaw in Windows after it gave Microsoft a ten-day window to warn the public about it.Google posted about the zero-day vulnerability on its security blog, saying Microsoft had yet to publish a fix or issue an advisory about the software flaw."This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited," Google said. It lets hackers exploit a bug in the Windows kernel, via a win32k.sys system call, to bypass the security sandbox.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google clashes with Microsoft over Windows flaw disclosure

Google and Microsoft are butting heads over the disclosure of vulnerabilities. On Monday, Google revealed a critical flaw in Windows after it gave Microsoft a ten-day window to warn the public about it.Google posted about the zero-day vulnerability on its security blog, saying Microsoft had yet to publish a fix or issue an advisory about the software flaw."This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited," Google said. It lets hackers exploit a bug in the Windows kernel, via a win32k.sys system call, to bypass the security sandbox.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Improve IT security: Start with these 10 topics

You want to be more responsible about IT security in your organization, but where do you start? May I suggest your first step be understanding these topics more thoroughly. This is list isn’t exhaustive. It’s only a beginning:1. DNS and DNSSEC: The biggest games in cyber war are hitting DNS providers. DNS can be compromised in many simple ways, but Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) thwarts these—at the cost of understanding how it works, how to deploy it and how it’s maintained. There are ways to understand if your own organization is threatened with DDoS attacks. Study them. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Improve IT security: Start with these 10 topics

You want to be more responsible about IT security in your organization, but where do you start? May I suggest your first step be understanding these topics more thoroughly. This is list isn’t exhaustive. It’s only a beginning:1. DNS and DNSSEC: The biggest games in cyber war are hitting DNS providers. DNS can be compromised in many simple ways, but Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) thwarts these—at the cost of understanding how it works, how to deploy it and how it’s maintained. There are ways to understand if your own organization is threatened with DDoS attacks. Study them. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Keith Ohlfs, man behind macOS pinwheel & much more, passes away at 52

Ohlfs family Keith Ohlfs Keith Ohlfs, a talented software UX designer whose claims to fame included working on the operating system at the heart of Steve Jobs' NeXT Computer systems, has died at the age of 52 from a heart attack.Ohlfs five years ago posted the video seen below in which NeXT Computer debuts in 1988, 8 years before Apple bought the company and adopted many of its concepts in OS X/macOS. Ohlfs created the animation that the computer used to introduce itself and Jobs wrote the text. "Steve was a huge inspiration in my life and his passion was for uncompromising form and function that has shaped my vision for the future of design and technology," Ohlfs wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft cleans house at the Windows Store

Microsoft announced earlier this year that it would remove applications from the Windows Store that do not comply with the age rating policies the company had adopted. The age rating policy is based on appropriate age and content ratings administered by the International Age Ratings Coalition (IARC) rating system. Microsoft said these ratings are about the suitability of the content in the app, rather than the age of the target audience for your app.  Well, it meant what it said. A large number of applications have been removed from the Windows Store, with reports ranging from 90,000 apps and games to more than 100,000. Given the Windows Store has (or had) 329,000 apps, that's about one-third of the total apps. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

System76 brings Ubuntu to $699 laptop with Kaby Lake chips

If Windows 10 isn't your cup of tea, System76 has a new Ubuntu laptop with Intel's Kaby Lake chip that won't burn your wallet.The 14-inch Lemur laptop starts at $699, a more affordable price for cost-sensitive users than Dell's Ubuntu-based XPS 13 Developer Edition, which starts at $949."We don't have any Mac tax or Windows tax that goes into [Lemur]," said Ryan Sipes, community manager at System76.Despite having a free OS, Dell's XPS 13 laptop has been criticized for being more expensive than the XPS 13 with Windows 10, which starts at $799.99. The Lemur is has many features in common with the XPS 13 DE, though it isn't as slick-looking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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