This is Microsoft’s vision of a holographic office

Microsoft made the biggest pitch to date for HoloLens as a business computing device on Monday during its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Canada.When Arantxa Lasa Cid, a program director at the company, took the stage for a HoloLens demo, she pulled up a workspace that looked a lot like a massive, multimonitor desktop setup, complete with virtual monitors showing an Outlook calendar, email and two web browsers. It looked a lot like a traditional desktop setup, with one catch: Cid was standing in front of an empty table, wearing one of Microsoft's augmented reality headsets. And then, with the tap of her finger, she pulled up a model of a jet engine. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Throwing our IoT investment in the trash thanks to NetGear

Soon it will be time to say “goodbye” to my family’s VueZone video cameras. Over the past three years, we have made quite an investment in NetGear’s VueZone technology: two hubs, eight regular and night-vision cameras, and even weatherproof outdoor housings. Soon: Poof. Toodles. It was fun, now it’s done.We initially purchased one NetGear VueZone Home Video Monitoring System in August 2013 for $218.48 (including tax), plus additional cameras and housings along the way. A few months later, we bought a second system for another piece of property. In addition, we paid NetGear an annual fee for motion detection and to store video clips in the cloud whenever activity was detected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Three questions to ask about DevOps measurement

Measurements and metrics are related ideas, but I make a distinction between the two. I use measurements when I talk about individual items that have numbers or values associated with them and metrics when I talk about measuring results or determining whether or not something is successful. For example, one measurement might be the frequency of releases, which could be used as a performance metric to determine whether you are getting new features to your customers more quickly. —NewStack

The post Worth Reading: Three questions to ask about DevOps measurement appeared first on 'net work.

Victims of terrorist attacks in Israel sue Facebook for $1 billion

The families of victims of five recent attacks in Israel are suing Facebook for more than US$1 billion, saying the social media site helps terrorists plan their violence. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court, accuses Facebook of helping Palestinian group Hamas recruit members, communicate, and plan attacks. The U.S. government designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1995. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are family members of five terrorist attacks in Israel in the past two years, the most recent being a March 8 stabbing attack in Tel Aviv that killed 29-year-old U.S. citizen Taylor Force. Four of the people who died in the attacks were U.S. citizens, and another U.S. citizen was injured.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Victims of terrorist attacks in Israel sue Facebook for $1 billion

The families of victims of five recent attacks in Israel are suing Facebook for more than US$1 billion, saying the social media site helps terrorists plan their violence. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court, accuses Facebook of helping Palestinian group Hamas recruit members, communicate, and plan attacks. The U.S. government designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1995. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are family members of five terrorist attacks in Israel in the past two years, the most recent being a March 8 stabbing attack in Tel Aviv that killed 29-year-old U.S. citizen Taylor Force. Four of the people who died in the attacks were U.S. citizens, and another U.S. citizen was injured.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung unveils the world’s highest capacity consumer SSD

Samsung today announced what it claims is the highest capacity consumer solid state drive, a 4TB member of its 850 EVO line, which will retail for $1,499 or about 36 cents per gigabyte of capacity.The new 850 EVO SSD uses Samsung's 48-layer high V-NAND technology, which stacks flash memory cells one atop another like microscopic skyscrapers and stores three bits per cell.Samsung then crammed the 4TB of capacity into a 2.5-in. SSD form factor only 7mm thick, which is small enough to fit into ultra-slim notebooks. Previously, Samsung's 2TB EVO SSD was its highest capacity flash drive. Samsung Samsung's new 850 EVO SSD boxed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Could Somebody Please Segment SDN Before We all go Crazy?

What is SDN's true definition?

​Polycom pulls plug on Mitel merger as higher bidder takes vendor private

Polycom has dramatically pulled the plug on Mitel’s proposed $US1.9 billion acquisition of the company, scrapping the deal to go private instead.Following a dramatic day of deliberating at the video conferencing vendor, over a years' worth of negotiating is now off the table after the company accepted a rival $US2 billion bid from Siris Capital Group LLC, a private equity firm based in New York.According to Polycom, its board of directors took less than 24 hours to decide on the move.In a move which has left the channel stunned, Polycom has officially ended the merger agreement, paying Mitel the $60 million termination fee after the vendor refused to raise its offer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Data-driven farming: How IoT delivers hyperlocal weather information affordably

The World Food Program warns that droughts, fires and storms could endanger food security for billions of people. To adapt, farmers need current, local and reliable information to help them choose the seeds and planting schedules best suited to local weather conditions.Traditional weather sensors, however, are often too expensive and difficult to operate in large parts of the developing world. This results in scarce farming and weather data for much of the globe.Farmers need hyperlocal information—both timely and local. With IoT and new connectivity options, affordable sensors that are easy to operate can collect the vital information farmers require.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SWIFT brings in external support as it fights wave of bank hacks

SWIFT is bringing in additional security support after a series of high-profile bank heists and attempted bank heists conducted via its financial transaction network.The company has hired two security firms, UK-based BAE Systems and Fox-IT Security of the Netherlands, to help its customers strengthen their security, it said Monday.SWIFT's network itself has not been breached in the recent attacks, but bank systems connected to it have been hacked in a number of high-profile incidents over the last year, the most spectacular of which almost led to the loss of US$1 billion from Bangladesh Bank.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SWIFT brings in external support as it fights wave of bank hacks

SWIFT is bringing in additional security support after a series of high-profile bank heists and attempted bank heists conducted via its financial transaction network.The company has hired two security firms, UK-based BAE Systems and Fox-IT Security of the Netherlands, to help its customers strengthen their security, it said Monday.SWIFT's network itself has not been breached in the recent attacks, but bank systems connected to it have been hacked in a number of high-profile incidents over the last year, the most spectacular of which almost led to the loss of US$1 billion from Bangladesh Bank.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Armed crooks use Pokemon Go to lure and rob victims

It’s not only cyber thugs interested in the Pokemon Go app, but crooks in real life as well. Armed robbers were reportedly using the app’s geolocation feature to lure victims to secluded locations.The “robbery part made sense” to the cops, but not the augmented reality game in which players walk around in the real world searching for Pokemon. Players can drop a Lure model in a real world location which last for 30 minutes to attract players to that location. O’Fallon Missouri Police Sgt. Phil Hardin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “that ‘younger, geeky officers’ had to fill in their colleagues about some of what the victim was describing.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Armed crooks use Pokemon Go to lure and rob victims

It’s not only cyber thugs interested in the Pokemon Go app, but crooks in real life as well. Armed robbers were reportedly using the app’s geolocation feature to lure victims to secluded locations.The “robbery part made sense” to the cops, but not the augmented reality game in which players walk around in the real world searching for Pokemon. Players can drop a Lure model in a real world location which last for 30 minutes to attract players to that location. O’Fallon Missouri Police Sgt. Phil Hardin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “that ‘younger, geeky officers’ had to fill in their colleagues about some of what the victim was describing.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN providers nibbling away at slow-moving MPLS carriers

Switching networking providers is no small task but it wasn't really an option for Pattonair CIO Brian Long. Growing 16 percent year-over-year, the provider of nuts and bolts for airline engines was regularly adding new offices worldwide to serve its customers. It needed to have these new sites up and running quickly but its MPLS network provider Verizon was not willing to move at the speed Pattonair required, Long says. Pattonair CIO Brian Long. "It was a really good service once [the network circuit] was in," Long says of Verizon's MPLS service. "But if you wanted to be a dynamic business and quickly open up new locations and change capacities it was just a nightmare." Long says he soon got the sense that "we were an account number in their database and we just couldn't get the support that we needed."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN providers nibbling away at slow-moving MPLS carriers

Switching networking providers is no small task but it wasn't really an option for Pattonair CIO Brian Long. Growing 16 percent year-over-year, the provider of nuts and bolts for airline engines was regularly adding new offices worldwide to serve its customers. It needed to have these new sites up and running quickly but its MPLS network provider Verizon was not willing to move at the speed Pattonair required, Long says. Pattonair CIO Brian Long. "It was a really good service once [the network circuit] was in," Long says of Verizon's MPLS service. "But if you wanted to be a dynamic business and quickly open up new locations and change capacities it was just a nightmare." Long says he soon got the sense that "we were an account number in their database and we just couldn't get the support that we needed."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud computing gives businesses the freedom to innovate

Although I’ve refused to get into the “what is cloud computing” argument over the years, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a very specific definition. I believe down at the very core of cloud computing sits an airtight, inviolable principle: A cloud enables the buyer to forgo asset ownership. + Also on Network World: Banking on the cloud +Through my years of consulting I have come to the conclusion that technology asset ownership is an addiction and one that must be overcome through willpower, a support network and a change in habit. I’ve had to commiserate too often with CIOs despondent over the failure of private clouds that don’t meet their goals to remain silent. The best way to illustrate my point is to consider the approaches of my fictional, but all too real, clients: Accumulation, Inc. and Leverage Enterprises.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud computing gives businesses the freedom to innovate

Although I’ve refused to get into the “what is cloud computing” argument over the years, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a very specific definition. I believe down at the very core of cloud computing sits an airtight, inviolable principle: A cloud enables the buyer to forgo asset ownership. + Also on Network World: Banking on the cloud +Through my years of consulting I have come to the conclusion that technology asset ownership is an addiction and one that must be overcome through willpower, a support network and a change in habit. I’ve had to commiserate too often with CIOs despondent over the failure of private clouds that don’t meet their goals to remain silent. The best way to illustrate my point is to consider the approaches of my fictional, but all too real, clients: Accumulation, Inc. and Leverage Enterprises.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon To Vendors: Here Are Our 5G Specs

Will these specs be interoperable with 3GPP's 5G standards?

Enterprise software developers continue to use flawed code in apps

Companies that develop enterprise applications download over 200,000 open-source components on average every year and one in every 16 of those components has security vulnerabilities.This is indicative of the poor state of the software supply chain, a problem that's only getting worse with the increased reliance on third-party code combined with bad software inventory practices.According to software development lifecycle firm Sonatype, third-party components account for 80 percent to 90 percent of the code found in a typical enterprise application today.The number of downloads from the largest largest public repository of open-source Java components reached 31 billion last year, a 82 percent increase over 2014, the company found.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprise software developers continue to use flawed code in apps

Companies that develop enterprise applications download over 200,000 open-source components on average every year and one in every 16 of those components has security vulnerabilities.This is indicative of the poor state of the software supply chain, a problem that's only getting worse with the increased reliance on third-party code combined with bad software inventory practices.According to software development lifecycle firm Sonatype, third-party components account for 80 percent to 90 percent of the code found in a typical enterprise application today.The number of downloads from the largest largest public repository of open-source Java components reached 31 billion last year, a 82 percent increase over 2014, the company found.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here