Apple’s aging Mac Pro is falling way behind Windows rivals

Apple's Mac Pro is aging fast, especially with screaming fast Windows desktops being announced in recent weeks.Introduced in 2013, the Mac Pro was a top-of-the-line desktop at that time. It looked exquisite in its sleek cylindrical design, and it sported new features like Thunderbolt 2 ports, plus the latest CPUs, GPUs and NVMe storage.More importantly, it was a signal that Apple had not abandoned the professional computing market. The latest Mac Pro was a relief to those clamoring for an upgrade from an older version of the computer, which last received a face-lift in 2010.But the Mac Pro is again falling behind the competition, with powerful new workstations from Lenovo, Dell and HP carrying superior technology. The PC companies are waging an active campaign to tempt Mac Pro users, many of them creative professionals, to move over to Windows PCs with better CPUs, GPUs, and memory. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s focus on Windows 10 upgrades is a mistake

Microsoft made a mistake at its recent developers conference when it didn't use the opportunity to push customers to buy new hardware, an analyst said today."On behalf of the Windows 10 team, we're happy to welcome all of these customers to Windows 10, whether they have a new PC, a five-year-old PC, or a Mac [emphasis added]," said Terry Myerson, the executive who leads the company's devices and operating systems group, after touting a new number of active Windows 10 users.Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, picked up on Myerson's "five-year-old PC," and didn't like what she heard.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10 "While Microsoft stated it is fine with some of those users having five-year-old PCs, a clear response to Phil Schiller's recent comment on the topic during Apple's last launch event, we strongly believe Microsoft should actually be concerned about the issue," Milanesi wrote in an analysis published on Creative Strategies' website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hyperlinking to unlawfully published copyright images is still legal, says top European judge

Publishing hyperlinks to photos from, say, Playboy magazine is legal -- even if the website linked to doesn't have permission to publish the images, a top European Union judge has said.That's because hyperlinking to a document does not constitute a fresh publication, according to Melchior Wathelet, advocate general of the Court of Justice of the EU, in a legal opinion issued Thursday.But his opinion, on a case brought by the publisher of Playboy magazine, is only advisory, and it still remains for the CJEU to make a final ruling on the matter. The question of whether hyperlinking constitutes publication is important to copyright and libel law. It was last addressed by the CJEU in 2014, when it found that Swedish media aggregation site Retriever did not need a newspaper's permission to link to stories. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Siemens and Airbus to push electric aviation engines

Siemens and Airbus teamed up today to develop electric and hybrid electric/combustion engines for commercial and private aircraft.The companies said they would amass a joint development team of about 200 employees that would jointly develop prototypes for various propulsion systems with power classes ranging from a few 100 kilowatts up to 10 and more megawatts, for short, local trips with aircraft below 100 seats, helicopters or unmanned aircraft up to classic short and medium-range flights.+More on Network World: The most magnificent high-tech flying machines+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Siemens and Airbus to push electric aviation engines

Siemens and Airbus teamed up today to develop electric and hybrid electric/combustion engines for commercial and private aircraft.The companies said they would amass a joint development team of about 200 employees that would jointly develop prototypes for various propulsion systems with power classes ranging from a few 100 kilowatts up to 10 and more megawatts, for short, local trips with aircraft below 100 seats, helicopters or unmanned aircraft up to classic short and medium-range flights.+More on Network World: The most magnificent high-tech flying machines+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The latest Flash zero-day was used to spread Cerber ransomware

The latest zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Systems' Flash player has been used over the last few days to distribute ransomware called Cerber, email security vendor Proofpoint said.Adobe said it would patch the flaw, CVE-2016-1019, on Thursday. The vulnerability affects all versions of Flash Player on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS.Ryan Kalember, senior vice president of cybersecurity at Proofpoint, said his company detected an attack trying to exploit the flaw on Saturday.One of Proofpoint's customers received an email with a document that contained a malicious macro that led victims through a series of redirects that eventually reached an exploit kit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The latest Flash zero-day was used to spread Cerber ransomware

The latest zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Systems' Flash player has been used over the last few days to distribute ransomware called Cerber, email security vendor Proofpoint said.Adobe said it would patch the flaw, CVE-2016-1019, on Thursday. The vulnerability affects all versions of Flash Player on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS.Ryan Kalember, senior vice president of cybersecurity at Proofpoint, said his company detected an attack trying to exploit the flaw on Saturday.One of Proofpoint's customers received an email with a document that contained a malicious macro that led victims through a series of redirects that eventually reached an exploit kit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What is Amazon cloud’s Lambda and why is it a big deal?

In an interview with Matt Wood, Chief product strategist at Amazon Web Services, one thing that stuck out was how big of an emphasis he placed on Lambda.Many people probably don’t know what Lambda is, or why it’s important. But Wood says it could usher in a new era of application development and cloud-based hosting. And perhaps most interestingly, it could be a replacement for one of Amazon’s core cloud services: Virtual machines.+ MORE AWS FROM NETWORK WORLD: Q&A with Amazon Web Service’s strategist on competing with Google and Microsoft and building the next big thing in the cloud +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Consumers actually like ISPs to play favorites on mobile data caps

Most mobile phone customers actually like when providers exempt selected video, music, and other online services from their monthly data caps, despite complaints that the practice violates net neutrality rules.Eighty-four percent of U.S. adults, and 94 percent of so-called millennials, are extremely or somewhat likely to try a new online service if it is exempted from their monthly data cap, according to a new survey commissioned by mobile carrier trade group CTIA.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: How to use public Wi-Fi hotspots safely Eight-five percent of adults, and 94 percent of young adults, were likely to use more data if it was what CTIA calls "free data," according to the survey. Sixty-five percent of adults were likely to sign up with a new mobile carrier that offers data cap exemptions, the survey said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slow growth ahead for IT spending, Gartner says

The days of go-go, double-digit growth for tech are long gone and do not appear to be on the way back anytime soon. Even though businesses are moving to the cloud and adopting new technology to stay competitive, global IT spending will be more or less flat this year and growth will remain sluggish through 2020, according to Gartner.The market research firm is forecasting worldwide IT spending to total US$3.49 trillion this year, a 0.5 percent decline from 2015. That's down from a forecast of 0.5 percent growth the company made last quarter. The change in the forecast is mainly the result of the dollar's growing strength against other currencies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon Web Service exec on competing with Google and Microsoft

It’s been a busy past couple of weeks in the IaaS cloud with Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft each holding major user events and announcing significant advancements, which continues to put pressure on the company many consider to be the market leader: Amazon Web Services.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Google and Microsoft make their pitch to unseat amazon in the cloud | Jeff Bezos letter to shareholders: At 10 years old, AWS is bigger than Amazon was and growing faster +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hyperconverged infrastructure requires policy-based security

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one of the key building blocks of next-generation data centers. Originally, HCI was deployed primarily by small and medium-sized businesses that wanted a faster, easier way to deploy data center technology such as servers, storage and networks. Over the past few years, HCI adoption has skyrocketed and is now being deployed by large enterprises looking to shift to a software-defined model.Initially, HCI was driven by start-ups, most notably SimpliVity and Nutanix. But recently Cisco, VCE and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have jumped into the market, and Juniper and Lenovo have formed a partnership that will likely lead to a combined HCI solution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hyperconverged infrastructure requires policy-based security

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one of the key building blocks of next-generation data centers. Originally, HCI was deployed primarily by small and medium-sized businesses that wanted a faster, easier way to deploy data center technology such as servers, storage and networks. Over the past few years, HCI adoption has skyrocketed and is now being deployed by large enterprises looking to shift to a software-defined model.Initially, HCI was driven by start-ups, most notably SimpliVity and Nutanix. But recently Cisco, VCE and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have jumped into the market, and Juniper and Lenovo have formed a partnership that will likely lead to a combined HCI solution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hyperconverged infrastructure requires policy-based security

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one of the key building blocks of next-generation data centers. Originally, HCI was deployed primarily by small and medium-sized businesses that wanted a faster, easier way to deploy data center technology such as servers, storage and networks. Over the past few years, HCI adoption has skyrocketed and is now being deployed by large enterprises looking to shift to a software-defined model.Initially, HCI was driven by start-ups, most notably SimpliVity and Nutanix. But recently Cisco, VCE and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have jumped into the market, and Juniper and Lenovo have formed a partnership that will likely lead to a combined HCI solution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here