Grim PC business shows no sign of recovery

PC shipments plummeted in the first quarter, dropping 11.5% compared to the year before, researcher IDC said Monday.The impressively dismal decline was a poor opening for a year that IDC once believed would see the bottom of the PC industry's years-old trough. But just a month ago, IDC revised its forecast, saying that shipments in 2016 would fall by 5.4% from 2015.Rival market research vendor Gartner, which also issued its Q1 shipment numbers this week, pegged the drop-off at 9.6%, with the difference largely attributed to how each company tallies shipments. Gartner, unlike IDC, counts tablets with detachable keyboards, like Microsoft's Surface Pro, as personal computers, and so usually comes up with larger shipment figures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New for Virtual DNS Customers: Self-Service Dashboard and APIs, and Two New Features

Today we're launching two new features and a brand new dashboard and API for Virtual DNS. Virtual DNS is CloudFlare’s DNS proxy that sits in front of some of the largest hosting providers in the world, shielding their DNS infrastructure from attacks and providing them with the DNS performance benefits of CloudFlare's network and caching.

It's been a year since we launched Virtual DNS, and the service has expanded a lot since then. Virtual DNS now answers 7 billion DNS queries a day, 4.6 billion of which are served from our cache, saving our Virtual DNS customers a collective 65% of their bandwidth. Beyond the bandwidth savings, Virtual DNS also protected its customers from a large vulnerability in BIND when it was discovered in August.

Virtual DNS is different from CloudFlare’s core authoritative DNS service, which comes included in CloudFlare’s standard plans. In authoritative DNS, CloudFlare hosts DNS records for a zone on its own infrastructure. In Virtual DNS, the customer hosts all of the DNS records for all of their zones, and CloudFlare serves as a front end proxy to them.

A brand new dashboard and API

The new Virtual DNS dashboard makes it fast and easy Continue reading

Zuckerberg wants the Facebook Messenger platform to replace iOS and Android platforms

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook Messenger will become the next platform with the addition of chat-bots and AI linked to Facebook business pages. Did he really mean the next platform will replace Android and iOS mobile platforms? Unquestionably he did. Messenger has now been promoted to the Messenger platform, raising expectations of former PayPal President and Facebook Messaging Vice President David Marcus.Zuckerberg has an uncontestable vision: consumers would rather interact with businesses via a text chat that resembles one with a friend instead of telephoning a call center or using another frustrating form of B2C communications. In this scenario, customer service is delivered via the Messenger platform that can be programmed with a chat-bot to respond to customer chat messages. A B2C merchant will be able build Messenger plug-ins for customer service and sales assistance. The bot could learn on its own to be more helpful by adding a separate AI and machine-learning module. It’s still a vision; the chat-bot and AI beta was released yesterday for innovators to start testing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Come Out to vForum Montreal on April 21!

Hey IT pros! Do you want to know how to simplify your IT with VMware solutions? Then join us at vForum Montreal on April 21st to discover the latest tips and tricks so that you can transform your IT! Whether you’re just starting out or you already have an advanced deployment plan, we’ll help you navigate your IT journey across cloud, virtualization and mobility. Make sure to free up your schedule for this one-day event – it’s free!

In the morning, you’ll hear some of IT’s biggest names dole out actionable advice on how to deliver an effective cloud strategy. Listen to VMware CTO of the Americas, Chris Wolf, discuss four key priorities that drive today’s IT imperatives. Then stick around for IDC Canada’s very own Program VP, David Senf, who will share his vast experience in forecasting and tracking markets & competitors in the cloud, servers, storage, networking & security, software tools and virtualization. Rounding out our list of keynote speakers is Shawn Rosemarin, VMware Chief of Staff Systems Engineer, who’ll explain how VMware’s Software Defined Enterprise can help mature your organization from a “cost center” into a “valued service provider.”

After lunch, dive deep into your IT Continue reading

Intel starts baking speedy FPGAs into chips

With rivals Nvidia and AMD both offering graphics processors, Intel is now deploying screaming co-processors of its own in the form of FPGAs.FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) are extremely fast chips that can be reprogrammed to do specific tasks. Intel last year acquired Altera for $16.7 billion as it started thinking beyond CPUs and stressing co-processors for demanding computing tasks.Intel recently started shipping server chips paired with FPGAs as part of a pilot program. The company is packing Altera Arria 10 FPGAs along with its Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors, code-named Broadwell-EP, in a multichip module. The Xeon E5 chips were introduced last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

House panel moves to require warrants for stored data

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has advanced a bill to give email and cloud-stored data new privacy protections from law enforcement searches. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted 28-0 to approve an amended version of the Email Privacy Act, which would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other cloud-stored data that's more than six months old. Some privacy advocates and tech companies have been pushing Congress to update a 30-year-old law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for the last six years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

House panel moves to require warrants for stored data

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has advanced a bill to give email and cloud-stored data new privacy protections from law enforcement searches. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted 28-0 to approve an amended version of the Email Privacy Act, which would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other cloud-stored data that's more than six months old. Some privacy advocates and tech companies have been pushing Congress to update a 30-year-old law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for the last six years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 Stack Benchmarking DOs and DON’Ts

An interesting question came up on the mechanical-sympathy list about how to best benchmark a stack of different queue (aeron/argona, jctools, dpdk, pony) and transport (aeron, dpdk, seastar) options.

Who better to answer than Gil Tene, Vice President of Technology and CTO, Co-Founder, of Azul Systems? Here's his usual insightful and helpful response:

If you are looking at the set of "stacks" (all of which are queues/transports), I would strongly encourage you to avoid repeating the mistakes of testing methodologies that focus entirely on max achievable throughput and then report some (usually bogus) latency stats at those max throughout modes.

The tech empower numbers are a classic example of this in play, and while they do provide some basis for comparing a small aspect of behavior (what I call the "how fast can this thing drive off a cliff" comparison, or "peddle to the metal" testing), those results are not very useful for comparing load carrying capacities for anything that actually needs to maintain some form of responsiveness SLA or latency spectrum requirements.

Rules of thumb I'd start with (some simple DOs and DON'Ts):

Fridge that automatically refills your water pitcher is either the best or worst thing ever

I’ve become that dad - you know, the one who goes around the house turning off the lights because his kids haven’t learned how to flip a light switch, or the one who opens the cupboard to discover an empty bag of Oreos (See it on Amazon).So instead of disdain, I want to congratulate and applaud GE for inventing a refrigerator that has an automatic refill water pitcher function. The press release says it best:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SmartThings community in uproar over loss of Rule Machine

There’s a storm brewing on the SmartThings forums as the SmartThings community suffered a big loss when community developer Bruce Ravenel announced his decision to pull Rule Machine.You can set up “routines” and add “actions” such as turning all the lights on, opening garage doors, unlocking doors and setting the thermostat in the SmartThings app. If you wanted those devices to be smarter and interact with other apps, then IFTTT lets people setup If This Then That recipes. But Rule Machine added another level of “smart” to smart devices. As was explained on the HA (Home Automation) Forums, Rule Machine is “like IFTTT but with an extra ‘This.’ If This and This, then do an action.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tokyo hotel apologizes in advance of minute-long Internet disruption

We all live in fear of the Internet going down, whether it be via a government kill switch or a nefarious hacking group. The operators of one swanky hotel in Japan understand the public's unease, and have taken pains to assure patrons that really, the Internet will only be inaccessible from the facility for 1 minute, and at 4AM at that.A friend who is working in Japan this week shared the photo above of a note from the Palace Hotel Tokyo's housekeeping staff, and she commented: "Only in Japan... The detail and thoughtfulness and modesty that pervades everything here is truly admirable."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tokyo hotel apologizes in advance of minute-long Internet disruption

We all live in fear of the Internet going down, whether it be via a government kill switch or a nefarious hacking group. The operators of one swanky hotel in Japan understand the public's unease, and have taken pains to assure patrons that really, the Internet will only be inaccessible from the facility for 1 minute, and at 4AM at that.A friend who is working in Japan this week shared the photo above of a note from the Palace Hotel Tokyo's housekeeping staff, and she commented: "Only in Japan... The detail and thoughtfulness and modesty that pervades everything here is truly admirable."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery Helps Meet Key Recovery Point Objectives at an Affordable Cost

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 10, 2015 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the City of Avondale, Ariz., has implemented VMware’s unified platform for the hybrid cloud. By virtualizing the network with VMware NSX™ and adopting VMware vCloud® Air™ Disaster Recovery, the City is better equipped to protect critical services. More than simple backups, Avondale is better prepared to achieve quick recovery from unforeseen incidents that could impact the delivery of municipal services to citizens and businesses such as traffic management, water and wastewater utilities, and emergency response by police officers and firefighters.

The city of Avondale, an innovative community in the Phoenix Metropolitan area, is committed to making sure that critical health, safety, utility, and financial services are always available for its residents. According to the City of Avondale, its municipal government maintains a budget of $180 million with over 500 employees. The 16-person Information Technology (IT) department supports the community by using technology to engage the community and innovate municipal services to keep the city responsive, efficient, and secure.

The City was looking to improve its ability to recover from unforeseen disasters through cloud-based disaster recovery. Given the Continue reading

U.S. government data security is an embarrassment

The U.S. spends a lot of money—Congressionally encumbered funds, but also unknown/untold amounts of money on its domestic, international and military-based espionage and intelligence activities.You’d think the U.S. was getting a good deal. Yet its citizenry is being robbed blind—and frequently. A mysterious hacking group, APT6, has been noodling around inside our infrastructure for years undetected until recently.This is to say: the greatest “superpower” on planet Earth has let the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), IRS and only heaven knows what infrastructure get cracked open like an egg. Your data, my data, yes, our information assets are in some cache resting in some dark data center somewhere—but not in the original spot where it belonged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Adapting Applications And Avoiding Acrobatic Adjustments

JumpingHoops

A couple of months ago, I was on a panel at TechUnplugged where we talked about scaling systems to large sizes. Here’s a link to the video of that panel:

One of the things that we discussed in that panel was applications. Toward the end of the discussion we got into a bit of a back-and-forth about applications and the systems they run on. I feel like it’s time to develop those ideas a bit more.

The Achilles’ Heel

My comments about legacy applications are pointed. If a company is spending thousands of dollars and multiples hours of time in the engineering team to reconfigure the network or the storage systems to support an old application, my response was simple: go out of business.

It does sound a bit flippant to think that a company making a profit should just close the shutters and walk away. But that’s just the problem that we’re facing in the market today. We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time creating bespoke, custom networks and systems to support applications that were written years, or even decades, ago in alien environments.

We do it every day without thinking. We have to install this specific Java version Continue reading

Microsoft, Samba Badlock flaw not critical, but serious enough

Microsoft and the Samba project fixed a vulnerability in their implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol after the flaw was initially announced three weeks ago under the name Badlock.The vulnerability, covered by Microsoft in its MS16-047 security bulletin published Tuesday, was also fixed in Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11. It could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to impersonate an authenticated user and execute arbitrary network calls to the server, possibly with administrative privileges.Badlock's existence was announced on March 22 by a company called SerNet, which  offers Samba consulting, support and development services. It employs the person who found the flaw: a Samba development team member named Stefan Metzmacher.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft, Samba Badlock flaw not critical, but serious enough

Microsoft and the Samba project fixed a vulnerability in their implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol after the flaw was initially announced three weeks ago under the name Badlock. The vulnerability, covered by Microsoft in its MS16-047 security bulletin published Tuesday, was also fixed in Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11. It could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to impersonate an authenticated user and execute arbitrary network calls to the server, possibly with administrative privileges. Badlock's existence was announced on March 22 by a company called SerNet, which  offers Samba consulting, support and development services. It employs the person who found the flaw: a Samba development team member named Stefan Metzmacher.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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