Dismal PC business contraction continues; no bounce yet from Windows 10

As expected, Windows 10 provided little if any bounce to PC shipments in the just-concluded September quarter, researchers at IDC and Gartner said yesterday. "Not in terms of driving volume, no," said Loren Loverde of IDC in a Friday interview when asked about Windows 10's impact. "The main inhibiting concern has been the continuing free upgrade." Rival research firm Gartner concurred. "The focus of the Windows launch in the quarter was to upgrade to Windows 10 on existing PCs, rather than ship on new PCs," the company said in a statement. Both IDC and Gartner pegged third-quarter PC shipments as down from the same period in 2014, although they differed slightly on the extent of the contraction. IDC said that shipments declined 11% year-over-year, while Gartner said it was closer to 8%. IDC put shipments at 71 million, Gartner, at 74 million. Part of the difference is how each defines the category: IDC does not include tablets with detachable keyboards, such as Microsoft's Surface Pro, while Gartner does.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dow Jones & Co. discloses breach, incident likely related to Scottrade

On Friday, in a letter to customers, the CEO of Dow Jones & Co. disclosed a data breach affecting 3,500 people. Based on public details, the incident seems similar to a breach reported by Scottrade last week that impacted 4.6 million investors. In his letter, Dow Jones Chief Executive William Lewis said that law enforcement officials informed the company about the potential breach in late July. After bringing in outside help, an investigation turned up a confirmation that the systems housing the customer data was accessed – but there is no proof that data was exfiltrated. The investigators also determined that the attackers had access to the system between August 2012 and July 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No Bull. Just Swag.

We're over-the-moon excited to announce the Ansible online store is live. In response to all of the love you've shown us, we had to step up our swag game. The Ansible Store carries a variety of our best items, and we can't wait to see you showing off your Ansible pride. 

Ansible_Store_Homepage

You can find your all-time favorites, like t-shirts, mugs and stickers. Plus, we've added a few exciting new items, like Ansible + Patagonia backpacks and onesies for our youngest fans.

For now we're only shipping throughout the United States while we get up and running. For our international friends, we'll expand shipment in the future. Stay tuned. 

Don't be surprised when you don't see our lovable Ansi-bull on the site. You'll need to attend a meetup or spot us at an event for one of those. 

So what are you waiting for? Start shopping and join the A team. 

Fabric View

The Fabric View application has been released on Github, https://github.com/sflow-rt/fabric-view. Fabric View provides real-time visibility into the performance of leaf and spine ECMP fabrics.
A leaf and spine fabric is challenging to monitor. The fabric spreads traffic across all the switches and links in order to maximize bandwidth. Unlike traditional hierarchical network designs, where a small number of links can be monitored to provide visibility, a leaf and spine network has no special links or switches where running CLI commands or attaching a probe would provide visibility. Even if it were possible to attach probes, the effective bandwidth of a leaf and spine network can be as high as a Petabit/second, well beyond the capabilities of current generation monitoring tools.

Fabric View solves the visibility challenge by using the industry standard sFlow instrumentation built into most data center switches. Fabric View represents the fabric as if it were a single large chassis switch, treating each leaf switch as a line card and the spine switches as the backplane. The result is an intuitive tool that is easily understood by anyone familiar with traditional networks.

Fabric View provides real-time, second-by-second visibility to traffic, identifying top talkers, protocols, tenants, tunneled traffic, Continue reading

Juniper Networks looking to go private?

Juniper Networks has reportedly hired investment banker Goldman Sachs to explore taking the company private.The development has the blessing of activist investor Elliott Management, according to the website Benzinga. Elliott owns 4.5% of Juniper and has encouraged the company to look for ways boost shareholder value through restructurings and product portfolio rationalization.Juniper did reorganize last year at the urging of Elliott after multiple quarters of lackluster performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can $1M in damages be accurate in a website defacement?

Corporate security pros should note that journalist Matthew Keys was convicted this week of changing a headline on the LA Times Web site, a case that may help define what can be included when a toting up damages caused by hackers. The bill cited in court came to $929,977 for the cost of changing back the altered headline, which stayed live for less than an hour, but also the cost of assessing what other damage was done and fixing it, which took months. You can read details about the case here and here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Basics: Explaining the Difference Between Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)

The next generation of networking is more complex and multi-functional compared to the networks of today. Networks are moving from “connectivity as a service” to “multi- service platform. Takeaways SDN & NFV are complementary technologies NFV depends on SDN to deliver network features that enable it. Both use controller concepts for Operations and Administration (OAM). […]

The post Basics: Explaining the Difference Between Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) appeared first on EtherealMind.

PlexxiPulse—Forrester Tech Mixer

Next Tuesday, we’re heading down to Cambridge, MA to participate in the second annual Tech Mixer hosted by Forrester. The goal of the event is to bring together emerging technology companies in an informal, relaxed setting to make connections and have conversations about current trends in the industry. We’ll be attending alongside some innovative companies and are looking forward to learning more about their platforms and predictions for the future at the event. If you’re in the Boston area, we hope to see you there. Details are listed below!

Date: October 13, 2015
Time: 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Forrester Research HQ
60 Acorn Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Forbes: Inside The Crystal Ball:  Five Data Center Trends For 2020 And Beyond
By Michael Levy
Standing at more than one million square feet, the United States Intelligence Community’s Utah Data Center is one of the world’s largest infrastructures. Costing nearly $2 billion, the site boasts storage capacity of almost 12 exabytes. That’s impressive considering the first electronic programmable computer was turned on at the University of Pennsylvania less than 75 years ago. Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For October 9th, 2015

Hey, it's HighScalability time:


Best selfie ever? All vacation photos taken by Apollo astronauts are now online. Fakes, obvi.

If you like Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability then please consider supporting me on Patreon.
  • millions: # of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet; 8%: total of wealth in tax havens; $7.3B: AWS revenues; 11X: YouTube bigger than Facebook; 10: days 6s would last on diesel; 65: years ago the transistor was patented; 80X: reduction in # of new drugs approved per billion US dollars spent since 1950; 37 trillion: cells in the human body; 83%: accuracy of predicting activities from pictures.

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • @Nick_Craver: Stack Overflow HTTP, last 30 days: Bytes 128,095,601,184,645 Hits 5,795,253,218 Pages 1,921,499,030 SQL 19,229,946,858 Redis 11,752,754,019
    • @merv: #reinvent Amazon process for creating new offerings: once decision is made "write the press release and the FAQ you’ll use - then build it."
    • @PaulMiller: @monkchips to @ajassy, “One of your biggest competitors is stupidity.” Quite. Or inertia. #reInvent
    • @DanHarper7: If SpaceX can publish their pricing for going to space, your little SaaS does NOT need "Contact us for pricing" 
    • Continue reading

Old-school sexting, as in circa 1969

Sexting among today’s teenagers was the subject of an email string this morning that eventually took a turn down memory lane, courtesy of a long-time friend who wouldn’t make up stuff like this: “Which reminds me of a story from 9th grade (1969 or ‘70). I was outside the high school with a couple of friends one morning before homeroom when we noticed some kind of small piece of paper falling from a second-story window. We went over and picked it up, and it wasn’t a piece of paper after all! Rather, it was a still-developing Polaroid of a kid’s (penis) with the handwritten caption, ‘(Not-to-be-named-here kid’s penis.)’  Technology really has come a long way.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wi-Fi Alliance reaches for peace over unlicensed LTE

A Wi-Fi Alliance workshop next month could start to lay the groundwork for peace between Wi-Fi and LTE promoters who have been arguing over potential interference.If LTE and Wi-Fi can operate peacefully in unlicensed spectrum, mobile users should be able to get a better experience in in crowded areas whether they are using their carrier's service or a Wi-Fi hotspot.The group will bring together representatives of both sides and lay out proposed guidelines for coexistence between Wi-Fi and LTE on unlicensed frequencies. The workshop, on Nov. 4 in Palo Alto, California, will be the first of several such meetings, the Alliance says.The goal is to have every unlicensed LTE product tested on its ability to coexist with Wi-Fi. Those tests might be administered by the Wi-Fi Alliance or by another body, said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of the Alliance. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘Steve Jobs’ review: Unconventional, entertaining, but incomplete

If you know enough about Steve Jobs, watching the new biopic Steve Jobs without bias is almost impossible. You can’t help think about Apple event keynotes, anecdotes from books about the late Apple CEO, the devices you use or have used that were guided by his vision.But try to leave all of that aside and appreciate Steve Jobs for what it is: entertainment. That’s where the movie succeeds, even as facts are fudged.Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (of The Social Network fame) constructed Steve Jobs around three major product launches: the Macintosh in 1984, the 1988 introduction of NeXT’s computer, and Jobs’s triumphant return to Apple with the iMac in 1998. Those three acts take place over 15 years of personal and professional strife in Jobs’s life, and that limited timeline by nature omits the growth he experienced both as a leader and as a person. This is a movie about Steve Jobs that doesn’t include the launch of the iPhone, what some might consider his greatest achievement, or even a mention of his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, and their three children together.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP, SanDisk partner to bring storage-class memory to market

Hewlett-Packard and SanDisk today announced an agreement to jointly develop "Storage Class Memory" (SCM) that could replace DRAM and would be 1,000 times faster than NAND flash.The two companies will market their SCM products for use in enterprise cloud infrastructures based on HP's memristor (a revolutionary form of resistor), which it has been developing for at least five years, and SanDisk's ReRAM memory technology.The resulting non-volatile memory technology is expected to be up to 1,000 times faster while offering up to 1,000 times more endurance than flash storage, the companies said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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