PC sales may be worse than expected this year

PC shipments are forecast to drop by 4.9 percent this year, more than the 3.3 percent fall earlier predicted, IDC said Thursday.Earlier in the day, Intel, the key chipmaker for the PC business, said its first quarter revenue would be around US$12.8 billion, down from the about $13.7 billion it had earlier expected, citing weaker than anticipated demand for business desktop PCs and lower than expected inventory levels in the PC supply chain.About 293 million PCs are expected to be shipped this year, according to IDC. The PC market dropped in value by 0.8 percent to $201 billion in 2014, and is expected to drop by another 6.9 percent in 2015, IDC said. Smaller declines in subsequent years are expected to take the total market to $175 billion by 2019.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ONOS Overview and Hands-on

Google error leaks website owners’ personal information

A Google software problem inadvertently exposed the names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers used to register websites after people had chosen to keep the information private.The privacy breach involves whois, a database that contains contact information for people who’ve bought domain names. For privacy reasons, people can elect to make information private, often by paying an extra fee.Craig Williams, senior technical leader for Cisco’s Talos research group who discovered the issue, said the data will make it easier for cybercriminals to draft phishing emails that try to trick victims into divulging information or clicking on malicious links.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google error leaks website owners’ personal information

A Google software problem inadvertently exposed the names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers used to register websites after people had chosen to keep the information private.The privacy breach involves whois, a database that contains contact information for people who’ve bought domain names. For privacy reasons, people can elect to make information private, often by paying an extra fee.Craig Williams, senior technical leader for Cisco’s Talos research group who discovered the issue, said the data will make it easier for cybercriminals to draft phishing emails that try to trick victims into divulging information or clicking on malicious links.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google error leaks website owners’ personal information

A Google software problem inadvertently exposed the names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers used to register websites after people had chosen to keep the information private.The privacy breach involves whois, a database that contains contact information for people who’ve bought domain names. For privacy reasons, people can elect to make information private, often by paying an extra fee.Craig Williams, senior technical leader for Cisco’s Talos research group who discovered the issue, said the data will make it easier for cybercriminals to draft phishing emails that try to trick victims into divulging information or clicking on malicious links.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google error leaks website owners’ personal information

A Google software problem inadvertently exposed the names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers used to register websites after people had chosen to keep the information private.The privacy breach involves whois, a database that contains contact information for people who’ve bought domain names. For privacy reasons, people can elect to make information private, often by paying an extra fee.Craig Williams, senior technical leader for Cisco’s Talos research group who discovered the issue, said the data will make it easier for cybercriminals to draft phishing emails that try to trick victims into divulging information or clicking on malicious links.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GitHub won because it’s social-media

Senate panel secretly approves cyberthreat sharing bill

A U.S. Senate committee has voted in secret to approve a controversial bill that seeks to encourage businesses to share information about cyberthreats with each other and with government agencies.The Senate Intelligence Committee, meeting behind closed doors, voted 14-1 late Thursday to approve the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act [CISA], even though Senator Ron Wyden, who cast the lone vote against the legislation, said it doesn’t adequately protect privacy.“If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections, then that’s not a cybersecurity bill—it’s a surveillance bill by another name,” Wyden said in a statement. The bill would have a “limited impact” on U.S. cybersecurity, he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google services disrupted by routing error

Google’s services were disrupted briefly on Thursday after a broadband provider in India made a network routing error.The provider, Hathway, made a technical change that caused traffic to more than 300 network prefixes belonging to Google to be directed to its own network, wrote Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn, which studies global traffic patterns.This type of error is seen daily across the internet. It involves BGP (border gateway protocol), which is used by networking equipment to direct traffic between different providers. Changes in the network are “announced” by providers using BGP, and propagate across the internet to other providers over time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google services disrupted by routing error

Google’s services were disrupted briefly on Thursday after a broadband provider in India made a network routing error.The provider, Hathway, made a technical change that caused traffic to more than 300 network prefixes belonging to Google to be directed to its own network, wrote Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn, which studies global traffic patterns.This type of error is seen daily across the internet. It involves BGP (border gateway protocol), which is used by networking equipment to direct traffic between different providers. Changes in the network are “announced” by providers using BGP, and propagate across the internet to other providers over time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Networking Field Day – Afterwards – Brocade SDN

Role Based Access Control in IOS

I don't believe this is well known: Cisco IOS has Role Based Access Control (RBAC) which can be used to create and assign different levels of privileged access to the device. Without RBAC there are two access levels in IOS: a read-only mode with limited access to commands and no ability to modify the running config (also called privilege level 1) and enable mode with full administrative access. There is no middle ground; it's all or nothing. RBAC allows creation of access levels somewhere between nothing and everything. A common use case is creating a role for the first line NOC analyst which might allow them to view the running config, configure interfaces, and configure named access-lists.

GNS3 Bridge to ESXi Environment using GNS3.

IDG Contributor Network: Optical fiber soon to see performance gains

We're seeing a surge in successful experiments with alternative, atom-thin materials that are going to speed up and reduce the size of computer chips. Black phosphorus is the latest super-material that promises efficiency in electronics. This one promises speed gains too.Adding the substance, commonly found in match heads and tracer bullets, to optical circuits made out of silicon increases data speeds, according to a University of Minnesota research team, and reported by Dexter Johnson in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' IEEE Spectrum publication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Optical fiber soon to see performance gains

We're seeing a surge in successful experiments with alternative, atom-thin materials that are going to speed up and reduce the size of computer chips. Black phosphorus is the latest super-material that promises efficiency in electronics. This one promises speed gains too.Adding the substance, commonly found in match heads and tracer bullets, to optical circuits made out of silicon increases data speeds, according to a University of Minnesota research team, and reported by Dexter Johnson in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' IEEE Spectrum publication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First look: VMware vSphere 6 keeps its edge

In the not so distant past, VMware held a long and commanding lead in the server virtualization space, offering core features that were simply unmatched by the competition. In the past few years, however, competition in virtualization has been fierce, the competitors have drawn near, and VMware has been left with fewer ways to distinguish itself.The competition may have grown over the years, and VMware may not enjoy quite as large a lead as it once did -- but it still enjoys a lead. With useful improvements to a number of key features, as well as the bundling of functions such as backup and recovery that were previously available separately, vSphere 6 is a worthy addition to the vSphere line. That said, some of the major advances in this version, such as long-distance vMotion, will matter most to larger vSphere shops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm’s Raspberry Pi-like computer has wireless capabilities

Raspberry Pi has inspired many board computers, and Qualcomm is now offering one of its own with a range of features never before seen in the low-price end of the market.The DragonBoard 410c is an uncased computer a little larger than a credit card, with all the important components on one board. With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, location tracking and 64-bit Snapdragon chips, it offers many capabilities not yet available in other low-cost boards.Qualcomm is best-known for its smartphone and tablet chips, but the board could be used to make robots, drones and wearables. The chip maker’s high-end developer boards have been used to develop self-learning robots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm’s Raspberry Pi-like computer has wireless capabilities

Raspberry Pi has inspired many board computers, and Qualcomm is now offering one of its own with a range of features never before seen in the low-price end of the market.The DragonBoard 410c is an uncased computer a little larger than a credit card, with all the important components on one board. With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, location tracking and 64-bit Snapdragon chips, it offers many capabilities not yet available in other low-cost boards.Qualcomm is best-known for its smartphone and tablet chips, but the board could be used to make robots, drones and wearables. The chip maker’s high-end developer boards have been used to develop self-learning robots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Analysis: Marriot Court Case Highlights the Problems of WiFi Services

Customers who pay for WiFi expect it to work. Marriott wanted to make that guarantee. But wireless spectrum is shared, uncontrolled, unregulated and unpredictable. You can't give a viable guarantee. Then you add lawyers ......

The post Analysis: Marriot Court Case Highlights the Problems of WiFi Services appeared first on EtherealMind.

New ransomware program targets gamers

A new malware program attempts to extort money from gamers by encrypting game saves and other user-generated files for popular computer games.The new threat, which claims to be a variant of the notorious CryptoLocker ransomware, targets 185 file types, over 50 of which are associated with computer games and related software.This is the first ransomware program to specifically target games, according to researchers from security firm Bromium, which recently found it. It was distributed via a drive-by download attack from a compromised website that directed users to the Angler exploit kit.The malicious program encrypts game saves, maps, profiles, replays, mods—in other words, custom content that users would not be able to recover by simply reinstalling the game.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here