The LG G4 smartphone wins on flexibility, loses on design

LG Electronics’ G4 is a high-end smartphone with a removable battery and a microSD card slot, but its design falls short when compared with other expensive devices.Last year, LG had a hit with the G3, thanks to its high-resolution screen and aggressive pricing, but the company may have trouble replicating that success with the G4, announced on Tuesday.The phone has a 5.5-inch, 1440 by 2560 pixel screen and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, which isn’t as powerful as the Snapdragon 810. LG thinks the Snapdragon 808 offers a better balance between performance and power efficiency. The G4 feels fast enough, so the company might be on to something, and the screen looks impressive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Musing: Generalist to Specialist and Back Again

Recently I’ve been musing on IT Generalists vs Specialists. We used to have more generalist roles, covering all parts of the stack. ITIL then pushed us towards greater specialisation. I believe that we’ve gone back to valuing the Generalist, as the person who can glue components together. Will the pendulum swing again?

Generalists: Soup-to-Nuts

When I started working in IT, our roles were more generalist in nature. We did everything. To set up a new app, we racked the servers and switches, installed the OS, configured the network, installed the DB & application, and made it all work.

We weren’t specialists in any one area, but we knew how everything fitted together. So if something broke, we could probably figure it out. If we had to investigate a problem, we could follow it through all layers of the stack. When we found the problem, we had license to fix it.

ITIL takes over: Specialisation

Sometime around the early-mid 2000s the “ITIL Consultants” moved in. Their talk of structure, processes and SLAs seduced senior management. We couldn’t just have people who Got Shit Done. No, everyone needed to be placed in a box, with formal definitions around what they could & Continue reading

Microsoft Build: Windows 10 starts here

Build 2015 is where the Microsoft truly begins the work of selling Windows 10, starting with developers.“This is a really important Build for Microsoft, probably the most important developer conference it has ever done. The company is on the brink of launching a new wave of operating system technologies that will affect almost everything it delivers over the next few years,” said Al Hilwa, IDC analyst who covers enterprise development, by email.Held this week in San Francisco, with the first keynote kicking off Wednesday morning, Build 2015 also promises to provide developers with more information about how to prepare their applications for the cloud, and may even offer a glimpse into HoloLens, the Windows 10-based virtual reality headset.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Linux vendor Cumulus rolls out management pack

LAS VEGAS -- Linux network operating system developer Cumulus Networks this week at Interop rolled out a management platform that provides a common interface and operational process for data center racks.The Cumulus Rack Management Platform is based on the company’s Cumulus Linux network operating system code base. Out-of-band management switches running Cumulus RMP may be managed by the same Linux toolsets as both servers and data-plane switches running Cumulus Linux, the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ansible 1.9.1 Released

ANSIBLE_1.9.1_Released

Ansible 1.9.1 fixes several bugs, including:

* Fixed a bug related to Kerberos auth when using winrm with a domain account.

* Fixing several bugs in the s3 module.

* Fixed a bug with upstart service detection in the service module.

* Fixed several bugs with the user module when used on OSX.

* Fixed unicode handling in some module situations (assert and shell/command execution).

* Fixed a bug in redhat_subscription when using the activationkey parameter.

* Fixed a traceback in the gce module on EL6 distros when multiple pycrypto installations are available.

* Added support for PostgreSQL 9.4 in rds_param_group

* Several other minor fixes.

As always, this update is available via PyPi and releases.ansible.com now, and packages for distros will be available as soon as possible.

Ansible 1.9.1 Released

ANSIBLE_1.9.1_Released

Ansible 1.9.1 fixes several bugs, including:

* Fixed a bug related to Kerberos auth when using winrm with a domain account.

* Fixing several bugs in the s3 module.

* Fixed a bug with upstart service detection in the service module.

* Fixed several bugs with the user module when used on OSX.

* Fixed unicode handling in some module situations (assert and shell/command execution).

* Fixed a bug in redhat_subscription when using the activationkey parameter.

* Fixed a traceback in the gce module on EL6 distros when multiple pycrypto installations are available.

* Added support for PostgreSQL 9.4 in rds_param_group

* Several other minor fixes.

As always, this update is available via PyPi and releases.ansible.com now, and packages for distros will be available as soon as possible.

Xerox targets paper-laden enterprises with new mobile apps, services

The “paperless office” has long been held up as a goal for businesses large and small, but few have come even close. The average office worker, in fact, still generates roughly two pounds of paper waste every day, according to the U.S. EPA.Aiming to help cut a few more of the ties that bind businesses to paper, Xerox on Tuesday unveiled a raft of new automation services and mobile apps for enterprise users.Xerox’s Workflow Automation Solution for Supply Chain Optimization tool, for example, targets retailers with a new way to digitize, centralize, automate and govern the manual steps involved in the product life cycle. Using the Datawatch Managed Analytics Platform, the new offering can reduce labor and printing costs, Xerox says, as well as simplify inventory and invoice reconciliation and improve fill rates by syncing data and applying automated analytics at the store level.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LG bets on battery life over performance with new G4 smartphone

LG Electronics is giving its latest flagship smartphone, the leather-covered G4, a big removable battery and a power-efficient processor, hoping a long battery life will help it stand out among tough competitors.The G4, teased for weeks, was finally unveiled on Tuesday at events around the world. The company hopes to repeat the success it had last year with the G3 and compete head-on with the Galaxy S6 from Samsung, arguably the best Android-based smartphone. But LG has chosen a slightly different approach on the inside and the outside.Like Samsung, LG used premium materials other than plastic. But instead of using a mixture of aluminium and glass, LG covered the back of the G4 in leather. There are six colors to choose from: black, red, brown, blue, beige and yellow. For leather-averse people, there is a version of the phone with a ceramic back covered in a diamond pattern.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon opens marketplace for business customers

Amazon has opened a marketplace for businesses where they can purchase items ranging from basic office supplies like paper clips to sophisticated products such as lab supplies and tractor parts.Companies that use Amazon Business will receive free two-day shipping on orders costing more than US$49. Only U.S. businesses can shop at the marketplace, but it’s open to both domestic and international sellers.Amazon built the site in response to strong demand from businesses for an online shopping service similar to the company’s core marketplace for consumers, the company said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Yes, Virginia, NFV services can be testable, scalable and predictable

One of the coolest demonstrations at the RSA Conference in San Francisco was of a network functions virtualization (NFV)-based firewall and Deep Content Inspection engine embedded into the software-defined networking (SDN) control plane of a heavily laden network. The firewall/DCI engine filtered content and blocked SQL injection attacks in real time, without slowing down the simulated network. The OpenStack-based testbed was created and run by Spirent, a Southern California firm well known for its network testing platform. The security firm with the firewall and DCI engine was Wedge Networks, a Canadian company that's focused on the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Earthquake rocks Internet in Nepal

dii_nepal

Saturday’s earthquake in Nepal, which claimed the lives of at least 4,000 victims and injured many more, took a toll on the country’s Internet connectivity, which was already one of the least developed in the region.  A recent evaluation of Internet infrastructure in South Asia commissioned by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) classified Nepal’s international connectivity as ‘weak’ and its fixed and mobile infrastructure as ‘limited’.


dii_nepal

While the loss of Internet connectivity pales in comparison to the loss of life, the ability to communicate both domestically and internationally will be crucial in coming days for the coordination of relief efforts already underway.  Innovative services from Facebook and Google to facilitate communicating the status of those affected by the massive earthquake would be largely useless if Nepal had been knocked entirely offline.  In fact, Nepal’s international links generally survived the earthquake, however last mile connectivity is another matter.

As we reported on Saturday, we began seeing severe Internet outages and instabilities immediately following the earthquake at 6:11 UTC.  On the left is a timeline of outages through today and on the right is the volume of DNS queries Continue reading

Why numbering should start at zero?

How does Internet work - We know what is networking

Please note: This has nothing to do with networking in particular! Not if you look from only one perspective. If you look from totally different perspective, with Cisco ACI and all other SDN solutions, you will probably meet with Python programming language (because you will) and then, somewhere in beginning of Python exploration this is the first question that will cross your mind. Of course, if you think like me! Although not directly related to networking, the question bothered me for some time now and the answer is not only really logical when you read it but it is also

Why numbering should start at zero?

The Walls Are On Fire

There’s no denying the fact that firewalls are a necessary part of modern perimeter security. NAT isn’t a security construct. Attackers have the equivalent of megaton nuclear arsenals with access to so many DDoS networks. Security admins have to do everything they can to prevent these problems from happening. But one look at firewall market tells you something is terribly wrong.

Who’s Protecting First?

Take a look at this recent magic polygon from everyone’s favorite analyst firm:

FW Magic Polygon. Thanks to @EtherealMind.

FW Magic Polygon. Thanks to @EtherealMind.

I won’t deny that Checkpoint is on top. That’s mostly due to the fact that they have the biggest install base in enterprises. But I disagree with the rest of this mystical tesseract. How is Palo Alto a leader in the firewall market? I thought their devices were mostly designed around mitigating internal threats? And how is everyone not named Cisco, Palo Alto, or Fortinet regulated to the Niche Players corral?

The issue comes down to purpose. Most firewalls today aren’t packet filters. They aren’t designed to keep the bad guys out of your networks. They are unified threat management systems. That’s a fancy way of saying they have a whole bunch of software built on top Continue reading

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