Senators again push for online sales tax

A group of U.S. senators has revived an effort to require major online retailers to collect sales tax from shoppers.The nine senators on Tuesday reintroduced legislation that would allow states to collect sales taxes—more than 9 percent in a handful of states—from large Internet sellers with no operations in the states collecting the taxes.The Marketplace Fairness Act is similar to legislation that was introduced but failed to pass in the past two sessions of Congress. A version of the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 69-27 in May 2013, but the House of Representatives failed to act on it.Lawmakers have tried for more than a decade to pass an Internet sales tax. Supporters of an online sales tax say local businesses are at a disadvantage because they have to collect sales taxes, while online retailers, in many cases, do not.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Six things to know about the USB 3.1 port in the new MacBook

Apple is challenging laptop users to adapt to fewer ports with the bold design of its new 12-inch MacBook, which has just one USB 3.1 port and a headphone jack. Apple laid out a similar challenge with its first MacBook Air in early 2008, which had just one USB 2.0 port to connect peripherals and a micro-DVI port to connect monitors.But the faster USB 3.1 port is significant because it will also be used to recharge the MacBook, as well as to connect to a wider variety of peripherals such as monitors, external storage drives, printers and cameras. The MacBook is one of just a few devices to carry the new USB port.USB 3.1 can technically transfer data between the host computers and peripherals at maximum speeds of up to 10Gbps (bits per second), which is two times faster than the current USB 3.0. The USB 3.1 port in the new MacBook will initially transfer data at 5Gbps, but expect that number to go up as the technology develops. There’s also excitement around the MacBook’s USB Type-C cable, which is the same on both ends so users can flip cables and not Continue reading

Snowden docs show CIA’s attempts to defeat Apple device security

Researchers sponsored by the U.S. government have reportedly tried to defeat the encryption and security of Apple devices for years.Several presentations given between 2010 and 2012 at a conference sponsored by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency described attempts to decrypt the firmware in Apple mobile devices or to backdoor Mac OS X and iOS applications by poisoning developer tools.Abstracts of the secret presentations were among the documents leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to journalists and were published Tuesday by The Intercept.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Technology Short Take #49

Welcome to Technology Short Take #49 (also known as Distraction-as-a-Service)! I have here for your reading pleasure an eclectic collection of links and articles from around the web, focusing on data center-related technologies. Here’s hoping you find something useful. Bring on the content!

Networking

• I love this post from Matt Oswalt on five next-gen skills for networking pros. I highly recommend you read the entire post, but in short the five skills Matt recommends are software skills (which includes configuration management and software development tools like Git), Linux, deep protocol knowledge, hypervisor and container networking, and IPv6. What’s really interesting to me is the (completely uncoordinated) alignment between Matt’s list of skills for networking pros and the list I provided to virtualization pros in a series of recent VMUG presentations (refer to slide 15, but the list is software development basics, Linux, automation/orchestration, and public cloud services). What does this mean? It tells me that some skills—specifically, Linux, automation/configuration management, software development concepts—are going to be essential for all new IT pros in the near future. If you want to stay relevant, regardless of your current “silo,” it’s time to evolve.
• Carl Niger has a write-up on the introduction Continue reading

Are We The Problem With Wearables?

Something, Something, Apple Watch.

Oh, yeah. There needs to be substance in a wearable blog post. Not just product names.

Wearables are the next big product category that is driving innovation. The advances being made in screen clarity, battery life, and component miniaturization are being felt across the rest of the device market. I doubt Apple would have been able to make the new Macbook logic board as small as it is without a few things learned from trying to cram transistors into a watch case. But, are we the people sending the wrong messages about wearable technology?

The Little Computer That Could

If you look at the biggest driving factor behind technology today, it comes down to size. Technology companies are making things smaller and lighter with every iteration. If the words thinnest and lightest don’t appear in your presentation at least twice then you aren’t on the cutting edge. But is this drive because tech companies want to make things tiny? Or is it more that consumers are driving them that way?

Yes, people the world over are now complaining that technology should have other attributes besides size and weight. A large contingent says that battery life is Continue reading

Response: Open Compute Project (OCP) Formally Accepts Open Network Linux (ONL) | Big Switch Networks, Inc.

This is good news. Big Switch has contributed Open Network Linux to Open Compute Project and been accepted as the standard operating system for whitebox Ethernet. Analysis Customers now have a number of choices for operating system for theirwhitebox switches. I know of the following: Open Network Linux Cumulus Linux PicOS from Pica8 This is base […]

The post Response: Open Compute Project (OCP) Formally Accepts Open Network Linux (ONL) | Big Switch Networks, Inc. appeared first on EtherealMind.

OSPF Design Test

I shared three OSPF questions below,similar to BGP Design Test published earlier. These are design related, please take your time before giving your answer. In return,I want you to share these test on social media so more people can benefit from it. If you have a problem,confusion with the answers which I provided, let’s discuss… Read More »

The post OSPF Design Test appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

Show 227 – OpenStack Neutron Overview with Kyle Mestery

Today's Packet Pushers adventure is piloted by hosts Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro. They are joined by guide Kyle Mestery on a tour of OpenStack Neutron.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks

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The post Show 227 – OpenStack Neutron Overview with Kyle Mestery appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Iain Gray: What I’ll Be Doing At Docker as VP of Customer Success

Apple Watch: Function Over Form Otherwise It’s Just a Fad

So yet another technology company wants to put some jewelry on my wrist.  Good luck.  You know it’s not that I don’t want the Apple Watch to succeed.  It’s just that I’ve been down this path already.

This past weekend I was reading a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle by Thomas Lee, “Why we need Apple to fail.”  While I’m not really buying Mr. Lee’s line of thinking - my ego is not going to be bruised one way or the other should Apple fail or succeed with this product - it did start me thinking.

My father was an employee at Hewlett Packard back in the good old days.  One of the latest and greatest products of those days was the desktop calculator.  It was a time when each successive year found significantly more computational power in much smaller footprints.  Eventually someone said, “Hey, we could make a calculator as small as a watch now.”  So they did.  

I don’t know how many watches HP produced over the lifetime of the product Continue reading

Cup of Joe with Jon and James

Cup of Joe with Jon and James

Two of Ansible’s very own Solutions architects, James Martin and Jonathan Davilla, will be hanging out at various coffee shops in the Washington, DC metro region in the upcoming weeks.   Stop by during your lunch hour and ask them about automation, DevOps culture, Ansible, and the difference between a latte and a machiatto.  Follow them on twitter for last minute updates @grepless and @defionscode.

3/13 , 11am-2pm   -  Swing’s Coffee 1702 G Street NW

3/27, 11am-2pm  - Chinatown Coffee 475 H St. NW

Open Hardware that Just Runs

When you buy a server, you don’t worry whether or not Windows will run on the server.  You know it will. That’s because the server industry has a comprehensive solution to a hard problem: rapid, standard integration between the OS and underlying open hardware.  They’ve made it ubiquitous and totally transparent to you.

This is not the case for embedded systems, where you have to check whether an OS works on a particular hardware platform, and oftentimes you find out that it’s not supported yet. Bare metal switches are a good example of this.

It’s time to change that.  We need the same transparent model on switches that we have on servers.  

To make open networking ubiquitous — and to give customers choice among a wide variety of designs, port configurations and manufacturers — the integration between the networking OS and bare metal networking hardware must be standardized, fast, and easy to validate. We need open hardware.

The Starting Point

Today, a bare-metal networking hardware vendor supplies their hardware spec to the NOS (network OS) provider. The NOS team reads the spec, interprets it and writes drivers/scripts to manage the device components (sensors, LEDs, fans and so forth). Then Continue reading

3 big surprises from the Apple Watch event

Apple fans expected to learn more about the Apple Watch during yesterday's announcement, but to the surprise of the audience, Apple had more to talk about at its Spring Forward event on Monday.Apple bets on its retail stores to sell the Apple WatchApple's 453 retail stores give it an advantage in the smartwatch market. Apple has made its watch stand out with so many options and price points, starting at $349 with different styles, sizes, straps, finishes, and materials – even an 18-karat gold version starting at $10,000. But such a diverse product line doesn't lend itself to ecommerce sales. Given the complexity of choices, Apple's stores will be the consumers' starting point.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top distributed computing projects still hard at work fighting the world’s worst health issues

This past fall saw the worst Ebola outbreak ever ravage western Africa, and while medical researchers are trying to find a drug to treat or prevent the disease, the process is long and complicated. That's because you don't just snap your fingers and produce a drug with a virus like Ebola. What's needed is a massive amount of trial and error to find chemical compounds that can bind with the proteins in the virus and inhibit replication. In labs, it can take years or decades.Thanks to thousands of strangers, Ebola researchers are getting the help and computing power they need to shave off the time needed to find new drugs by a few years.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers Distributed computing is not a new concept, but as it is constituted today, it's an idea born of the Internet. Contributors download a small app that runs in the background and uses spare PC compute cycles to perform a certain process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP creates new server line for cloud computing

As more computing moves to cloud-based data centers, Hewlett-Packard is moving there, too.HP said today that it is creating a server family aimed specifically at building systems for cloud providers.This is being done as part of a joint venture with Foxconn, a partnership announced last year to create cloud-optimized servers. HP has been building servers with the Taipei-based electronics maker over the last year, but is now giving a name to its server line: Cloudline. It has also announced several server products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch: An overpriced, out-of-date status symbol

Yesterday I was subjected to all 95 minutes, 14 seconds of the Apple Watch announcement "keynote" video stream, and I am left with one clear notion:The Apple Watch is the stupidest piece of gadgetry I have seen in a long, long time.(I should note that I am not entirely unbiased here. I am a Linux user and an Open Source advocate. And, perhaps most importantly, I like freedom. Apple and I don't tend to see eye-to-eye on that front. But that doesn't make the Apple Watch any less pointless.)Let's start with the elephant in the room – the price.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tool allows account hijacking on sites that use Facebook Login

A new tool allows hackers to generate URLs that can hijack accounts on sites that use Facebook Login, potentially enabling powerful phishing attacks.The tool, dubbed Reconnect, was released last week by Egor Homakov, a researcher with security firm Sakurity. It takes advantage of a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) issue in Facebook Login, the service that allows users to log in on third-party sites using their Facebook accounts.Homakov disclosed the issue publicly on his personal blog in January 2014, after Facebook declined to fix it because doing so would have broken compatibility with a large number of sites that used the service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AnsibleFest New York City SUPER Early Bird Tickets Now Available

We are excited to announce that the next AnsibleFest will be held in New York City!

We are still working out the details, but we wanted to make some tickets available at a huge discount. AnsibleFest NYC is currently being planned for early June and will be at a great venue in New York City. If you are flexible and can plan ahead as well as make changes to your schedule, these tickets are for you!

The SUPER Early Bird price is just $179 (over 30% off the standard price) and is only available until March 23, 2015.

Purchase Super Early Bird AnsibleFest tickets here

We'll be announcing the exact date and location soon!

The Last Part of Nature to Surrender

Announcing Virtual DNS: DDoS Mitigation and Global Distribution for DNS Traffic

It’s 9am and CloudFlare has already mitigated three billion malicious requests for our customers today. Six out of every one hundred requests we see is malicious, and increasingly, more of that is targeting DNS nameservers.

DNS is the phone book of the Internet and fundamental to the usability of the web, but is also a serious weak link in Internet security. One of the ways CloudFlare is trying to make DNS more secure is by implementing DNSSEC, cryptographic authentication for DNS responses. Another way is Virtual DNS, the authoritative DNS proxy service we are introducing today.

Virtual DNS provides CloudFlare’s DDoS mitigation and global distribution to DNS nameservers. DNS operators need performant, resilient infrastructure, and we are offering ours, the fastest of any providers, to any organization’s DNS servers.

Many organizations have legacy DNS infrastructure that is difficult to change. The hosting industry is a key example of this. A host may have given thousands of clients a set of nameservers but now realize that they don't have the performance or defensibility that their clients need.

Virtual DNS means that the host can get the benefits of a global, modern DNS infrastructure without having to contact every customer Continue reading