Three Tips for Technical Blogging

From time to time, I’m asked by new or potential technical bloggers for advice on how to get into writing, or how to overcome some kind of mental reservation that he/she may have.

It’s actually somewhat ironic – I still suffer from many of the same issues that I suffered from back before Keeping It Classless existed.

So, truth be told, I constantly remind myself of the same advice that I give to the bloggers-to-be that ask me for advice. It’s high time that I open the kimono a little bit and hopefully help someone in the process. Here are my top five tips for technical bloggers – whether you’re just getting started, or if you’re already fairly established but maybe hitting some blockage.

Know Why You Do It

Be keenly aware of the motivation(s) that drive your blogging. Write them down. Look at them every day. Keeping these in mind should be your primary source of energy when writing about a technical topic. Unless blogging is your actual job (in which case Continue reading

Lebanese cyberespionage campaign hits defense, telecom, media firms worldwide

For the past two years, a cyberespionage group that likely operates from Lebanon has hacked into hundreds of defense contractors, telecommunications operators, media groups and educational organizations from at least 10 countries.The still-active attack campaign was uncovered and analyzed recently by security researchers from Check Point Software Technologies, who dubbed it Volatile Cedar. The company’s researchers found evidence that the attackers started their operation in late 2012, but have managed to fly under the radar until now by carefully adapting their tools to avoid being detected by antivirus programs.Unlike most cyberespionage groups, the Volatile Cedar attackers do not use spear phishing or drive-by downloads to gain a foothold into their victims’ networks. Instead they target Web servers and use them as initial entry points.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s Surface 3 starts at $499, eligible for free Windows 10 upgrade

Microsoft wants laptop diehards to switch over to its lightweight Surface 3 tablet, which will offer PC-like performance and be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10 later this year.The Surface 3 tablet has a 10.8-inch screen with a 1920 x 1280-pixel resolution, and can double up as a laptop with a keyboard attachment. The tablet provides 10 hours of battery life when playing video.With prices starting at US$499, the tablet is positioned by Microsoft as a nimbler, less expensive version of the faster Surface Pro 3 tablet, which starts at $799. Surface 3 will ship in 26 countries starting in May, and an LTE version of the tablet will be available through carriers later this year, Microsoft said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broken NFC terminals, lack of retail support stifling Apple Pay usage

Apple Pay got off to a hot start after its debut in October, attracting 11% of all credit card-using households and converting 66% of iPhone 6 users in its first four months on the market, according to an ongoing study of more than 3,000 credit card users conducted by market research firm Phoenix Marketing International.Although iPhone users appeared eager to try out Apple's new mobile payment plan – the study estimates that more than 88% of those who set up an Apple Pay wallet went on to make a purchase with it either in a retail store or in a mobile app – they have run short on opportunities to use them in the time since."The demand is there: 59% of Apple Pay users have gone into a store and asked to make a purchase with Apple Pay," Greg Weed, Phoenix Marketing International director of research, said in a statement. "But so is the disappointment: 47% visited a store that was listed as an Apple Pay merchant only to find out that the specific store they visited did not accept (or were not ready to accept) Apple Pay."To read this article in full or to leave Continue reading

Arista decouples switch, software pricing

Arista Networks this week decoupled the pricing of its software and switch hardware as a consumption option for cloud providers.Arista is offering its EOS operating system as a separate subscription-based license from its switch hardware. The hardware is priced under a separate bundle but its purchase requires an EOS subscription.Essentially what Arista has done is priced its hardware and software separately and offered EOS as a subscription-based license vs. a perpetual license. It’s a new consumption model for Arista kit that the vendor says is more aligned with the way cloud providers purchase and operate the products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VRF-Lite+GRE/dot1q or MPLS L3 VPN

I am going to create a new category on the blog which we will discuss together the different technologies,protocols, designs and architecture. You can suggest a discussion topics and you all please welcome to join the discussions in the comment box of each topic. I want to throw a first topic for the discussions !… Read More »

The post VRF-Lite+GRE/dot1q or MPLS L3 VPN appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

Indiana law is fast having ‘definite negative impact’ on tech

Organizers of the upcoming Indy Big Data Conference are feeling the impact of the tech industry's anger over Indiana's new "religious freedom" law and want state lawmakers to correct the law -- quickly.The Indy Big Data conference, set for May 7 and designed to focus on "mining big data for big profits," has been losing sponsors in flurry of activity."Over the past 48 hours we have had seven national sponsors back out of the Indy Big Data Conference 2015 as a direct result of the Religious Freedom Act," said Christine Van Marter, the CEO of Conference Ventures, in an email statement. "This law is having an immediate and definite negative impact on technology in the state of Indiana."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, March 31

Silk Road investigators charged with stealing bitcoinVirtual evidence is no less tempting to a corrupt agent than cash or drugs found in a raid: Two former US federal agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin in the course of investigating the Silk Road marketplace. A former DEA special agent, who worked undercover to cultivate a relationship with recently convicted Ross Ulbricht, allegedly used online personas to engage in complex bitcoin transactions to steal both from the government and the targets of the investigation. And a former Secret Service agent who served as a computer forensics expert allegedly took more than $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigation—and put it in his account at now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt Gox.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LG may introduce leather-covered flagship smartphone at April 28 event

LG Electronics is expected to introduce its next high-end smartphone on April 28, and has hinted that the back of the device will be covered in leather.In the light of the growing focus on looks at the recent Mobile World Congress, it wouldn’t be surprising if LG uses better materials for the successor to the G3, which is expected to be called the G4. The invite for April 28 that the company sent out on Tuesday just said “save the date” and “see the Great”, but the text is written over a leather back with stitching on one side.LG wouldn’t be the first to offer leather or faux leather as an alternative. Real leather is an option on Motorola Mobility’s Moto Maker customization service, and Samsung Electronics uses faux leather on the back of the Galaxy Note 4.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s iPhone trade-in program in China could boost sales

Apple has quietly launched a trade-in program to let Chinese customers exchange their old iPhones and iPads for the latest devices, which could help promote adoption of its upcoming Apple Pay and Apple Watch.The trade-in program has already been available in the U.S., but Apple on Tuesday brought the service to China, mentioning it in an update to its website.Chinese customers will be able to exchange iPhones as old as the iPhone 4 to receive store credit that can be used towards the purchase of a new unit, according to an Apple store worker in Beijing.The company, however, will only accept units that were officially sold in China, and not in other countries. Customers can bring the old devices to a local Apple store, where the product serial numbers and overall quality will be checked.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google cloud platform can now be managed from a phone

Google is testing a version for Android smartphones and tablets of a console that will help its customers monitor services in the cloud while on the move.Following the beta launch of the Cloud Console for Android, Google said a version for Apple’s iOS operating system is expected to launch later this year.Using the app, users can set up alerts, manage Google cloud platform resources and access health graphs to gain insights into the performance and availability of their cloud-powered applications on Google’s Cloud Monitoring feature, wrote Michael Thomsen, a product manager at Google, in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Inaugural Customer Symposium Highlighted Fast Move to SDN/NFV

Inaugural Customer Symposium Highlighted Fast Move to SDN/NFV

by Andy McFarland, VP of Customer Care - March 31, 2015

Our inaugural symposium featured registrants from 5 continents.

In Paris a few weeks ago, Packet Design hosted our first ever Customer Symposium to discuss industry trends and share our latest product developments. Partners and customers joined us from four hemispheres and five continents (with a handful who travelled over 10,000 km). In addition to a showcase of our SDN product (due out later this year) and a sneak preview of our 15.1 release (stay tuned for more on this), the highlight was a presentation by Heavy Reading industry analyst Caroline Chappell. Here’s a quick summary of her talk.

Chappell discussed SDN and NFV adoption trends and shared deployment strategies being used by leading communication service providers. She also outlined the new architectures and management systems needed to successfully operate SDN and NFV-based networks.

One quote that stood out was her contention that, in her more than 25 years of industry experience, “I have never seen the telco industry transition so quickly." She said the timeline for widespread SDN adoption has been pared down from 10 to five years. Continue reading

IBM to pump $3 billion into new IoT business unit

Hungry for a bigger piece of the Internet of things market, IBM will invest US$3 billion over four years to establish a new business unit dedicated to providing IoT systems and services to enterprises.“We’re only at the very beginning of an amazing revolution. If we thought we were dealing with big data now, we haven’t seen anything yet,” said Erick Brethenoux, IBM director of analytics.IBM General Manager Chris O’Connor will oversee the new unit, which will initially court enterprises in travel, logistics, insurance, public utilities, transportation and retail, Brethenoux said.IBM will also tailor a new cloud service, the IBM IoT Cloud Open Platform, providing a way for enterprises to build their own data-driven systems, Brethenoux said. Over time, it will also develop specialized packages for specific fields like the insurance industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EFF questions US government’s software flaw disclosure policy

It’s not clear if the U.S. government is living up to its promise to disclose serious software flaws to technology companies, a policy it put in place five years ago, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.The digital watchdog said on Monday it received a handful of heavily redacted documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which it sued last July after it and the National Security Agency moved too slowly on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.Last year, the EFF sought documents related to the U.S. government’s efforts to beef up its Vulnerability Equities Process (VEP), a framework for notifying companies about zero-day vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to update Docker on CentOS 7

I recently noticed that the Kubernetes guys are moving their container images from the Docker hub registry to their own repository…

image
A quick look tells me that Google now has it’s own image repository (gcr.io) so it seems to make sense that the Kubernetes team would be using that rather than the Docker hub registry.  That being said, I though all I’d have to do was update my YAML files to point to the new location.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.  After pushing the controller definitions to the Kubernetes cluster it became apparent that the containers were stuck in a pending state.  When I logged into one of the hosts and check the Docker logs I saw the issue…

image 
After some digging, I found this…

image

Since the container image name had a ‘-‘ in it, Docker didn’t know what to do with it.  So the fix is to update Docker to the latest stable code which happens to be version 1.5.  In my case, the repositories I was using with YUM didn’t have 1.5 so we need to pull the latest binaries from Docker and use those.  To update, Continue reading

Three Tips for Technical Blogging

From time to time, I’m asked by new or potential technical bloggers for advice on how to get into writing, or how to overcome some kind of mental reservation that he/she may have. It’s actually somewhat ironic - I still suffer from many of the same issues that I suffered from back before Keeping It Classless existed. I have been having some serious "Newbie Blogger" issues last few weeks. Ironically, I feel compelled to write about them.
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