Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia, Windows 10′s expectation is displayed PC market weakened demand. Many consumers have found it best to wait for the new operating system before upgrading the computer.

Nvidia’s founder-CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, according to PC gaming is on the rise, however, and the summer sales leaves a clear growth. “Windows 10 will help, as well as DirectX 12,” he commented

Analysts are not compatible with Nvidia’s boss along the same lines. Market research firm Moor Insights & Strategy, Patrick Moorhead pointed out that, although Windows 10 will be available in the summer, it will not directly appear in selling new configurations. The new operating system looks through its paces until the Christmas season comes.

Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Uutiset/2015-05-10/Julkaisematon-Windows-10-rokottaa-pc-myynti%C3%A4-3221401.html

Digital evidence storage for legal matters is a common practice. As the use of Solid State Drives (SSD) in consumer and enterprise computers has increased, so too has the number of SSDs in storage increased. When most, if not all, of the drives in storage were mechanical, there was little chance of silent data corruption as long as the environment in the storage enclosure maintained reasonable thresholds. The same is not true for SSDs.

A stored SSD, without power, can start to lose data in as little as a single week on the shelf.

SSDs have a shelf life. They need consistent access to a power source in order for them to not lose data over time. There are a number of factors that influence the non-powered retention period that an SSD has before potential data loss. These factors include amount of use the drive has already experienced, the temperature of the storage environment, and the materials that comprise the memory chips in the drive.

The Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) defines standards for the microelectronics industry, including standards for SSDs. One of those standards is an endurance rating. One of the factors for this rating is that an SSD retains data with power off for the required time for its application class.

In a presentation by Alvin Cox on JEDEC’s website titled “JEDEC SSD Specifications Explained” [PDF warning], graphs on slide 27 show that for every 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) rise in temperature where the SSD is stored, the retention period is approximately halved. For example, if a client application SSD is stored at 25 degrees C (77 degrees F) it should last about 2 years on the shelf under optimal conditions. If that temperature goes up 5 degrees C, the storage standard drops to 1 year.

The easiest way to manage the problem is to image the drive in a timely manner. If long term storage is required, image the SSD onto a mechanical drive and place that drive in storage as well as the SSD.

Now imagine a situation in which an SSD was stored in legal hold where the data was no longer available for imaging

Bottom line – image it now … and use a mechanical disk.

JEDEC SSD Specifications Explained
http://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/Alvin_Cox%20%5BCompatibility%20Mode%5D_0.pdf

The standards body for the microelectronics industry has found that Solid State Drives (SSD) can start to lose their data and become corrupted if they are left without power for as little as a week. … According to a recent presentation (PDF) by Seagate’s Alvin Cox, who is also chairman of the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), the period of time that data will be retained on an SSD is halved for every 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperature in the area where the SSD is stored.

SSDs lose data if left without power for just 7 days
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ssds-lose-data-if-left-without-power-just-7-days-1500402

The standards body for the microelectronics industry has found that Solid State Drives (SSD) can start to lose their data and become corrupted if they are left without power for as little as a week.

While hard drives are mechanical in nature and make sure of rapidly rotating discs coated with magnetic material, flash storage devices are completely electronic, making use of a chip to process the data, so that data can be transferred much faster into smaller devices that are also more durable if dropped.

According to a recent presentation by Seagate’s Alvin Cox, who is also chairman of the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), the period of time that data will be retained on an SSD is halved for every 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperature in the area where the SSD is stored.

Consumer class SSDs can store data for up to two years before the standard drops, but when it comes to SSDs used by enterprises, the drives are only expected to retain data for a period of three months – a fact confirmed by Samsung, Seagate and Intel’s own ratings on their products.

Security firm KoreLogic is concerned that far too many people are now using SSDs in both consumer and enterprise applications, which is clearly not a great idea if the data is important and might be needed for a longer period that three months.

The firm advises that users make sure to regularly back up their data and create drive images, or they will risk losing their data, which can have disastrous consequences, for example if the data was part of evidence gather by a law firm for a deposition.

“If long term storage is required, image the SSD onto a mechanical drive and place that drive in storage as well as the SSD,” KoreLogic writes in a blog post.

Google’s given Microsoft Office an awkward hug by refreshing Drive so it plays nice with desktop applications.

Drive is Google’s share ‘n’ sync offering and integrates tightly with its apps: drop a document into Drive and you can read or edit it in the Docs in-browser word processor. That tool’s not to everyone’s tastes and misses a few features found in desktop word processors.

Google’s explanation for the new effort is that it makes Drive a better place to store things like big graphics files that in-browser apps just aren’t tooled up to handle. Which is a little odd seeing as Google’s also experimenting with cloudy Photoshop on Chromebooks.

The company is also promising that when you save a document stored in Drive, the changes will be saved back to Drive.

Americans think technology has made them more productive at work, but it also has many of them working longer hours, according to a new report.

The 7th Thoresen Chess Engines Competition (TCEC) has ended, and a new victor has been crowned: Komodo.

“Although it is coming on 18 years since Deep Blue beat Kasparov, humans are still barely fending off computers at shogi, while we retain some breathing room at Go. … ”

The New Chess World Champion
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/the-new-chess-world-champion/

Today we salute Komodo for winning the 7th Thoresen Chess Engines Competition (TCEC), which some regard as the de-facto world computer chess championship.

All-flash arrays are SAN orphans, typically operating outside the existing SAN infrastructure and having a hard time of it from the data services angle as a result. Wouldn’t it be much better if they lived inside the existing SAN house rather than being out in the cold, so to speak?

Existing enterprise SAN arrays are robust, reliable and mature products with data services software facilities built up through several software releases to provide data protection and management functions such as;

Backup product/operation integration
Snapshots
Asynchronous and synchronous replication
Cloning
Data reduction ranging from thin provisioning through to deduplication
Provisioning
Resource usage trending
General management

SAN arrays from Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM and NetApp are all in this general category and provide a rounded set of data management services that are relied on by IT departments using their arrays.

When all-flash arrays were first envisaged they were conceived by newer, start-up companies who could not use existing array software; it’s proprietary obviously, and so wrote their own. This had an intrinsic virtue in that it was written to take advantage of NAND flash’s low latency and not slow the flash down through inefficiencies in the controller software layer.
The startup’s marketed this as ground-up designed software, tailored for flash and therefore creating arrays that had faster controller software stacks as well as natively faster media.

The high cost of flash compared to disk media was tackled by adding in deduplication and compression to arrive at an effective cost/GB of storage that was equivalent to or lower than a disk-based SAN.

But there was a cost, an almost hidden cost, in that the data in the all-flash arrays could not be managed in the same way as with the installed SANs. They had their own management interface; their own support arrangements and their own data services which, commoner to existing SANS were limited at first and, as well as being inferior in features to the existing arrays, were different in their detailed operation and management.

Only two existing SAN array vendors offer new all-flash array performance inside their data services stockade; HDS and HP. Why have they been able to do this when Dell, EMC, IBM, NetApp and others cannot?

Some years back, when Microsoft was mired in Windows Vista and open source issues, and web developers were on an accelerating trajectory, a quiet revolution took place.

In the corridors and anterooms of tech conferences, scrunched deep into beanbags and huddled next to power outlets developers were at work, nose down, in PowerBooks. It was one of those changes that one day you suddenly just became aware of.

Apple laptops had replaced Windows laptops as the code jockey’s steed of choice, with the very act of programming itself having become decoupled from the client’s operating system. It was said, and it was written, how Microsoft had lost a generation of developers.

Today, a new revolution is taking place. PC sales, and even laptops, are down, and manufacturers are pulling out of the market. The future is all about the device.

For most, the “PC” will become a thing that fits in your palm – or, in the case of the iPad, your comically oversized jacket pocket.

That’s fine for consuming information. An iPad is a great way to browse the web, check email, stay in touch with friends, and so on. But what does a post-PC world mean for creating things? What does programming in a post-PC world look like?

If you’re writing platform-specific mobile apps in Objective C or Java then no, the iPad alone is not going to cut it. You’ll need some kind of iPad-to-server setup in which your iPad becomes a mythical thin client.

If, however, you’re working with scripting languages such as Python and Ruby or building web-based applications, the iPad is tantalizingly close to being a great development environment.

Right now though, there are a lot of ”ifs” associated with iOS-based, post-PC programming world. Too many, in fact, to make working on your iPad more enjoyable than a laptop. I doubt that I’ll be swapping my laptop for a tablet any time soon.