Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s SQL Server 2014 early code: First look
Welcome to the Hekaton
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/18/microsoft_sql_server_2014_release_code/
In-memory database engine, improved integration with Windows Azure, and new indexing technology for high performance data warehousing applications – there’s plenty to like in SQL Server 2014, released to manufacturers on Tuesday.
But while Microsoft has been busy and done some heavy lifting, the code that will become generally available on 1 April has some glaringly rough edges.
The database engine is new code which accesses data directly in memory, uses a high level of concurrency, and compiles stored procedures to native code for further optimisation. A copy of the data is streamed to disk for persistence, though you can disable this for maximum performance if you do not care about losing data.
The performance benefit is real.
Microsoft is also making a big deal of new Azure integration. There are several possible scenarios. You can mount database files that are in Azure storage; the latency makes this unsuitable in many cases, though SQL Server will cache the most active data – but it can be useful for archiving.
Another Azure feature is replication to SQL Server databases running on Azure VMs.
New in SQL Server 2014 are clustered columnstore indexes, which are updateable, and are now intended to be standard for data warehousing.
What is notable in SQL Server 2014 overall is that so much of the product seems unchanged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Things We Won’t Miss About Windows XP
http://www.10zig.eu/news/articles/10-xp-features-we-wont-miss
The reign of XP’s model just doesn’t fit modern requirements anymore, with Windows 7 and Windows 8 lending themselves to Thin Client computing, the cloud and VDI far more than the their legacy predecessor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Toshiba Electronics Europe will now tell you that the self-encrypting hard drives MQ01ABUxxxBW series have the U.S. FIPS 140-2 (Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2).
In contrast to the hard drives encrypted by the software, itsensäsalaava (SED, self encrypting drive) to encrypt data in hardware disk at full speed. This also means that the encryption slow down disk activity.
SED encryption can not be deactivated. Wipe technology to ensure that, if the plate is introduced somewhere else, all sensitive data yyhkiytyy definitely out.
Toshiba’s new drives are available in 500 and 320 GB versions.
Source: Elektroniikkalehti
http://www.elektroniikkalehti.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1118:kiintolevyn-salaus-tayttaa-usa-n-hallinnon-vaatimukset&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft sending out Surfaces with wrong processor
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/387760/microsoft-sending-out-surfaces-with-wrong-processor
Microsoft is supplying Surface Pro 2 tablets with older processors, despite having promised customers upgraded components.
“I now feel like I’m in limbo because I don’t feel that I can trust what I am told by anyone from Microsoft,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Minecraft dev halts talks with Oculus following Facebook acquisition
Notch: “I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games.”
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/minecraft-dev-halts-talks-with-oculus-following-facebook-acquisition/
The news of Oculus’ surprise acquisition by Facebook wasn’t even an hour old when Markus “Notch” Persson announced he was halting talks to potentially bring a version of his hit game Minecraft to the Oculus Rift.
“We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus,” Persson tweeted. “I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Project Morpheus impressions: Sony proves it’s serious about virtual reality
New headset is in the same class as Oculus Rift and is even better in some ways.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/project-morpheus-impressions-sony-proves-its-serious-about-virtual-reality/
Sony certainly made all the right noises about the difficulties and potential inherent in virtual reality when it unveiled its Project Morpheus headset earlier this week. Words are cheap, though; the proof of Sony’s chops in the quickly developing world of modern VR hardware would only come with the chance to put the device on and explore a virtual world ourselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Microsoft working on augmented reality headset for Xbox
Anonymous sources lend credence to previous “Project Fortaleza” leaks.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/report-microsoft-working-on-augmented-reality-headset-for-xbox/
In the midst of the deafening buzz for the Oculus Rift, this year’s GDC is loaded with companies hinting at their own virtual reality or augmented reality solutions. Microsoft is not among them, but the company may be working on its own 3D head-mounted display internally, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu and the Unspoken Rules
Ubuntu’s disagreements with the rest of open source are really less about issues than relationships.
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/ubuntu-and-the-unspoken-rules-1.html
A maxim of communication theory says that conflicts are seldom about the topic discussed. Almost always, they are about the relationships between the people arguing.
In the same way, the conflicts between Ubuntu and its commercial counterpart Canonical on the one hand and other free software projects on the other hand are not just about Unity, the wording of the Canonical Contributors’ License Agreement, the technical differences between Mir and Wayland, or any of the half dozen other issues being so passionately discussed at any given time.
The only return that free-licensed software promises is credit for your work. That promise remains important to many developers even today, when many are getting paid for their work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Self-encrypting drive wipes itself out if breached
http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/self-encrypting-drive-wipes-itself-out-if-breached.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222920545
Toshiba Electronics Europe‘s MQ01ABUxxxBW series of self-encrypting drive (SED) has been validated to the FIPS 140-2 standard (the US Federal Information Processing Standard)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital opium set to drive Facebook
http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/digital-opium-set-to-drive-facebook.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222920569&vID=209
In a recent Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of Oculus, a company who only showcased its first prototype of a virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift at the consumer electronics show in January this year, with yet a real product to commercialize.
The company is actively working on its second version of a development kit, DK2, using two 960×1080 pixels low persistence OLED displays (one per eye) to eliminate motion blur and judder, which the company claims could eliminate simulator sickness. The kit also includes positional head tracking and orientation tracking for better navigation through virtual worlds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Musings on the Oculus sale
http://www.raphkoster.com/2014/03/25/musings-on-the-oculus-sale/
Rendering is the dream of a game industry desperately searching for a new immersion, another step in the ongoing escalation of immersion that has served as the economic engine of ongoing hardware replacement, the false god of “games getting better.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to ditch its Hadoop software and support Cloudera instead
http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/26/intel-cloudera-hadoop/
Intel is set to cause a tremor in the big data market tomorrow.
The chip maker will announce tomorrow that it will stop pushing its own distribution of open-source Hadoop software for storing and processing lots of different kinds of data, and it will instead support the Hadoop distribution from fast-growing big data company Cloudera, VentureBeat has learned.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Search For The Next Platform
http://avc.com/2014/03/the-search-for-the-next-platform/
I found this part of Mark Zuckerberg’s post on the Oculus acquisition most revealing:
We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we’re in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.
If you look at these big acquisitions like Nest and Oculus, you might scratch your head.
But the roadmap has been clear for the past seven years (maybe longer). The next thing was mobile. Mobile is now the last thing. And all of these big tech companies are looking for the next thing to make sure they don’t miss it.. And they will pay real money (to you and me) for a call option on the next thing.
It isn’t clear if the next thing is virtual reality, the internet of things, drones, machine learning, or something else.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft and Dell sign Android, Chrome OS patent agreement
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-and-dell-sign-android-chrome-os-patent-agreement-7000027754/
Summary: Microsoft and Dell have renewed their patent cross-licensing agreement, with Dell agreeing to pay Microsoft royalties for Dell’s products running Android and Chrome OS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Facebook’s $2 Billion Oculus Buy Is a Bet Too Far
http://www.wired.com/business/2014/03/facebook-oculus-second-life/
Mark Zuckerberg envisions a world where you strap on a pair of goggles and, through the wonders of virtual reality, you meet face-to-face with your doctor.
That’s why Facebook is paying $2 billion to acquire Oculus, the Irvine, California company behind a virtual reality headset known as Rift. Rift isn’t yet available to the world at large, and when it finally arrives in the next year or so, it will merely be a way of playing 3-D games and perhaps watching movies, not holding virtual consultations with your doctor or chatting with distant friends. But in buying the two-year-old company, Zuckerberg says that he and Facebook are looking five to 10 years down the road, towards a future where virtual reality is a common way for us to communicate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Virtual Genius of Oculus Rift
http://time.com/39577/facebook-oculus-vr-inside-story/
How a 19-year-old hacker set out to invent a gaming headset and ended up reviving a dead technology and building a global communications platform worth $2 billion
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Ukraine Crisis Could Kill Its Tech Outsourcing Boom
https://www.vocativ.com/world/ukraine-world/ukraines-booming-sector-jeopardy-amid-political-instability-war/
For the last several years, Ukraine has been an international powerhouse for IT outsourcing. But developers are fleeing the country, and a potential military draft could wreak havoc on the industry
By 2012, there were some 4,000 IT outsourcing companies in Ukraine, and the sector was growing at 25% year-on-year. Economists were projecting the $2 billion industry would continue to grow by another 85% in the next six years.
“The information technology services industry in Ukraine is booming,” Forbes announced in August 2012. “And the reason? Outsourcing.”
But the recent revolution, political instability and the looming threat of a conflict with Russia have turned the industry upside-down.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Which College—and Which Major—Will Make You Richest?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/which-college-and-which-major-will-make-you-richest/359628/
A new study finds that nine of the 10 most lucrative degrees in America are in computer science programs at elite colleges—and Harvey Mudd runs away with the lead
A Bachelor of Science from Harvey Mudd College, the small California science and engineering school, is the most valuable college degree in America.
Stanford’s computer science program pays off more than any single major in the country.
For the best dollar-for-dollar investment, nothing beats the University of Virginia.
it’s devilishly difficult to measure the cost and benefit of college.
PayScale found that a degree in business, or computer science, or engineering, or economics at UVA has a higher dollar-for-dollar return than any major at any other school in the country. Yes, better than majoring in finance at Harvard, or computer science at Stanford, or business at Berkeley, or anything at Harvey Mudd.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Israeli Waze hit with GPL class action lawsuit: plaintiff requests source code.
http://2jk.org/english/?p=357
An interesting class action lawsuit has been brought in Israel against Waze, the Israeli navigation company who were acquired by Google last year. The class action raises an interesting question: according to the class action plaintiff, Mr. Roey Gorodish, Waze was first released as GPLv2 licensed software (which require to provide end-users with the original source code), and the data which Waze uses is based on a warranty to the Waze community to maintain it free. Such warranty was provided via freemap’s data (which Waze used), who selected to license it under the GPL, as well as under a proprietary license. Therefore, the plaintiff requests statutory damages and the release of Waze’s source code and map data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Man behind famous Windows XP wallpaper wishes he’d negotiated a better licensing deal
The default Windows XP wallpaper containing rolling green hills, blue sky and fluffy white clouds may be more recognisable than the Mona Lisa, but it earned its photographer a pittance.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/man-behind-famous-windows-xp-wallpaper-wishes-hed-negotiated-a-better-licensing-deal-20140326-35ims.html#ixzz2xF5hUrHg
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Is Selling Office 365 Within iPad Apps, and Apple Is Getting Its 30 Percent Cut
http://recode.net/2014/03/27/microsoft-is-selling-office-365-within-ipad-apps-and-apple-is-getting-its-30-percent-cut/
While one of the big holdups for Office for iPad was getting the software just right, another was Apple’s policy that apps that sell things — including subscriptions — use Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism and hand over 30 percent of that revenue to Apple.
This had been a big sticking point historically, so it was one of the key question marks looming over this launch.
Indeed, Microsoft does offer Office 365 subscriptions within the just-released Word for iPad and the other Office apps and, yes, it is paying the 30 percent cut, Apple confirmed to Re/code. Microsoft declined to comment on the matter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Office for iPad Isn’t Perfect, But It’s What We Needed All Along
http://mashable.com/2014/03/27/office-for-the-ipad-review/
It took Microsoft a while — by some measures too long — but it’s finally here: Office for iPad, a set of companion productivity products that work seamlessly with their desktop counterparts but offer enough standalone functionality to offer true productivity value for any iPad owner.
There is, as soon as you open any of Microsoft’s Office for iPad apps, a deep and comforting sense of familiarity: Word for iPad looks like Microsoft Word, Excel for iPad, with its green border and almost iconic symbols, looks like Excel. Opening PowerPoint for iPad is like saying hello to an old friend.
This sense of completeness does break down on occasion, especially if you go looking for the Save button (sorry, there’s no concept of “saving” a file in the iPad) or, more importantly, if you’re seeking a way to print your Office for iPad documents.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A cloud for everyone, on every device
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2014/03/27/a-cloud-for-everyone-on-every-device.aspx
That’s why I talk about them together. Mobile without cloud is limiting. The cloud without mobile is mostly latent potential. But the place where they meet is magic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Office for iPhone and Android phones is now completely free, Android tablet version coming ‘in the future’
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/03/27/office-iphone-android-phones-now-free-home-use-office-365-subscription-longer-required/
In addition to releasing Office for iPad, Microsoft today also updated Office Mobile for iPhone and Office Mobile for Android with a major change: both are now completely free for home use. You can download the new versions now directly from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Microsoft says the decision was made in order to align Office Mobile for Windows Phone with its iOS and Android counterparts. As a result, Office Mobile now lets smartphone users view, as well as edit, content on the go for free. An Office 365 subscription is no longer required for editing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NVLink takes on PCI Express
http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/nvlink-takes-on-pci-express.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222920599
Nvidia’s new NVLInk interconnect is directly challenging PCI Express 3.0 and 4.0 in the data center.
PCI Express has been the de facto interconnect for CPUs for a decade, but Nvidia has worked with IBM to use NVLink to provide higher bandwidth links between POWER processors and Nvidias Pascal graphics processor in 2016. This will allow systems to scale to exascale (1000 PFLOPS) performance for high performance computing, data analytics and machine learning, says the company.
Todays GPUs are connected to x86-based CPUs through the PCI Express (PCIe) interface, which limits the GPUs ability to access the CPU memory system and is four- to five-times slower than typical CPU memory systems.
PCIe 4.0 proposes a 16Gtransfers/s bit rate, double today’s PCIe 3.0 specification, while preserving compatibility with software and mechanical interfaces and power envelope
The final PCIe 4.0 specifications, including form factor specification updates, are expected to be available in late 2015 says the PCI special interest group.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VDI a ‘delightful’ experience… Really?
GPU devs at Silicon Valley shocked to their, er, cores in GTC session
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/28/vdi_lecture_at_gpu_technology_conference/
Ken Fingerlos from Lewan Technology delivered in spades with his “Virtual is Better than Physical: Delivering a Delightful User Experience from a Virtual Desktop” GTC14 session. Delightful? Hmm…In my past lives, I’ve had to use some virtual PCs and my experience ranged from “absolutely unusable” to “omg I hate this”.
One of the surest ways to wreck a VDI project is to provide users with a worse experience than they had with their three-year-old mid-range desktop or laptop. This is why it’s crucial to configure and size the infrastructure in such a way to give them a demonstrably better experience, or at least one that won’t have them up in arms or burning the IT staff in effigy in the parking lot.
Right now, he suggests using the Windows Experience Index as a quick and easy way to gauge end user performance. However, this tool is going away in Windows 8, so an alternative PC benchmark will need to be used.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM PCjr STRIPPED BARE: We tear down the machine Big Blue would rather you forgot
30th anniversary voyage of the 8088-powered ‘Peanut’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/22/ibm_pcjr_stripped_bare_still_mediocre_after_all_these_years/
In March of 1984, the Peanut – by then dubbed “PCjr” – would finally make it to store shelves. A little more than a year later, however, IBM would kill it off. By that time, the PCjr had already cemented it reputation as one of the most spectacular failures in computing history.
A number of factors were blamed for the PCjr’s demise – marketing failures, poor developer support, and weak backing from IBM have all been cited. The biggest problem with the PCjr, however, was that is wasn’t very well engineered. The design of the system was, quite simply, bad.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sticky Tahr-fy pudding: Ubuntu 14.04 is slickest Linux desktop ever
Wait, Canonical actually listened to us?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/28/ubuntu_14_01_final_beta_review/
If Ubuntu Mobile is able to do what iOS did for Apple – that is, sell not just phones and also tablets beyond the company’s corresponding desktop – Canonical needs to have a great desktop ready to go. As of this beta at least, Ubuntu 14.04 is well on its way to being just that – a great desktop on which to stake Ubuntu’s future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Box releases HTML5 document conversion tool, updates developer prices
Wants more traction ahead of IPO
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2336816/box-releases-html5-document-conversion-tool-updates-developer-prices
BOX HAS UPDATED developer usage plans and opened access to a document viewing tool as it looks to build momentum ahead of its IPO.
Box has made its HTML5 document viewing tool called Box View available for developers to incorporate into their companies’ products and services.
“With just a few simple API calls, developers can create an elegant and consistent content experience across all platforms.”
“Most developers will never have to pay anything for Box View, and, for those that do, Box View pricing is built to scale alongside your app’s user base,” added Rose.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-typeface-garamond-schools/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Reducing paper use through recycling and dual-sided printing had been talked about before as a way to save money and conserve resources, but there was less attention paid to the ink for which the paper served as a canvas for history and algebra handouts.
“Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume,” Suvir says with a chuckle.
He’s right: Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce, while the equivalent amount of Hewlett-Packard printer ink can cost up to $75.
Suvir figured out that by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually.
Using the Government Services Administration’s estimated annual cost of ink — $467 million — Suvir concluded that if the federal government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% — or $136 million per year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei D01 Server Board Features 16 ARM Cortex A15 Cores with up to 64 GB RAM, 3 SATA, 2 GbE Ports
Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/03/18/huawei-d01-server-board-features-16-arm-cortex-a15-cores-with-up-to-64-gb-ram-3-sata-2-gbe-ports/#ixzz2xI8rIJKb
Tomi Engdahl says:
ECS LIVA is a Complete Sub $200 mini PC based on Intel Bay Trail-M SoC
Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/03/27/ecs-liva-is-a-complete-sub-200-mini-pc-based-on-intel-bay-trail-m-soc/#ixzz2xI8yYIIL
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Only Explanation Of Facebook Buying Oculus For $2 Billion That Makes Any Sense
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-mark-zuckerberg-bought-oculus-for-2-billion-2014-3
Unlike other recent acquisitions in technology, this one doesn’t immediately make sense.
So why did Facebook buy the company? There are two, intertwined reasons to explain this deal.
But if Zuckerberg is wrong — and Oculus is not the next major platform — it’s not a big deal.
Sure, $2 billion makes it sound like a big deal, but the deal terms are good for Facebook. It is spending $400 million in cash and using 23.1 million shares to buy Oculus. There’s an additional $300 million in earnout bonuses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees
http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/
Back in January, I wrote about “The Techtopus” — an illegal agreement between seven tech giants, including Apple, Google, and Intel, to suppress wages for tens of thousands of tech employees. The agreement prompted a Department of Justice investigation, resulting in a settlement in which the companies agreed to curb their restricting hiring deals. The same companies were then hit with a civil suit by employees affected by the agreements.
Confidential internal Google and Apple memos, buried within piles of court dockets and reviewed by PandoDaily, clearly show that what began as a secret cartel agreement between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt to illegally fix the labor market for hi-tech workers, expanded within a few years to include companies ranging from Dell, IBM, eBay and Microsoft, to Comcast, Clear Channel, Dreamworks, and London-based public relations behemoth WPP. All told, the combined workforces of the companies involved totals well over a million employees.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UPDATE 2-Apple, Google lose bid to avoid trial on tech worker lawsuit
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/apple-google-ruling-idINL1N0MP25G20140329
A U.S. judge on Friday rejected a request from Apple, Google and two other tech companies to avoid a trial in a class action lawsuit alleging a scheme to drive down wages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big data: are we making a big mistake?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xWEB6H5B
Big data is a vague term for a massive phenomenon that has rapidly become an obsession with entrepreneurs, scientists, governments and the media
But the “big data” that interests many companies is what we might call “found data”, the digital exhaust of web searches, credit card payments and mobiles pinging the nearest phone mast
Unfortunately, these four articles of faith are at best optimistic oversimplifications. At worst, according to David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge university, they can be “complete bollocks. Absolute nonsense.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Review: Asus crafts a tiny $179 Chromebox out of cheap, low-power parts
It’s too bad that booting into non-Chrome OS operating systems is so difficult.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/03/review-asus-brings-chrome-os-to-mini-pcs-in-a-low-power-inexpensive-package/
We like mini desktops around these parts, but one thing that makes them less than ideal for every use case is that their price tag usually isn’t very mini. By the time you buy something like Intel’s NUC and stuff it full of all the parts it needs, you’ll end up spending somewhere in between $400 and $700, depending on the kit, parts, and operating system you decide to use.
Asus’ first Chromebox changes that formula. Its specs won’t necessarily impress, but starting for $179 you can get your hands on a fully functional Chromebox that requires no extra expenditure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD: Why we had to evacuate 276TB from Oracle DB to Hadoop
Chip biz CIO Jake Dominguez spills beans to El Reg
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/24/amd_hadoop_migration/
AMD has migrated terabytes of information from an Oracle Database installation to an Apache Hadoop stack, claiming Oracle’s pricey software was suffering from scaling issues.
The migration of 276TB of data, which was completed last year, was prompted by “an environment outage that took weeks to recover,” according to an internal document seen by El Reg. This encouraged AMD to replace Oracle for something else.
According to AMD, the Hadoop software has an unlimited row limit for query results compared to 100,000 rows on the chip giant’s Oracle setup, and “99 per cent of all queries execute in 15 minutes or less, with a median execution time of just 23 seconds.”
Many organizations have sought to extricate themselves from Oracle’s grip, either by swapping out Oracle-owned open-source tech for other software, as Google did with a vast MySQL to MariaDB migration, or by shifting away from the company’s proprietary databases to open-source ones
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows XP isn’t going to disappear in 10 days
Column Microsoft shouldn’t rely on upgrade cash
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2336799/windows-xp-isnt-going-to-disappear-in-10-days
THE WORLD WON’T END in 10 days when Microsoft finally drops support for Windows XP on PC systems on 8 April, and perhaps aside from making a few minor adjustments, most businesses and consumers still using it probably will hardly notice and thus won’t care, despite Microsoft’s rather desperate recent campaign of fear-mongering about security.
Microsoft’s desperation is understandable, since sales of new PCs fell off a cliff last year due to widespread dissatisfaction with Windows 8. The firm rushed out Windows 8.1 last autumn, but it wasn’t enough to reverse the lack of market momentum and the lingering effects of hard times in the economy, so 2013 PC sales were generally down for the year.
The firm thought it saw an opportunity to extract more money from Windows XP users by forcing them to upgrade their PC systems to its latest release of Windows, coincidentally also helping its PC OEM partners by driving sales of new PCs. Not only would Microsoft sell millions of copies of Windows 8.1, but in addition that would also force those users to upgrade Microsoft Office as well, which is far more expensive than Windows itself, drawing even more revenue into the company.
What Microsoft didn’t reckon on was that businesses and consumers that are still running Windows XP find it adequate to meet their needs and aren’t about to replace it anytime soon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft does not expect rush off Windows XP after support is cut
But custom support is not a long-term solution
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2336827/microsoft-does-not-expect-rush-off-windows-xp-after-support-is-cut
DESPITE THE CUTOFF of support for Windows XP being less than two weeks away, there is no sign of any last-minute move away from the obsolescent release, according to Microsoft.
There are millions of PCs online still running Windows XP, despite Microsoft’s repeated efforts to urge businesses and individuals away from it and onto a later release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 or 8 with the least cost, hassle, and downtime
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2092348/how-to-upgrade-from-xp-to-windows-7-or-8-with-the-least-cost-hassle-and-downtime.html
The end is near – end of support for Windows XP, that is. April 7, 2014 is the last day businesses or individuals can expect any support at all for the operating system that has been the workhorse of many PCs for over twelve years. Loss of XP support can bring big security risks – no more patches when vulnerabilities are uncovered – and lead to productivity losses as users find that IT resources no longer can provide effective assistance to solve technical problems.
Before starting you’ll need to choose Windows 7 or 8 as your new target OS. Key considerations are use cases and longevity.
Next, catalog the programs – both off-the-shelf and homegrown – that you use on a daily or periodic basis. Make sure you have the latest updates from those publishers with assurances that they offer Windows 7/8 support for your critical apps.
Next up is the decision whether or not to update hardware. Purchasing new HP PCs and tablets with Windows 8 pre-installed will ease the IT burden if you plan to use new Windows 8 features like touch and app tiles.
Today’s PCs offer dramatically more CPU power, memory, and disk storage than the XP-based systems of just a few years ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
POSIX – 25 Years of Open Standard APIs
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/103514
The POSIX API has a venerable history of allowing portability and compatibility among a wide variety of systems and applications. Its legacy is destined to continue well into the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM going the Google way
ARM to dominate them all, including the brand image.
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/03/arm-going-google-way.html
There are many similarities in how Google and ARM are building the ecosystem around them, only the timescale is different. Google created Android OS and licensed it to phone manufacturers. Each one of them were allowed to customize it and to highlight their own brand image. Eventually people are purchasing Samsung Android or HTC Android, not Google Android devices.
Soon Google understood they have lost the control over brand image. To fight back, Google introduced ChromeOS, which is kept tightly in Google’s own control. Manufacturers are not allowed to tailor it, and Google has full control over software updates
ARM did the same.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT widespread anger
Businesses want to waste less on information technology and the transfer of funds to activities which productivity is easier to measure. At the same time a general dissatisfaction with information technology is increasing, is indicated by two recent studies.
IT boss to require more and more and more accountability for results. “They were told to grow your business more often, not just to support it,”
In the same study also found greater dissatisfaction with the previous information technology. Even the IT bosses’ attitudes had changed in a negative direction.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/itsuuttumus+yleistyy/a978243
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kickstarter reacts to Facebook acquiring Oculus Rift; extremely angry
“Major sell out”
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Computer_Peripherals/Display_Graphics/Kickstarter_reacts_to_Facebook_acquiring_Oculus_Rift_extremely_pissed.aspx
$400 million in cash plus $1.6 billion in stock ─ the price Facebook is paying to acquire Oculus, maker of the Rift VR googles ─ is synonymous with bribery. Oculus’ hallmark phrase “Designed for gamers, by gamers,” no longer holds true when the primary shareholder is the biggest social media and information dealer in the world, whose idea of a game is shovelware such as Farmville.
Hyperbole aside, it’s a well-known fact that all Kickstarter campaigns bear a certain degree of risk of failure, nevertheless, the Rift’s campaign succeeded by raising $2,437,430, equivalent to 975% of their proposed funding goal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux 3.14 out
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1403.3/03023.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM Partners Ship 50 Billion Chips Since 1991 – Where Did They Go?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 31, 2014 9:00 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7909/arm-partners-ship-50-billion-chips-since-1991-where-did-they-go
A few weeks ago ARM celebrated its partners shipping over 10 billion ARM based chips in 2013. As ARM makes a royalty on every IP license shipped, it was a banner year for the company. The bigger story was that the 10 billion in 2013 brought the cumulative total for ARM based processors to over 50 billion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spin that disk drive forecast, Gartner: Watch those desktop units dive
Biz drive shipments pull average up to ‘slow’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/31/gartner_disk_drive_forecast/
Gartner is forecasting that total hard disk drive shipments will grow at a leisurely 2.9 per cent CAGR from 2013 (552 million units) to 2018 (635.1 million units). But bear in mind that’s an average: desktop drives unit shipments will be shrinking at a -7 per cent CAGR over the period while high-capacity business drives grow at a 25.1 per cent CAGR.
Gartner’s updated forecast calls for SSD penetration in notebooks to expand from approximately 20 per cent in 2013 to 38 per cent by 2018.
hybrid drive growth is impressive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Worldwide software market grew by 4.8 per cent in 2013. Net sales rose to 407.3 billion U.S. dollars, or about 295.3 billion Euros.
Most of the growth came from developed markets.
Souce: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/gartner+ohjelmistomarkkinoilla+5+prosentin+kasvu++oracle+ja+salesforce+yllattivat/a978815
Tomi Engdahl says:
Beyond Meritocracy: 6 Ways IT Employee Performance Evaluations Are Changing
http://www.cio.com/article/750499/Beyond_Meritocracy_6_Ways_IT_Employee_Performance_Evaluations_Are_Changing
Neither employees nor their managers look forward to annual performance reviews. That’s why experts suggest using methods and tools that provide valuable, real-time feedback on how employees are doing.