Windows 8, the most significant upgrade to Microsoft’s operating system since Windows 95 and one of the most important products in the company’s history, will not achieve enough adoption in enterprises to be considered a standard, according to Forrester Research. By the time the next major Windows upgrade is released, Windows 8 will be in less than 50 percent of workplace PCs, unable to overtake its predecessor Windows 7. “I have to believe Microsoft expected better enterprise adoption for Windows 8,” said Forrester analyst David Johnson, the lead author of the report “IT Will Skip Windows 8 As The Enterprise Standard,” released Thursday. As it is, most enterprises have either recently migrated from Windows XP to Windows 7, or are in the process of doing so. In a Forrester survey of European and North American enterprises and SMBs conducted in last year’s third quarter, Windows 7 was on almost half of respondents’ PCs and Windows XP had a 38 percent share. Respondents further said that they forecast having Windows 7 on 60 percent of their PCs a year later, and Windows 8 on 26 percent.
A data center in Sweden has cut its energy bills by a million dollars a year using seawater to cool its servers, though jellyfish are an occasional hazard. Interxion, a collocation company in the Netherlands that rents data center space in 11 countries, uses water pumped from the Baltic Sea to cool the IT equipment at its facilities in Stockholm. The energy used to cool IT equipment is one of the costliest areas of running a data center. Companies have traditionally used big, mechanical chillers, but some are turning to outside air and evaporative techniques as lower-cost alternatives. Seawater is another option, and apparently an effective one. Interxion recouped its initial investment after about a year, with the “cost” of the seawater equivalent to $0.03 per kWh, said Lex Coors, Interxion’s chief engineering officer, at the Uptime Institute’s data center conference in Santa Clara, Calif., this week.
emerge over the past year or so, but examples with triple-boot capabilities are much less common. . . “The components of this device are the result of careful and accurate selection, to ensure perfect compatibility with all operating systems.” Ready for a look? Here's what we've got.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich admitted Thursday in his first speech in that role that the company has been weak in smartphones and tablets, but aims to improve by advancing chip and manufacturing technologies. Intel’s main focus is to produce more power-efficient chips, as it also adds features for connectivity and security, Krzanich said during a speech at the annual shareholder meeting in Santa Clara, Calif. “We see that we’ve been a bit slow to move in the space,” Krzanich said of the mobile market. “We’re well positioned already and the base of assets we have will allow us to grow much faster in the area.”
Google has introduced an IDE (integrated developer environment) aimed at easing development of Android apps. in San Francisco. on the base of IntelliJ's Idea Java IDE. "The pivot around the IntelliJ IDE is a shift for Google," noted Al Hilwa, who covers application development software for IDC, in an email interview. IntelliJ "is less complex and more friendly than Eclipse and should help Android reach a broader section of developers," Hilwa wrote.
Anyone remotely within the orbit of SAP lately knows that its number-one focus is the HANA in-memory database and development platform. At this week’s Sapphire conference in Orlando, the vendor sought to show the progress it is making in both building out HANA’s capabilities as well as attracting developers and partners to HANA. “After four years of preaching HANA, I think we have reached a relative climax,” SAP co-founder and Chairman Hasso Plattner said during a keynote address Thursday. “It’s not about HANA anymore, it’s about the applications on HANA.” While walking the conference’s show floor, Plattner saw evidence of “hundreds, probably thousands” of applications that are being built on HANA, he said. SAP has also been updating HANA through a series of service packs, which it says provide new functionality without the pain and hassle of a traditional upgrade. Service pack number six is now generally available and with it brings a raft of features resulting in a “re-imagined” HANA, SAP said Thursday.
Four British men associated with the LulzSec hacker collective received prison sentences Thursday for their roles in cyberattacks launched by the group against corporate and government websites in 2011. Ryan Cleary, 21, Jake Davis, 20, Ryan Ackroyd, 26, and Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, were sentenced Thursday in London’s Southwark Crown Court after previously pleading guilty to charges of carrying out unauthorized acts with the intention of impairing the operation of computers. Davis, who was known online as “Topiary,” received a two-year prison sentence. He acted as a spokesperson for LulzSec, writing some of the hacker group’s announcements and managing its website and Twitter account. Ackroyd, who posed as a 16-year-old girl online and used the alias “Kayla,” received a 30-month prison sentence, while Mustafa al-Bassam, who used the online alias “T-Flow,” received a 20-month suspended prison sentence and was ordered to perform 200 hours of unpaid community work.
that you can earn by playing games, and trade in for bragging rights and prizes. Sound odd? Sure, but it’s also rather neat. Steam Trading Cards are currently in beta, and themed after the few games that support them. You earn cards by playing the participating games, though you can only earn about half of a game’s total card set on your own. You’ll need to collect the rest of the set by bartering with friends or other Steam users. Here’s where things get interesting (and potentially valuable): complete a set of cards, and you can craft them into a game badge. These badges can be displayed on your Steam profile, but you’ll also earn random goodies like backgrounds for your Steam profile and (more lucratively) coupons for DLC and discounts on Steam games. , and as of the last hour virtual game cards have been selling for about $2 - $3—which sounds ludicrous. There is of course the potential to earn a badge and get a coupon for 50% off a game or DLC, and… nope, still ludicrous. I’m sure the market prices will level off once that “shiny new feature” smell wears off, more folks get invited to the beta, and a true median price is determined by supply and demand.
processor are among its most impressive pieces of hardware. The stock Android Jellybean 4.2 OS on the upcoming Google S4 eliminates the Nexus branding that other Galaxy devices have held and comes with a completely unlocked bootloader. The themes and skins that have identified Galaxy software will be replaced by a basic and direct Android interface, and it will have no preinstalled apps bogging it down. That will make for a cleaner and more customizable phone, ideal for developers who seek the capability to modify their devices (hence its announcement at the developers’ conference). Perhaps because of Google’s backing or perhaps because of the lack of Nexus branding, the stripped-down, unlocked Google S4 will carry a lower price tag than other Galaxy iterations. When it hits the stores June 26, AT&T and T-Mobile members will be able to pick up this developer’s dream device for a relatively light $649.
E-commerce trade group NetChoice takes aim at state legislation—and at open access and privacy advocates—in the newest list of bills it deems would be awful for the Internet. Topping NetChoice’s (Internet Advocates’ Watchlist for Ugly Laws) list are a number of California proposals aimed at protecting privacy that would create regulations for Internet companies. In some cases, the proposals are contradictory: One bill in California would limit website and mobile app privacy policies to 100 words, and a second would require more disclosure in privacy policies. Another California bill would require advertisers on mobile apps to include privacy policies and to obtain consumer consent before displaying ads in some circumstances. “States are seen as laboratories of democracy, but [California] is building us a Frankenstein of Internet laws right now,” said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, with members including Facebook, Yahoo and eBay.
Swedish top-level domain administrator .SE has to its surprise become directly involved in the local Prosecution Authority’s court case to seize thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se, but it hopes to explain to the court that forcing domain names off the Internet does not help. The Swedish Prosecution Authority battle with The Pirate Bay and the people involved with the site has been a long and winding road. Its latest attempt to stop the site is to seize its Swedish domain names. About two weeks ago .SE received an advance notice that the Prosecution Authority had filed a petition with the Stockholm District Court, requesting the seizure of two domain names, thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se, CEO Danny Aerts wrote in The case itself didn’t come as a surprise, but the fact that the domain administrator was one of the defendants did. In the eyes of the prosecutor, .SE has become some form of accomplice to criminal activity, a perspective that is unique in Europe as far as he knows, Aerts said.
We may not have a new version of Android to drool over, but at least we've got more feature-filled, better-looking maps. At its Google I/O keynote Wednesday morning, Google announced an of its popular Google Maps service. The demos shown on stage drew some applause out of the otherwise listless attendees, and I was itching for the chance to put this improved version of Maps through its paces. After playing around with Maps and virtually visiting several locales around the world, I'm impressed with how much Google has improved its already great mapping tool—though I think the company might have oversold it a bit on stage. The new desktop Maps version looks fantastic: Google has done away with the navigation bars on the top and left side of the screen, dedicating your entire browser window to your map. For the most part, menus are hidden out of sight, which makes the entire interface feel less cluttered. I know there are people who'll miss all the knobs and sliders of the older version, but if you only really use Google Maps to get around, this new layout will fit your needs perfectly. Look up an address or city, and you'll immediately fly to that location with an incredibly smooth and fluid animation. Zooming in or panning around the map is much faster than it was previously, and doesn't require you to wait 30 seconds for all the elements of the map to refresh themselves. Switching between the standard and satellite views still isn't as fast as I'd like, but the 3D models that pop up when you zoom in close no longer look like deformed blobs, and you can actually tell buildings apart.
Security researchers from Damballa have found a new variant of the Pushdo malware that's better at hiding its malicious network traffic and is more resilient to coordinated takedown efforts. The Pushdo Trojan program dates back to early 2007 and is used to distribute other malware threats, like Zeus and SpyEye. It also comes with its own spam engine module, known as Cutwail, which is directly responsible for a large portion of the world's daily spam traffic. The security industry has tried to shut down the Pushdo/Cutwail botnet four times during the last five years, but those efforts only resulted in temporary disruptions. In March, security researchers from Damballa identified new malicious traffic patterns and were able to trace them back to a new variant of the Pushdo malware.
You can't set a clock by your Internet download speed. A great many factors make one page faster than another. And a great many other factors can make the same page fast one day (or hour) and slow the next. Most of these variables are completely out of your control. But it's still worthwhile to understand them.
The seizure of funds of the largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was triggered by an alleged failure of the company to comply with U.S. financial regulations, according to a federal court document. The U.S. District Court in Maryland on Tuesday ordered the , which were in an account with Dwolla, a payments company that transferred money from U.S. citizens to Mt. Gox for buying and selling the virtual currency bitcoin. A copy of the was provided on Wednesday by a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. The warrant alleges that Mt. Gox failed to register as a "money transmitting business" in accordance with 18 U.S. Code 1960. Violators can be fined and sentenced up to five years in prison.
Embedded YouTube videos don't infringe copyright under current German law, but they could violate European rules, the German Federal Court of Justice said on Thursday. The court said that it has referred a case about YouTube embeds to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg for an opinion, and has not reached a final ruling, said court spokeswoman Dietlind Weinland. The court found that embedded YouTube videos don't infringe the copyright of the rights holder because an embedded video is a link to content on another website, Weinland said. This doesn't violate the German Copyright Act because it is the owner of the website that originally posted the video who has responsibility for making it accessible to the public, she added. .
Spiceworks has teamed up with Fiberlink to add mobile device management functionality to the next version of its free network and IT management software. As the BYOD (bring-your-own-device) trend accelerates, IT departments are seeking ways to remain in control while letting employees use their own smartphones or tablets for work. Spiceworks is hoping to help by integrating Fiberlink’s MaaS360 directly into its software, which is also called Spiceworks. There is a large interest is mobile device management; when Spiceworks asked its users if they were interested, the overwhelming verdict was to integrate the functionality, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. The ad-funded Spiceworks software is today used by IT staff to discover what’s happening in their network, including whether employees are using applications such as Dropbox and Evernote. It also includes a help desk and a crowd-sourced knowledge base.
just to turn off your computer. Some would argue that doing so is an antiquated idea. After all, Windows 7 and 8 don't need regular reboots to continue running smoothly the way earlier versions did. On most modern systems you can leverage sleep/hibernate modes almost indefinitely, enjoying the benefits of quick wake/standby without ever actually shutting down. Ah, but sleep mode continues to draw a bit of power, so it's not always the best option--especially for battery-conscious laptop users. And, let's face it, some users are just accustomed to turning off their PCs at the end of the day. the off switch?
Dell intends to move workstations into the data center and then serve up intense multimedia and engineering applications to remote users over the cloud or in virtualized environments via thin clients. To that end, the PC maker Thursday introduced the Precision R7610 workstation, which is designed like a 2U rack server but with the power of a typical workstation using Intel’s latest Xeon processors and support for up to four graphics cards. The workstation will host virtual machines in data centers so that applications can be run on thin clients, PCs or mobile devices in remote locations. Workstations typically have been relegated to the desk, using the combined processing power of CPUs and GPUs to make movies or to run CAD/CAM applications. The R7610 workstation can host up to four GPUs to centralize processing for data-intensive applications such as engineering and multimedia, which can then be rendered to mobile devices, PCs, or thin clients like Dell’s Wyse P25. The R7610 supports graphics processors from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, which are able to serve virtual desktops with the help of improved memory management and interfacing with hypervisors.
A day after breaking an almost year-long silence on a , Google co-founder Larry Page said Wednesday that people should be more open about their medical histories. “I just disclosed yesterday my voice issues, I got so many thoughtful emails from people and advice,” he said answering an audience question at the in San Francisco. Page said he had originally thought his own medical information should be very private, but the response he got from his blog post caused a rethink. “At least in my case I feel I should have done it sooner and I’m not sure that answer isn’t true for most people, so I ask why are people so focused on keeping your medical history private?” Page began skipping public appearances in July last year due to an issue affecting his vocal chords, but at the time didn’t disclose the precise nature of the problem. Google too declined to comment on the matter leading some to question whether CEOs should be more public about their health conditions. The issue has been brought to the forefront in the last couple of years after .
Amazon Web Services is improving the performance of its DynamoDB database service with Parallel Scan, which gives users faster access to their tables. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service that, like Amazon’s other cloud services, promises to offload administration tasks while allowing enterprises to scale easily and pay only for what they use. The service stores data on solid-state disk drives and creates replicas in three different locations to improve availability. The throughput of a database operation on DynamoDB has been constrained by the maximum performance of a single storage partition. Parallel Scan will change that by allowing tables to be logically divided into multiple segments and scanned in parallel. For example, an application that processes a large table of historical data can perform a parallel scan much faster than a sequential one, Amazon writes
Pop quiz for small business owners: When is the last time you updated your company's page? On the heels of the . Google+ is the search giant's third or fourth foray into social networking (depending on whether you count ), but it is clearly its most ambitious. Billed as a site that "aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life," businesses were more enticed by the vague promises (or rumors) that a presence on Google+ would lead to better placement in Google's search results. That alone seemed to merit investing heavily in making Google+ a rich and regularly updated environment.
Toshiba's luxurious Kirabook is the first Windows laptop to feature a display rivaling Apple’s Retina technology. The Kirabook is also thinner and much lighter than Apple’s MacBook Pro, it’s outfitted with a touchscreen. While I wish I could report that Toshiba has crafted a masterpiece that fully justifies its $2000 price tag, this machine suffers from a couple of significant flaws. With a native resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels, the Kirabook’s 13.3-inch display delivers a pixel density of 221 pixels per inch—just shy of the 227 ppi that Apple packs into the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s 2560-by-1600-pixel display. If you think Apple’s computers are overpriced, consider the fact that a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 3.0GHz Intel Core i7-3540M processor sells for $100 less than the Kirabook, which runs on a 2.0GHz Intel Core i7-3537U CPU. Apple, however, doesn't currently offer any full-blown computers with touchscreens (the iPad doesn't count). Clock speeds aren’t everything, of course. The processor that Toshiba picked boasts a TDP (thermal design power) of just 17 watts, versus the 35-watt TDP of the chip that Apple uses. ( refers to the maximum amount of power that a computer’s cooling system must dissipate. A lower TDP is desirable for a mobile computer, because it improves battery life. In our test, the Kirabook’s battery lasted an impressive 5 hours, 14 minutes.) The Kirabook’s other key components include 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory and a 256GB solid-state drive. I’ll get into the Kirabook’s performance in depth later. Photos, movies, and documents look gorgeous on the Kirabook’s display. But when I compared the Kirabook to a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (Apple doesn’t offer its high-res display on its thinner, lighter MacBook Air line), I found that Apple’s product delivered far better contrast. Both machines rely on the Intel HD 4000 GPU core integrated into the CPU, so I don’t know whether the Kirabook’s problem is due to Toshiba’s choice of Corning Concore glass (which is specifically formulated for touchscreens) or due to the fingerprint-resistant coating on the glass. Whatever the reason, it was no contest: The Retina display produced much deeper blacks.
A German online copyright law that will give publishers the exclusive right to the commercial use of their publications on the Internet will come into effect on Aug. 1. The law was published in Germany’s Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt) . After a law is published in the gazette, it will come into effect, a spokeswoman said. The new rule is a toned down version of a controversial online copyright bill that aimed to give publishers the right to charge search engines like Google for republishing short text snippets of the kind used in Google News. The law as published does not extend to news snippets though. It states that publishers have the exclusive right to commercialize their products or parts thereof, except in the case of single words or very small text snippets.
A federal court in New York has denied class certification to copyright owners in an infringement lawsuit against YouTube over unauthorized hosting of content, stating that copyright claims have only superficial similarities. Judge Louis L. Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had earlier this year thrown out a copyright infringement complaint by Viacom International and others against YouTube, stating that the Google unit was protected under the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects service providers from copyright infringement claims if they follow certain notice and take down procedures. Viacom filed the lawsuit against YouTube in March 2007, and accused YouTube of “brazen” copyright infringement by allowing users to upload more than 150,000 clips of Viacom’s programming. Judge Stanton ruled earlier this year that Viacom did not have the kind of “evidence that would allow a clip-by-clip assessment of actual knowledge” by YouTube. Generally speaking, copyright claims are poor candidates for class-action treatment, the Judge wrote in his ruling on Wednesday. “Each claim presents particular factual issues of copyright ownership, infringement, fair use, and damages, among others,” he added.
The Meteor Entertainment employee who helped create Brosie the Riveter spoke with Wired about the prank that went viral, and about what the internet's reaction to it could tell us about the gender problem in the gaming industry.
Nintendo has said that it is working with YouTube to place advertisements in front of user-created videos of Nintendo games. This might be a bad idea.
In the wake of the AP scandal, in which federal investigators obtained the phone records of journalists using only a subpoena, four lawmakers have introduced legislation in the House that would prevent federal agencies from seizing any phone records without a court order.
As bloated as it might be, Apple isn't forgetting about iTunes. Cupertino released the latest update to its music/video/movies/app manager and player today.
Design freaks (and freaks of any persuasion, really) can find a digital treasure chest of entertaining content in the realm of the podcast. Allowing for interested parties to expand beyond radio/tv/print restrictions, the format continues to grow in professionalism and regard.
Over 10 days in November 1983, the U.S. and the Soviet Union nearly started a nuclear war. Now newly declassified documents reveal just how close we reached a mutual destruction -- because of an exercise.
At Google's annual I/O developer conference Thursday, the company announced the first big wave of third-party Glass apps, dubbed Glassware.
Four leading hackers from LulzSec, an offshoot of Anonymous, were sentenced today to between two and two-and-a-half years in prison in London for their roles in hacking Sony and a series of other targets in 2011.
A Danish ferry operator has begun converting a diesel-electric ship into a diesel-electric hybrid. When it's done, it will be the world's largest hybrid passenger ferry.Scandlines commissioned the retrofit of the Prinsesse Benedikte, a ship that can carry 300 vehicles and 900 passengers on the short, 11-mile hop between R?dbyhavn, Denmark and Puttgarden, Germany. Thanks ...
No longer will anyone have to hire Tobias F?nke -- his new web site lets people insert him into any available openings they have.
Electronic Arts says it will no longer include an Online Pass that makes used-game buyers pay extra for online game services.
Studying and practicing math is so difficult and boring that very few people do it. A new study suggest there may be an easier way. Scientists stimulated volunteers' brains with mild electric current while they learned new arithmetic operations based on made-up symbols. Those who received this brain stimulation learned quicker -- and retained a performance edge six months later.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers is launching a fellowship program for design students, announcing today the assignments awarded that will connect some of the best students from some of the best schools with some of the most design-influenced startups (and not-so-startups) on the venture capital giant's client list for 3-month appointments.
The war against al-Qaida is far from winding down, according to top Pentagon officials. The Pentagon's chief of irregular warfare sees it lasting for 10 to 20 more years.
If machines are going to become as smart as Google and NASA want them to be, they may need a whole new type of computing to get them there. Quantum computing, that is.So today Google said it's opening a lab -- complete with a quantum computer -- called the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. It's hosted ...
From even a short distance, this West African Gaboon viper looks just like a pile of dead leaves. New research shows that the highly-camouflaged snake owes its elusiveness to nanostructures in its black scales.
GitHub is a social network where software developers can host open source projects. It's also a household task organizer, a platform for publishing legal documents, and now it's a place where Gregorian chant fanatics can hack church music.
For fans wondering what happens after Star Trek Into Darkness, you won't have long to wait to find out; IDW's
Attorney General Eric Holder became the White House's highest ranking official Tuesday to support sweeping privacy protections requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain e-mail and other content stored in the cloud.
This week on
The elite hunters and killers of the U.S. military are getting new missions. And that means all sorts of new gear.
As Google CEO Larry Page spoke Wednesday, his froggy voice not only grew stronger, the impression grew stronger that this is the man, and Google the company, that is leading technology today.
McDonald's, one of America's most ubiquitous, mundane institutions, might not seem like the best place to make compelling pictures. Nolan Conway thinks otherwise. He's visited hundreds of the restaurants and finds them to be fertile ground for colorful portraits.
The first chick has hatched in the Great Blue Heron nest at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary in Ithaca, New York. But if you missed it, there are four more to come.
If 2009's
Somehow, for some reason, Angry Birds is going to be a movie. Continuing in the grand tradition of Mortal Kombat (the movie) and Super Mario Bros. (the movie) soon there will be a cinematic feature based on the massively successful videogame about shooting birds at things with slingshots.
Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spacecraft is being prepared for its first test flights. The lifting body vehicle arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in southern California today where it will be put back together and begin flight testing next door using the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base.
Come fly with the new Landsat satellite as it records images over a 9,000-kilometer swath of Earth, and zoom in on any point along the way with a Gigapan version of the trip.
Google delivered some news for users of its Cloud Platform stable of services at its I/O event on Wednesday. Its Compute Engine service ? which competes with Amazon Web Services ? will now be available to all users, not just those willing to shell out $400 for support. But it also announced the addition of the most commonly requested feature for its App Engine platform cloud: support for the PHP programming language.
Someone out there just won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, Apple's way of saying "Thanks" for downloading its 50 billionth iOS app.