IT Executive news

• Retail group rips chip-card conversion expense, pushes for PIN security

  29-09-2015 23:34
  
  The top attorney for the powerful National Retail Federation blasted banks and credit card companies on Tuesday for problems and costs with the massive ongoing U.S. rollout of computer chip cards and chip card readers.
  Mallory Duncan, general counsel for the NRF, said computer chip cards will initially require customers to provide a signature, instead of a distinct PIN (personal identification number), which won't eliminate online and phone fraud with a stolen or lost chip card.
  He also said th
  
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• Where does SDN make sense? We ask Fidelity’s Director of Global Network Architecture

  29-09-2015 23:03
  
  Carlos Matos has been following Software Defined Networking from the get-go as one of the earliest members of the Open Networking Users Group (ONUG). We recently caught up with Matos, the Director of Global Network Architecture at Fidelity Investments, to get his view on how and where companies are likely to benefit from SDN.
  Carlos Matos, Director of Global Network Architecture at Fidelity InvestmentsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Changing the IT conversation at Pfizer

  29-09-2015 22:41
  
  This is the best time to do the best work you’ve ever done. That’s what Jeff Keisling, then CIO of Wyeth, told his IT organization in early 2009, when it was announced that Pfizer would be acquiring their company for $68 billion.That was a big deal then—not only in the sense of being a huge transaction, but also because it was executed in one of the most troubled economies in a lifetime.Meanwhile, the IT pros at Wyeth were thinking about other things. They were proud of their h
  
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• OS X El Capitan launches Wednesday

  29-09-2015 22:16
  
  Apple today reminded Mac owners that they can download OS X 10.11, aka El Capitan, free of charge starting tomorrow.[ Related: 8 tips and tricks for OS X El Capitan ]If the Cupertino, Calif., company follows past practice, it will add El Capitan to the Mac App Store around 10 a.m. PT.The upgrade will run on the same Macs that now run last year's Yosemite, 2013's Mavericks, 2012's Mountain Lion and 2011's Lion, according to Apple's system requirements. That means more than nine of out 10 Macs whi
  
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• Cloud-based 'digital twins' could make power plants more efficient

  29-09-2015 22:00
  
  Electricity may be the lifeblood of the IT, but the industry that produces it has been slow to take advantage of computing advances. That may be changing, with a cool new tool from GE that could help keep power plants running.Big data and Internet of Things technology may offer particular advantages to power systems that are spread out across whole regions, have thousands of specialized parts and have to operate at all times. General Electric supplies a lot of the parts that go into power p
  
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• Google triples self-driving car fleet in four months

  29-09-2015 21:23
  Google is expanding its self-driving car fleet quickly: in the last four months the number of cars it is permitted to drive on California streets has more than tripled.As of Monday, Google has licenses for 73 self-driving vehicles, up from 23 cars in mid May, according to records from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Under state law, companies wishing to test autonomous vehicle technology on public roads need a permit for each vehicle from the DMV.All of the expansion of Goo
  
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• Advertisers can now pay to sneak by your ad blocker

  29-09-2015 21:23
  
  A dollar isn't a lot of money, but if someone forks one over for a product, the product should work as advertised. However, Crystal, a popular iOS app that block ads on Web pages viewed in the native mobile Safari browser, will soon change the rules of the game. Instead of simply blocking all ads, Crystal will accept payments from advertisers to let their ads slip through and appear on users’ screens, according to The Wall Street Journal.To read this article in full or to leave a com
  
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• Microsoft reshuffles into 3 businesses for financial reporting

  29-09-2015 21:06
  
  Microsoft today changed how it will report its financial performance, reducing the number of operating divisions to three, in an effort to align with CEO Satya Nadella's emphasis on the cloud and productivity platforms, and opportunities to reap revenue from customers after they've moved to Windows 10.
  The three operating segments -- Intelligent Cloud, Productivity and Business Processes and More Personal Computing -- replace six earlier divisions, which were roughly organized on a consumer ver
  
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• A Linux botnet is launching crippling DDoS attacks at more than 150Gbps

  29-09-2015 20:31
  A Linux botnet has grown so powerful that it can generate crippling distributed denial-of-service attacks at over 150 Gbps, many times greater than a typical company's infrastructure can withstand.The malware behind the botnet is known as XOR DDoS and was first identified in September last year. Attackers install it on Linux systems, including embedded devices such as WiFi routers and network-attached storage devices, by guessing SSH (Secure Shell) login credentials using brute-force attack
  
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• Developers find themselves in hackers’ crosshairs

  29-09-2015 20:13
  
  Attackers have long targeted application vulnerabilities in order to breach systems and steal data, but recently they’ve been skipping a step and going directly after the tools developers use to actually build those applications.
  Consider the news that broke earlier this year that entailed how the CIA allegedly attempted to compromise Apple’s development software Xcode. Such a breach could mean that every app developed with the development environment would, in turn, contain malware
  
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• Pentaho's analytics software to blend multiple streams of big data

  29-09-2015 20:03
  
  One of the challenges of big data is blending information from multiple sources, and Pentaho has developed new software to make that process easier.Pentaho 6.0, announced Tuesday at the Strata + Hadoop conference in New York, includes the first version of the Pentaho enterprise-class server and aims to help companies blend data of any type -- structured or unstructured, for example -- at any stage of the pipeline.Scheduled for release in mid-October, Pentaho 6.0 offers new data service
  
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• Apple CEO says the future of enterprise is mobility

  29-09-2015 19:55
  
  When it comes to improving productivity, Apple CEO Tim Cook says businesses don't need their employees to work harder -- they need to change how they work."There's no more time in the day, so you have to transform your business." he said during a conversation with Box CEO Aaron Levie Tuesday at the BoxWorks conference. "And so today, that means embracing mobility in a big way."It's something that he thinks companies haven't been doing enough of -- Apple included. While there are plenty of a
  
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• SDN startup PLUMgrid opens up on OpenStack

  29-09-2015 19:44
  
  SDN start-up PLUMgrid this week unveiled the latest version of its software for building OpenStack clouds.
  Version 4.0 of PLUMgrid’s Open Networking Suite (ONS) for OpenStack supports multiple OpenStack distributions, Load Balancing as a Service (LBaaS) plugins, high availability and dynamic Tunnel Heatmap for improved visibility into physical and virtual layers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Apple throws down the gauntlet with overhauled privacy policy

  29-09-2015 19:15
  
  Apple is making it very clear how it uses your data with a revamp of its privacy policy, posted in full on the company’s website. In the process, Cupertino is also making it plain just how different it is from other tech companies.
  Apple affirmed its commitment to customer privacy a year ago, and Tuesday’s update covers everything new in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. The company isn’t just issuing platitudes about how great its privacy protections are—it dives into real det
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 3D Touch: Peek and Pop Web pages in Safari

  29-09-2015 18:54
  
  3D Touch has added a whole new wrinkle to Apple's latest iPhones. The inclusion of 3D Touch means that you can apply pressure on the screen of your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus to Peek at a web page without opening it. And if you press deeper you can Pop into that web page to see it fully.But 3D Touch can be a bit confusing for folks new to it, so in this how-to I'll show you how you can use 3D Touch to Peek and Pop Web links in Safari.How to Peek and Pop a link in Safari via 3D Touch3D Touch lets you P
  
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• Why passion is a requirement for today's CIO

  29-09-2015 18:38
  
  Tim McCabe, managing director of KPMGKPMG recently released a study of 1,200 global CEOs. Want to know what they're worried about? Here are their top four concerns, according to the research:New entrants disrupting their business models
  Keeping current with new technologies
  Competitors' ability to take business away from their organizations
  The relevance of their company's products and services in three years
  Technology, of course, is the most significant contributing factor in these concerns. W
  
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• Microsoft bolsters Azure in containers, security

  29-09-2015 17:49
  Microsoft is enhancing its Azure cloud platform with a new container service and a new security center.Debuted at Microsoft's AzureCon virtual event, the Azure Container Service, which will be available for preview by the end of the year, is an open source container scheduling and orchestration service that builds on Microsoft's partnerships with both Docker and Mesosphere. The service leverages Docker and Apache Mesos to deliver an open source environment for running container workloads."C
  
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• OS X El Capitan review: Mac upgrade that's as solid as a rock

  29-09-2015 17:00
  El Capitan, OS X 10.11, arrives for everyone September 30, but I’ve been using it all summer. In these days of free operating-system updates, major OS X updates feel a whole lot more routine than they used to be. Apple has chosen not to roll out major OS X features piecemeal throughout the year, though, which still makes this the biggest change your Mac will experience this year.[ Related: 8 tips and tricks for OS X El Capitan ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please cli
  
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• Apple, Microsoft wield privacy as marketing tool

  29-09-2015 16:57
  
  Apple hasn't changed its privacy policy in over a year -- but on Tuesday morning the company updated its website with a fresh explanation of what that policy means, product by product, service by service. The update comes just a day after Microsoft chose to reexplain its privacy policy and how it relates to Windows 10.The timing of the announcements is coincidental, but also a sign that privacy is an important arena in which platform vendors must compete today.To read this article in f
  
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• Connected vehicles as a technology platform: Don Butler, Ford Motor Company

  29-09-2015 16:20
  
  In this CXO Talk interview, Don Butler, executive director for connected vehicles and services at Ford Motor Company, discusses digital transformation in the automotive industry. This episode defines what Ford means in terms of automobiles being connected and what three aspects of connectivity connected cars need to incorporate, beamed in, brought in and built in because consumers are increasingly connected and living digital lifestyles and Ford is working to be part of that.To read this articl
  
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• Newly found TrueCrypt flaw allows full system compromise

  29-09-2015 15:25
  Windows users who rely on TrueCrypt to encrypt their hard drives have a security problem: a researcher has discovered two serious flaws in the program.TrueCrypt may have been abandoned by its original developers, but it remains one of the few encryption options for Windows. That keeps researchers interested in finding holes in the program and its spin-offs.James Forshaw, a member of Google's Project Zero team that regularly finds vulnerabilities in widely used software, has recently discovered t
  
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• 4 tech tips to guarantee holiday success for retailers

  29-09-2015 14:58
  
  Black Friday is still nearly three months away, but breathless holiday retail sales forecasts are already in full swing. Happily, predictions are optimistic this year: eMarketer forecasts that U.S. retail sales will reach a whopping $885 billion in November and December, an increase of 5.7 percent over last year and the biggest year-over-year growth rate since 2011. Retailers can’t heave a sigh of relief just yet, of course. They are hunkering down to make sure they can compete proper
  
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• Why CIOs should worry about the Internet of Things

  29-09-2015 14:50
  
  The Internet of Things (IoT) has the promise to make everything more intelligent and efficient. Smart grids, smart meters, smart refrigerators and smart cars are just some examples that get mentioned in just about every article that gets written about IoT. But while compelling applications and innovations can come from the IoT, CIOs continue to have two legitimate major areas of concern when thinking about how the mechanics of IoT will affect their organizations: storage and security.Handling th
  
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• Where are all the good Web developers?

  29-09-2015 14:44
  
  So you want to build something on the Web.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• MapR adds in-Hadoop document database

  29-09-2015 14:23
  
  At the Strata + Hadoop World show in New York City today, Hadoop distribution specialist MapR Technologies announced the addition of native JSON support to its MapR-DB NoSQL database, packaged with its MapR Distribution including Hadoop.MapR Chief Marketing Officer Jack Norris says MapR-DB becomes the first in-Hadoop document database, allowing developers to quickly deliver scalable applications that also leverage continuous analytics on real-time data.[Related: MapR 5.0 Hadoop supports real-tim
  
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• How to craft an effective social media policy

  29-09-2015 13:20
  
  Nowadays, it is almost impossible to prevent employees from using social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest – while at work. Some businesses are fine with that, even encouraging employees to promote the company and its products or services on social media. At the same time, however, they don’t want productivity to slip, or to have workers portray the company negatively on popular social media channels.[ Related: A day in the life of a social CIO ]So
  
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• 8 tech degrees that will pay you back

  29-09-2015 12:42
  
  8 tech degrees that will pay you backImage by ThinkstockGetting your college degree is expensive, so it's important to consider the return on that investment when it comes to your education. If you have an interest in technology, you're in luck, because tech degrees offer some of the best potential salaries. Technology degrees are growing, as areas such as social science and humanities have seen a decline, according to CareerBuilder. In fact, half of the fastest growing degrees are in STEM field
  
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• 10 tried and true methods for breaking coder’s block

  29-09-2015 12:42
  
  We’ve all heard of writer’s block, but if you’re a programmer and been doing it long enough, chances are you’ve experienced a cousin of writer’s block, coder’s block.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• “Substantiële stappen nodig voor ICT-beleid”

  29-09-2015 12:02
  Er moeten substantiële stappen worden gezet in het beleid gericht op ICT. Het kabinet mist een integrale visie op ICT en bijgevolg ook op de digitale economie. Met die kritiek komt de Adviesraad voor Wetenschap, Technologie en Innovatie (AWTI) in een vorige week aan de ministers Kamp, Bussemaker aangeboden... lees meer
  
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• Progress Software CEO: We're honored to serve dev community

  29-09-2015 12:00
  
  Progress Software has been helping developers build better applications since Ronald Reagan was president -- in his first term. Along the way, the company, which boasts a base of more than 1.7 million developers, has evolved to meet the changing needs of the enterprises and software companies that use its products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Many retailers anxious facing Thursday's chip-card conversion deadline

  29-09-2015 12:00
  
  The nation's retailers bear a huge share of the burden of converting to more secure chip card technology, even as banks have been shipping updated chip credit and debit cards to millions of customers for months.
  On Thursday, retailers of all sizes must have inew payment terminals installed in their stores, restaurants and hotels. If they don't meet the Oct. 1 deadline set by banks and card companies, they will then incur all the financial liability for fraud with cards using older magnetic stri
  
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• Juniper unites the enterprise

  29-09-2015 11:15
  
  Juniper Networks this week unveiled a reference architecture for enterprise networks intended to assist in the transition to cloud computing.
  Called Unite, the architecture is embodied in the company’s Junos operating system software and encompasses a handful of new and existing Juniper products. They include the EX9200 switch, the Junos Space Network Director management system, and third party products integrated through Juniper’s Open Converged Framework.To read this article in fu
  
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• Amazon joins the on-demand economy, using independent contractors for deliveries

  29-09-2015 08:36
  
  Amazon.com is using independent contractors for its Flex delivery program to ferry packages to customers, adopting a staffing method that has already attracted controversy and lawsuits.Amazon Flex, which the company describes as its newest delivery innovation, allows individuals to be their own bosses while earning up to US$25 per hour or more delivering Prime Now orders, wrote company spokeswoman, Kelly Cheeseman, in an email on Monday.Prime Now uses an app to offer charged one-hour delivery an
  
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• Facebook crashes for 2nd time in a week

  29-09-2015 03:51
  
  Facebook crashed again on Monday, the second time in less than a week and the third time in three weeks.
  The social network went down for nearly three-quarters of an hour between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET. Users were unable to access their Facebook pages or struggled with extremely long load times or pages that would only partially load.
  Instead of seeing their news feeds or friends' pages, uses received the message: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as
  
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• iPhone 6S doubles down on memory and speed

  29-09-2015 03:18
  
  The iPhone 6S comes with twice the DRAM memory of its predecessor and the very latest in memory technology, which boosts performance by as much as 100%.
  Rumors that the iPhone 6S, which began shipping last week, would double down on its DRAM capacity had been around for the past several months, but iFixit's teardown confirmed them this past week.
  One surprise: Not only does the iPhone 6S come with 2GB of DRAM, but it uses Samsung's leading-edge LPDDR4 memory. SK Hynix is producing the memory fo
  
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• Microsoft's Office 2016 intro guides are here, a week late and short on useful details

  29-09-2015 03:17
  
  We concluded our Office 2016 review by noting how poorly Microsoft was promoting the new features of the suite. A new series of Office 2016 guides, published Monday, help rectify that shortcoming—barely. 
  On Monday, Microsoft launched a series of guides to Office 2016—covering Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote—that cover the basic features of each app, as well as a quick guide to getting started. In addition to the guides that cover the new Office 2016 apps, t
  
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• NASA finds signs of water on Mars, raising hopes of finding life

  29-09-2015 03:16
  
  NASA scientists have found evidence of liquid water on the surface of the Red Planet.
  The space agency announced today that after years of investigation, they have determined that water intermittently seeps from below ground and on to the Martian surface. The water appears to ebb and flow depending on the season and the weather.
  NASA scientists had previously detected crystalized water in the Martian soil and traces of large ancient water flows millions of years old, but this is the first time
  
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• iPhone 6S, 6S Plus sales surpass 13M through first weekend

  29-09-2015 03:04
  
  Apple today said it sold more than 13 million iPhone 6S and 6S Plus handsets through the first weekend of retail sales, a 30% increase over last year's sales claim for the 4.7-in. iPhone 6 and 5.5-in. 6 Plus.
  The Cupertino, Calif., company touted the 13 million as a record. "Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple's history," CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.
  The 13 million included units sold in Apple's own ret
  
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• XcodeGhost: Was Apple negligent?

  29-09-2015 02:56
  
  Stop the presses! The venerable Apple App Store has been compromised! Yes, it’s shocking news. No, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t label me an Apple apologist, but there are some things to be said in its defense. And more importantly, there are some things to be learned from this event, both by Apple and others.
  Certainly a good number of apps (4,000 or so, by some counts) on Apple’s App Store were infected with what has come to be known as the XcodeGhost malware. P
  
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• Google, NASA sign 7-year deal to test D-Wave quantum computers as artificial brains

  29-09-2015 02:53
  
  D-Wave Systems said Monday that the company has signed a seven-year deal with Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association to supply D-Wave’s quantum computers as part of an ongoing investigation to see whether they could be used as the next artificial intelligence platform. 
  Installation of a new D-Wave 2X system was recently completed, the companies said. The system, now operational, includes a 1000+ qubit quantum processor.  “At 1000+ qub
  
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• Tesla's autopilot mode expected in October

  29-09-2015 02:05
  
  An autonomous driving mode that will take some of the strain off of drivers during long trips should arrive in Tesla cars in the next few weeks.Earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk promised the feature as part of a "summer" update, and while Tesla will miss that deadline by a couple of weeks, it is about to roll it out.The company has been testing the software for several months on long drives, including from its Silicon Valley headquarters to Seattle. It keeps the car safely in lane and adjusts its
  
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• Unlicensed LTE backers take fight to the streets

  29-09-2015 00:18
  
  Some of the biggest carriers and mobile technology vendors in the U.S. have banded together to defend unlicensed LTE, a technology that some opponents fear could slow down Wi-Fi.Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA are among the founding members of Evolve, an organization that says it will bring the case for unlicensed LTE to the public. Qualcomm and Alcatel-Lucent are also on board, along with both major trade groups representing U.S. carriers.Unlicensed LTE is a set of technologies for transmitt
  
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