IT Executive news

• Study reveals only 1 in 6 drivers want fully-autonomous vehicles

  24-05-2016 23:28
  
  The overwhelming majority of Americans don't want to own a fully self-driving car in the future, according to a new survey by the University of Michigan (U-M).Creative Commons Lic.
  A Lexus SUV equipped with Google's autonomous driving Lidar and sensors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• HPE is spinning out its huge services business and merging it with CSC

  24-05-2016 23:23
  
  Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will spin off its enterprise services business and merge it with IT services company CSC in a surprise move announced Tuesday. HPE said the "spin-merger" would create a pure-play IT services company with US$26 billion in annual revenue. It expects to close the deal by March 2017.It's the latest step in an effort to turn around one of Silicon Valley's oldest companies. Just last year, Hewlett-Packard split itself into two vendors, with HPE selling data center produ
  
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• Tech woes hamper jury in Oracle case aginst Google

  24-05-2016 23:04
  
  As if the jury deciding the Oracle v. Google trial didn't have enough on its plate already.Deliberations were interrupted Tuesday when the 10-member panel ran into technical problems trying to review evidence from the case given to them on a PC.The jurors apparently wanted to look at some of the source code for Google’s Android OS and couldn’t get the large files to open.“You lawyers should not have done this to the jury; you should have tested it out yourselves,” an irri
  
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• 76% off Intel Compute Stick - Deal Alert

  24-05-2016 22:53
  
  The Intel Compute Stick is a tiny device the size of a pack of gum that can transform any HDMI TV or display into a complete computer. This model is currently discounted 76% or a whopping $375 off its regular Amazon list price, so you can buy this neat little gadget for just $115.90. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (80% rate it a full 5 stars -- read reviews). It comes loaded with Windows 10 and Android 5.1, and has both wifi and bluetooth capabilities. You'll easily connect to the inte
  
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• More CIOs report to the CEO, underscoring IT’s rising importance

  24-05-2016 22:38
  
  Thirty-four percent of CIOs surveyed report directly to their CEO, further validating how IT has become increasingly strategic as businesses seek to generate more money using digital technologies, according to the new 2016 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO survey. However, 65 percent of CIOs say the lack of technical talent -- particularly for big data analytics -- is hampering their efforts to keep up with the pace of change.Marc Snyder, who manages KPMG’s CIO advisory global center of excellence, say
  
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• Google says welcome to the Cloud 2.0

  24-05-2016 22:33
  
  Enterprises' initial entrance into the cloud is over and they witnessing the arrival of the Cloud 2.0. That's the word from Diane Greene, senior vice president for Google's cloud businesses.
  The first phase of the cloud involved testing the waters, figuring out how companies could save time and in-house effort by having apps and services run in the cloud and using the cloud to store data. The top concerns were security and reliability.
  Fast forward several years, and enterprises that have moved
  
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• Cisco's Meraki spreads its cloud to voice

  24-05-2016 22:20
  
  If you manage your whole LAN in the cloud, why not add in the desk phones, too?
  That's what Cisco's Meraki division has done. Its first phone, the MC74, can be managed on the same dashboard Meraki provides for its switches, Wi-Fi access points, security devices, and other infrastructure.
  Cisco bought Meraki in 2012 when it was a startup focused on cloud-managed Wi-Fi. The wireless gear remains, but Cisco took the cloud management concept and ran with it. Now Meraki’s approach is the model
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Is Amazon’s Comixology Unlimited worth a subscription?

  24-05-2016 22:11
  I’ve been a huge fan of comics ever since I was a kid. One of the reasons I bought an iPad Pro was to read my digital comics in all their glory on the big iPad’s 12.9-inch screen, and they certainly do look fantastic on it.
  So imagine my delight today when I noticed that the Comixology app for iOS had been updated on my iPad Pro. I tapped on the update to see more information about it and discovered that I can now subscribe to a new comic book subscription service called Comixology
  
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• Students can now work three years on an F-1 visa, but legal fight continues

  24-05-2016 21:45
  
  The federal government this month officially extended the length of time someone with a STEM degree can work on a student F-1 visa from 29 months to three years.
  Students are eligible to work on their F-1 visa for one year under the government's Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. But in 2008, near the end of his second term, President George W. Bush's administration made it possible for students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields to get a 17-month extension beyon
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: A key factor in the CIO's ability to drive change

  24-05-2016 21:30
  
  I recently met with a major player in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, and the company is incredibly frustrated with how developments are evolving. They pointed out the promise of the IoT but said it’s not evolving much beyond the use case of predictive maintenance. It seems people are In Denial (ID). Why aren’t use cases and revenue opportunities in the IoT exploding? I believe the hindrance is the same as it is when trying to drive change through any new technology: the change i
  
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• Microsoft has been conning Windows users for two months

  24-05-2016 21:16
  
  Microsoft has been using a deceptive tactic to dupe Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users into upgrading to Windows 10 for at least the last two months, according to the company's website.
  An oft-revised support document that Computerworld cited in a May 16 story about Microsoft's aggressive upgrade practices spelled out the workings of a pop-up notification that Windows 7 and 8.1 users had been seeing. The notification told those customers -- primarily consumers, but also many small-to-mid-sized bus
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Stop hurting your IT operations

  24-05-2016 21:05
  
  It’s about time we faced a reality that we conveniently ignore: we constantly and continuously hurt our IT Service Operations. Yes, it is through us – our actions or lack thereof – that make our service operations, and the service desk in particular, perform and look bad and be widely derided by our user community. It’s time that we look at service operations in a very different light. Let’s talk about fundamentals
  As you know in ITIL parlance service operations is
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Open source is a positive sum game, says Cloud Foundry CEO

  24-05-2016 20:52
  
  The central theme of the Cloud Foundry Summit, held this week in Santa Clara, California, was multi-cloud, a theme reinforced in CEO Sam Ramji's keynote.
  During the keynote Ramji said that all of Cloud Foundry releases support AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, VMware vSphere, OpenStack of various flavors, SoftLayer, and RackHD. “This is a really big deal because it simplifies the experience for developers. One consistent developer experience on a platform across all these diffe
  
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• Do we need vendor allies in the malware arms race?

  24-05-2016 20:35
  
  “You simply cannot do incident response and all the functions of a security operations center anymore without vendor operational support.” That is a paraphrased version of what a colleague told me recently. At first, I raised my eyebrows; I’m a huge believer in self-reliance. After more consideration, though, I saw more than a little truth in the statement.
  A typical modern SOC covers numerous functions, including incident response, intrusion detection system (IDS) monitoring,
  
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• Lightning fast NoSQL with Spring Data Redis

  24-05-2016 20:19
  A multi-tiered architecture built on top of Java EE presents a powerful server-side programming solution. As a Java EE developer for many years, I've been mostly satisfied with a three-tiered approach for enterprise development: a JPA/Hibernate persistence layer at the bottom, a Spring or EJB application layer in the middle, and a web tier on top. For more complex use cases I've integrated a workflow-driven solution with BPM (business process management), a rules engine like Drools, and an inte
  
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• Datameer gets an overhaul to make big-data analytics easier

  24-05-2016 18:59
  
  The rise of the citizen data scientist has placed a new premium on easy-to-use analytics tools, and on Tuesday Datameer announced a fresh version of its namesake platform designed with that imperative in mind.New in Datameer 6 are a simplified front end as well as an expanded tool for selecting the best processing framework for the job.Datameer 6's new front end combines the previously linear steps of data integration, preparation, analytics and visualization into a single screen. Shifts in cont
  
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• Disaster recovery in a DevOps world

  24-05-2016 18:58
  
  According to a 2015 survey by IT Revolution Press in conjunction with Puppet Labs, organizations using DevOps deploy code 30 times faster than others, doing deployments multiple times per day. Moreover, change failure gets cut in half with DevOps and services are restored up to 168 times faster than they are at non-DevOps organizations.DevOps: Failing more quickly, and recovering faster
  Let’s focus on those last two points for a moment. One thing is for certain: Embracing DevOps also pays
  
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• Facebook's plan to disrupt cellular gets big-name support

  24-05-2016 18:56
  
  Several of the world's largest cellular carriers, representing almost 1.3 billion subscribers, have pledged support to a Facebook project that aims to dramatically reduce the cost of building and expanding wireless data networks.
  The carriers are joining the company's Telecom Infra Project (TIP), an audacious attempt to design commoditized mobile network gear that can be easily and cheaply deployed to areas currently underserved by carriers.
  Facebook announced the project in February with
  
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• US state officials worry about their ability to respond to cyberattacks

  24-05-2016 18:32
  Many states aren't confident of their ability to respond to cyberattacks on physical infrastructure such as water and electric systems, U.S. emergency response officials say.The U.S. government could do several things to help states improve their response to cyberattacks, including increased funding for technology training programs, cybersecurity experts told a House of Representatives committee Tuesday.States have difficulty hiring top cybersecurity employees, said Steven Spano, presi
  
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• By the numbers: Cyberattack costs compared

  24-05-2016 18:25
  
  Data breaches caused by malicious insiders and malicious code can take as long 50 days or more to fix, according to Ponemon Institute's 2015 Cost of Cyber Crime Study. While malware, viruses, worms, trojans, and botnets take only an estimated 2-5 days to fix.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• French tax police raid Google’s Paris office

  24-05-2016 18:07
  
  French police have raided Google's Paris office as part of an investigation into the company's tax affairs.The raid began at 5 a.m. Tuesday, Paris time, according to local newspaper Le Parisien, and involved five public prosecutors, 25 computer experts, and investigators from the French tax office and the Central Office for the Prevention of Corruption and Financial and Tax Crimes (OCLCIFF), the public prosecutors' office told local media.French prosecutors began investigating Google's finances
  
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• Singapore sets a path toward food and water independence

  24-05-2016 18:00
  
  Singapore is both a city and a nation on a relatively small island in southern Asia near the equator. By area, Singapore is smaller than all five boroughs of New York City, but must supply basic needs, including food and water, to its 5.4 million residents.
  One potential solution to Singapore’s need to grow crops on scarce land is vertical farming.
  Sky Greens, a young company in Singapore,has developed a patented vertical farming system with rotating growing troughs that are mounted on an
  
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• New ads in Google Maps might suggest a pit stop at McDonalds

  24-05-2016 18:00
  
  Later this year, Google Maps users will start seeing new ads as they're driving down the road and planning trips using its mobile app.The company announced a new promoted pins feature on Tuesday that will show users special pins on the map with a brand's logo in different situations, like when they're planning trips, driving by and searching for places to go. For example, when someone searches for "coffee," they might see a pin with a Starbucks logo show up on their map, while another user might
  
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• Big data and analytics spending to hit $187 billion

  24-05-2016 17:09
  
  Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics will grow from nearly $122 billion in 2015 to $187 billion in 2019, according to the new Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide from research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).That's an increase of more than 50 percent over IDC's five-year forecast period.[ CIO.com and Drexel to honor 50 analytics innovators. Nominate your analytics project today! ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click h
  
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• Amazon stops offering refunds for after-purchase price drops

  24-05-2016 17:07
  For a few years, Amazon’s protected users against immediate price drops after purchase with an informal price protection policy that refunded you the difference if the cost of something you bought was slashed mere days later. It appears those good times are over.
  Over the past month, Amazon customers began complaining that the online retailer was no longer honoring price protection refunds on anything, with the sole exception of televisions.
  GroovyPost was the first to notice the change i
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Beating the bell curve blues

  24-05-2016 17:05
  
  “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer”Well, it might have worked for William Shakespeare, but it’s never going to work for those who manage IT people. The winter of discontent caused by having to assign performance ratings to people in conformance to a bell curve has faded, but another winter is never far away when it comes to the bell curve blues. Here’s the kind of thing I’m talking about: “All twenty of my team are high performers; why d
  
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• Skeptics question Android on Chromebooks

  24-05-2016 17:02
  
  Google's announcement last week that it will let owners of Chromebooks run Android apps was met with skepticism by analysts, who argued that it would not significantly change the market for the inexpensive notebooks that run the browser-based Chrome OS.
  Android apps "aren't designed for the keyboard, they're not scaled for the larger screen, so they aren't going to be ideal," said Bob O'Donnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research. "Most people will find that frustrating."
  The combination of
  
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• Twitter introduces 4 big changes that will make tweets much easier to send and read

  24-05-2016 16:58
  
  Twitter isn’t abolishing its defining 140-character limit for tweets, but it’s making some big changes so you can do more within those confines. Other tweaks to the way replies work will remove some of the “inside-baseball” Twitter tricks that act as a barrier to entry for new users.
  In the future, any media you attach to a tweet—be it an image, video, Periscope stream, poll, whatever—will no longer eat into your precious limit. Twitter’s post doesn&rsq
  
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• New DMA Locker ransomware is ramping up for widespread attacks

  24-05-2016 16:24
  The TeslaCrypt creators called it quits recently, but unfortunately for users, there's a new ransomware program that's ready to take its place.Called DMA Locker, this threat first appeared in January, but its encryption implementation was so flawed that it was hard to take it seriously. Researchers had no problem developing a file recovery tool for the first two versions.However, its authors have recently fixed all issues and malware researchers believe that with the newly released version 4, DM
  
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• Windows hardware demands are going up for first time in seven years

  24-05-2016 16:15
  
  If you go out shopping for a new PC after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update rolls out this summer, you might notice something we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The basic hardware requirements for Windows 10 are going up—albeit just slightly. This is the first such hardware increase since 2009 when Windows 7 rolled out.
  Starting with the Anniversary Update, Microsoft’s recommended specifications to hardware vendors—as first noticed by WinBeta and Nokia Power User&mdas
  
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• BrandPost: The Pulse of IT

  24-05-2016 15:51
  We recently partnered with the world's leading IT research company, IDG, and asked IT decision makers three questions about the latest software trends and challenges. What did your peers have to say? Their answers may surprise you.Get Insight You Can Count OnLooking to implement the latest software to give your business a strategic advantage? The majority of our respondents indicated the need for professional services with their next upgrade project. It's not uncommon for in-house teams to need
  
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• BrandPost: Mobility Readiness Survey

  24-05-2016 15:48
  Whether your organization encourages users to bring their own devices or issues corporate devices to maintain visibility and control over network access, you’ve embraced the mobile enterprise. Increasingly, today’s end users demand mobile access, and the enterprise is conforming to these demands. But can your infrastructure really support the mobile enterprise?Accepting the changes in end-user behavior doesn’t necessarily mean that the enterprise has the infrastructure and skil
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 6 reasons team collaboration is so important in online marketing

  24-05-2016 15:45
  
  Marketing departments are undergoing a strange shift in some niches, reducing or eliminating the collaborative power of an entire team in favor of individuals — such as entrepreneurs or seasoned marketing professionals — who oversee campaigns by themselves. In reality, teams are far more efficient due to their collaborative nature, but too many businesses have been sucked into the idea that the human element is less important these days.The illusion of individual marketing “te
  
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• How the Internet of Things improves air travel

  24-05-2016 15:45
  
  Air travel has come a long way since the dark days of 2001. Security remains a concern, but the industry is paying increasing attention to innovation and customer service, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are playing a big role in efforts to make aviation more efficient and improve the passenger experience. As the costs of Internet-connected sensors and networking equipment continue to plummet, airlines, airport operators, airplane manufacturers and other travel and aviation industry s
  
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• BrandPost: The ROI of Disaster Recovery

  24-05-2016 15:00
  
  Many small businesses and medium-sized companies resist developing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy because they don’t want to spend money that could be allocated toward more immediate concerns, such as sales, marketing, and technology that will scale the business.But treating DR like a luxury is like treating fire insurance as merely an option: You’re only asking for trouble, or worse. The Institute for Business & Home Safety writes, “Each year disasters such as floods, h
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Knowing when a full software evaluation project is worthwhile

  24-05-2016 14:28
  
  With more than half of all IT projects still failing, this article by Sharon Florentine  suggests the odds are not in your favor when making a major software purchase. Software evaluation and selection projects are an enormous amount of work for any organization because there are so many factors to consider. It can take months from the start of the project to making the selection and purchasing the software. Is it worth doing all this work up front, either internally or by hiring outsi
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 12-inch MacBook: An Apple redditor's review

  24-05-2016 14:20
  Apple’s 12-inch MacBook has gotten a fair amount of negative and dismissive commentary hurled at it by some journalists and bloggers. But why rely on such jaded people for your buying decision? A lot of them seem to suffer from a perennial case of technology boredom, they move from one product to another and seem to have the attention spans of gnats.An Apple redditor has his own take on the 12-inch MacBook that’s worth reading if you’re considering buying one. And unlike most j
  
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• How IoT will change the job market

  24-05-2016 13:24
  
  The Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to bring millions of devices online, and as many as a quarter million unique IoT applications will be developed by the year 2020. That means opportunities for skilled developers and technologists will abound. However, there are other, subtler ways the IoT will affect the job market.
  "We're seeing tech companies around the globe getting organized and creating IoT strategies, but where they're struggling is they don't have the processes and talent in-house to
  
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• Businesses lack a streamlined approach to digital transformation

  24-05-2016 13:05
  
  Technology is transforming the business world, but for many companies, it's happening faster than they can keep up. Gartner released a report on the state of digital business transformation in 2016, polling 396 leaders of large companies in over 30 countries. The research showed that CEOs are generally optimistic about the future of digital transformation. Three quarters of CEOs reported an understanding about the future of digital transformation and that there needs to be a shift in how it's ap
  
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• If you don't have anything nice to say: Don’t drag Steve Jobs into it

  24-05-2016 12:58
  What’s a publication to do when Apple opens a new flagship store that looks incredible and has some standout architectural features but you don’t want to be seen as falling into the company’s trap of giving it free attention? Why, still report about it, but complain about it the whole time.Writing for Boy Genius Report, Chris Mills says “Apple’s stores have gone from serious to absurd in 15 years.” (Tip o’ the antlers to SamT.)More like Apple Store have
  
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• How to avoid phishing attacks

  24-05-2016 12:39
  
  Keep the network out of reach of criminalsImage by Susana FernandezAccording to the Verizon data breach investigation report published last month, phishing remains a major data breach weapon of choice. Trend Micro added that ransomware is expected to be one of the biggest threats in 2016 and that a single ransom demand will go much higher, reaching seven figures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• The legal mumbo jumbo on popular mobile apps can take over 24 hours to read

  24-05-2016 12:19
  
  Have you ever been put off by the lengthy “terms and conditions” and privacy policies of mobile apps and other online services?The Norwegian Consumer Council also has a grouse against these long and abstruse statements and to prove its point the consumer group has downloaded the terms of service and privacy policies for apps found on an “average” mobile, and are streaming live as guests read out the documents.“Together they exceed the New Testament in length –
  
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• Lawsuit seeks the secrets behind the H-1B lottery

  24-05-2016 12:00
  
  Two business immigration groups have filed a lawsuit seeking information about how the H-1B visa distribution system -- including the visa lottery -- works. It alleges that the U.S. has no right to keep most of the records secret.
  It is not surprising that the H-1B distribution system is coming under scrutiny in a lawsuit. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) this year received 236,000 H-1B visa petitions for the 85,000 visas allowed under the current cap. The agency distributes
  
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• How to escape that forced Windows 10 upgrade you mistakenly agreed to

  24-05-2016 12:00
  On Monday, hordes of angry Windows users pelted Microsoft with complaints about being lured into upgrading their PCs over the weekend. For months, Microsoft has been urging users running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to upgrade to Windows 10 before the free offer expires on July 29. But the series of dialog boxes and other messages that Microsoft has sent users have become increasingly deceptive, burying the opt-out links amid text that appears to commit users to the upgrade.Normally,
  
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• 13 things you need to know about MU-MIMO Wi-Fi

  24-05-2016 12:00
  
  It's been nearly 20 years since Wi-Fi made its debut, and one of its most significant innovations to date is now beginning to spread: MU-MIMO, an optional feature in Wave 2 of the emerging 802.11ac wireless standard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Need more analytics speed? Cray wants to light a fire under your big data

  24-05-2016 09:05
  
  It's no secret that analytics is eating the enterprise world, but if there's anything in perpetually short supply, it's speed. Enter Cray, which on Tuesday unveiled a new supercomputing platform designed with that in mind.Dubbed Urika-GX, the new system is the first agile analytics platform to fuse supercomputing with an open, enterprise framework, Cray said.Due to be available in the third quarter, Urika-GX promises data scientists new levels of performance and the ability to find insight in ma
  
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• Facebook denies bias in Trending Topics, but promises changes nevertheless

  24-05-2016 06:31
  
  Facebook on Monday denied any evidence of ‘systematic political bias’ in the selection or prominence of stories included in its Trending Topics feature, but promised changes in its processes in any case to minimize errors of judgment by individuals, who appear to play an important role in selecting the stories.The move by the social networking company was outlined in a response to a letter from Senator John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, in the wake of a repor
  
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• Google and Oracle's Android copyright fight is up to a jury now

  24-05-2016 02:32
  
  Oracle and Google’s fierce court fight over the code inside Android went to a jury on Monday after closing arguments that sharply differed on the most basic issues.The federal jury in San Francisco is now deciding whether Google’s use of copyrighted Java code constitutes fair use, an exemption that would free the company from having to pay Oracle damages.At issue is "declaring code" that's part of 37 Java APIs Google used. Google says it simply used selected parts of Java to create s
  
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• This site aims to be the Yelp of the SaaS world

  24-05-2016 01:10
  
  Online reviews have already transformed the way people choose everything from restaurants to respiratory therapists, and now SaasGenius wants to do the same for enterprise software in the cloud.This week the company will launch a beta version of its service, and it invites participants to submit reviews of business software in 12 different categories.In the past, businesses looking for software relied primarily on word-of-mouth reviews, but SaasGenius aims to tap the model that's become so commo
  
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• Fair or fowl? We rank all 16 Angry Birds games

  24-05-2016 01:00
  
  Happily Angry after?Angry Birds maker Rovio long boasted about its ambitions to become the next Disney, and now that goal has kinda-sorta come to fruition: The Angry Birds Movie is playing on thousands of screens around the globe. Whether or not it’s any good is another matter altogether—critics' reviews seem pretty mixed. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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