IT Executive news

• Windows: When no growth is an improvement

  21-10-2016 21:51
  
  Microsoft yesterday said that revenue in the September quarter for the More Personal Computing group was down 2%, the second consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines and the fifth contraction in the last six quarters.
  Windows revenue, which accounts for the bulk of More Personal Computing's (MPC) total, was flat. But that was an improvement over the prior quarter, when sales of the operating system were down 4%.
  "Our total [Windows] OEM business was flat this quarter, more in line with th
  
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• Capital One CIO finds tech talent at Grace Hopper conference

  21-10-2016 21:51
  
  Capital One’s CIO Rob Alexander knows that CIOs can’t afford to sit on the sidelines as the war for technology talent in the digital age rages around them. That’s why Alexander is attending Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Technology in Houston this week.With a reported 15,000, mostly women attendees this year, the event was full of both experienced and blossoming software programmers, product managers and other IT staff, making it a can’t miss event for Alexander, wh
  
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• Extensive DDoS attack against Dyn restarts, could indicate a new use of old criminal tech

  21-10-2016 21:34
  
  Attacks against DNS service provider Dyn resumed today after a two and a half hour lull, and could indicate a new application of an old criminal technology, experts say.
  Dyn hasn’t shared details on the type of DDoS attacks used nor the size of those attacks that have affected access to sites including Amazon, Etsy, GitHub, Shopify, Twitter and the New York Times.
  +More on Network World: Gartner Top 10 strategic technology trends you should know for 2017To read this article in full or to
  
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• Target passes Walmart as top corporate solar customer

  21-10-2016 21:32
  
  Target has surpassed perennial champion Walmart as the U.S.'s top corporate user of solar power, according to a new report.
  Target has installed 147 megawatts (million watts or MW) of solar capacity on 300 stores, according to the 2016 Solar Means Business Report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
  "We're incredibly proud of the progress we've made in improving building efficiencies and reducing environmental impact. Our commitment to installing solar panels on 500 stores and d
  
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• iPads and Apple TV aimed at transforming patient care

  21-10-2016 21:29
  
  No one looks forward to a hospital stay, but the tech amenities at Jacobs Medical Center could make visits more comfortable for patients.
  With an iPad and Apple TV in every room, patients will be able to control room settings such as temperature, lighting and window shades. They can access games, log into their own social and entertainment apps, and control the TV. The iPad also provides access to a patient’s electronic medical records, including information such as medications, care
  
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• BrandPost: 2016 CEO Mandate: Develop Data Analytics

  21-10-2016 18:11
  
  It is a crucial time for organizations across multiple industries, as CEOs work to help their companies navigate critical disruptors, unique challenges and powerful external forces.According to KPMG’s 2016 CEO Outlook survey, in fact, two-thirds of chief executive officers believe that the next three years will be more critical than the last 50 years. “CEOs have a clear goal, to create a more intelligent, data-driven experience for their customers, their innovators, and their partner
  
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• Bankers plan to give Corda blockchain code to Hyperledger project

  21-10-2016 18:07
  
  Corda, a distributed ledger platform developed by a finance industry consortium, will go open source next month when its developers donate the code to the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project.The move was reported by Reuters on Thursday and the story subsequently reposted to the websites of Corda backer R3 and the Hyperledger Project.A distributed ledger, sometimes referred to as a blockchain, is a database shared across a number of servers and that relies on a consensus among those servers to
  
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• Why Patriots coach tossed Microsoft’s Surface

  21-10-2016 18:03
  
  If there was ever a better argument for focusing more on the deployment of a technology than on the technology itself it was when Bill Belichick tossed out his tablet and went back to using hard copy pictures. Boy can I relate. I’ve been there myself. I don’t care how good the technology is, if the deployment is bad it doesn’t matter what the hardware is, your experience will suck. While moving back to paper is perhaps a tad extreme, sometimes you just want to slap the related
  
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• 75% off DKnight MagicBox II Bluetooth 4.0 Portable Wireless speaker, 10W Output Power with Enhanced Bass - Deal Alert

  21-10-2016 17:49
  
  The DKnightMagicBox II Bluetooth speaker offers great quality sound with the latest Bluetooth 4.0 technology. It features two highly powerful 40mm total 10W acoustic drivers for excellent sound. With the ultra-compact size and the soft touch rubber design, it can be easily fitted into a backpack, suitcase, or a travel bag. The built-in 2000 mAh rechargeable battery enables an 10-12 hours of playtime on a single charge. This speaker is strong enough to fill up a kitchen, living room, or clas
  
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• Easy-to-exploit rooting flaw puts Linux computers at risk

  21-10-2016 17:29
  
  The maintainers of Linux distributions are rushing to patch a privilege escalation vulnerability that's already being exploited in the wild and poses a serious risk to servers, desktops and other devices that run the OS.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2016-5195, has existed in the Linux kernel for the past nine years. This means that many kernel versions that are used in a variety of computers, servers, routers, embedded devices and hardware appliances are affected.The Red Hat security team de
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Just Thinking Cloud? You're Already Too Late!

  21-10-2016 16:41
  
  Just Thinking Cloud? You’re Already Too Late! Many of us today are thinking about the cloud and what it might mean to the future.  Yet as we’ve pondered cloud technology, it has gone from an intriguing concept to an absolute inevitability.  In fact, it has gotten to the point that if by 2020, an IT leader is not an expert in leveraging the cloud, that person may not have a job. When we step back and take a look at the past decade, it has been an avalanche in terms
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Why offshoring doesn't matter

  21-10-2016 16:20
  
  Recently, an enterprise client was debating whether the offshoring ratio — the percentage of resources located off versus on shore — proposed by a service provider was too high, too low or just right. About a half-hour into the conversation, I realized we were asking the wrong question altogether.Trying to discern what constitutes too much risk when it comes to offshoring has been a common exercise for years. After all, the cost implications are significant. Service providers tend to
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: We can't afford quality!

  21-10-2016 15:43
  
  A client recently made a statement to me that roughly translated as I am concerned about the high cost of doing a quality job. Wow! Talk about not understanding the impact of quality. The organization was hemorrhaging from the consequences of low-quality work in a major software implementation. One of several root causes of that situation was a complete lack of quality management in the software build.
  Unfortunately, they were contemplating the same ineffective approach the second time around.
  
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• Major DDoS attack on Dyn DNS knocks Spotify, Twitter, Github, Etsy, and more offline

  21-10-2016 15:30
  
  Update: Dyn says services were restored at 9:36 A.M. Eastern time, and I can now connect to the affected websites again—which indicates the two events were indeed related. Every morning, I sit down at my PC with a cup of coffee, crank some tunes on Spotify, and scour r/techsupportgore for gnarly PC disaster pics to tweet out. Not this morning, because it appears a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack targeting DNS host Dyn has knocked a big chunk of the Internet offline.
  
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• Cloud services lift IT outsourcing market higher than expected

  21-10-2016 14:27
  
  Companies signed IT and business process outsourcing deals worth a record $9.5 billion in annual contract value, according to the quarterly outsourcing index produced Information Services Group (ISG). Traditional outsourcing contracts were up 5 percent to $5.8 billion, while the fast-growing as-a-service segment leapt 20 percent to $3.7 billion, according to ISG.
  “Most conversations we’re having with clients are cloud-led,” says John Keppel, ISG president, for Europe, Middle E
  
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• Competition in gigabit internet market can significantly reduce prices

  21-10-2016 14:19
  
  Americans have long put up with expensive broadband service that's slower and more expensive than what is enjoyed in much of Europe and parts of Asia. Even when big ISPs announce that they deployed gigabit broadband in a new market, all too often the claims are exaggerated or restricted to just a few neighborhoods.
  In the last few years, however, a number of ISPs, Google, and a few U.S. cities made ultra-fast connections available via a technology called "Fiber to the Home" (FTTH). When there's
  
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• IBM says Macs save up to $543 per user

  21-10-2016 14:18
  
  By the end of 2016, roughly one in four IBM employees will use a Macintosh computer. The tech giant, which employs 400,000 people, bought and provisioned 90,000 Macs since it started to support Apple laptops in June 2015. It expects to have at least 100,000 Macs deployed by 2017.IBM now has the largest enterprise Mac deployment in the world, and it is Apple's biggest business customer for Macs, according to Mac maker. Apple declined to provide details on the other leading enterprise Mac customer
  
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• 13 travel bags for the discerning techie

  21-10-2016 14:00
  
  The best travel bags and backpacks for techiesWould you use a rolling suitcase with a built-in laptop tray? How about a backpack designed specifically for GoPro fans, or a purse that recharges your iPhone? Bag makers, including startups and more established brands, clearly think you would. During the past year or so, a variety of bags hit the market that aim to make the life of the gadget-laden traveler a little easier, often in clever or unusual ways. These 13 bags range in style, size, fe
  
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• Windows GDI flaw leads to PowerShell attacks

  21-10-2016 12:00
  
  A critical vulnerability in the Windows GDI (graphics device interface) that Microsoft patched in its latest round of security updates was exploited by a sophisticated attack group to escape browser-based sandboxes and remotely execute malicious code, according to Kaspersky Lab.
  Windows GDI is an API that helps applications work with graphics and formatted text on video displays and printers. The remote code execution flaw stemmed from how GDI handled objects in memory (CVE-2016-3393), and the
  
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• MIT ports Tesseract OCR to JavaScript

  21-10-2016 12:00
  
  With their JavaScript port of the Tesseract optical character recognition engine, developers at MIT are looking to provide convenience and lower costs in building image-processing applications.
  Tesseract.js, released this month, supports more than 60 languages, automatic text orientation, and script detection. Running in either a browser or a server via Node.js, it features a simple interface for reading paragraph, word, and character bounding boxes.[ Use JavaScript in your dev shop? InfoWorld
  
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• Deep dive: The Apple Watch Series 2 delivers on last year’s promise

  21-10-2016 12:00
  
  This year’s Apple Watch Series 2 surpasses the previous model by addressing many first-generation flaws.
  
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• Men need to do more to support gender diversity, says Dell EMC exec

  21-10-2016 09:51
  
  Men need to do more to encourage and support gender diversity within technology companies, according to Stephane Reboud, EMEA director of services sales for Dell EMC.
  The proportion of women going into technical roles is actually on the decline, he said. "When I did engineering studies, 22 percent of my class at French engineering school were women. Twenty years later it's only 12 percent," Reboud told ComputerworldUK in an interview.
  "We need to continue to engage - especially men - on those d
  
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• 'Please think of Dell EMC as one company,' pleads CEO Michael Dell

  21-10-2016 09:14
  
  Just six weeks since the record-breaking $67 billion merger of Dell and EMC, the overriding official message at Dell EMC World in Austin this week is one of unity.
  "We're not two companies anymore. It's one company. Please think of us as one company as that's what we are now," CEO Michael Dell told press.
  However there are confusions. It's unclear if the new company is called Dell Techologies or Dell EMC (both have been used interchangably throughout).
  Far more importantly, it's not clear what
  
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• Intel asserts its trademark rights against John McAfee

  21-10-2016 08:56
  Intel does not object to John McAfee using his personal name in connection with his business, but it objects to the use by the maverick entrepreneur and security expert of the McAfee trade name and trademark in a way that could confuse or deceive consumers or dilute the brand.The issue came up when John McAfee teamed with MGT Capital Investments, which had been until recently mainly into gaming sites, and announced in May that it is in the process of acquiring a diverse portfolio of cybersecurit
  
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• Privacy groups target kids advertising disguised as YouTube content

  21-10-2016 06:05
  Marketing companies are targeting children on YouTube with advertising disguised as other content, an "unfair and deceptive" business practice, three privacy groups said in a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.The companies, including Disney's Maker Studios and DreamWorks' AwesomenessTV, use popular "influencers" on YouTube to pitch products, aimed at children worldwide, with videos that "masquerade" as unsponsored content, said the complaint, filed Friday by the Center for Digital D
  
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