October 29, 2014

Google Developing Disease Detection Pill
"Nanoparticles are the nexus between biology and engineering, so we can make these nanoparticles behave in ways that we want them to," Conrad explained. "Essentially, the idea is simple: You swallow a pill with these nanoparticles, and they're decorated with antibodies or molecules that detect other molecules. They course through your body, and, because the core of these particles are magnetic, you can call them somewhere... And you can ask them what they saw."


From Wearable to Invisible Technology
One of the big players in this school of thought is a company called MC10. MC10 has been working for almost 10 years to create BioStamp and Checklight. These are tiny, wearable devices that come with wireless capabilities, sensors and a number of other features. In BioStamp’s case, the device isn’t so much worn as it is stuck right on the body. Because of it’s flexibility, it can be worn like a temporary patch, or bandaid. Athletes could use something like this to closely and accurately monitor their heart rate and breathing patterns during physical exercise. The device could even track how their muscles respond to different training and what seems to be most effective or most damaging.


Joining up is hard to do
Just as full integration is impossible at a system level, it is also unlikely at an organisational level. Advocates of integrated solutions are often guilty of the merger illusion, namely that putting functions together in the same organisation is sufficient to make sectionalism subside. But as anyone who works in a large organisation will attest, the fact that managers share the same employer and use the same front door is pretty much irrelevant to whether they put corporate, customer-focussed interests above departmental, producerist ones.


Is it Enterprise Architecture or Wall Art?
The thing you have to be careful of is that if you see your markets disappearing, if your product is outdated, or your whole industry is redefining itself, as we have seen in things like media, you have to be ready to innovate. Architecture can restrict your innovative gene, by saying, “Wait, wait, wait. We want to slow down. We want to do things on our platform.” That can be very dangerous, if you are really facing disruptive technology or market changes. Albert Camus wrote a famous essay exploring the Sisyphus myth called “The Myth of Sisyphus,” where he reinterpreted the central theme of the myth.


Tech Support’s NSFW Problem
One big concern: As McAfee Labs warns in its 2014 Threat Predictions report, "Attacks on mobile devices will also target enterprise infrastructure. These attacks will be enabled by the now ubiquitous bring-your-own-device phenomenon coupled with the relative immaturity of mobile security technology. Users who unwittingly download malware will in turn introduce malware inside the corporate perimeter that is designed to exfiltrate confidential data." Today's malware from porn sites is usually not the kind of spyware that's dangerous to enterprises, says Carlos Castillo, mobile and malware researcher at McAfee Labs -- but that could change.


Top 10 Cloud Myths
"Cloud computing, by its very nature, is uniquely vulnerable to the risks of myths. It is all about capabilities delivered as a service, with a clear boundary between the provider of the service and the consumer," said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "From a consumer perspective, 'in the cloud' means where the magic happens, where the implementation details are supposed to be hidden. So it should be no surprise that such an environment is rife with myths and misunderstandings." Even with a mostly agreed on formal definition, multiple perspectives and agendas still conspire to mystify the subject ever more.


Five ways to make identity management work best across hybrid computing environments
The idea of holistic management for identity is key. There's no question about that, and something that we'll come back to is this idea of the weakest link -- a very commonly understood security principle. As our environment expands with cloud, mobile, on-prem, and managed hosting, the idea of a weak point in any part of that environment is obviously a strategic flaw.  As we like to say at SailPoint, it’s an anywhere identify principle. That means all people -- employees, contractors, partners, customers, basically from any device, whether you’re on a desktop, cloud, or mobile to anywhere.


Is US Tech Policy Ready For A Zombie Apocalypse?
One Delaware law seeks to solve this problem by allowing all digital content to be passed along to family members after death. However, because eBooks on Amazon and movies on iTunes aren't owned, but rather licensed, these digital goods can be passed on only to the extent allowed by end-user licensing agreements. These agreements handle transfers differently.Apple's EULA defers to California law, while Amazon's and Google's EULAs don't allow for any transfer. Therefore, many state laws (such as Delaware's) will have little effect. Federal legislation is needed to put this issue to rest.


Cloud Sprawl: The Problem of Too Many Clouds
Believe it or not, this is actually becoming a bit of a problem. Administrators are working with a very new technology and are beginning to expand their WAN (or cloud) presence far beyond what they originally thought would be possible. IT consumerization has been the main driver behind this push as has been the demand for more distributed computing systems. Unlike virtualization or even desktop sprawl, administrators have the opportunity to get control of the cloud environment sooner rather than later.


How SOA Governance (and SOA Management) Should Actually Be Done
Organizations do have well-defined separation of governance and management functions in general, but this wisdom seems to be absent when dealing with SOA. After all, the board of directors and the executive management team look at the “what” and “how”, respectively, of everything the organization does. Similarly, project steering committees and working groups do the same at lower levels. So what about SOA governance (and SOA management)? Why is there so much confusion and conflation between these two functions? Shouldn’t it be just a simple matter of extension, based on what we know about SOA and about the functions of governance and management?



Quote for the day:

"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it." -- Lou Holtz

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