Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

February 20, 2013

Predicting your unpredictable capacity needs in the data center

There have been many advances in technology in the last few years in the data center - all in an effort to handle the demands of today’s business environment. There’s more data to process and more storage needed to keep it all. When it’s time to figure out how to plan for your future needs, there are numerous variables to juggle and take into account. Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Data Centers talks about the capacity planning dilemma.

REMux: An Experimental Approach to Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is important in a world of increasingly diverse device sizes and capabilities, but there's no one, correct way to design responsive sites. Dirk Lüth offers one very interesting technique that uses common media queries, but then alters the rendering based on rem units and font-size based proportionally on the viewport. It's a unique approach, and you'll find lots of interesting ideas here.

Mozilla debuts in-browser PDF, patches 13 Firefox bugs
Firefox's PDF viewer came out of a Mozilla Labs project initially dubbed "PDF.js," the "js" for JavaScript, which along with HTML5 APIs (application programming interfaces), was used to build the browser's viewer. With the move, Mozilla follows in Google's footsteps: The search giant baked a PDF viewer into Chrome more than two years ago. But unlike Chrome's PDF viewer, which operates inside the browser's anti-exploit sandbox, Firefox's does not sport similar defenses. And that matters, as PDF documents are often rigged with malicious code.

Wave Outlines Windows 8 Mobile Device Management Alternative
To hear Wave tell it, the Windows 7 or Windows 8 device itself can act as a security token. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which is a chip soldered into the device's motherboard, stores user credential information. Mobile device users enter a single PIN to connect to corporate network resources, which avoids having to enter multiple passwords for access. On the back end, Microsoft's Active Directory can be used to manage the security certificates and even disable a device remotely should it get lost.

How we hacked Facebook with OAuth2 and Chrome bugs
Egor Homakov and @isciurus chained several different bugs in Facebook, OAuth2 and Google Chrome to craft an interesting exploit. MalloryPage can obtain your signed_request, code and access token for any client_id you previously authorized on Facebook. The flow is quite complicated so let me explain the bugs we used.

Project Management, Cloud Computing Style
The truly portable office is not only possible, but is quickly becoming the norm for many businesses. Handheld devices were a big step toward the reality of working anywhere, and now cloud computing has removed the final barrier. With project management software hosted in the cloud, you can have everything you need at your fingertips, anywhere you happen to be. Of course, every technology has its advantages and drawbacks. In this article, we'll take a look at how companies can move their project management into the cloud, who can benefit, and what pitfalls still remain for this lofty software solution.

Who’s the best cloud storage provider? Microsoft, says Nasuni; but it still likes Amazon
So here’s an interesting tidbit. Nasuni, which manages cloud storage for small and midsized businesses, ran a set of exhaustive tests to assess the performance, availability and scalability of five major cloud storage providers. And the winner? Microsoft Windows Azure. Yup. Not Amazon S3, but Azure Blob storage.

Silicon Labs and SIGFOX Collaborate to Unleash the Potential of the Internet of Things
“The collaboration between Silicon Labs and SIGFOX provides a solid wireless platform for M2M communication and cloud connectivity,” said Diwakar Vishakhadatta, vice president and general manager of Silicon Labs’ Embedded Systems business. “The integration of SIGFOX’s breakthrough UNB technology further strengthens Silicon Labs’ position as a leading supplier of mixed-signal solutions for smart energy, connected home, and other monitoring and control applications for the Internet of Things.”

Shuttleworth's one device: The smartphone is the tablet and the PC
In a video posted to YouTube this week, a very Bono-like Shuttleworth, channelling his inner Jony Ive and Steve Jobs, spoke at length about the mobile version of the company's open-source and Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu for tablets. The OS will be entering a preview release shortly that will be installable on selected Android hardware, such as Google's Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus phone.

Quote for the day:

"When I've heard all I need to make a decision, I don't take a vote. I make a decision." -- Ronald Reagan

February 19, 2013

Leadership Caffeine-Listen Harder, Please!
In working with leaders at all levels striving to strengthen their performance,listening skills aren’t an issue some of the time, they are an issue nearly 100% of the time. For too many in leadership roles, either the Symphony of Brilliance (as in, “I know the answer” or, “I’m right”), or, the Symphony of Busyness (“I’ve got so much to do, don’t distract me”) playing in their minds, drowns out attempts at communication emanating from those around them.

How Social Intelligence Can Guide Decisions

This isn’t to suggest that “social” will entirely displace current methods of intelligence gathering. But it should emerge as a strong complement. As it does, social-intelligence literacy will become a critical asset for C-level executives and board members seeking the best possible basis for their decisions.

Five overlooked cost categories for new servers
Acquiring new servers isn't just a matter of cutting a purchase order and paying the bill. Just as any automobile carries additional costs after the initial purchase, IT professionals and business planners need to identify and account for the added costs of new server deployments. Let's consider five general cost categories that can inflate the cost of your next server refresh.

9 Tips for How to Use Operating Level Agreements in Multisourcing
"By establishing OLAs between these groups, the IT function can provide the appearance of seamless service to the business," says Edward Hansen, partner with law firm Baker & McKenzie. Until recently, OLAs were most often internal to an IT organization or a single large service provider, ensuring that the groups within the organization were working together to deliver IT services. But with the rise of multisourcing, OLAs are back in the spotlight.

US Department of Energy: Proving the cloud service broker model
To bring order to this chaos, a new sub-market of the broader cloud-computing market has emerged: the cloud service broker (CSB). Envision some kind of cloud middleman, helping to cut through the plethora of cloud options and services by offering…well, just what a CSB offers isn’t quite clear. And that’s the problem with the whole notion of a CSB. The market has yet to fully define it.

Jacqui Taylor (Global) - Bursting the IT Legacy
In our legacy IT systems, we built to manage the capacity of a peak hour, day or month irrespective of how many of these existed in the business year. This ensured that our IT systems had capability and resources available year round to cope with the relatively few peaks, so unused capacity was the norm and services were therefore expensive. When we build a PaaS we build only the minimum of infrastructure resources (‘provisioned' in Cloud-speak) so that you only pay for what you use at any given time and to meet the peaks we burst additional resources as required, hence the term Cloud Bursting

Hortonworks Sandbox Opens Up Enterprise Apache Hadoop To Newbies
The free, self-contained virtual machine with Hadoop pre-configured has been built using the new Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) 1.2, the industry’s only enterprise-ready, 100 per cent open source platform powered by Apache Hadoop, the release added. Hortonworks is one of the leading commercial vendors of Apache Hadoop, the open source platform for storing, managing and analysing big data. It is now making Hadoop more robust and easier for clients to install, manage and use.

What Data Can’t Do
Commerce depends on trust. Trust is reciprocity coated by emotion. People and companies that behave well in tough times earn affection and self-respect that is extremely valuable, even if it is hard to capture in data. ... Data analysis is pretty bad at narrative and emergent thinking, and it cannot match the explanatory suppleness of even a mediocre novel.

Seven dirty secrets of data visualisation
Data visualisation is a wonderful way of exploring data, finding new insights, and telling a compelling story. But what are the real challenges visualisation developers face - and what don't they want you to know about their work? Here are some of the dirty secrets of the information visualisation (infovis) profession, with an inside look at the process of visualisation development, along with practical tools and approaches for dealing with its inevitable challenges and frustrations.

Google-refine
Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase.

European Copyright Society Says Hyperlinks (And Framing) Should Not Be Infringing
Basically, since a hyperlink just points you somewhere it's not transmitting the work, there's no copyright violation. The paper goes into significantly more detail, citing case law around the globe to support its position. It also warns the court that while this may seem like a simple issue, it's vitally important to the health of the internet

Quote for the day:

"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery." -- Warren Bennis

February 18, 2013

Highly Regulated Companies Tiptoe Into Social Media
Banks are embracing social media despite the fact that the financial services industry may be subject to the strictest compliance requirements and regulatory mandates. In just one example, in January 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) published guidelines for blogs and social networking sites that, among other things, outline specific record-keeping responsibilities and supervision requirements.

Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Significantly Influenced $1.1 Trillion
"Overwhelmingly we find EA practitioners focused on delivering on business value and strategic transformation," said Philip Allega, managing vice president at Gartner. "Gone are the days of just 'doing EA' with little value or impact. Sixty-eight percent of organizations surveyed stated that they are focusing their EA program on aligning business and IT strategies, delivering strategic business and IT value, or enabling major business transformation."

Facing Inconvenient Truths, the Mantle of Leadership?
As a leader you might think suffering at work isn’t applicable to you and your team. If your team is engaged, motivated, with a clear purpose, a great work/life balance and works harmoniously together, you could be in the small majority of leaders who actually help to relieve suffering at work. If you think you are, ask your team. If they confirm your perception, congratulations: If not, would you listen and face an inconvenient truth?

Big Data Has Huge Network Implications
Fast-forward to 2013 and Big Data is already starting to shake the foundations of the IT industry, with huge implications for the network market. According to new research from IDC, Big Data technology and services will grow at a 31.7% compound annual growth rate, around seven times the rate of the overall IT market, with revenues reaching $23.8 billion in 2016.

Stop Hyping Big Data and Start Paying Attention to ‘Long Data’
Datasets of long timescales not only help us understand how the world is changing, but how we, as humans, are changing it — without this awareness, we fall victim to shifting baseline syndrome. This is the tendency to shift our “baseline,” or what is considered “normal” — blinding us to shifts that occur across generations (since the generation we are born into is taken to be the norm).

Enterprise Sector Opens Up To Post-PC Era Devices
According to a survey by Forrester Research the enterprise sector loves post-PC era devices. Forrester's annual Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends survey reveals how much information workers in the enterprise sector love Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Windows Phone amongst other platforms. The survey also reveals how much these workers are eyeing tablets and smartphone devices based on Windows platform.

American Express Lets Twitter Users Shop Via Tweet
Cardmembers can sync their eligible cards to Twitter by going to sync.americanexpress.com/twitter and adding a billing and shipping address. Starting Monday, users can tweet #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to purchase a US$25 Amex gift card for $15. The system sends users a confirmation tweet in their @ Connect tab within 15 minutes, and after the user tweets back to confirm the purchase, the product will ship to the address on file via two-day shipping, courtesy of American Express.

Is your PaaS composable orcontextual? (Hint: the answer matters)
Parts of an IT environment should be composable, but there will always be elements where the relative stability of contextual extension makes more sense. And composable systems can leverage API-driven systems that themselves are designed primarily for extensibility via contextual approaches. The key is to think about each system from the perspective of how it will be used, and to target its extensibility mechanism based on needs.

R and Data Mining: Examples and Case Studies

This chapter introduces some basic concepts and techniques for data mining, including a data

mining procedure and popular data mining techniques, such as clustering, classi cation and association

rules. It also presents R and its packages, functions and task views for data mining. At

last, some datasets used in this book are described.

Help Wanted: Defining a Business Intelligence Leader
here are great external resources from TDWI and Robert Half International. Finally, here's a description of a senior BI architect/manager/executive I've used in the past. Would love to hear from everyone on what's missing, what can be added, changed, etc.

Quote for the day:

"The only way to get ahead is to fail early, fail often, and fail forward." -- John Maxwell

February 17, 2013

How to Design an Effective Culture
Jim & Michele discuss designing culture and making really true teams that have collaborative intimacy and solving really hard problems with great teams. Building on their 16 years research, experiments and working with teams they talk about how their approach can build environments of hyper-productivity and joy in work.

Turning Data Into Profit
The unused 95% data could very well be the most significant chunk. If it is used efficiently then it can refine complex business initiatives, identify operational roadblocks and help in developing new services and products. The productivity of Big Data is clear but for extracting those data investment in technologies and updated workforce is desirable. But first of all, a clear idea about Big Data is necessary to start with.

AI Found Better at Diagnosing, Treating Patients, Than Doctors
New research by Indiana University shows using artificial intelligence to understand and predict the outcomes of medical treatment could reduce healthcare costs by more than 50% while also improving patient outcomes by nearly the same amount.

KPMG Report Shows Cloud Implementation Challenges and Higher Costs Than Expected
One of the most important lessons uncovered by this research is that business process redesign needs to be done in tandem with cloud adoption, if organizations hope to achieve the full potential of their cloud investments. Executives have found that simultaneous process redesign is central to addressing the complexities that often arise in the implementation and operational phases of cloud adoption.

Big Data is a solution looking for a problem: Gartner
While businesses are keen to start mining their data stores for useful insights, and many are already experimenting with technologies like Hadoop, the biggest challenge is working out what question you are trying to answer, said Debra Logan, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “Even banks are not doing Big Data in a production sense, because most of what they've got is pretty well organised and in mainframes,” she said.

Entrepreneurs: Do you have a People Strategist?

This would be a consulting role that feels like a partner in the organization – to help achieve business through strategic people management. By serving the entrepreneur and questioning him as an insider, while bringing the perspectives of an outsider. A fundamental pre-condition for Human Capital management is a strong will at the executive management level of the company, combined with the skill of strategic people management. A Human Capital Strategist can provide just that.

Watch out HP, IBM, Teradata, Oracle: Amazon Redshift is here
Redshift, based on technology from ParAccel, claims to offer big-time data warehouse capability for a tenth of the price of legacy suppliers and, as of today, customers can start finding out for themselves if it lives up to the hype. If it does, it will uphold Amazon’s reputation for disrupting tech giants. Redshift availability was announced on the AWS blog.

Big Data success depends on better risk management practices like FAIR
The panel of experts explores new trends and solutions in the area of risk management and analysis. Learn now how large enterprises are delivering better risk assessments and risk analysis, and discover how big data can be both an area to protect, but also used as a tool for better understanding and mitigating risks.

Projects, errors, the user experience and planning in 2013
As we reflect on the work that was done, projects completed, our operational effectiveness, and hopefully how IT contributed to the successes of the business, and document these achievements using your company's format of choice, don't forget to use business terms and avoid buzzwords and IT jargon. Once completed, make sure you share this record with everyone within IT so that they can see how their hard work contributed not only to the department's success, but to the company's overall goals as well.

Designing the next programming language? Understand how people learn!
If we, for example, look at the "programming" languages created in the Model-Driven Development there, we see quite some focus on involving domain experts in development by creating higher level, domain-specific, or sometimes even visual languages. Although there are much more reasons to do Model-Driven Development, it is the ease of use and the lower entry barrier that captures the imagination.

Quote for the day:

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak - and to sit down and listen" -- Winston Churchill

February 16, 2013

Data Laboratory: Is It For You?
What would the purpose of a data laboratory be? I think that the following ideas are strong candidates: Identify what value can be extracted from existing enterprise data; Identify value that may be present for the enterprise in new data sources that can be acquired externally or internally; Synthesize new "data compounds" through the "chemistry" of data integration and assess them for business value; Distill new information products from the raw data resources; and Figure out how to work around existing data deficiencies.

Hadoop to Be Pervasive By 2015
While IT organizations conduct trials over the next few years, especially with Hadoop-enabled database management system (DBMS) products and appliances, application providers will go one step further and embed purpose-built, Hadoop-based analysis functions within packaged applications. The trend is most noticeable so far with cloud-based packaged application offerings, and this will continue.

Ericsson and Gemalto Work to Simplify M2m with Embedded SIMs
The use of embedded SIMs has several advantages, according to Blockstrand. So-called late binding allows the SIM card to be activated later in the production process of a car, for example, he said. The embedded SIM card can be remotely activated when it arrives in the country where it will be sold, instead of someone locally having to put a card in every car.

How Cisco’s Learning Network Became a Social Hub for the IT Industry
Five years ago, Learning@Cisco, the educational services division of Cisco Systems, built a social network platform it called the Cisco Learning Network to help teach and train people who wanted to learn how to become certified by Cisco. But since then it has grown to become a portal for the entire IT industry with over 2 million users who share information on everything from Cisco certification to job searches. It has allowed Cisco to differentiate its brand, create loyal customers, mine for marketing insights and influence the market.

A ‘Golden Era’ of Insight: Big Data’s Bright Future
Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft and co-director of Microsoft Research’s Redmond lab sees a future where machines, fueled by large amounts of data, can become “empowering, lifelong digital companions” who know what you want or need (be it pizza or medicine), where you want to go (be it Hawaii or the most traffic-free route to the ball game) and generally work with a passion on your behalf.

Joy at Work: It's Your Right
Achieving joy at work is not only possible; it's a necessity. I've come to appreciate that happiness on the job is a leading indicator of an individual's ability to sustain high levels of passion, performance, and productivity over the long run. If we can uncover our true gifts and find work that makes regular use of them, we've fulfilled our responsibility to use them wisely and we've optimized our chances for claiming our right to enjoy the process.

Google Retail Stores Could Be a Smart Move, Analysts Say
Google is in the process of building its own retail stores and hopes to have the first stores open in time for the holidays in major U.S. metropolitan areas, according to a report Friday in 9to5Google, which cited an unnamed, "extremely reliable" source. "Google feels right now that many potential customers need to get hands-on experience with its products before they are willing to purchase," the website reported.

Actionable analytics top CIO priority

"Solutions architects should work with business analysts, subject matter experts and business managers to develop an understanding of the kinds of business decisions that will be made and let computers make decisions that are structured and repeatable to conserve people's time and attention for the thinking and actions that computers cannot do," concludes the Gartner report.

Is direct current power the silver bullet for data center efficiency?
Direct current or alternating current can be used at high voltages for power transmission, but AC has been the main choice to date. Trying to eliminate the transformation losses for the transmission stage is unlikely to be workable. It's pretty much the same at the distribution level; changing the existing infrastructure from AC to DC is not going to be easy, and there would still be a need to use high-voltage DC, so transformation is still required.

Why Application Performance Management Matters Now
One of the lesser-known APM systems, OpNet, in Bethesda, Md., has a product line that corresponds to several of these steps, including AppResponse Xpert for monitoring the end user experience, network and application; AppTransaction Xpert for "deep transaction performance analysis and prediction," according to its descriptor on the OpNet (now part of Riverbed) website; and AppMapper Xpert for mapping an application's parts and dependencies.

Quote for the day:

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." -- Henry David Thoreau

February 15, 2013

'The Art of the Data Center' highlights data center innovations
Despite recent news articles regarding energy waste in the data center industry, there are plenty of designs that stand out for their innovation. A new book, The Art of the Data Center, highlights these gems and provides interviews with some of the key players who produced the designs.

Real Life IT: The day the websites went out in Georgia
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers use the lists from the Google Safe Browsing service for checking pages against potential threats.” Internet Explorer wasn’t impacted by this problem since it uses a separate mechanism (SmartScreen filter) to notify users of malware-affected sites. The site malware was picked up by Google Safe Browsing, and then Chrome/Firefox users were presented with warnings.

5 fresh Android apps worth adding to your arsenal
Aside from a full-on Android upgrade, there's nothing like a cool new app to make your phone feel fresh and exciting again. So as we move closer to the start of spring, I thought it'd be a fine time to share some interesting new Android apps that have caught my eye. These five selections all stand out in some way -- for their excellent design, innovative functionality, or outstanding user experience. And they've all either been released or significantly updated in recent weeks.

Cloud Computing Price Comparison Engine
Use sliders to set minimum RAM, HDD, and CPU requirements for your cloud server. The result table will update accordingly with monthly prices from multiple IaaS cloud providers. You can also adjust required transfer rates and specify the maximum length of a subscription plan you are willing to prepay. Click Advanced mode for complex configuration requirements.

Optimising CPU and memory usage in AS3.0
This post is extremely useful for serious ActionScript 3.0 programmers. Kids has nothing to do with it but any serious application cant give high results and framerate without code optimization. Memory and processor optimization is especially important for those who make games and complicated graphics. Most of the information in this post represents links with description but in time maybe I will add textual information and more links.

A classic on how to run an office
Whenever the subject of management is discussed, the name of Peter F Drucker, the father of modern management, comes up. But long before Drucker descended on the scene India had Kautilya (a k a Chanakya), advisor to Chandragupta Maurya, in 4th century BC, whose tactical precepts helped put the brakes on Alexander’s mission to conquer the world. Kautilya helped Chandragupta rule the empire with elan.

Intel releases SSD cache acceleration software for Linux servers
Additionally, Intel's CAS now supports caching to NAND flash (solid-state drives and PCIe cards) in storage arrays. And it supports VMware vMotion, which allows virtual machines to migrate between systems while maintaining hot data on cache, regardless of the host machine. "The advantage is not just to provide better performance, but ensure no matter what happens, that performance remains consistent," said Andrew Flint, Intel's CAS product manager.

Data Clustering Using Entropy Minimization

The algorithm works with categorical and numeric data and scales well to extremely large data sets. Although all the ideas used in the clustering algorithm presented here are known, the overall algorithm and specific implementation, as claimed by the author, have not been published before. James McCaffrey call this algorithm and its implementation Entropy Minimization Iterative Agglomerate Clustering (EMIAC) to distinguish it from other clustering techniques.

Certificate Authorities form group to push for better certificate-revocation checking
The group's first efforts will focus on educating Web server administrators, software vendors, browser developers and end users about the importance of certificate-revocation checking and the benefits of adopting and implementing a mechanism called OCSP stapling -- OCSP stands for Online Certificate Status Protocol.

Need to set new rules for the “Technology Game”
Technology has a purpose. It exists in service of achieving the goals, not for its own sake or for the sake of the players. Technology should do no harm. It would be great if everyone can win, even win a little bit, but if there are losers their losses should be recoverable and not permanent. You can get back into the game. Technology should be readily available and accessible; all should have the chance to play the game.

E-stamps replace stamp papers in Delhi courts
"It's your rent agreement on the e-stamp paper. Now all stamp papers will be produced online and can be printed on normal paper like this one," explained the notary. That is true. The Delhi government has introduced electronic-stamping facility in all the district counts and has done away with stamp papers of all denominations. Delhi is the first state to introduce e-court fee in all its district courts.

Quote for the day:

"To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, & that is sincerity and integrity." -- Douglas Adams

February 14, 2013

Obama's cybersecurity executive order: What you need to know
The final executive order doesn't have half of the concerning privacy implications that CISPA does, and has also garnered support from a major privacy group, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Having said that, the privacy implications of this cybersecurity order have yet to be defined, and could still pose a significant risk to the privacy of web citizens.

Performance Anywhere SaaS From HP To Inject Agility Into Enterprises

HP Performance Anywhere, a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that the company claims will speed application delivery. This software integrates easily with the HP Agile Manager and HP Quality Center to further promote collaboration across development, test and operations teams to better align IT with business priorities. Both HP Agile Manager and HP Performance Anywhere are part of HP’s overall Converged Cloud strategy.

Survey: U.S. falls behind on user-centered BYOD
Thirty percent of managers in the U.S. said their companies are more likely to focus on users over devices. In Singapore, that number was more than twice as high, with 63% of managers saying they would focus more on users. Forty-one percent of those surveyed in Germany said their companies put users ahead of devices, while 56% said the same thing in the U.K.

IBM Smarter Analytics Signature Solution
The IBM Smarter Analytics Signature Solution for Anti-Fraud, Waste and Abuse efficiently processes cases and coordinates activity across investigative teams. It helps with case management and provides transparency into the effectiveness of investigations with dashboards and performance reports

Researchers develop a more accurate car navigation system
Researchers say the system combines conventional GPS signals with data from sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to determine a vehicle's position within six feet of its location, a dramatic reduction from the current margin of error of 50 feet. The system can be installed inexpensively in any vehicle, say researchers at Spain's Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where the system was developed.

The Evolution of Data Masking
Data masking works by obfuscating or suppressing sensitive information; as a category, this can include credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, medical information, and intellectual property, among other assets. For a host of ethical, legal, or regulatory reasons, certain people in certain roles shouldn't (or can't) be permitted to see this information.

Obama, in State of the Union, offers shout-outs to tech
But a program that may be the most revolutionary is an IBM-backed two-year-old effort to train IT professionals, called P-Tech, in Brooklyn, NY. It's essentially a high school/ community college combo, and its principal, Rashid Davis,said he "was definitely surprised and happy" about the high-profile shout-out.

Secure FTP on Windows Server 2008
As his coworker came across a 12 minute video concerning Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7 Secure FTP services, David thought it will be interesting to summarize it and so does in this post. Basically, Microsoft got lots of complaints about the fact that no "built-in" secure FTP services had been included into previous versions of Windows Server. In fact, there is no built-in secure FTP services in Windows Server 2008, but it can be downloaded.

Cut-through versus store-and-forward in Ethernet switch architecture
Cut-through designs typically deliver lower latency, but there are drawbacks. The biggest issue is that cut-through switches will forward corrupted frames since they don't wait to see if the checksum at the end of each frame is valid. In contrast, a store-and-forward switch, having read the entire frame, can discard corrupted data, preventing it from entering the network and using resources unnecessarily.

Jury still out on value of BI gamification
Gamification is being touted as a way to immerse more enterprise users more deeply in business processes and tasks. Gamification borrows heavily from interactive and reward & recognition elements from online games, and maps them to business goals to drive interactivity, participation, and (hopefully) better results. The thinking is simple: the more interesting it is, the more likely people are to engage.

Quote for the day:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

February 13, 2013

40 GbE technology: Hurry up and wait
Believe it or not, the 40 Gigabit Ethernet era is already upon us. The standard has long since been ratified, and products are shipping. But for the time being, 40 Gigabit Ethernet is having trouble moving out of first gear. A few reasons for the delay include existing wiring infrastructure, where these faster Ethernet switches are placed on networks, slower adoption of 10 GbE (which has been mostly on servers) and the preponderance of copper gigabit network connections.

Why Software Still Stinks
This webcast, delivered by a software quality professional and a respected industry analyst who researches security products, will discuss what organizations must do to roll out an effective application security program, which includes the right mix of training, tools, best practices and assessment that yield the highest mitigation on investment.

Big security for big data
Catching a hacker and being able to stop them as the attack is taking place is more useful to a company than being able to use forensics to piece together an attack that already took place. However, in order to have that as part of your arsenal, we have to resolve four problems: How do you insert data faster into your data store?; How do you store all this data?; How do you quickly process events?; How do you return results faster?

Apigee Big Data Insights: Are You in Control of Your App Economy?
According to Apigee, organizations no longer own or control all the data they need to make accurate business decisions. Just as consumers are learning that they don’t necessarily control the types of information that are collected about them, the amount of data generated by the mobile apps and plugins deployed by companies isn’t always easy to access or analyze.

IT training gets an extreme makeover
There are a number of variables helping to push staid PowerPoint presentations into history's dustbin. "Innovative IT training programs got their start because of cost-cutting measures," says Kendra Lee. As IT managers contend with shrinking budgets and skeleton staffs, many can no longer afford to enroll their workers in monthlong, off-site workshops. At the same time, new delivery mechanisms, such as cloud technology, are enabling companies to offer online courses anytime, anywhere, and at a fraction of the cost of on-premises programs.

How to Implement Lean BI
So, what is Lean BI? Lean BI is about focusing on customer value and generating additional value by accomplishing more with existing resources by eliminating waste. Lean BI is a set of principles and practices that have been influenced by three main concepts: Lean manufacturing; Systems theory; and Agile project management.

Building Android Apps with MVVM and Data Binding
As the name implies, MvvmCross is an open source, cross-platform MVVM framework for Windows Phone, Mono for Android, MonoTouch, the Windows Runtime and more. Part of bringing MVVM to platforms where it wasn't previously available means that it also enables you to take advantage of rich data binding support in your views. This feature is quite powerful, and can save you a lot of time and code.

Lawmakers to reintroduce controversial info-sharing bill
Representatives Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, and C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat, are scheduled to reintroduce the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) on Wednesday, they said in a press release. The new version of CISPA will be identical to the one that passed the U.S. House of Representatives despite objections from several privacy groups.

Don't open that PDF: There's an Adobe Reader zero-day on the loose
"Upon successful exploitation, [the exploit] will drop two DLLs [dynamic link libraries]. The first DLL shows a fake error message and opens a decoy PDF document, which is usually common in targeted attacks. The second DLL in turn drops the callback component, which talks to a remote domain," FireEye said. FireEye says it has submitted the sample to Adobe's security team and, without a new patch available from the company, is warning users not to open any unknown PDF files until it receives confirmation.

COBOL will outlive us all

Yes, most of the smaller COBOL programs written in the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1990s have been replaced with newer systems and newer technologies. However, the big mission critical systems written long ago in COBOL and modified and enhanced for the past thirty to forty years are still driving very large, very prestigious companies around the country and around the world. These companies include banks, insurance companies, manufacturing companies, retail chains, health care organizations, and every other type of company you can imagine.

Can New Software Testing Frameworks Bring Us to Provably Correct Software?
We can get CPUs that are consistent and reliable, and we can get compilers that work on top of them that are provably correct. Pascal creator Nicholas Wirth described how to write a correct compiler in his book, Compiler Construction, back in 1996. It should be a simple step from there to create "functionally correct" programs that can, for any input, produce the correct output. The only problem is that no one seems to be able to actually do it.

Quote for the day:

"Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses." -- Anonymous

February 12, 2013

The Wisdom of Crowds, Friends, and Experts
The TED Book by Jim Hornthal, A Haystack Full of Needles includes an overview of the different predictive approaches taken by one of the most common forms of data-driven decision making in the era of big data, namely, the recommendation engines increasingly provided by websites, social networks, and mobile apps. These recommendation engines primarily employ one of three techniques, choosing to base their data-driven recommendations on the “wisdom” provided by either crowds, friends, or experts.

Almost all US networks can be hacked: Intelligence Committee
Rogers said that hackers have stepped up attacks since last year, and pointed to China and Iran. "They're taking blueprints back, not just military documents, but civilian innovation that companies are gonna use to create production lines to build things," Rogers said. "They're stealing that, repurposing it back in nations like China, and competing in the international market." Rogers told CBS that the US government has essentially "set up lawn chairs, told the burglars where the silver is ... and opened the case of beer and watched them do it".

Thornton May: IT and the Internet of Things
A few weeks ago, the IT Leadership Academy took the pulse of a few dozen CIOs regarding the state of the Internet of Things. Unsurprisingly, every one of them said they were pretty sure that somewhere in their enterprise someone was "linking things," or at least "thinking about linking things." But less than 2% of them had a strategy in place to fully exploit the emerging connectability associated with the Internet of Things.

Meeting PCI DSS compliance requirements with a data management program
This special video presentation from Mike Chapple, SearchSecurity.com's resident expert on enterprise compliance, focuses on dealing with PCI DSS requirements in relation to data management practices, emphasizing how to manage sensitive data that is subject to PCI DSS standards. Additionally, this presentation provides an overview and history of PCI DSS, a look at full requirements and analysis, the basics of a PCI DSS data management program, and more.

Using partial mocks for non public methods testing

Many may argue that building tests on private methods will lead to brittle tests that break easily when you re-factor private implementations, which is another point to have in mind; but again there are times that you just find that testing a private method in isolation makes a lot more sense and it should make other's life easier when later they need to maintain your code.

MIT aids human, robot cooperation with cross-training
"People aren't robots. They don't do things the same way every single time," said Julie Shah, head of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT, in a statement. "And so there is a mismatch between the way we program robots to perform tasks in exactly the same way each time and what we need them to do if they are going to work in concert with people."

Helping Employees See Why We Do What We Do
If you have not seen Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” Brian encourages you to take the time to watch it. It’s only 18 minutes long, but it has a lot of impact. In the first five minutes, he explains his theme by drawing one circle inside another that is inside another.

MDM, BYOA adoption driving enterprise app store growth: research
"Enterprise app stores promise at least a partial solution but only if IT security, application, procurement and sourcing professionals can work together to successfully apply the app store concept to their enterprises. When successful, they can increase the value delivered by the application portfolio and reduce the associated risks, license fees and administration expenses," Ian Finley noted.

Email Overload: Can Social Really Help?
"My inbox, of course, is insane -- just like most of my customers," Foster said in an interview. Her company, Brilliant Life Design, offers personal and team productivity training for entrepreneurs and startups, a segment known for the do-it-all, do-it-yourself ethos. That mindset matches Foster's own day-to-day business. "It's just me," she said. "I'm doing it all." In her search for ways to reduce the amount of email she sends and receives, Foster recently began trialing Sendgine, a new "social productivity" application.

Microsoft Surface Pro review
The Core i5-based Surface Pro combines ultrabook components with a (chunky) 10.6in. tablet form factor to deliver decent performance and excellent build quality. However, a few design issues, missing features and, above all, disappointing battery life suggest you'd be wise to wait and see how this product develops.

Quote for the day:

"Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises" -- Mark Pincus

February 11, 2013

Australian Government Wants To Grill Apple And Microsoft On High Prices
"In what's probably the first time anywhere in the world, these IT firms are now being summoned by the Australian parliament to explain why they price their products so much higher in Australia compared to the United States," said ruling Labor government MP Ed Husic, who helped set up the committee. High local prices and soaring cost-of-living bills for basic services are hurting the popularity of the minority Labor government ahead of a September 14 election it is widely tipped to lose, giving political momentum to the inquiry.

Automating Data Protection Across the Enterprise
While a DEI can be built in many different ways, this paper defines a DEI Reference Implementation (DEIRI - pronounced “Dairy”) that has proven to be successful in multiple industries and companies of different sizes and locations. The DEIRI is based on the following diagram and depicts a minimal Production implementation that addresses a fixed level of business requirements. Depending on a company's software development and quality-assurance practices, it may choose to deploy similar DEIs for Development and Quality Assurance environments.

Predictive Analytics Guide
What's the best way to learn about predictive analytics? There's no better way to learn than from concrete case studies such as those presented by Fortune 500 analytics competitors and other top practitioners at the next Predictive Analytics World. In the meanwhile, start by taking a look through the resources listed below on this page.

How Gamification Reshapes Corporate Training
Many companies have a hard time getting employees to attend corporate training. Workers are often reluctant because it means taking time away from the office and possibly incurring high travel expenses. With corporate training budgets currently in recovery mode after the toll the recession took, many companies are looking to see the ROI before buying in to training.

In the Battle of More Data vs. Better Algorithms, Better Data Beats Them Both
So maybe the solution to “More Data” vs. “Better Algorithms” isn’t incremental improvements to either, but rather to invite consumers to the conversation and capture a fundamentally better data set. Getting this new type of data to the market won’t be easy. Four main hurdles need to be cleared for the market to reach scale.

Apple experimenting with an iWatch, secures solar touchscreen patent
A wrist watch could make a lot of sense in the context of Apple's search for way to deliver products that are more accessible in lower income markets, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a report last month, the Times notes. Rumours circulated earlier this year that Apple was looking at plastic to bring the cost of an iPhone down to between $99 and $250.

With Buyout Set, Dell Needs to Lay Out PC Strategy, Analysts Say
"It's too early to tell how much Dell wants to remain in PCs," said Moorhead. "They could more easily reduce or exit the business as a private company... Dell customers, specifically business PC customers and channels, could be a little edgy until Dell announces it's in the PC business for the long haul."

Google warns reporters covering Myanmar of 'state-sponsored' attack on Gmail accounts
A number of journalists covering Myanmar were warned by Google that their Gmail accounts had been targeted by "state-sponsored" attackers. Myat Thura, a reporter in Myanmar, for example, said he had been warned by Google of the attackers trying to get to his account, but added that his mail had not been hacked.

Harvard University Leverages Big Data for Case Study on Kumbh Mela 2013
Harvard University is conducting a study of the Kumbh Mela 2012-13 as an interdisciplinary work involving design, infrastructure, urbanism, business of Kumbh Mela, public health etc. The study is focused on understanding how the temporary ‘mega pop-city’ is built and deconstructed within weeks before and after the Kumbh Mela.

The worst IT addictions (and how to cure them)
Are you a jargon junkie? Got an insatiable appetite for information? Do you rule over your company's systems with an iron fist, unwilling to yield control until someone pries the keyboard from your cold, dead hands? You're going to have to face it -- you're addicted to tech. It's not an uncommon problem, but it can lead to bad decisions, lost productivity, wasted money, and data breaches, to name just a few downsides. Fortunately, there are cures. Consider this your first step on the long road to recovery.

Quote for the day:

"Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm & energy that we have resisted it in the past." -- Tom Peters