'Digital India' lags behind in world internet race
A particular obstacle is posed by the challenges of laying such an underground network in insurgency-affected states like Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Indian-administered Kashmir, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. A lack of agreement between the central and state governments does not help, and compounding the mix are illiteracy, poverty and a shortage of skilled manpower. The "Digital India" project aims to promote e-education in over 250,000 government schools and e-governance in about 250,000 village councils via internet connections. However, most schools in villages and towns face a severe shortage of qualified computer trainers.IBM Wants Watson to Teach Robots Some Social Skills
High says it is important to do this because language alone is only part of human communications. “We augment the words with physical gestures to clarify this and that,” High said. “You can bring into the [robot] interface this gesturing, this body language, the eye movement, the subtle cues that we as humans use when we communicate with one another to reinforce our understand of what we’re expressing.” Robot interaction is becoming an important issue as industrial robots start moving into new settings, requiring them to work alongside people, and as companies try to develop robots for use in stores, offices, and even the home.CBRE's CIO discusses the new IT operating model
In the old days, IT would collect requirements, and then translate them into a business requirements document and issue an RFP to source the solution. That process doesn't work anymore. We still have to understand requirements, but now we can break them down into bite-sized pieces and deliver solutions iteratively. This means we can move forward delivering value without having to use multiple business cycles to develop a longterm technology system. Longterm visions for systems these days get very outdated, very quickly. It is all about iterative learning and deployment. We do small projects that are continuous in nature and that build on each other and provide value at every stage.Colocation to Cloud – Making the Right Choice
The choice of whom to colocate with represents the first stage of the journey but it is also often the most important decision that any business will make along the way. In the near term, colocation gives businesses peace of mind, allowing them to participate in the benefits of a hosted datacentre while managing IT upgrades within their budget and timeline. Companies can migrate elements of the operations and management for maximum benefits and minimum risk. For many organisations, however, this will be just one part of an evolutionary process. Where service providers like Pulsant are able to add significant value over and above the traditional colocation provider is in supporting the transition from colocation to cloud.NFV MANO Mania Has Run its Course
The NFV MANO model needs to adapt to this new reality. The original architectural concept, developed in 2011, became a roadmap of new technology elements and standards needed for NFV. A lot has changed since 2011 and it’s all likely to change again, and it’s not clear that the MANO model will — or can — adapt quickly enough. Service providers and technology vendors with whom I’ve spoken in recent months say some of the confusion about the future of service-provider NFV stems from the ubiquitous MANO diagram, which can be seen below. The marketing guys got a hold of this slide and promoted it at every NFV conference on earth. It became a sort of Rosetta Stone for NFV.The Future of Data Science
“What data scientists use today is a combination of statistical and machine learning algorithms to find patterns in the predictive models they use,” he says. “Traditionally, they’ve had to have a strong mathematical foundation. You hear many data scientists saying ‘I did the math.’ That also refers to running statistical machine learning algorithms. “In the future,” he continues, “the tools are going to de-emphasize the mechanics of doing machine learning. So the data scientists are going to be more creative about the types of models they create, freeing them up to have more time for curiosity to discover new things that may be of value.” ... In the future, advances in data science tools will help leverage the existing data science talent to greater effect, Gualtieri says.Why You Should be a Little Scared of Machine Learning
What deep learning will allow us to do is to bridge the semantic gap between the fuzzy thing that is the real world, and the symbolic world computer programs operate in. Simply put, machines will soon have much more understanding of the world than they currently do. A few years from now, you’ll take a picture of your friend Sarah eating an ice cream cone, and some machine in the cloud will recognize Sarah in the said picture. It will know that she’s eating ice cream, probably chocolate flavored by the color of it. Facial expression recognition will make it possible to see that she looks excited with a hint of insecurity.Pragmatic Technical Debt Management
One of the key ways to prevent technical debt is to create awareness about technical debt in development teams. Development teams must know about technical debt, its various dimensions and types, and the impact of debt on their project. They must be well equipped with code quality concepts, clean coding practices, design smells, and ways to refactor them. The level of understanding and awareness about best practices and above-mentioned concepts could be improved by conducting focused trainings, as well as organizing workshops and conferences. Employing relevant processes can help a development team prevent accumulation of technical debt. Typical examples of such processes are review processes and architecture governance.Banks Embrace Bitcoin’s Heart but Not Its Soul
“We’re likely going to see years of exploration and talking and some preliminary products with companies like Chain, but it’ll be a very narrow use case,” says Silbert. He predicts that in coming years Bitcoin will rise to become a recognized store of value of something like gold, and that innovation in its design and services built on top will see the original, public blockchain become an underpinning for financial services of all kinds. “Eventually Wall Street will come to appreciate that the Bitcoin blockchain is the most secure and most flexible and can solve a lot of the issues that they have,” he says.Microsoft has big plans for its mobile apps: more sharing, more collaboration
Something's happening to the Outlook apps for iOS and Android. Quietly, they’ve begun to take on more and more responsibility—not just email, but calendaring and file information as well. It's no accident. Smartphone apps began life as focused, single-purpose products, but Microsoft's betting we'll want more interconnectivity moving forward. Just as cosmic dust collected into stars and planets, then began rotating about one another, colliding and sometimes gobbling each other up, Microsoft’s mobile apps are being built to interact with each other, share information, work together.Quote for the day:
“Don’t just spot and point out problems – solve them.” -- S. Chris Edmonds
