Новости за 01.02.2016

When it comes to the problem of stopping errant drones, there's been a number of high-tech solutions -- from radio jamming to laser beams to nets launched by other drones  --  but a group in The Netherlands is proposing a low-tech solution that's much more elegant.

Electronic voting has been a pretty dismal failure in the last few election cycles, so all eyes will be on Microsoft tonight as its new custom app and cloud services will be the means by which local officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties will report vote tallies in real-time.

Microsoft’s InPrivate browsing is supposed to help you “surf the web without leaving a trail” and InPrivate browsing mode can be used in Edge. Microsoft says, “When you use Microsoft Edge in InPrivate mode, your browsing information, such as cookies, history, or temporary files, aren’t saved on your device after your browsing session has ended. Microsoft Edge clears all temporary data from your device.” Yet InPrivate browsing with Edge is a fail as it is not private and instead keeps browsing history. Читать дальше...

Microsoft's browsers, Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge, continued to bleed users last month, according to the latest data from metrics company Net Applications.

Of interest to the CIA

The CIA has been investing in startups since 1999 through its not-for-profit arm called In-Q-Tel, hoping to accelerate development of technologies the agency might find useful. It currently lists about 100 firms in its portfolio. The agency doesn’t say why it might be interested in the technologies these companies represent, but with a little imagination it’s not that hard to figure out possibilities. Here is a sample of what they’ve been interested in lately.

Blaming the victim is wrong – wrong, wrong, wrong – except when the victim is a blithering idiot.

Every once in a while I get asked what my background is, and my answer is always that I'm a generalist: a jack of all trades and master of some. Being a generalist is not easy in a world where IT professionals have been told since the beginning to specialize. However, it requires a generalist to see the forest for the trees, an analogy well-suited to the continually emerging world of cloud computing.

Microsoft revealed Project Natick this weekend – an effort to test data centers that are deployed underwater.

A T-Mobile service called Binge On that allows subscribers to consume as much data as they want while streaming video from selected providers violates Net neutrality rules, according to a published analysis from Stanford University legal scholar Barbara van Schewick.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of those next-generation technology concepts that for a long time seemed just over the hill: everybody talked about it but it wasn't quite here. I think it's time to reconsider, because IoT is not only here, it's growing fast. In 2014, Gartner predicted that by 2020 there would be 25 billion connected devices. Cisco predicted that number would be closer to 50 billion, and Morgan Stanley thinks 75 billion.

In the open source cloud space, OpenStack, the initiative co-instigated five or so years ago by NASA and Rackspace, has the lion's share of the attention. Indeed, you would be forgiven for thinking that there is no other open source cloud operating system other than OpenStack. But in thinking that you'd be wrong. You see, before OpenStack was even a thing, a small startup called cloud.com was founded to create a cloud operating system to be a kind of a "private Amazon Web Services." Cloud.com was acquired by Citrix back in 2011... Читать дальше...

You're on every do-not-call list and you've tried opting out, but still the telemarketers keep pestering you. What's a consumer to do? Just ask the Jolly Roger Telephone Company.

Microsoft really wants small businesses to pick up its Office 365 productivity suite, and the company unveiled a new offer Monday aimed at drawing them into its cloud.

My colleague Doug Cahill and I are knee-deep into a research project on next-generation endpoint security. As part of this project, we are relying on real-world experience, so we’ve interviewed dozens of cybersecurity professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) who have already deployed new types of endpoint security software.

Over 60 Android games hosted on Google Play had Trojan-like functionality that allowed them to download and execute malicious code hidden inside images.

When it comes to cybersecurity, it's long been safe to assume that almost nobody is doing much of anything to protect themselves. But a new survey by credit-monitoring company Experian reveals that notion may no longer be completely accurate.

Predictive analytics can speed up business decisions and create a competitive advantage, but the models need better governance to avoid having some predictions turn into business fiascos, according to research supported by the Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council.

Building a reliable Wi-Fi network is a challenge for businesses of all sizes. I'm sure all of us have experienced poor-quality Wi-Fi in places like hotels and wondered why it's so hard to put in a system that actually gives a good experience, especially when you have to pay for it. Some environments are tougher than others, particularly if there is a high concentration of people and devices. Last year, I authored this blog post describing the challenges the Orlando airport faced as it went fully wireless. Читать дальше...

Tablets may have ushered in the post-PC age, but the only ones posting a growth in sales are detachables --  the ones that are most like PCs.

A few years ago, Microsoft switched from per-processor to per-core licensing in SQL Server, and it's about to do the same with Windows Server 2016. You may not be thrilled with the results.

Windows Phone has always struggled in the U.S., but last year it was at least making progress. Almost all of that is being frittered away as the company stalls with the release of Windows 10 Mobile and new hardware, giving Android and iPhone even bigger leads.

Controversial technology that lets LTE networks use unlicensed spectrum could become a trusted part of the enterprise IT toolkit in a few years.

President Barack Obama's $4 billion computer science initiative, announced Saturday, is getting financial help from two India-based IT offshore firms. They are joining other tech firms contributing to parts of this program.

This past summer, the White Rose Academies Trust in Leeds, England, kicked off a project that represented the first step on a journey to a software-defined networking platform -- and the move precipitated some career changes, both positive and negative, for the IT staff.

As data becomes a fundamental part of operations in nearly every industry, businesses are finding that privacy measures are becoming equally as important. Unfortunately, research suggests that businesses don't understand how vital privacy practices are and treat it an afterthought.