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Thursday, October 30, 2014

IT spending reality check: 2014's mixed message

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From: "Network World Daily News PM Alert" <nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2014 1:56 PM
Subject: IT spending reality check: 2014's mixed message
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CurrentC already hacked

Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay'

Network World Daily News PM
October 30, 2014

IT spending reality check: 2014's mixed message

Tech budgets and hiring are down from earlier optimistic projections, but IT's confidence is holding steady.

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Issue highlights

1. CurrentC already hacked

2. Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay'

3. IDG Contributor Network: Just where are the world's hackers located?

4. Guinness World Record: Amplifier operates at a speed of one trillion cycles per second

5. Microsoft releases stopgap POODLE protection for Internet Explorer

6. Microsoft adds IoT, Big Data orchestration services to Azure

7. Drupal: If you weren't quick to patch, assume your site was hacked

8. Smartphone share of overall mobile phone sales stalling at 70 percent

9. Pirate Bay co-founder found guilty of hacking in Denmark

10. The Charge of the Troll Brigade: What to know about #GamerGate

11. Confidential business data at risk at the border

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CurrentC already hacked

CurrentC, the mobile payment platform from MCX poised to take on Apple Pay, sent out an email on Wednesday indicating that it's already been hacked. While the only information compromised were customer email addresses, the news couldn't have come at a worse time for CurrentC which has been lambasted in the media in recent days.Over the past few days, both Rite Aid and CVS disabled support for Apple Pay across all of their nationwide locations. The reason? Both companies belong to a consortium of companies planning to rollout their own mobile payment platform dubbed CurrentC in early 2015. Naturally, Apple Pay fans, and otherwise champions of the free market, have been absolutely vitriolic in their hatred for CurrentC. Indeed, the service isn't yet even operational and the CurrentC app already has horrible 1-star ratings on iTunes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay'

That Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay couldn't even be call called an open secret because it has been so widely understood and on several occasions reported. Yet Cook himself had never publicly acknowledged his sexual orientation.Today that changed.Writing himself – and eloquently -- on BloombergBusinessweek: For years, I've been open with many people about my sexual orientation. Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I'm gay, and it doesn't seem to make a difference in the way they treat me. Of course, I've had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people's differences. Not everyone is so lucky.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

IDG Contributor Network: Just where are the world's hackers located?

Here's a question I was asked recently by an IT buddy: where do hackers live? Where are they from?Well, new studies and reports have been bubbling up over the last month or so, and although I don't have a definitive answer, I can take a stab at answering his question.HistoryRumors have persisted for years that countries with good education systems but poor job prospects have been the ones that generated hackers. The kids are taught well about computers and the like, but when it comes time to enter the job market, there isn't any work, so they use their skills messing with computers and end up hacking.Nick Farrell, writing for IDG Connect earlier this year, says Bulgarians at the turn of the century used hacking to vent frustration at corrupt governments that had "ruined their lives" after the fall of communism. The kids tested their skills against foreign governments and others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

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Guinness World Record: Amplifier operates at a speed of one trillion cycles per second

DARPA said today that a solid-state amplifier developed under its Terahertz Electronics program was recognized by Guinness World Records as the fastest ever recorded -- one terahertz (1012 GHz), or one trillion cycles per second—150 billion cycles faster than the existing world record of 850 gigahertz set in 2012. Northrop Grumman developed the amplifier known as the Terahertz Monolithic Integrated Circuit (TMIC) and said the device exhibits power gains several orders of magnitude beyond the current state of the art.+More on Network World: IBM/DARPA turn out brain-like 5-billion transistor superchip+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Microsoft releases stopgap POODLE protection for Internet Explorer

Microsoft on Wednesday gave Windows customers an easier way to block attacks against Internet Explorer (IE) meant to steal browser session cookies and impersonate victims.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier Two weeks after Google researchers revealed the "POODLE" attack method and about the same length of time before Microsoft releases its next round of security updates, Microsoft offered one of its automated "Fixit" tools to disable SSL 3.0, an aged and vulnerable Internet encryption standard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Microsoft adds IoT, Big Data orchestration services to Azure

Microsoft added three new big data services to its Azure cloud platform yesterday as part of its ongoing efforts to make Azure a leading platform for big data services and to make it ready to tackle the Internet of Things (IoT)."Every day, IoT is fueling vast amounts of data from millions of endpoints streaming at high velocity in the cloud," says Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of Machine Learning at Microsoft. "Examples of streaming analytics can be found across many businesses, such as stock trading, fraud detection, identity protection services, sensors, web clickstream analytics and alerts from CRM applications. In this new and fast-moving world of cloud and devices, businesses can no longer wait months or weeks for insights generated from data."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

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Drupal: If you weren't quick to patch, assume your site was hacked

Users of Drupal, one of the most popular content management systems, should consider their sites compromised if they didn't immediately apply a security patch released on Oct. 15.The unusually alarming statement was part of a "public service announcement" issued by the Drupal project's security team Wednesday."Automated attacks began compromising Drupal 7 websites that were not patched or updated to Drupal 7.32 within hours of the announcement of SA-CORE-2014-005 - Drupal core - SQL injection," the Drupal security team said. "You should proceed under the assumption that every Drupal 7 website was compromised unless updated or patched before Oct 15th, 11pm UTC, that is 7 hours after the announcement."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Smartphone share of overall mobile phone sales stalling at 70 percent

Smartphones during the third quarter again accounted for about 70 percent of total mobile phone shipments. Prices need to fall even further to attract more users in emerging markets, but that won't happen overnight.Though the smartphone share of overall mobile phone sales increased year over year, it has been flat, sequentially, at around 70 percent for the last couple of quarters, according to Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. For the smartphone share to increase, prices have to come down so more users in parts of the world such as Africa and India can afford them.Today the cheapest smartphones cost about US$35 at wholesale, but prices under $20 are needed. Getting there will take a couple of years, at least. "In the short term, the component cost, IPR costs and the software costs are too high for smartphones to compete at the very bottom end of the market, so feature phones aren't going away," Mawston said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Pirate Bay co-founder found guilty of hacking in Denmark

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was found guilty of hacking and serious vandalism in the Court of Fredriksberg in Denmark on Thursday.Warg was found guilty for hacking the mainframe of IT service provider CSC in Denmark. A 21-year old Danish man was also found guilty, as he acted as Warg's accomplice, according to the ruling. To protect the man's privacy, Judge Kari Sørensen, who presided over the case, ordered news outlets not to publish his name.Svartholm Warg's sentence will be announced on Friday at 1 p.m. local time, said Sørensen. She declined to discuss further details of the case over the phone.The prosecutor in the case is requesting a prison sentence of five years for Svartholm Warg.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

The Charge of the Troll Brigade: What to know about #GamerGate

There are two ways to think about #GamerGate. The short version is that it's a loosely-organized mob of so-called "gamers" rallied around a Twitter hashtag focused on the harassment of women -- primarily, but not only, female game developers -- under the pretense of pushing for higher standards in video game journalism.  The longer story is that the #GamerGate hashtag has all but taken over a large and growing corner of the web, starting back in August, when a jilted ex-boyfriend wrote a long (seriously, it's basically a novel) blog entry accusing his former girlfriend, independent game developer Zoe Quinn, of cheating on him with a video game journalist (in the spirit of disclosure, that journalist is a friend of mine) in return for positive reviews of her games. Never mind that the journalist in question had never actually reviewed one of her games -- the witchhunt was on. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Confidential business data at risk at the border

Several recent court decisions have re­inforced the principle that government agents may examine laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices in the possession of people crossing the border into the U.S.--even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing.Most border searches appropriately target serious crimes, such as terrorism and child pornography. But in light of the many international white-collar criminal investigations being conducted by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, this broad power to capture electronic data at the border poses a serious privacy risk for business executives and lawyers traveling to the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

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SLIDESHOWS

Ubuntu turns 10: A look back at the desktop Linux standard bearer

A brief history of Ubuntu, as alliterative as all-get-out.

JOIN THE NETWORK WORLD COMMUNITIES

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MOST-READ STORIES of 2014

1. Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay'

2. Cisco, others pushing 2.5G, 5G Ethernet

3. What it's like living on a Chromebook, Part 1

4. FBI: List of purchase order scam victims growing rapid

5. Microsoft 'almost' wraps up largest layoff

6. Lowe's ranked the best, Home Depot the worst in SECTF contest

7. Stealthy malware uses Gmail drafts as command

8. Windows 7 sales end this Friday

9. Internet2 slices network

10. Getting chipped: Why I will live with an NFC chip implant for a year

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Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘I’m proud to be gay’

*Note to Tim Cook: Yawn. Don't care. What are you techin' up? - Dan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Network World Daily News AM Alert" <nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com>
Date: Oct 30, 2014 8:05 AM
Subject: Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay'
To: <aquarianm@gmail.com>
Cc:

Microsoft 'almost' wraps up largest layoff

Cisco, others pushing 2.5G, 5G Ethernet

Network World Daily News AM
October 30, 2014

Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay'

Apple CEO Tim Cook writing today: "While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven't publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."

READ MORE
 

Issue highlights

1. Microsoft 'almost' wraps up largest layoff

2. Cisco, others pushing 2.5G, 5G Ethernet

3. Internet2 slices network

4. Visualizations may shape smarter city development

5. Facebook gives away homebrewed OS monitoring tool

6. How to figure out if a data breach is a hoax

7. MCX says CurrentC is less about tech, more about relationships

8. Samsung eyes cheaper smartphones as profit slumps

9. China's Xiaomi surges to become world's third largest smartphone vendor

10. Movie industry yells 'Cut!' on wearables in theaters

11. HP's new Sprout PC has 3D scanning, virtual sketchpad

12. US Navy, Energy Dept. team to develop wave energy devices

13. BlackBerry promises a blast from the past with BlackBerry Classic

14. Google gets its 'spagger' on

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Microsoft 'almost' wraps up largest layoff

Microsoft has handed out pink slips in a third round of job cuts that "almost" concludes its plan to eliminate 18,000 positions.The company announced in July that it would let go about 14 percent of its workforce, the largest set of job cuts in its history, but instead of axing them with one swing, Microsoft said it would carry out the job cuts over the course of its fiscal year, which ends in June of next year.Some critics termed this approach unwise, saying it would prolong uncertainty among employees, drag down staff morale, reignite concern among enterprise customers, give talking points to rivals and generate bad press for the company multiple times.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Cisco, others pushing 2.5G, 5G Ethernet

Cisco and three other vendors have formed an alliance to promote the development of 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet technology for enterprise networks. The other three participants in the NBASE-T Alliance are silicon, semiconductor and IC companies Aquantia, Freescale and Xilinx.The objective of the nonprofit alliance is to enable multi-gigabit Ethernet speeds on existing Gigabit Ethernet cabling. Alliance members say there's demand for a unified approach to the deployment of faster data rates on Cat5e and Cat6 twisted-pair copper cables matching the bandwidth increase driven by 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points and other technologies, such as 802.11ad, 802.11ax and LiFi.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Internet2 slices network

The Internet2 this week said it can now demonstrate a nationwide virtualized multitenant network that operates as multiple discrete, private networks.Virtualization allows Internet2 to be partitioned into isolated "slices" that can accomodate multiple users and their applications, as if they had their own private network. This advancement is enabled by Internet2's use of 100G speeds and software-defined networking, the organization says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Visualizations may shape smarter city development

There's more to making cities smart than the Internet of Things and the collection of big data.The move to address urban problems like pollution and traffic congestion has shone a spotlight on instrumenting things like roads, light poles and mobile devices, and seizing insights from the information they generate. But how that data is presented can affect the impact it has and the types of questions that get asked, panelists at the GreenBiz Verge conference said Tuesday.Just as smaller sensors have expanded data collection and big-data tools have made it possible to better analyze information, visualization software is also evolving. That could help to give ordinary citizens a say in how cities are built and run.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

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Facebook gives away homebrewed OS monitoring tool

Facebook has released an open-source tool for monitoring operating system state changes across very large infrastructures, which could help engineers quickly diagnose performance and security issues.The tool, called Osquery, allows administrators to run SQL-based queries on operating system characteristics stored in a high-performance database, collecting data such as running processes, loaded kernel modules and open networking connections, wrote Mike Arpaia, a Facebook software engineer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

How to figure out if a data breach is a hoax

The notoriety that comes with taking credit for a data breach is alluring. Declaring a successful data breach can suddenly bring a lot of attention, which is why posting bogus data is attractive.For companies and organizations, it's a real headache, since an allegation of a breach can immediately pose public relations challenges."The speed of the news cycle is a lot faster than the speed of the incident response process," said Allison Nixon, a threat researcher with consultancy Deloitte.Nixon wrote a paper describing some non-intrusive techniques for figuring out if a data breach is legitimate. The paper, she said in a phone interview on Wednesday, is intended to allow third parties to get a sense whether a leak is real.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

MCX says CurrentC is less about tech, more about relationships

The company behind CurrentC, an in-store mobile payment system backed by some of the biggest retailers in the U.S., attempted on Wednesday to play down a growing controversy over whether its backers could accept Apple Pay.Dekkers Davidson, CEO of Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), said its members, which include retailers such as Walmart, Shell, 7-Eleven, Dunkin Donuts, Sears, Old Navy, Best Buy, Exxon Mobil and Gap, are free to make their own decisions on payment systems.The comments, which came in a conference call, represented the first time MCX had addressed a sudden flood of online criticism about its technology.Formed in 2012, MCX had existed largely unnoticed until last week when two of its members—drug store chains Rite Aid and CVS—abruptly stopped accepting Apple Pay and Google Wallet, which use a wireless chip payment technology called NFC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Samsung eyes cheaper smartphones as profit slumps

Samsung plans to focus on cheaper smartphones and flexible displays for high-end phones after its third-quarter profit plummeted by nearly 50 percent amid intense competition from Chinese rivals making low-cost handsets.The low-end smartphone market is still growing rapidly, and the company aims to exploit the opportunity by improving cost competitiveness, said Kim Hyun-joon, the head of the company's mobile communications segment said during an earnings conference call on Thursday in Seoul. Samsung also aims to differentiate its high-end products with flexible displays and new materials such as metal frames.The world's largest smartphone maker saw its market share drop to 23.8 percent in the third quarter from 32.5 percent a year ago, while Xiaomi rose to the third place after second-ranked Apple, according to IDC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

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China's Xiaomi surges to become world's third largest smartphone vendor

Phones from Xiaomi still haven't arrived in the U.S., but the company's booming sales in China have been enough to make it the third largest smartphone vendor in the world.Xiaomi reached the ranking, behind Apple and Samsung, in the third quarter, said research firms IDC and Strategy Analytics on Thursday.The Chinese vendor only began selling phones three years ago but it has quickly risen to become a leading vendor in its home market, by offering feature-packed Android phones at affordable prices.In the third quarter, Xiaomi had a 5.3 percent share of the smartphone market, still far behind second place Apple, which had a 12 percent share, according to IDC. But unlike its rivals, Xiaomi posted triple-digit year-over-year growth in smartphone shipments, of 211 percent, making it the fastest growing among the top vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Movie industry yells 'Cut!' on wearables in theaters

The dictum, "Please turn off all cell phones" at your local movie theater may soon be expanded to include Google Glass, smartwatches, GoPros, life-logging cameras, and a cast of thousands of other wearables.The Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners, which represents 32,000 screens across the U.S., have issued a zero tolerance policy on wearable devices capable of recording video, due to concerns over piracy.Both groups already had a policy that all phones must be silenced and put away at show time. But all other recording devices, which would include wearables, must also be turned off and put away, the groups said Wednesday in an update to their policy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

HP's new Sprout PC has 3D scanning, virtual sketchpad

HP is making the virtual world feel a bit more real with its new double touchscreen computer called Sprout. The $1,900 all-in-one PC has powerful imaging and touch technology. READ MORE

US Navy, Energy Dept. team to develop wave energy devices

With an eye toward helping jump-start a nascent industry the US Navy and Department of Energy today said they would spend $10 million to test two deep-water wave energy devices. The devices fall under what's known as advance marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) technology which converts the energy of waves, tides, rivers, and ocean currents into clean, renewable electricity that can be used by homes and businesses.[RELATED: 10 hot energy projects that could electrify the world] "A total of $10 million has been made available for these in-water tests to collect important performance, reliability, and cost data from innovative wave energy conversion devices that are in the late stages of technology development," the DOE stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

BlackBerry promises a blast from the past with BlackBerry Classic

A top row of navigation keys! A trackpad! The BlackBerry is back, baby, with the BlackBerry Classic!Well, that's how BlackBerry hopes you'll react, anyway, with the announcement of the BlackBerry Classic on the company's website on Tuesday. Chief executive John Chen promised the "things you remember about BlackBerry that made you better are better than ever with BlackBerry Classic".+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Quick look: The interesting rise and quick fall of Blackberry +"Innovation is a word that gets used too often and carelessly. Innovation is not about blowing up what works to make something new – it's about taking what works and making it better," Chen wrote in a blog post. "In that sense, BlackBerry Classic represents the kind of innovation BlackBerry – and you – strive toward every day."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

Google gets its 'spagger' on

A post yesterday addressed an unusual failure on the part of Google to provide me with a definition for a word – slang, actually -- with which I was thoroughly unfamiliar: spagger.Turns out, no thanks to Google, that it's shorthand for "spaghetti dinner."The post ended with me noting: "Someone needs to tell Google."Someone – or more likely, something – did so. As you can see, yesterday's post is now the No. 2 result delivered for a search on spagger, right below the Urban Dictionary's definition, which was not applicable to my quest.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE

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SLIDESHOWS

Ubuntu turns 10: A look back at the desktop Linux standard bearer

A brief history of Ubuntu, as alliterative as all-get-out.

JOIN THE NETWORK WORLD COMMUNITIES

As network pros you understand that the value of connections increase as the number of connections increase, the so called network effect, and no where is this more evident than in professional relationships. Join Network World's LinkedIn and Facebook communities to share ideas, post questions, see what your peers are working on and scout out job applicants (or maybe find your next opportunity).

Network World on Facebook

Network World on LinkedIn

MOST-READ STORIES of 2014

1. What it's like living on a Chromebook, Part 1

2. Ebola crisis brings out another sickness: Vile scammer

3. Getting chipped: Why I will live with an NFC chip implant for a year

4. Shocking Social Media Horror Stories

5. Windows 7 sales end this Friday

6. Lowe's ranked the best, Home Depot the worst in SECTF contest

7. FBI: List of purchase order scam victims growing rapidly

8. What's a 'spagger?'… (Google's no help)

9. 255 terabits a second: New fiber speed record?

10. NoSQL takes the database market by storm

Follow Network World

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When accessing content promoted in this email, you are providing consent for your information to be shared with the sponsors of the content. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

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