Tag: computer

Commercial PC sales drive growth

Posted on February 28, 2018 by - News

growBeancounters from Context have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and concluded that commercial PC sales are driving growth in the hardware market.

While the PC market has been suffering for the last five years, the commercial market has been its main source of revenue.

Context, which gets sales numbers from Western European distributors, indicate that volume sales of desktops, notebooks and PC workstations increased by 3.3 percent in January year-on-year.

The growth was driven by sales of commercial PCs, which had a 10.3 percent rise last month. The consumer segment continued to struggle, and volumes there dropped by 4.4 percent.

The growth in the commercial sector was across all the main form factors with desktops up by 6.5 percent, notebooks by 12 percent and PC workstations by 12.5 percent.

Context believes that the long awaited impact of Windows 10 was starting to kick in and drive customer upgrades.

Context senior analyst Marie-Christine Pygott said that commercial PCs will remain the stronger segment soon as more companies upgrade to Windows 10 and refresh their ageing hardware.

Computers will be our overlords claims Woz

Posted on March 25, 2015 by - News

metropolisThe real brains behind the foundation of Apple, Steve Wozniak, said he has come to terms with the fact that computers will one day become the masters of humanity.

Speaking to The Australian Financial Review the new Australian permanent resident said he has started to feel a contradictory sense of foreboding about the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence, while still supporting the idea of continuing to push the boundaries of what technology can do

“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question,” Woz said.

He long dismissed the ideas of writers like Raymond Kurzweil, who have warned that rapid increases in technology will mean machine intelligence will outstrip human understanding or capability within the next 30 years. But he has started to realise that those predictions might be right and that computing that perfectly mimicked or attained human consciousness would become a dangerous reality.

“Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently,” Woz said.

It is not clear if humans will be the gods, the pets or the ants that get stepped on.
“When I got that thinking in my head about if I’m going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines … well I’m going to treat my own pet dog really nice,” Woz said.

Wozniak said the negative outcome could be stopped from occurring by the likely end of Moore’s Law, the pattern whereby computer processing speeds double every two years.

The ever increasing speeds have happened due to the shrinking size of transistors, which mean more can be included in a circuit. But it has been suggested that Moore’s Law cannot continue past 2020 because, by then, the size of a silicon transistor will have shrunk to a single atom.

So unless scientists can start controlling things at sub-atomic level, by developing so-called quantum computers, humanity will be protected from perpetual increases in computing power.

“For all the time they’ve been working on quantum computing they really have nothing to show that’s really usable for the things we need … researchers can make predictions, but they haven’t been able to get past three qubits yet,” Woz said. .

Woz hopes they manage it  because it is about scientific exploring… but in the end we just may have created the species that is above us.

 

Lockheed Martin jets into cyber security

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

DF-SC-82-10542US defence contractor Lockheed Martin sees cyber security as its number one growth area over the next three to five years.

Although it is better known for its jet aircraft, Lockheed Martin is the main provider of IT technology to the US government, said expects double-digit growth in its overall cybersecurity business over the next three to five years.

Lockheed said it was making strong inroads in the commercial market by using its experience and intelligence gathered while guarding its own networks and those of government agencies.
Chief Executive Officer Marillyn Hewson said Lockheed was providing cyber security services for more than 200 customers around the world in the energy, oil and gas, chemical, financial services and pharmaceuticals business.

Hewson told the company’s annual media day that Lockheed had faced 50 “coordinated, sophisticated campaign” attacks by hackers in 2014 alone, and she expected those threats to continue growing.

Lockheed now represented a large number of companies on the Fortune 500 list, including 79 percent of utilities, 35 percent of oil and gas companies, 46 percent of chemical firms, and 46 percent of financial firms.

It has been helped by the fact that other weapons makers, including Boeing and Harris have largely exited the cyber security business after finding it difficult to generate any real cash.

Valve’s economist to sort out Greek economy

Posted on January 28, 2015 by - News

r846248_7947263Computer game outfit Valve’s economist Yanis Varoufakis is to be Greece’s new finance minister and tasked with the chore of sorting out the country’s stuffed up economy.

Yanis Varoufakis originally had the job of analyse and improving Valve’s  Steam Market but now has been appointed the new finance minister of Greece.

Obviously, Greece’s Euro debt crisis has been critical to Europe over the last few years as the country tried to save up a bit of cash to pay off its crippling debts. The new Greek government dominated by political party Syriza has pledged to stop starving the country to pay off Germans and the armed forces and start spending again.

The Greek economy was crippled by a high public sector wage and pension commitments and Varoufakis has been chosen to sort out the whole mess – preferably without a famous Greek strike.

While working at Valve, Varoufakis often cited nobel-prize winner Friedrich Hayek and classical liberal and Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, when talking about the fundamentals of capitalism introduced in areas hitherto untouched. “Firms can be seen as oases of planning and command within the vast expanse of the market,” he previously wrote.

No one can say that his new job is not challenging, particularly when your history is making sure that  a computer games company does well and your main enemy is a bunch of fascists called the Golden Dawn.

Cameron’s porn filter deletes other sites too

Posted on December 8, 2014 by - News

stupid cameronBritish Prime Minister David “One is an Ordinary Bloke” Cameron’s porn filter is being used to purge the internet of a few sites that he does not want British people to see.

The alarm call was sounded by the German hacker site the Chaos Computer Club over the weekend which noticed that its site had been blocked in the UK.

Vodafone customers were also being stopped from accessing the ticket sales to this year’s Chaos Communication Congress.

The group claims that its sites were on a list which censors the open internet. These internet filters, authorised by Prime Minister David Cameron, are implemented by UK’s major internet service providers (ISPs) were supposed to stop porn from falling into the hands of children. But it appears that the list has been extended to include material deemed “extremist”.

Users can opt-out of censorship, or bypass it by technical means, but only a minority of users know how to bypass those filters.

Chaos points out that accessing its server directly via http://213.73.89.123/ appears to work quite well, thereby rendering the censorship efforts useless.

CCC-spokesperson Dirk Engling said that he saw this as proof that censorship infrastructure – no matter for which reasons it was set up, and no matter which country you are in – will always be abused for political reasons

Toshiba has new wearable computer chip

Posted on November 11, 2014 by - News

tieToshiba has announced it will begin sampling a new ARM-based application processor designed for wearable devices.

Dubbed the TZ1021MBG chip, it will form Tosh’s TZ1000 family of ApP Lite application processors for wearable devices such as smartwatches, smart glasses, activity monitors and smart bracelets. The new product will be on display during the four day Electronica 2014 show in Germany starting today.

The chip will be in mass production by March 2015.

The chip includes an integrated 48MHz ARM Cortex-M4F CPU with flash memory that is found in other chips in the ApP Lite product group, but it does not have Bluetooth Low Energy and the accelerometer that were integrated into the TZ1001MBG.

This makes the TZ1021MBG smaller and slimmer, according to Toshiba officials. The ARM Cortex-M4F CPU includes digital signal processing (DSP) and floating-point processing, enabling the combining of data from multiple sensors.

Toshiba officials said the chip includes highly sensitive analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) that will help devices pick up and measure weak biomedical signals—such as a pulse or a heart’s electrical activity—and leverages a low-power design for devices that need long battery life.

The chip measures 6.7mm by 4mm by 1mm and includes 8MB of memory.

 

Blizzard boss wades into Gamergate

Posted on November 10, 2014 by - News

558_L-narikoBlizzard Entertainment’s president and CEO Michael Morhaime surprised the software industry by referring negatively to Gamergate.

For those who came in late, Gamergate is a campaign by backward misogynistic gamers to chase women from the industry with death threats and online harassment so that they can continue to play games where big-breasted women are saved by men. All this is done under a pretext that women gaming journalists are corrupt.

Morhaime has to be careful, after all, he sells many games to people who support Gamergate and have views about women which make cavemen look enlightened. He did not mention he was talking about Gamergate but it is not difficult to spot the thread.

“Over the past couple months; there’s been a  group of people who have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people’s lives miserable, and they have been tarnishing our reputation as gamers… “It’s not right.”

Blizzcon is a great example of how positive and uplifting gaming can be,” Morhaime added—speaking to his company’s long-running convention dedicated to its small but enormously popular handful of games. “Let’s carry the good the good vibes from this weekend out into the world all year round.”

“There is another person on the other end of the chat screen,” he continued, making a strong reference to the online harassment that has flared up unpleasantly in recent months. “They’re our friends, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters.”

“Let’s take a stand to reject hate and harassment,” Morhaime said.

“Let’s redouble our efforts to be kind and respectful to one another. And let’s remind the world what the gaming community is really all about.”

Xerox Alto source code made public

Posted on October 22, 2014 by - News

altoThe code that inspired generations of computer nerds has been made public by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

The Xerox Alto computer was important because it was the first attempt and a making a machine that was visual rather than text based. It used a mouse and a WYSIWYG word processor. It was this beastie which was ripped off by Steve Jobs

Conservationists behind making the code available to the public had to archive it to nine-inch tape, before being transferred to eight-millimetre cartridges and then put on CDs.  Then they had to get permission to release the code.

The file includes the Bravo word processor, Markup, Draw and Sil drawing programs, and the Laurel e-mail program. There’s also the BCPL, Mesa, Smalltalk, and Lisp programming environments along with various utilities and the Alto’s Ethernet implementation.

Ethernet was developed for the Alto system using networking software, called Pup (for PARC Universal Packet).  This anticipated the Internet by allowing multiple Ethernet local area networks to be interconnected by leased phone lines, radio links, and the ARPANET (which at this time connected a handful of computers at ARPA research centres).

You can look at the software here 

 

2014 the best year since 2001

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

2001The tech industry is in its best state since 2001, according to figures from TechAmerica Foundation analysts.

Before the bubble burst, and payrolls shrank dramatically, the tech industry employed 6.5 million people.  In 2014 we are just 200,000 jobs shy of equalling that figure.

Tech industry employment reached 6.3 million in the first half of this year, a gain of 118,800 jobs, up 1.9 percent compared to the first half of 2013.

Oddly that is below the 3.7 percent growth rate overall for private-sector employers and the weaker rate of growth is an anomaly for the industry.

Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of technology industry trade group CompTIA, which bought  TechAmerica, said that the tech industry often experiences a better employment situation than the private sector.

In 2011 and 2012, the tech industry outgrew the overall private sector. In 2009, while the private sector saw employment fall by 5.5 percent. The employment decline in the tech industry was slightly lower at 4.5 percent.

Some of the slowing down of growth might be due to the fact that some big names like HP and  Microsoft have been cutting back, and in the first half of this year there were nearly 50,000 tech industry layoffs.

Safer areas to work have been R&D, testing and engineering services, which saw 54,100 new jobs. IT services was next, with a gain of 36,000 jobs.

Computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing saw employment rose from 156,000 jobs in January 2013 to 166,000 in June 2014.

Apparently, the tech industry is one of the best-paying sectors of the economy. The average annual salary for a tech industry employee is $93,000, compared to $47,400 for the private sector.

Brown Dog snuffles the 99 percent

Posted on October 8, 2014 by - News

cover-image-530x360A team of boffins is developing a search engine which can find all the data on the world wide web which cannot be seen by search bots.

The engine, dubbed Brown Dog, searches the web for uncurated data and makes it accessible to scientists.

Kenton McHenry, who along with Jong Lee lead the Image and Spatial Data Analysis division at the National Center for Supercomputing Application (NCSA) said that the information age has made it easy for anyone to create and share vast amounts of digital data, including unstructured collections of images, video and audio as well as documents and spreadsheets.

But the ability to search and use the contents of digital data has become exponentially more difficult because digital data is often trapped in outdated, difficult-to-read file formats and because metadata–the critical data about the data, such as when and how and by whom it was produced–is nonexistent.

McHenry and his team at NCSA have been given a $10 million, five year award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to manage and make sense of vast amounts of digital scientific data that is currently trapped in outdated file formats.

So far they have come up with a Data Access Proxy (DAP) which transforms unreadable files into readable ones by linking together a series of computing and translational operations behind the scenes.

Similar to an internet gateway, the configuration of the Data Access Proxy would be entered into a user’s machine settings and then forgotten. Data requests over HTTP would first be examined by the proxy to determine if the native file format is readable on the client device. If not, the DAP would be called in the background to convert the file into the best possible format readable by the client machine.

The second tool, the Data Tilling Service (DTS), lets individuals search collections of data, possibly using an existing file to discover other similar files in the data.

Once the machine and browser settings are configured, a search field will be appended to the browser where example files can be dropped in by the user. Doing so triggers the DTS to search the contents of all the files on a given site that are similar to the one provided by the user.

While browsing an online image collection, a user could drop an image of three people into the search field, and the DTS would return images in the collection that also contain three people. If the DTS encounters a file format it is unable to parse, it will use the Data Access Proxy to make the file accessible.

The Data Tilling Service will also perform general indexing of the data and extract and append metadata to files to give users a sense of the type of data they are encountering.

McHenry said the two services are like the Domain Name Service (DNS) in that they can translate inaccessible uncurated data into information.

According to IDC, a research firm, up to 90 percent of big data is “dark,” meaning the contents of such files cannot be easily accessed.

Brown Dog is not only useful for searching the Deep Web, it could one day be used to help individuals manage their ever-growing collections of photos, videos and unstructured/uncurated data on the Web.

Intel talks up wi-fi cunning plans

Posted on August 22, 2014 by - News

cunning-planChipzilla is telling the world about its cunning plans to move to “wire-free” computing by 2016.

Writing in the company bog, Intel is apparently developing a smart dock through which laptops can wirelessly connect to monitors and external peripherals.

Intel said that this will remove the need to plug HDMI or DisplayPort display connectors directly into laptops. The wireless dock will provide USB 3.0-like speeds to transfer data to external peripherals.

“When you walk in the office with your laptop, it will automatically link with your wireless-enabled monitor or projector to deliver an HD streaming experience without the hassle of plugging into your HDMI or DisplayPort,” Intel said.

Intel is developing technology so wireless monitors automatically start and link up when laptops are within a specific distance. Intel calls this “proximity-based peripheral syncing” technology.

People could also log on with face recognition, without the need to touch the keyboard.

Most of Intel’s wire-free computing is based on WiGig, which is faster than the latest Wi-Fi technology. Intel is also considering WiGig to connect wireless keyboards and mice to laptops.

Power adapters will also become outdated in Intel’s wireless world. It is developing wireless charging technologies for laptops. So far we have already seen charging pads based on A4WP’s Rezence magnetic resonance technology.

Intel is expected to explain its wire-free computing for business PCs plans at the Intel Developer Forum next month in San Francisco.

But it will have to move fast. Rivals bought Wilocity, which develops WiGig technology, last month and will put WiGig in its Snapdragon mobile chipsets so smartphones and tablets can wirelessly stream 4K video to external displays.

 

Insurance companies don’t know who their customers are

Posted on February 13, 2013 by - News

insuranceResellers trying to peddle insurance along with hardware packages might find themselves in hot water because the insurance industry has a problem identifying its customers.

Analyst outfit Ovum said that insurance companies are badly informed when it comes to working out who their customers are as the whole industry is getting turned on its head by new technology.

New research from the analysts highlights how the insurance sector is trying to adapt to new models of commerce and some are falling behind.

An Ovum spokesperson said that insurance is moving from a model where one-to-many messaging works, particularly in mass media, to a framework where consumers are gaining more power in the business transaction.

This means that insurance companies are designing packages which do not meet the needs of consumers and if they are being sold as part of a reseller, or warranty package, then it will the IT company that gets hit by the backlash.

Ovum believes that until insurers understand who the customer is, they will be unable to shape, deliver, and strengthen the experience each customer expects. It thinks that insurers, and those who are peddling it, must ensure that marketing is tailored to each individual customer as closely as possible.

Barry Rabkin, principal analyst, Insurance Technology warned that the insurance industry was headed towards a competitive myopia.

He said that customer experiences were becoming the basis of competition in the insurance industry and companies need to encompass customer needs, expectations, and satisfaction into their customer experience management (CEM) strategy.

Bad experiences were also more likely to be communicated thanks to the spread of mobile technology and users who are more informed and interconnected people who are seeking advice from each other.

If a reseller does not closely monitor their insurance packages to make sure they are what their customers think they are getting, it could be their brand that suffers. Customers are more likely to blame the company they bought the package from, before they moan about the insurance.

Resellers have to offer more personalised insurance packages rather than hoping that one size will fit all.

Insurers and the companies that repackage their products must quickly weave in the importance of customer experience into the company strategy at each touch point in order to succeed or fail to meet their expectations, Rabkin said.

Resellers salt fake reviews

Posted on January 30, 2013 by - News

fakeSuppliers have been paying computer science experts in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia to write fake glowing reviews for products on partner websites.

According to Guardian Money, fake reviewing has becoming a global business and is making the idea of customer reviews redundant.

Many offer their services to western companies on Freelancer.com, which promotes itself as an international website on which you can “outsource anything you can think of”. Companies simply post their requirements and wait for freelancers to start bidding for the work.

Guardian Money focused on fake reviews which promoted WAE+ which is a Birmingham reseller which claims to flog cheap cameras, flat-screen televisions and computers. It used to be known as We are Electricals. Last year this reseller had the distinction of being Computerworld’s most complained about company. Bogus reviews work was also carried out for a financial services company, AnnuitySupermarket.Com.

It outted “Zahed Kamal” who is a 25-year-old studying computer science and engineering at university in Chittagong, Bangladesh. He made cash on the side posting hundreds of reviews on independent consumer review websites such as Trustpilot and Review Centre. He has 11 jobs posting reviews, which, he says, will earn him £1,130 – which is a lot of dosh from where he comes from. He makes so much cash that he sub-contracts some of the work to others in India and Bangladesh.

What is tricky is that the writer needs to be able to create a unique name, email and internet provider address for each review, and make it look like it is posted in the UK. It does not take much computer expertise to do that, but it does explain why it is a nice little earner for computer science students.

WAE+ was a good example of what is going wrong with the system. Either its reviews were extremely low or extremely good.

In March 2012, an internet culture blogger called Danger Nazi Zombies Ahead (DNZA) analysed WAE+ reviews and found usernames that had posted glowing reviews were also used to post positive reviews of a small set of unrelated companies, based in different countries. Curiously those who bought from Birmingham UK with prices in pounds and thought the outfit was pretty good also bought from an American clothes shop with prices in dollars.

Guardian Money found Kamal, who said he was contracted to post reviews about WAE+ and was contacted through Freelancer.com by someone under the name of “f0rtkn0x” who was believed to be Ben Slater, operations director of WAE+.

Things went badly when someone from his company was fired, started posting bad reviews, and reported all about the reviews WAE+ got from his clients.

WAE+ insisted that there were no false reviews online about WAE+ for which it is knowingly responsible.

Kamal told the Guardian that sometimes he is contracted to put up real reviews that have been sent to a company by customers, but which haven’t been posted on the all-important review sites.
Trustpilot admitted that there was a black market for reviews and it took it very seriously. It also relies on the Trustpilot community to help identify and investigate reviews, further ensuring their quality and authenticity.

Fake reviews are illegal under consumer protection legislation. Apparently reading three negative reviews is enough to change the mind of 63 percent of consumers about making a purchase