Announcement

43 articles, 2016-03-13 12:01 1 releases updated preview builds for phone and PC Build 14271 for the PC and Build 14267.1004 for mobile released to testers on the Fast (2.00/3) Ring,Cloud and Infrastructure,Software,Operating Systems ,Microsoft,Windows 10 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.v3.co.uk 2 US Department of Defense to migrate millions of PCs to Windows 10 - in just one year DoD to migrate four million desktops in just one year - or, at least, that's the (2.00/3) plan,Operating Systems,Software ,Windows,Windows 10,Microsoft,Department of Defense,operating system 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.v3.co.uk 3 A look inside the SAP IQ column-oriented database The SAP IQ 16 column-oriented database can be used to deploy decision support, business intelligence, data warehouse and data mart implementation. 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com 4 A look at the upcoming SQL Data Warehouse The Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse service combines SQL capabilities with the ability to grow, shrink or pause in seconds. 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com 5 Sir Clive Sinclair talks ZX Spectrum, electric cars and the UK tech scene "Yes, we've certainly gone backwards",Software,Hardware ,ZX Spectrum,Sinclair 2016-03-13 12:01 740Bytes www.computing.co.uk 6 Intel shoots for 3D broadcasting with Replay Technologies acquisition The acquisition is indicative of growing digital transformation across industries ,Strategy,Hardware,Business Software ,Intel,Data,IBM,Digital 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.computing.co.uk 7 Oracle users warned over virtualisation software licence risks “It's simply not clear what Oracle’s contractual position is in reference to virtualised hardware,” warns software company,Software,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Oracle,TmaxSoft,Virtualisation 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.computing.co.uk 8 Microsoft unveils Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection service for enterprise customers Microsoft to add a post-breach layer of protection to the Windows 10 security stack,Software,Security ,Microsoft,Cyber security,Azure,Cloud,Windows 10 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.computing.co.uk 9 Office 365 suffers European outage due to 'high resource utilisation' So - lag, basically,Business Software,Appliances ,Microsoft,Azure,Azure outage,Office 365 outage,SMB Spotlight,smb-services 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.computing.co.uk 10 HSCIC completes migration to NHS Spine 2 backbone New NHS Spine is 'the biggest public-sector IT system to be built entirely on open source software', claims HSCIC,Health,Open Source ,HSCIC,NHS 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.computing.co.uk

11 Met Office goes for CA API Management to deliver new web and mobile data services Big data and big business increasingly go hand-in-hand for the Met Office,Software,Public Sector ,Met Office,Charles Ewen,API,Department for Business, Innovation and Skills,Cray,XC40,Intel 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB www.computing.co.uk 12 VR is here but embedded tech will truly transform its future HTC Vive and Oculus Rift offer great experiences, but the evolution of VR hardware and software is still at an early stage ,Gadgets,Hardware,Developer,Applications ,HTC,Oculus Rift,Samsung,Google,virtual reality,video games 2016-03-13 12:01 977Bytes www.computing.co.uk 13 Oracle’s 'traumatic' licensing methodology works, so it won’t change, says Specsavers global CIO It took Specsavers nine months to renegotiate a licensing deal with Oracle, but it didn't have to, says Phil Pavitt ,Licensing,Leadership ,Oracle,software licensing,SMB Spotlight,smb-services 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.computing.co.uk 14 The Computing Vendor Excellence Awards 2016 – enter now! Do you have what it takes to be a winner?,Software,Hardware ,Vendor Excellence Awards 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB www.computing.co.uk 15 Microsoft demos DevOps capabilities with updates to Azure Stack Technical Preview Microsoft previews developer services that will run on its Azure platform for inside customer data centres,DevOps,Developer,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Microsoft,Azure,DevOps 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.v3.co.uk 16 Is DevOps just a 're-branding' of ops? Interest in DevOps is intense, but have the roles and responsibilities, even within organisations that have adopted it, really changed?,DevOps,Developer ,DevOps,Puppet Labs 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB www.computing.co.uk 17 calls for tighter safeguards on bulk data collection Gates discusses the iPhone case, AI and the Book in his latest Reddit chat,Business Software,Privacy ,Microsoft,Bill Gates,Windows 10,Artificial Intelligence 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.computing.co.uk 18 Opera Software to turn Chinese in $1.2bn buyout Chinese consortium keen to pay a premium for Chrome clone browser company,Internet,Software ,Opera,vivaldi,Jon von Tetzchner,Presto,Chromium,Chrome,Qihoo 360,China 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.computing.co.uk 19 Amazon Web Service's Ts & Cs upgraded for zombie apocalypse AWS EULA keeps all bases covered,Cloud and Infrastructure,Software,Applications ,Amazon,Lumberyard,AWS,EULA,zombie 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.computing.co.uk 20 Blockchain-as-a-Service and open-sourcing of platform code among a slew of blockchain announcements from IBM IBM determined not to miss out on the predicted blockchain boom,Developer ,blockchain,Bitcoin,IBM,IBM Watson Internet of Things,Internet of Things,z Systems,London Stock Exchange,The Linux Foundation,Jim Zemlin,Bluemix,Cloud Computing 2016-03-13 12:01 4KB www.computing.co.uk 21 Why bet365 is open sourcing its Erlang code Bet365's Chandru Mullaparthi explains why the online betting giant has adopted Erlang – and why you should, too,Open Source,Big Data and Analytics ,Erlang,bet365,open source 2016-03-13 12:01 822Bytes www.computing.co.uk

22 Big data in big numbers - it's time to forget the 'three Vs' and look at real-world figures The term 'big data' has lost its meaning, says Sean Jackson, who offers some numbers to explain its impact in the here and now,Business Software ,Big Data and Analytics,Exasol,in- memory database,Gartner,Moore's law,Google,,Analytics,Internet of Things 2016-03-13 12:01 1KB www.computing.co.uk 23 Fixes for Flash flaws in IE and Edge browsers in Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday updates It's that time of the month, again,Software,Operating Systems,Security ,Microsoft,Windows 10,Qualys,Wolfgang Kandek,,Windows,Adobe Flash,Adobe,patch Tuesday,Tyler Reguly,Tripwire,Windows Journal,Microsoft Edge,MS16-022,remote code execution,Craig Young, 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.theinquirer.net 24 Microsoft SQL Server to run on Linux with SQL Server 2016 Linux version of Microsoft SQL Server 2016 planned for release next year,Cloud and Infrastructure,Software ,Cloud,databases,SQL Server 2016-03-13 12:01 3KB www.v3.co.uk 25 Oracle rushes out emergency patch to fix Java security flaw Java has a security flaw requiring an emergency patch. That's unusual, isn't it? ,Software,Internet,Internet of Things ,Java,Oracle,security,Patch,Wolfgang Kandek 2016-03-13 12:01 2KB www.v3.co.uk 26 Moving from Transactions to Streams to Get Consistency With many databases in a system they are rarely independent from each other, instead pieces of the same data are stored in many of them. Using transactions to keep everything in sync is a fragile solution. Working with a stream of changes in the order they are created is a... 2016-03-13 11:41 3KB www.infoq.com 27 Microsoft and Olio Devices announce patent licensing agreement REDMOND, Wash., and SAN FRANCISCO — Jan. 25, 2016 — On Monday, Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Olio Devices Inc. signed a patent licensing agreement covering wearable devices. Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “Mutually beneficial and collaborative patent licensing agreements like this one promote innovation and lead... 2016-03-13 11:37 2KB news.microsoft.com 28 Upstream oil and gas companies spend smarter on digital technologies to drive value, reduce costs in downturn, Accenture and Microsoft survey finds HOUSTON — March 9, 2016 — As upstream oil and gas companies scrutinize every dollar invested, they’re spending smarter today on digital technologies, seeking to drive value and reduce costs amid low oil and gas prices, a new survey by Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) reports. Respondents to the... 2016-03-13 11:37 6KB news.microsoft.com 29 Google glitch translates 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'; it has a ring to it Irony alert: Google Translate bug brands Russians as occupiers when translating from Ukrainian 2016-03-13 11:35 3KB www.v3.co.uk 30 Microsoft and Acer expand partnership to bring Microsoft services to more customers on more devices REDMOND, Wash., and TAIPEI, Taiwan — Feb. 10, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. and Acer Inc. announced on Wednesday the expansion of their global partnership to bring productivity services to more consumers. From the second half of 2016, Acer will begin pre-installing Microsoft services and apps on its portfolio... 2016-03-13 11:37 3KB news.microsoft.com 31 E-School for Girls partners with NYU and Microsoft for entrepreneurship event NEW YORK — Feb. 4, 2016 — Pre-college entrepreneurship program E-School for Girls partnered with New York University, Microsoft Corp. and Natalie Zfat for an inspirational and educational event, What It Takes to Be a Successful Entrepreneur, on Feb. 3, 2016, at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Microsoft is... 2016-03-13 11:37 3KB news.microsoft.com 32 Microsoft Cloud strength highlights second quarter results REDMOND, Wash. — January 28, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2015: During the quarter, Microsoft returned $6.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends. “Businesses everywhere are using the Microsoft Cloud as their digital platform to... 2016-03-13 11:37 8KB news.microsoft.com 33 Microsoft delivers enterprise-class ERP to the cloud REDMOND, Wash. — March 9, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced that its next-generation cloud ERP solution, AX, built on and for Microsoft Azure, is now available in 137 markets in 40 languages. The enterprise-class business application brings the power, speed and intelligence of cloud computing to... 2016-03-13 11:37 7KB news.microsoft.com 34 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner The allegations were made using Google’s Google+ social networking platform, and also on Google Maps. When the reviews claiming that infants were not safe in the nursery were found by the small business, the owners originally approached Google and asked them to remove the offensive and untrue content. But the... 2016-03-13 03:33 24KB feeds2.feedburner.com 35 Should your business upgrade to Windows 10? The pros and cons of switching to Microsoft's newest OS 2016-03-13 09:00 3KB www.techradar.com 36 Microsoft reportedly installing Windows 10 without consent - - again We all know that Microsoft is using increasingly aggressive -- and desperate -- tactics to get people to upgrade to its newest operating system. A month ago it switched the update status from 'optional' to 'recommended', and last week it snuck Windows 10 advertising into a security patch. We all... 2016-03-13 08:10 2KB betanews.com 37 Supporting EJB Transactions in Your Java App - Developer.com Explore the concept of EJB transaction management in a Java EE framework. 2016-03-13 00:00 6KB www.developer.com 38 Artificial intelligence and language The concept of artificial intelligence has been around for a long time. We’re all familiar with HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, C-3PO from Star Wars.. 2016-03-12 20:16 13KB techcrunch.com 39 How to train your human, part II: Products that make habits last In the first part of this series, we learned about designing products that use good triggers and motivators to get users like Joe to engage in healthy.. 2016-03-12 20:16 8KB techcrunch.com 40 Technology and the laws of power Is the tech industry partly responsible for the rise of Donald Trump? That's what John Robb, who's always worth reading, suggests in a series of recent posts,.. 2016-03-12 20:16 5KB techcrunch.com 41 OneDrive app update brings support for iPad multitasking on iOS Microsoft has released an updated version of its OneDrive app on the App Store with various enhancements such as support for iPad multitasking and the ability to purchase Office 365 subscriptions. 2016-03-12 16:06 1KB www.neowin.net 42 Microsoft is desperately nagging enterprise users to upgrade to Windows 10 -- even if they can't Microsoft's incredibly aggressive pushing of Windows 10 has been going on for some time now. In many regards it is something that home users have become accustomed to. While you might bemoan Microsoft constantly adverting Windows 10 to you if you've not yet upgraded, you must appreciate that it at... 2016-03-12 13:00 3KB betanews.com 43 Essay: Will the First Amendment survive the information age? As Apple tries to fend off government demands for access to iPhone content, the company is leaning on free speech arguments as a key part of its defense in a California courtroom. 2016-03-12 23:43 7KB phys.org Articles

43 articles, 2016-03-13 12:01

1 Microsoft releases updated Windows 10 preview builds for phone and PC (2.00/3) Microsoft has released updated preview code for Windows 10 on the PC at the same time as the Windows 10 Mobile version for phones. The releases come as Microsoft counts down an upcoming major update of Windows 10, codenamed Redstone. Both updates were pushed out overnight to testers signed up for Microsoft's programme, which the company uses to evaluate upcoming features before they are merged into the release code. Build 14271 for the PC and Build 14267.1004 for mobile were released to testers subscribing to the Fast Ring, which is updated the most frequently and thus showcases the newest features. For the most part, both updates largely comprise a number of bug fixes to previous preview releases, as Microsoft focuses on cleaning up the code in preparation for the Redstone release sometime in the first half of this year. Redstone will be the second major update for the Windows 10 platform on the PC, following last year's Windows 10 November Update. However, there are a couple of notable changes; starting with Build 14271 on the PC and going forwards, the setting that governs how frequently Windows will ask for tester feedback will be locked to automatic. Announcing the change on the Windows Experience blog , Gabe Aul, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Engineering Systems Team said that receiving feedback is a vital part of the Windows Insider Programme. "After each build upgrade or after certain activities, Windows will often ask for feedback. The answers to these questions are used by our engineering teams to understand how Windows Insiders feel about a particular experience or a particular build," he explained. "While we don't require Windows Insiders to answer these questions, we do hope they take the time to answer them so that we can better improve Windows for our customers," he added. Meanwhile, Windows 10 Mobile Build 14267.1004 delivers a new Visual Voicemail feature for dual-SIM devices such as the Lumia 950 XL , as well as fixing a serious bug in Build 14267 where users of the where the Lumia 550 found that their device would no longer charge or connect via USB. Visual Voicemail was showcased by Microsoft last year, and provides on-screen controls that enable users to listen to and manage voicemail messages without having to dial into their voicemail system. However, users of older Windows Phone handsets will be disappointed, as Microsoft recently began making preview releases available only for devices that shipped with Windows 10 Mobile, such as the Lumia 950, 950 XL, 650 and 550. Microsoft warned of some known issues with these latest preview releases, but which it is working to fix. Some PCs, for example, have been found to freeze or bluescreen when resuming from hibernation, and there is there is a known driver bug that prevents some commercial antivirus tools from operating as expected. Computing will be holding an Internet of Things Business Summit in London on May 12. Attendance is free to qualifying end users and places are already going fast. Visit the event page to peruse the agenda and to sign up 2016-03-13 12:01

2 US Department of Defense to migrate millions of PCs to Windows 10 - in just one year (2.00/3) The US Department of Defence (DoD) is planning a wholesale migration to Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system - and is aiming to complete the migration in just one year. The operating system migration comes as the US Army opens a request for proposal over a monster $12bn IT services contract . Microsoft has been swift to highlight the DoD announcement as an endorsement of the latest version of the platform, claiming that the migration will enable the DoD to improve security, lower the cost of IT and streamline its operating environment. "Because the DoD is a prime target of cyber criminals and one of the largest and most complex organisations in the world, its leaders know the importance of securing its baseline systems," said Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of the Windows and Devices Group, detailing the decision on Microsoft's blog . However, the agency is setting itself an unenviable task. Microsoft said that the US Secretary of Defense has directed all DoD agencies to begin the rapid deployment of Windows 10 to all information systems currently using Microsoft operating systems. This accounts for some four million seats, and the DoD is targeting the upgrade for completion inside a year. Many enterprise firms that have far fewer deployed instances have struggled to migrate away from legacy platforms such as Windows XP , which hit the end of its lifecycle nearly two years ago. These migrations have often taken years to plan and execute, making the DoD's plans ambitious to say the least. The decision to standardise on Windows 10 is apparently in response to a range of challenges that include the difficulties of managing multiple platforms and devices across the various DoD agencies, plus a constantly shifting threat landscape, a particular concern to an organisation like the DoD, which is a prime target of cyber criminals. In fact, DoD chief information officer Terry Halvorsen said that the agency's networks are "getting shot at" virtually every day. The DoD spends about $44bn annually on cyber security and IT, and needed to deploy systems that are more secure, efficient and cost-effective, and standardised on a single platform. Microsoft said that Windows 10 has been certified against specific US government criteria and standards, including the National Information Assurance Partnership Common Criteria Protection Profile for mobile devices. 2016-03-13 12:01

3 A look inside the SAP IQ column-oriented database SAP IQ is a relational column-oriented database management system that can be used to implement highly scalable data warehouses. The high-performance column store technology of SAP IQ can deliver high-speed compression and ad hoc analysis without complex tuning. This DBMS includes additional functionality for managing data warehouses and business intelligence applications, including analytics, multilingual client application performance interfaces, federation and Web enablement. SAP IQ 16 runs on multiple operating systems including Windows, Linux x86, Linux POWER, HP-UX , AIX, Solaris x86 and Solaris SPARC. SAP IQ can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud. 2016-03-13 12:01 Craig S.

4 A look at the upcoming Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse Currently in preview, Microsoft refers to its Azure SQL Data Warehouse as a fully managed, elastic and petabyte-scale columnar data warehouse service that's compatible and integrated with the Microsoft SQL Server ecosystem. It provides an enterprise with a distributed database management system that can store and process large volumes of relational and nonrelational data. The SQL Data Warehouse service enables customers to elastically pause their usage or shut down their compute infrastructure, while maintaining the data. During a pause, the data is maintained, but can't be accessed. Customers pay for only the commodity storage used to persist the data, potentially reducing the cost of their enterprise data warehouse. With Azure SQL Data Warehouse, customers can increase or decrease query power in seconds. Instead of paying for dedicated fixed ratios of disk and compute, they can take full advantage of storage at cloud scale and then apply query compute based on seasonal requirements. The data warehouse service is delivered with two simple meters -- compute and storage -- so costs can be easily forecasted. Customers of all sizes across all industries can use Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Organizations with SQL Server and Transact-SQL (T-SQL) expertise may benefit from SQL Data Warehouse if they need to add nonrelational capabilities to their existing data warehouse or no longer want to manage their on-premises data warehouse. 2016-03-13 12:01 Craig S.

5 Sir Clive Sinclair talks ZX Spectrum, electric cars and the UK tech scene Sir Clive Sinclair should be no stranger to Computing readers. A pioneering mind in the UK technology scene, Sir Clive Sinclair was responsible for one of the first truly mass-market personal computers... 2016-03-13 12:01

6 Intel shoots for 3D broadcasting with Replay Technologies acquisition Intel is pushing into digital broadcasting, having acquired Israeli 3D video specialist Replay Technologies. The purchase is a natural extension of Intel's partnership with Replay, which began in 2013, and involved the two working on various 3D video projects. Their most recent project involved 360-degree broadcasts of the NBA All-Star Weekend, specifically in the Slam Dunk contest where basketball players pull off spectacular shots. The company's proprietary freeD 3D video rendering format uses 28 ultra high-definition cameras and computational power from Intel's servers to broadcast the contest in a way that provides a 360-degree view of the dunks. Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital, explained that the purchase of Replay will see Intel scale up the use of freeD to create what it call "immersive sports" for broadcasters and fans. "Immersive sports requires the high-performance computing Intel is known for, and it's also data driven, fuelling the continued build out of the cloud. For athletes, coaches, broadcasters and fans, the ability to capture, analyse and share data adds compelling new dimensions to the game," he said. "As part of Intel, the team will focus on growing their existing business and advancing their technology with Intel to deliver faster freeD processing and new features like the ability to manipulate and edit personalised content. " Intel's acquisition of Replay, for an undisclosed sum, is an attempt to further develop 3D broadcasting, and shows how companies are exploring the use of new digital technology and related hardware to provide enhanced services to customers and audiences. 360-degree broadcasts could, for example, provide web broadcasts in documentaries or travel programmes, while companies could showcase products, designs and even financial results in a more interactive and engaging way. The Amba Hotel in London's Marble Arch already does something similar with a virtual reality app and headset that allows potential clients to get an interactive tour of the hotel's facilities even if they are in a different country. IBM is another company exploring the use of cutting-edge digital technologies in traditional industries, and has created a Watson-powered robot concierge for a Hilton hotel . 2016-03-13 12:01

7 Oracle users warned over virtualisation software licence risks Oracle database users running their applications in a virtualised environment using third-party virtualisation software, such as VMware's, could be in "serious breach" of Oracle's software licensing rules - and potentially on the hook for millions in fines and extra software licences. That is the claim of Carl Davies, managing director at Tmaxsoft, which provides a "drop-in replacement for the Oracle database", and which therefore has a vested interest. "Nobody is suggesting that Oracle users - be they ISVs or end users themselves - are intentionally running in breach. It is simply not clear what Oracle's contractual position is in reference to virtualised hardware," said Davies. He continued: "Oracle permits some partitioning technology as a means of limiting the number of software licences required in virtualised environments but it can be unclear which methods are approved and it's easy to misinterpret and fall into non-compliance. "But ignorance is no defence once Oracle decides to audit an organisations' estate. The one sure result for non-Oracle Virtualisation Machine (OVM) users such as VMware will be significant cost and disruption, and once the audit is complete they will be given 30 days to become compliant again. " Complaints over software vendors' licence auditing programmes have increased as new software licence sales have fallen in recent years. It is not just Oracle that has been the target of user ire, but also Microsoft and SAP, among others. "To be clear, Oracle does publish an Oracle Partitioning Policy, which makes a distinction between hard and soft-partitioning," said Davies. "It prohibits the use of many of the most common virtualisation technologies as hard partitioning in order to limit the number of licences required, including Solaris 9 resource containers, AIX workload manager and VMware," he continued. "However this document has been far from widely publicised and, confusingly, explicitly states that none of these prohibitions can be included in any contract. Despite the fact that Oracle goes to great lengths to describe its partitioning policy, it goes on to suggest that this very policy will not form part of any agreement or contract. "This is obviously very perplexing and it isn't surprising that some customers are accusing Oracle of promoting misuse of its software to then report that same customer to be out of compliance. " Tmaxsoft has, in the past, accused Oracle of being heavy-handed in its software licence audits , and of coming down hard on users adopting virtualisation within their environments to make their hardware go further. 2016-03-13 12:01

8 Microsoft unveils Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection service for enterprise customers Microsoft has unveiled details of a threat protection service it is developing that, it claims, will help organisations detect and deal with attacks on their networks. Using a combination of endpoint and cloud- based tools, it is intended to detect threats that have made it past other defences and provide response recommendations. Due to be available later this year, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is already being trialled by some early adopter customers as well as being used to protect Microsoft's own network, the company revealed. Full details have yet to be disclosed, but the service is likely to be incorporated into the Windows 10 Enterprise edition of Microsoft's operating system, and thus available only to volume licensing customers. The new service is being developed because of the increasing sophistication of cyber attacks mounted against corporate networks, and the damage that can be inflicted through lost productivity and loss or theft of confidential information. Microsoft claims that serious breaches cost the average organisation some $12m per incident, in addition to a broader impact on a company's reputation. "As the attackers' approaches have evolved and become more sophisticated, so too must our approach to provide security to our enterprise customers," said Microsoft's executive vice president for the Windows and Devices Group, Terry Myerson. He added that 90 per cent of IT directors responding to a survey said they needed a fully-fledged advanced threat protection solution that is capable of identifying attacks sooner and providing remediation. To address this, Microsoft is building Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection around software built into Windows 10 endpoints feeding data back to cloud-based services to provide a global view of the threat landscape. The software giant said that Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is powered by a combination of Windows behavioural sensors, cloud-based security analytics, threat intelligence, and by tapping into Microsoft's "intelligent security graph". The latter is being developed to provide analytics on information drawn from more than one billion Windows devices. The service's security operations data provides an easy way to investigate alerts, explore the corporate network for signs of attacks, and to get detailed file footprints from across the organisation to recommend responses. It will also be able to examine the state of machines and their activities over the preceding six months for historical investigation purposes. One organisation involved in the trial is IT services supplier Avanade. "Cyber security is my biggest concern and securing all endpoints in my organisation is my current priority. Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is unique in that it can see exactly what's going on across every endpoint, which other solutions are failing to address," said Avanade's IT security director, Greg Petersen. Because Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is being built into Windows 10, it will be automatically kept up-to-date along with Windows itself. No on-premise server infrastructure or ongoing maintenance will be required, claims Microsoft. 2016-03-13 12:01

9 Office 365 suffers European outage due to 'high resource utilisation' UPDATE: Microsoft has issued Computing with the following statement, attributed to "a Microsoft spokesperson": "A limited number of customers in Europe may have intermittent access to email on mobile devices, or intermittent delays accessing the portal, and we're working to resolve both as quickly as possible," said the spokesperson, curiously focusing only on mobile when, to Computing 's knowledge, a number of types of device were affected. "Customers can access email via Outlook client or Outlook on the web and can visit the O365 Service Health Dashboard for updates," the spokesperson said. ORIGINAL STORY: Office 365 is experiencing a European outage, marking the second time in three months that Microsoft's critical enterprise systems are unavailable for a sustained period. The company has been quoted as attributing the problems to "high resource utilisation". Many users are unable to log into Office 365 through its front-end portal, resulting in perpetual lag, while the website promising that technicians are "working on it". If users are able to log in to services - for example Outlook - they are experiencing further lag inside the service environment when trying to open emails. Office 365 seems to have been inaccessible by those affected since around 9am this morning. Microsoft has made no formal announcement as yet, but Computing has been informed by a contact in the tech support industry that the company is blaming the problems on "high resource utilisation". Users on Twitter are reporting "multiple customers experiencing outages", and accusing Microsoft of "fix[ing] one thing and breaking another" . Computing has contacted Microsoft for a statement, and will update this story as and when we get one. Office 365's last major outage took place on 3 December 2015 , and also included Azure services. It lasted around four hours, and cloud email management firm Mimecast warned at the time that continued outages could begin to have "a detrimental impact on the country". A further outage took place on 18 December 2015 , and was attributed more directly to Microsoft's Azure functions. 2016-03-13 12:01

10 HSCIC completes migration to NHS Spine 2 backbone The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has completed the final phase of its move from the Spine backbone, which was created as part of the ill-fated National Programme for IT (NPfIT), to Spine 2. The Spine was part of the national infrastructure that stored patient information and enabled electronic messaging. It has been singled out by many as one of the few success stories of NPfIT , but as it went live more than 10 years ago, contracts with the suppliers who delivered it were about to end, necessitating some kind of revamp. HSCIC wanted the new Spine to be capable of processing significantly more data, enabling faster and more effective messaging and sharing between NHS organisations than ever before . As part of the upgrade to Spine 2, it has abandoned the original Spine's Oracle relational database and moved to open source platforms, such as the Riak NoSQL database from developer Basho. HSCIC claims that the new Spine is the biggest public-sector IT system to be built entirely on open source software. "We wanted to develop a service that HSCIC and developers could work with and adapt, to suit the needs of individual NHS organisations. The entire system is built on open source, freely available software, which makes it much easier to work with and develop," said Rob Shaw, director of assurance services at HSCIC. "The team working on Spine operate an agile working method, which makes it much faster to improve and change the service. We are all proud of what has already been achieved and excited to continue to develop the service in the future," he added. Another big shift is that HSCIC chose IT consultancy BJSS to work with it on the project, taking over a role previously held by BT. HSCIC said that it had taken the technological backbone of the NHS from a private company to in-house, public-sector management. "The usual practice for a big public-sector project like this has been to give the whole thing to a large supplier. We decided that we could manage and make improvements to Spine more flexibly in-house, and have worked with a number of specialist SMEs to successfully deliver our aims," said Shaw. HSCIC claimed that the 18-month transition project to the new Spine was achieved without disrupting the service it provides to 28,000 organisations, while simultaneously enabling the secure transfer of almost 150TB of data, including the demographic details of 80 million people. According to HSCIC, the system has saved £21m in its first year and saved the NHS 750 working days of time to date. Computing's Enterprise Open Source Summit is on 6 July in London. For more information, click here 2016-03-13 12:01

11 Met Office goes for CA API Management to deliver new web and mobile data services The Met Office is to use API Management software from CA Technologies in a bid to make it easier for the Met Office, as well as third parties, to deliver a wider range of online weather services to the web and mobile devices. As Ewen discussed with Computing this week , the Met Office's core "business" is becoming more complicated than ever, with the organisation tasked with disseminating forecast and climate data to more people and other organisations than ever before. Indeed, each forecast that the Met Office calculates today involves some 400GB per run. CA's software, therefore, is intended to help streamline the process by which the Met Office electronically shares data with partners, create new weather services, and improve the organisation's service to the public, regardless of how they choose to interact with the Met Office. Both cloud computing and mobile have increased demand for the Met Office's services, as well as expectations. But they also present new opportunities for the organisation to extend its reach and to increase revenues. Indeed, the burgeoning demand for detailed weather information from industry was the motivating factor behind systems giant IBM's recent acquisition of The Weather Company. The Met Office will be able to launch new mobile app-based services, aimed at both the public and organisations like the armed forces for the purpose of planning exercises, for example. They will also be able to provide more information to the energy, retail and other sectors where the weather can have a big impact. "The Met Office combines the latest science with ground-breaking advances in technology and local understanding to deliver operational advantage to our customers. We need to have the necessary knowledge, experience and flexibility to be able to apply our science across business and government to manage risks and opportunities as they arise from our weather," said Met Office CIO Charles Ewen. He continued: "CA API Management will underpin the next-generation of the Met Office services, allowing the organisation to safely share its data and applications with partners, developers, mobile apps and cloud services. " In addition to CA, the Met Office also worked with PC distributor and services company Computacenter on the implementation. Milko Van Duijl, senior vice president of UK and Ireland for CA Technologies, said that the software would "help power the next generation of digital services at the Met Office". He added:"CA's API Management software will enable the Met Office to monetise its weather and climate data, accelerate mobile services development, and grow the organisation. " The Met Office creates up to 3,000 tailored weather and climate forecasts, and briefings every day. It has recently upgraded its supercomputer estate from IBM to 140 tonnes of Intel-powered Cray XC40s. It uses APIs to bring together data from multiple sources, as well as helping to communicate and share information with third parties. The Met Office was established in 1854 as a small department within the Board of Trade, and issued its first gale warning in 1859. The Met Office today is organised as a "Trading Fund" within the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BISS). That follows its transformation into an executive agency in the Ministry of Defence in 1990, and its transfer to BISS in 2011. See also : 2016-03-13 12:01

12 VR is here but embedded tech will truly transform its future Virtual reality (VR) is set to be everywhere in 2016. And for good reason. The HTC Vive went live for pre-orders just a few days ago and was snapped up by 15,000 early adopters despite the eye-watering... 2016-03-13 12:01

13 Oracle’s 'traumatic' licensing methodology works, so it won’t change, says Specsavers global CIO Oracle's approach to licensing has led to a 'traumatic' journey for Specsavers, according to its global CIO Phil Pavitt, who claims that the tech giant won't change the way it works. A damning report by the not-for-profit organisation Campaign for Clear Licensing (CCL) at the end of 2014 suggested that Oracle's customers are left "hostile and filled with deep- rooted mistrust" as a result of the tech giant's licensing and auditing processes - and indeed, it is an area that CIOs have been telling Computing that they're frustrated about for years, not just with Oracle, but with the likes of IBM and SAP too. According to Pavitt, Specsavers now has a good deal, but the firm had to go through six to nine months of "real trauma" to get to that deal. "We're happy with that deal, it wasn't easy to get to but we are now licensed appropriately. But at the end of the day, the journey was overly dramatic and traumatic and didn't need to be," Pavitt told Computing. "It is a real shame that their products are really good and unfortunately you can't do without them. But unfortunately the way they operate, it's just not a customer-focused way at all; their approach to the customer is minus the customer," he stated, adding that SAP and Oracle are both difficult to work with. Last year at Oracle Openworld in San Francisco, the then CTO of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Iain Patterson, suggested that the way Oracle licensing worked was about to change - as long as customers took a different approach to how they handle their licences. But despite both the DVLA and Specsavers renegotiating deals with Oracle, Pavitt doesn't believe that Oracle will change. "I don't believe that [Oracle will change]. At the end of the day they are a transaction-based organisation, they act like it, they sell like it, the gun-to-the-head methodology is selling. It's very powerful for them, there is no other methodology they've been trained in using and you have to get to very senior levels in the UK or the US to get any reasonable conversation about a reasonable deal - and that's not about discounting necessarily, it's about the right deal for the organisation," Pavitt said. This accords with Patterson's account that Oracle CEO Safra Catz was personally involved in the conversation to get DVLA a better deal. Pavitt believes that the likes of Oracle and SAP should really be coming to their customers to help them, but said because of their size, customers have to approach them instead. So what could force a change? "It won't stop; it hasn't changed for 20 years so why would it change? If the customers jointly stand up then perhaps they'll do something, but it'll never happen," he said. 2016-03-13 12:01

14 The Computing Vendor Excellence Awards 2016 – enter now! After last year's fantastic inaugural Computing Vendor Excellence Awards, we're back for 2016 and offering you another chance to pick up one of our coveted IT industry gongs. Open to all technology vendors in the enterprise IT space, the categories for entry range across a broad spectrum, from unified communications to DDoS mitigation; from business continuity to data visualisation. With 23 awards up for grabs, make 2016 the year you walk away with a trophy. The intense judging process - involving a crack team of top IT industry CIOs and Computing 's own technology experts - culminates in an unforgettable awards ceremony taking place at a glittering central London venue on the afternoon of 1 July, 2016. Last year's winners said picking up a Computing VEA was seen as a company's "most prominent award to date", a "tremendous endorsement" as well as a great way to "highlight how serious" a company is about serving customers in its chosen sector. The Computing Vendor Excellence Awards 2016 are now open for entries, and we urge you not to delay - the deadline for submitting your entry is 5pm on 22 April 2016. Soon after this date, a shortlist will be announced. Best of luck, and we do hope you'll be joining us on the day. 2016-03-13 12:01

15 Microsoft demos DevOps capabilities with updates to Azure Stack Technical Preview Microsoft's Azure Stack was released as a Technical Preview at the end of January, but the firm is already extending its capabilities with extra platform as a service (PaaS) and DevOps tools for enterprise customers to evaluate. Azure Stack can be regarded as a version of the Azure public cloud packaged so that it can be deployed on servers running in a customer's own data centre. It is a key part of Microsoft's hybrid cloud strategy, as customers running Azure Stack will find it easier to extend to the Microsoft Azure cloud thanks to the large degree of consistency across the two platforms. In a new update, Microsoft has added extra that organisations can download and deploy onto the Azure Stack Technical Preview, including an updated Azure software development kit (SDK); a Web Apps capability in the Azure App Service; SQL and MySQL database resource providers; and Visual Studio support. Microsoft said that this update represents just the first instalment of a continuous innovation process planned for Azure Stack, and which will eventually lead towards enterprise customers being able to fully deliver Azure services from their own data centres. However, Microsoft said that the three PaaS resource providers it has now delivered, for Web Apps SQL and MySQL, are still only at the early preview stage. "We're making them available early to solicit community and early adopter feedback to help simplify the installation and configuration experience. We will then incorporate the feedback and release another public preview for these services before we release the next Technical Preview of Azure Stack," the firm said in a posting on its Azure blog. Meanwhile, adding Azure Stack support into the Visual Studio suite will help organisations move towards a DevOps strategy, enabling them to build and deploy cloud-like services from their own data centre. "Enterprises today must manage both hyper-scale web applications and complex requirements such as ensuring regulatory compliance and data sovereignty," said Microsoft's senior programme manager for Azure Tools, Jason Shaver. "To meet these needs, Microsoft lets enterprises approach the cloud as a model rather than a place: Azure and Azure Stack share a standardised architecture, portal, and application model, allowing developers to write once and deploy to public, private, or hosted cloud environments without code changes," he added. Computing is set to host a DevOps Summit event in London on 5th July 2016. Follow the link for more details. 2016-03-13 12:01

16 Is DevOps just a 're-branding' of ops? "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," goes the old saying - the more things change, the more they stay the same. That is certainly the risk with the way in which many organisations are approaching DevOps, warns Puppet Labs founder and CEO Luke Kanies. Appearing on a live Computing webcast from London, Kanies suggested that many organisations' were approaching DevOps in much the same way that they had approached cloud computing just a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago, he said, "every company had to have a cloud strategy. What we found was that most organisations' private cloud strategies was to rename their VMware vSphere infrastructure to be their private cloud. "In the same way, a lot of organisations have been implementing DevOps by taking all their ops teams and just calling them DevOps engineers. Or, hiring a slightly more senior ops engineer and giving them a different title, but with fundamentally the same role and the same dynamic. "That's not the right way to implement DevOps," said Kanies. Instead of genuinely implementing DevOps structures within IT, many organisations are simply taking the easy route and re-branding accordingly, he warned. "There is a cultural and organisational change that you have to go through and that change in a lot of organisations, especially mature organisations... if it's not painful you're probably not doing it right", he said. Iain McInnes, lead DevOps specialist at OVO Energy, on the panel of experts on the same live webcast, agreed. "The key skills stay the same [but] the direction and the cohesiveness of the teams working together is the key difference," he said. "And implementing such cultural change, especially in well-entrenched teams with equally well-entrenched practices, is never easy. " While to outsiders, the shift might seem logical, to those involved, the upheaval involved shouldn't be underestimated, warned Kief Morris, the author of Infrastructure of Code: Managing Servers in the Cloud and a cloud specialist at consultancy ThoughtWorks. "It's about finding ways for getting those [two] groups to work better together and various aspects in terms of team structure, culture and automation of working practices," said Morris. "It's about getting ops, the people managing the infrastructure, to align more closely with business outcomes," he added. Naturally, automation of working practices will make staff who could be affected nervous and, potentially, hostile. For Kanies, whose company's software has been instrumental to the spread of DevOps, a big bang approach - in which IT is re-organised from the top down - may not be wise. "Start with a small team," Kanies advised. "It's a huge mistake to have an executive-level strategic move to having a DevOps team and DevOps delivery. That's a great way to make sure that you get nothing done over three years," said Kanies. Instead, he advised, put together a "stealth squad" of people in a single business area to provide, effectively, a proof of concept to prove not only that it works, but that it will be beneficial for everyone working in both development and operations - or, if it doesn't work (for whatever reasons) it won't affect the wider business too much. "You want to do it in a place that gives your team the opportunity to learn and the time to learn. But you also want to pick an area that if it works, it's genuinely meaningful. So, pick a high- pressure area that has a real opportunity to deliver meaningful value and then, when that works you can take what you have learnt from that and 'spread success out'," said Kanies. Then, he suggested, the organisation can spread DevOps via the experts its cultivated team-by- team over the course of three or so years. Smaller organisations, he admitted, might not have much choice in the matter than to adopt a "big bang" approach. "But at larger organisations you don't want to try to do this in a way that means that failure makes the front page of the Financial Times," he added. Computing's DevOps Summit will be in London on 5th July, and is free to qualifying IT professionals. Hear from end users, including Sky, Hiscox and Ovo Energy , how they implemented DevOps in their organisations, as well as best practice seminars from Chef, Puppet, Splunk and other big-names in DevOps 2016-03-13 12:01

17 Bill Gates calls for tighter safeguards on bulk data collection Microsoft founder Bill Gates has demanded more public debate around bulk data collection, stating that there are currently insufficient safeguards in place to ensure that the information is only used for the proper reasons. Gates made his comments in his third 'Ask Me Anything' session on web forum service Reddit . "I think there needs to be a discussion about when the government should be able to gather information. What if we had never had wiretapping? Also the government needs to talk openly about safeguards," he said. "Right now a lot of people don't think the government has the right checks to make sure information is only used in criminal situations. So this case will be viewed as the start of a discussion. "I think very few people take the extreme view that the government should be blind to financial and communication data, but very few people think giving the government carte blanche without safeguards makes sense. "A lot of countries like the UK and France are also going through this debate. For tech companies there needs to be some consistency, including how governments work with each other. The sooner we modernise the laws the better," he said. Gates also called for improved regulation around artificial intelligence, a hot topic given that a computer has recently beaten the world champion at board game 'Go' . "I think it is worth discussing [regulation] because I share the view of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking that when a few people control a platform with extreme intelligence it creates dangers in terms of power and eventually control," he said. He also discussed his unsurprising use of the Microsoft Surface Book and Windows 10. "I just recently switched to the Surface Book. I only detach the screen a few times a week and I like the keyboard better than my previous Surface [and] I use the latest version of Windows - always updated Windows 10," he said. 2016-03-13 12:01

18 Opera Software to turn Chinese in $1.2bn buyout The board of Opera Software, the Norwegian web browser pioneer, has agreed a $1.2bn acquisition by a consortium of Chinese investors as its six-month hunt for a buyer reaches fruition. The company effectively put itself up for sale in August when it hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to sniff out anyone interested in acquiring it. That decision followed a decline in earnings due to its continuing loss of market share in browsers, compounded by lower advertising sales. The consortium buying the company includes security company Qihoo 360 and internet firm Beijing Kunlun Tech. The deal is backed by the investment funds Golden Brick and Yonglian Investment. In addition to the Opera web browser, which is - or used to be - particularly popular in parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the company also offers the SurfEasy virtual private networking service. It also has intellectual property in mobile and slimline web browsers, technology that is embedded in a range of "smart" and other devices. " The transaction would give Opera access to the extensive internet user base of Kunlun and Qihoo in China as well as the financing and other support of the Consortium that would allow for the full potential of the company to be realised. At the same time, Kunlun and Qihoo would be able to cross-sell their products and services to the Opera user base, and benefit from Opera's leading mobile advertising platform," said the company in a statement this morning. The buyers would appear to be keen to acquire Opera - offering 53 per cent above its closing price on Thursday, before the company's shares were suspended on Friday by the Oslo stock exchange as rumours of a takeover gathered pace. Opera switched from its in-house developed Presto rendering engine to Google's open-source Chromium project in August 2013 after pre-announcing the shift in February that year. The company justified the move claiming that the Presto code had become too unwieldy. The shift also helped it to cut costs and a number of staff were made redundant later that year. However, users were also lost in the transition - and they don't appear to have come back. Its co-founder and former CEO, meanwhile, Icelander Jon von Tetzchner, set up a new web browser software company in 2015, called Vivaldi , which promises to be faster than established browsers - including Opera. 2016-03-13 12:01

19 Amazon Web Service's Ts & Cs upgraded for zombie apocalypse People frequently complain about software and cloud EULAs - end-user licence agreements - but think about it from the side of the company: especially with cloud, it has to take account of every last stupid thing someone might be motivated to do with its software and/or services. That, perhaps, partly accounts for the latest changes to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Ts and Cs. It has just thrown open its games development platform Lumberyard - based on Crytek's CryEngine so it ought to be good - and updated its Service Terms accordingly. "The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat," it states. Fair enough. It continues: "This restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the US Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to re-animate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organised civilisation. " Some might argue that's already occurred, citing the US Presidential Election as proof, with all that's missing the certificate from the CDC. 2016-03-13 12:01

20 Blockchain-as-a-Service and open-sourcing of platform code among a slew of blockchain announcements from IBM IBM has made a slew of announcements around blockchain technology, demonstrating its intent to get in on the blockchain boom that began with the emergence of the crypto-currency bitcoin a few years ago and which is now attracting the attention of governments , finance, manufacturing and many other sectors. A blockchain is a type of mutual distributed ledger (MDL). All transactions written to it are visible to all, shared peer-to-peer across multiple machines and impossible to alter or delete. Because of the total number of developers working on blockchain and related applications it has been described as "the biggest IT company in the world". However, many areas of development are still at an early stage , and despite its potential in other areas, most use cases still revolve around crypto-currencies. IBM has released 44,000 lines of code to the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project , a collaborative open-source endeavour that aims to promote a cross-industry open standard for the development of distributed ledgers. "As with any early-stage, highly complex technology that demonstrates the ability to change the way we live our lives and conduct business, blockchain demands a cross-industry, open source collaboration to advance the technology for all," writes Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation . IBM also announced a Blockchain-as-a-Service offering on its Bluemix cloud platform together with DevOps tools to allow developers to create, test and deploy blockchain applications in the cloud or on IBM z System servers. In addition, the firm's blockchain plans include its supercomputer-based Watson IoT Platform, which the company will deploy for Internet of Things applications including smart contracts - machine-to-machine transactions that are fulfilled automatically when certain conditions are reached. RFID information, barcode-scan events and other device-created data will be pulled together and used by blockchain-based ledgers to enable such smart contracts, IBM says. The company recently opened the Watson Internet of Things global HQ in Munich to drive cognitive computing research and develop the next generation of cognitive IoT apps, something that IBM has dubbed "Industry 4.0 innovation". The technology giant will also open a number of "IBM Garages" in London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo to hot-house the creation of business-oriented blockchains, and IBM Global Business Services will expand its blockchain consulting practice for clients in finance and logistics. The financial sector has become particularly interested in blockchain in recent months, seeing the technology as a way to increase the security of transactions, reduce fraud, decrease costs and provide an incorruptible audit trail. Among the blockchain partners listed by IBM is the London Stock Exchange Group. "We believe this technology has the potential to drive change across the industry but will need to be developed in partnership with customers and industry participants under an open-source approach," said Moiz Kohari, EVP, group head of technology innovation of the LSE Group. Interested in open source? Come along to the Computing Enterprise Open Source Summit in July. Registration is free for most delegates. 2016-03-13 12:01

21 Why bet365 is open sourcing its Erlang code The story of why bet365 has developed Erlang support libraries for the open source community begins with a challenge that is common in online businesses around the world. How do you scale your systems... 2016-03-13 12:01

22 Big data in big numbers - it's time to forget the 'three Vs' and look at real-world figures We have all heard the term "big data" but what does it mean - and what do we define as big? Many people try to define it in terms of size, although opinions vary; for some a dataset over a terabyte is... 2016-03-13 12:01

23 Fixes for Flash flaws in IE and Edge browsers in Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday updates Fixes for critical flaws in Adobe Flash running on Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers are among a slew of "important" security updates in Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday. This month's package isn't as bad as the one before it when there were a lot of serious vulnerabilities to deal with , but it will still top many a sys admins daily to-do list. Microsoft notes that all versions of Windows are affected, and says that users of Windows Vista and later, including Windows 10, need to get patching immediately. Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at security firm Qualys, noted that after a busy January, things had more-or-less returned to normal. "We are back to normal numbers on Patch Tuesday. After a light start with nine bulletins in January we are getting 12 bulletins (five critical) in February, which is in line with the average count for last year of 12.25 a month. Actually it is 13, but the last one this month, MS16-022, is more of a packaging change," he said. He continued: "It concerns Adobe Flash, a software package where updating has already been handled by Microsoft for the last three-and-a-half years in the Internet Explorer 10 and 11 browsers. " The highest priority item is MS16-022 , which contains fixes for 22 vulnerabilities for Adobe Flash, all of them rated as 'critical' and capable of handing the attacker complete control over the target machine. " The Flash update was also singled out by Tyler Reguly, manager of software development at Tripwire, who said that this is "one of the best changes" that February has to offer. In case you missed it, no one likes Flash these days". He added: "One of the best changes this month is that Adobe Flash Player, embedded in Microsoft IE and Edge, has finally received its own bulletin. Previously, Microsoft updated the same Knowledge Base on a month-by-month basis with no defining elements," he said. "This is a welcome change and hopefully bodes well for other areas where Microsoft continues to do this. " A large chunk of the Microsoft fixes provide protection against remote code execution (RCE) threats. One of these applies to Windows Journal, which has piqued the interested of Craig Young, a security researcher at Tripwire. "Today marks the 12th RCE bug Microsoft is patching in Windows Journal in just 10 months. This is particularly interesting because Windows Journal vulnerabilities were basically unheard of before 2015," he said. "While the increased scrutiny of Windows Journal may be an indication of Microsoft's successes in the tablet space, it is important to remember that the flaw is not limited to tablets. "In fact, every piece of software installed on a computer adds to the potential attack surface even if that software is not frequently used," he said. 2016-03-13 12:01

24 Microsoft SQL Server to run on Linux with SQL Server 2016 Microsoft has made the surprise revelation that SQL Server 2016 will include a version that will run on Linux. The company has provided public preview releases of SQL Server 2016 since May last year, and the release candidate version was last updated at the start of this month. Microsoft will now herald the arrival of SQL Server 2016 with a Data Driven event in New York on Thursday, 10 March culminating in general availability of the platform later this year. But Microsoft has revealed that it also plans to release a version of SQL Server that will run on Linux, starting with the core relational database capabilities currently available in the private preview release. Full availability is slated for the middle of 2017. Bringing SQL Server to Linux will enable Microsoft to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on- premise and cloud, according to , executive vice president for Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise Group. "SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with even more flexibility in their data solution. One with mission-critical performance, industry-leading TCO, best-in-class security, and hybrid cloud innovations like Stretch Database, which lets customers access their data on-premise and in the cloud whenever they want at low cost, all built in," Guthrie wrote on the Official Microsoft Blog. Microsoft will face stiff competition in the Linux database market, as there are already a number of database vendors providing relatively mature relational database platforms. These include Oracle's MySQL, part of the widely used Lamp stack, plus MariaDB and EnterpriseDB , to name but a few. MariaDB has already become the database of choice for inclusion with Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, although many of these are now lining up to praise Microsoft for bringing SQL Server to the platform. Equality drive However, it will take Microsoft some time to bring SQL Server for Linux up to feature parity with its Windows-based counterpart. The private preview of SQL Server on Linux currently has only the core capabilities, and those applying to join the preview programme will find that it is currently available only for Canonical's Ubuntu Linux or as a Docker image. "We are delighted to be working with Microsoft as it brings SQL Server to Linux," said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. "Customers are already taking advantage of Azure Data Lake services on Ubuntu, and now developers will be able to build modern applications that use SQL Server's enterprise capabilities. " Microsoft said that SQL Server on Linux will be based on SQL Server 2016, meaning that it should eventually have most if not all of the same features, including encryption capabilities and in-memory database handling as an option for all applications. 2016-03-13 12:01

25 Oracle rushes out emergency patch to fix Java security flaw Oracle has rushed out an out-of-band patch to fix serious security flaws in its Java client running on Windows devices. The patch was released late on Friday, with the issue explained in its Security Alert CVE-2016- 0603. The patch is intended to fix vulnerabilities in Java 6, 7 and 8 running on Windows. "To be successfully exploited, this vulnerability requires that an unsuspecting user be tricked into visiting a malicious website and download files into the user's system before installing Java SE 6, 7 or 8," explained Oracle. It continued: "Though relatively complex to exploit, this vulnerability may result, if successfully exploited, in a complete compromise of the unsuspecting user’s system. " The flaw has received a CVSS Base Score of 7.6, which translates as "High". Oracle explained that customers with Java already installed are not at risk but that anyone installing the software should use the official website to avoid the risk of infection. "As a reminder, Oracle recommends that Java home users visit Java.com to ensure that they are running the most recent version of Java SE and that all older versions have been completely removed," the firm said. Qualys chief technology officer Wolfgang Kandek urged anyone installing Java in the coming days to be aware of the Oracle fix. "As Oracle points out, existing installations are not at risk. New installations should use the latest fixed packages published by Oracle," he said. "This would address the situation where an end-user might have visited a malicious site which could have prepared the machine for an attack by downloading altered versions of one of the DLLs [ dynamic link libraries] involved. " The fix comes around two weeks after Oracle issued its standard quarterly security update that contained 248 fixes. Oracle recently pledged to kill off Java plug-ins in a move that mirrors a pledge made by Adobe in December to phase out its much-maligned Flash browser plug-in. 2016-03-13 12:01

26 Moving from Transactions to Streams to Get Consistency When systems become more complex with databases split into smaller ones, maybe using derived databases for e.g. full text search, a challenge is to keep all this data in sync, Martin Kleppmann stated in his presentation at the recent QCon London conference The biggest problem working with many databases is that they are not independent from each other. Pieces of the same data is stored in different forms so when data is updated all databases having a piece of the updated data must also be updated. The most common way of keeping data in sync is to make it a responsibility of application logic, often done by independent writes to each database. This is a fragile solution, in failure scenarios, e.g. after network failure or a server crash, you may fail to update some of the databases and end up with inconsistencies between them. Kleppmann notes that this is not the kind of consistency that eventually will correct itself, at least not until the same data is written again: This is not eventual consistency; this is more like perpetual inconsistency The traditional solution is using transactions which gives us atomicity, but Kleppmann notes that this only works within a single database, with two different data stores this is not feasible. Distributed transactions (a.k.a. two-phase commit ) can cross multiple storage systems but for Kleppmann they have their own challenges like poor performance and operational problems. Looking back at the problem, Kleppmann notes that a very simple solution is to order all writes in the system sequentially, and ensuring that everybody then reads them in the same order. He compares to deterministic state machine replication where, with the same starting state, a given input stream will always create the same state transitions when run several times. With a leader database (the master) where all writes are also stored as a stream in the order they are handled, then one or more follower database can read the stream and apply the writes in exactly the same order. This enables them to update their own data and eventually becoming a consistent copy of the leader. For Kleppmann this is a very fault tolerant solution. Each follower keeps tracks of its position in the stream; after a network failure or crash the follower can just proceed from the last saved position. Kleppmann mentions Kafka as one tool when implementing the above scenarios. He is currently working on an implementation, Bottled Water , where he is using PostgreSQL to extract data changes which are then relayed to Kafka. The code is available on GitHub. A presentation about developing with Kafka was recently published on InfoQ . Kleppmann’s presentation is already available for QCon attendees , and will later be available for readers of InfoQ. He has also published the slides from the presentation. 2016-03-13 11:41 Jan Stenberg

27 Microsoft and Olio Devices announce patent licensing agreement REDMOND, Wash., and SAN FRANCISCO — Jan. 25, 2016 — On Monday, Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Olio Devices Inc. signed a patent licensing agreement covering wearable devices. Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “Mutually beneficial and collaborative patent licensing agreements like this one promote innovation and lead to better products and experiences for consumers.” Microsoft’s commitment to licensing IP The patent agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant technology ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, it has entered into more than 1,200 licensing agreements. More information about Microsoft’s licensing programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing . About Olio Devices Inc. Co-founded by Steven Jacobs, Evan Wilson, and AJ Cooper, Olio aims to empower the classic wristwatch with custom technology designed by Olio to help simplify and manage our everyday lives. The company combines high-end materials with proprietary hardware and software to create finely crafted connected timepieces for the busy modern lifestyle. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. To learn more visit: http://www.oliodevices.com or follow @oliodevices on Twitter. About Microsoft Technology Licensing Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC was formed in 2014 to acquire, manage and license Microsoft’s patent portfolio. About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Note to editors : For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts . 2016-03-13 11:37 By Microsoft

28 Upstream oil and gas companies spend smarter on digital technologies to drive value, reduce costs in downturn, Accenture and Microsoft survey finds HOUSTON — March 9, 2016 — As upstream oil and gas companies scrutinize every dollar invested, they’re spending smarter today on digital technologies, seeking to drive value and reduce costs amid low oil and gas prices, a new survey by Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) reports. Respondents to the “ 2016 Upstream Oil and Gas Digital Trends Survey” included international oil companies (IOCs), national oil companies (NOCs), independents and oilfield services firms. Over the next three to five years, 80 percent of upstream oil and gas companies plan to spend the same, more, or significantly more (30%, 36%, and 14%, respectively) on digital technologies as they do now, according to the survey, now in its fifth edition. This continued investment in digital is due to respondents’ confidence that digital technologies can continue to help them drive leaner, smarter organizations. More than half (53 percent) of respondents said digital is already adding high to significant value to their businesses. Cost reduction was identified as the biggest challenge that digital technologies can most address today, respondents said. In addition, respondents reported that making faster and better decisions was the greatest benefit digital technologies can deliver (56 percent) and that one of the biggest barriers to realizing value is the lack of a clear strategy or business case, not the technology itself. Today’s digital investments focus more on mobility, with almost three-fifths of respondents (57 percent) reporting having invested in mobile, compared to 49 percent of the respondents in last year’s survey. Next is investing in the Internet of Things (IoT) (44 percent) this year vs. 25 percent in 2015 and the cloud (38 percent), up 8 percent from last year. Over the next three to five years, these investments are expected to shift more to big data and analytics (38 percent), IoT (36 percent) and mobile (31 percent). “In the current challenging environment, the upstream oil and gas industry is focusing digital technologies on areas that help them work smarter and deliver significant efficiencies and savings in the short term while enabling them to make better decisions faster,” said Rich Holsman, global head of Digital in Accenture’s Energy industry group. “So, in the short term we expect these companies will continue to invest in areas that help lower operations costs through technologies like increased worker productivity with mobility, lower infrastructure costs through the cloud and drive better asset management through analytics.” Respondents said digital’s biggest impact to date on the upstream oil and gas workforce has been increased employee productivity and engagement followed by better training and reskilling opportunities. They see the greatest impact from IoT in enabling connected field workers, with 60 percent of respondents planning to have field workers and assets digitally connected with smart devices. The use of the cloud, respondents said, has shifted from being used primarily for infrastructure to an enabler of mobile tools. This trend is expected to increase in the next three to five years, as companies keep using the cloud to get faster and more value from other digital technologies. “By taking advantage of the intelligent cloud, greater use of analytics and IoT go hand in hand with what we are seeing in our business today — the advent of the industrial Internet enabling the power of digital across the oil and gas landscape,” said Craig Hodges, general manager of the Gulf Coast District at Microsoft. “You can see this trend gaining traction from connected wells and intelligent pipelines to highly- efficient digital refineries.” While two thirds (66 percent) identified analytics as one of the most important capabilities for transforming their company, only 13 percent felt their firm’s analytical capabilities were mature. Almost two-thirds (65 percent) plan to implement more analytic capabilities in the next three years to help address this need. The “2016 Upstream Oil and Gas Digital and Technology Trends Survey,” sponsored by Accenture and Microsoft and conducted by PennEnergy Research in partnership with the Oil & Gas Journal, surveyed upstream professionals worldwide, including engineers, geologists and mid-level and executive management. About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions – underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 373,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com. Accenture Digital , comprised of Accenture Analytics , Accenture Interactive and Accenture Mobility , offers a comprehensive portfolio of business and technology services across digital marketing, mobility and analytics. Learn more about Accenture Digital at www.accenture.com/digital . About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. 2016-03-13 11:37 By Microsoft

29 Google glitch translates 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'; it has a ring to it As a fan of Cossack dancing, Eastern Bloc architecture, vodka and pervasive government oppression, Sneak loves Russia. And while he accepts that Siberia is a vast and mostly empty land mass, capable of killing the unwary in numerous ways, he would not liken it to Mordor, the dark, ash-covered, orc-infested land in the south-east of Tolkien's Middle Earth. But, according to multiple reports, the all-seeing, all-knowing Sauron Google believes that Russia is in fact Mordor. Or more accurately a bug in the Google Translate tool translated the Ukrainian word for 'Russian Federation' into 'Mordor'. Not content with effectively calling Russia a nation of twisted, down-trodden creatures ruled by a brutal dictator, Google Translate went one step further by translating 'Russians' into 'okkupanty' meaning ‘occupiers' in Sneak's second language, that being English. C++ is his mother tongue. Then to pour a granary of salt into the virtual wound, Google translated the surname of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov into the Russian for 'sad little horse', according to The Telegraph. Sneak thinks that's rather cute in a slightly Eeyore way. Yes he knows Eeyore is a fictional donkey. Please don't write in. Now, that noise you're hearing is Sneak's irony alarm going off at full pelt, given that Ukraine is not exactly having the best time with Russia and pro-Russian rebels at the moment, particularly as in 2014 Russia annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine, simply because it could. Google has apologised for the error and blamed the automated aspect of Translate, but Sneak is not convinced that it was a bug and, to indulge the conspiracy theorist in him, believes that a disgruntled pro-Ukraine programmer decided to tweak Google Translate to offer this slight at Russian users. Back in his early years as an IT chap at Northern Rock, Sneak ended up dating a lovely Russian systems analyst called Natasha. She had a mononym. Next thing he knew she disappeared one evening after a heady of vodka and Kerplunk! and disappeared with Sneak's server room key card. Then the banking crisis happened, Northern Rock went under and Sneak took indefinite sick leave. The moral of the story is that annoying the Russians might not be wise, otherwise the road to Google's Mountain View HQ could end up being blocked by Soviet-era tanks with president Putin straddling a turret, topless and declaring "You shall not pass" to befuddled Google engineers. Or perhaps they will take it in good humour. After all as the video below explains: Russians love to boogie. 07 Jan 2016 2016-03-13 11:35

30 Microsoft and Acer expand partnership to bring Microsoft services to more customers on more devices REDMOND, Wash., and TAIPEI, Taiwan — Feb. 10, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. and Acer Inc. announced on Wednesday the expansion of their global partnership to bring Microsoft mobile productivity services to more consumers. From the second half of 2016, Acer will begin pre-installing Microsoft services and apps on its portfolio of Android smartphones and tablets. Specifically, customers will benefit from the productivity tools including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on select Android smartphones and tablets from Acer. “We’re excited to partner with Microsoft to provide enhanced mobile productivity to our products,” said ST Liew, president of Acer Smart Products Business Group. “By integrating the Microsoft software suite, Acer customers will enjoy productivity on-the-go along with the familiar computing experience on their smartphones and tablets.” Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “We’re pleased that we have been able to enhance the already strong partnership that exists between Microsoft and Acer. Mutually beneficial and collaborative agreements such as this one promote innovation and lead to better products and experiences for consumers.” Microsoft’s commitment to licensing IP The patent agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant technology ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, it has entered into more than 1,200 licensing agreements. More information about Microsoft’s licensing programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing . About Acer Established in 1976, Acer is a hardware + software + services company dedicated to the research, design, marketing, sale, and support of innovative products that enhance people’s lives. Acer’s product offerings include PCs, displays, projectors, servers, tablets, smartphones, and wearables. The company is also developing cloud solutions to bring together the Internet of Things. Acer employs 7,000 people and ranks No. 4 for total PCs globally (IDC 2014). Revenues for 2014 reached US$10.39 billion. Please visit http://www.acer.com for more information. About Microsoft Technology Licensing Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC was formed in 2014 to acquire, manage and license Microsoft’s patent portfolio. About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Note to editors : For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts . 2016-03-13 11:37 By Microsoft

31 E-School for Girls partners with NYU and Microsoft for entrepreneurship event NEW YORK — Feb. 4, 2016 — Pre-college entrepreneurship program E- School for Girls partnered with New York University, Microsoft Corp. and Natalie Zfat for an inspirational and educational event, What It Takes to Be a Successful Entrepreneur, on Feb. 3, 2016, at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Microsoft is committed to empowering entrepreneurs at all stages of their lives, and excited to see more girls and women taking advantage of the rapidly changing technology landscape to bring their ideas to reality,” said Kristina Libby, consumer public relations lead at Microsoft. Speakers at the event included Teaching Garage CEO Janice Chong, Microsoft Consumer PR Communications Lead Kristina Libby, Council of Economic Education CEO Nan J. Morrison, Motivate Design CEO Mona Patel, E-School for Girls Founder and Program Director Allison Wright and entrepreneur Natalie Zfat, who gave lightning talks to a crowd of 100 decision- makers, media, faculty and students. “Over the past three years, E-School for Girls has developed into a premier pre-college program serving the community and our young women as they become female entrepreneurs and our future leaders,” said E-School for Girls Director Allison Wright. “It is my personal mission to ensure that our students get to experience entrepreneurial success, build their skills and confidence, and learn how to support themselves and each other no matter their gender or socioeconomic background. We are developing a new group of female entrepreneurs and leaders in each E-School for Girls class, and I’m excited to grow the program even further in partnership with Microsoft.” Now approaching its third year, E-School for Girls was created in partnership with NYU College Advising Corps and provides underserved high school juniors and seniors with a premier summer pre-college program. The experiential two-week program takes young women through a journey of self-exploration while developing an entrepreneurial enterprise, which includes ideation, business planning, team building, personal branding, pitching, and an introduction to a network of academics, businesspeople and mentors. Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. E-School for Girls/NYCPromise Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions to E- School for Girls/NYCPromise Inc. in the United States are tax-exempt to the extent provided by law. Note to editors : For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts . 2016-03-13 11:37 By Microsoft

32 Microsoft Cloud strength highlights second quarter results REDMOND, Wash. — January 28, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2015: During the quarter, Microsoft returned $6.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends. “Businesses everywhere are using the Microsoft Cloud as their digital platform to drive their ambitious transformation agendas,” said , chief executive officer at Microsoft. “Businesses are also piloting Windows 10, which will drive deployments beyond 200 million active devices.” The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”) to non-GAAP financial results. Microsoft has provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. “We delivered double-digit operating income growth in non-GAAP constant currency while investing in key strategic areas that position Microsoft for continued long term growth,” said , executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes declined 2% (up 5% in constant currency) to $6.7 billion, with the following business highlights: Revenue in Intelligent Cloud grew 5% (up 11% in constant currency) to $6.3 billion, with the following business highlights: Revenue in More Personal Computing declined 5% (down 2% in constant currency) to $12.7 billion, with the following business highlights: “It was a strong holiday season for Microsoft highlighted by Surface and ,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “Our commercial business executed well as our sales teams and partners helped customers realize the value of Microsoft’s cloud technologies across Azure, Office 365 and CRM Online.” Business Outlook Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast. Webcast Details Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Frank Brod, chief accounting officer, John Seethoff, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary, and Chris Suh, general manager of Investor Relations, will host a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time (5:30 p.m. Eastern time) today to discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information. The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/investor. The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on January 28, 2017. Adjusted Financial Results and non-GAAP Measures During the second quarter of fiscal year 2016, GAAP revenue, operating income, net income, and earnings per share include the net impact from revenue deferrals. For the second quarter of fiscal year 2015, GAAP revenue, operating income, net income, and earnings per share include the recognition of previously deferred net revenue and charges related to integration and restructuring expenses. These items are defined below. In addition to these financial results reported in accordance with GAAP, Microsoft has provided certain non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. Presenting these non-GAAP measures gives additional insight into operational performance and helps clarify trends affecting the company’s business. For comparability of reporting, management considers this information in conjunction with GAAP amounts in evaluating business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Non-GAAP Definitions Revenue Deferrals. Microsoft recorded a net $1.9 billion revenue deferral during the three months ended December 31, 2015, primarily related to Windows 10 and Halo 5. Microsoft recognized a net $326 million of previously deferred revenue during the three months ended December 31, 2014, primarily related to sales of bundled products and services. Integration and Restructuring Charges. Integration and restructuring expenses were $243 million during the three months ended December 31, 2014. Integration and restructuring expenses include employee severance expenses and costs associated with the consolidation of facilities and manufacturing operations related to restructuring activities, and systems consolidation and other business integration expenses associated with the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices and Services business. Constant Currency Microsoft presents constant currency information to provide a non-GAAP framework for assessing how our underlying businesses performed excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. To present this information, current and comparative prior period non-GAAP results for entities reporting in currencies other than United States dollars are converted into United States dollars using the average exchange rates from the comparative period rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during the respective periods. The non-GAAP financial measures presented below should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. About Microsoft Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as: For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/investor . All information in this release is as of January 28, 2016. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations. For more information, press only: Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, (503) 443-7070, [email protected] For more information, financial analysts and investors only: Chris Suh, general manager, Investor Relations, (425) 706-4400 Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news /. Web links, telephone numbers, and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information, as well as today’s 2:30 p.m. Pacific time conference call with investors and analysts, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/investor . 2016-03-13 11:37 By Microsoft

33 Microsoft delivers enterprise-class ERP to the cloud REDMOND, Wash. — March 9, 2016 — Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced that its next-generation cloud ERP solution, Microsoft Dynamics AX, built on and for Microsoft Azure, is now available in 137 markets in 40 languages. The enterprise-class business application brings the power, speed and intelligence of cloud computing to people and organizations to achieve more. “Customers from around the world are using the cloud in incredible ways to accelerate and transform their business,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise. “Today’s release is an exciting milestone extending Microsoft’s business cloud offerings. It’s now possible for organizations to run their entire business in the cloud with Microsoft — from productivity with Office 365, to business analytics with Power BI and Cortana Analytics Suite, customer engagement with Dynamics CRM and business operations with Dynamics AX.” Customers across the globe are already using Dynamics AX to run their business processes in the cloud — from single domains like human resources and manufacturing to end-to-end business. Companies already live in production include Hagler Systems , Haldex , Icon , Renault Sport Formula One Team , Priva , Smiles , Travel Alberta and Umbra Group. The new Dynamics AX moves beyond traditional business solutions and brings ERP, business intelligence, infrastructure and database services together in a single offering, empowering organizations to run industry-specific and operational business processes that are extendable with specific solutions from partners. Wednesday, Microsoft announced more than 50 ISV solutions that are available on the Azure Marketplace. These Microsoft-curated, pre-configured industry and vertical solutions help customers discover and implement the solution they need quicker than ever before and, like Dynamics AX, enable fast consumption of updates and improvements. In addition to the 50-plus solutions already available, hundreds are in development today. The new Dynamics AX takes the capabilities of Lifecycle Services (LCS) to the next level. Businesses will be able to combine the best practices for their mission-critical apps with the flexibility and simplicity of upgrade via the cloud. With LCS, Dynamics AX will formalize the concepts of development, test and production, making the ongoing upgrade quicker to implement and deploy and easier to manage. “Lifecycle Services represents a shift in how companies manage the life cycle of an ERP system in a way that’s never really been done before,” said Josh Greenbaum, principal analyst, Enterprise Application Consulting. “The ability to test in the cloud and use the cloud’s natural elasticity and functionality to take the test, flip a switch and make it the actual production environment, that truly is magic.” Harnessing the power of the Azure cloud, Dynamics AX provides enhanced security along with global availability and scale, enabling businesses and people to work more safely anywhere, anytime while respecting the data sovereignty requirements of global customers no matter where in the globe they operate. “We do everything through Dynamics AX now; we manage virtually all of our operations,” said Thomas Mayer, chief operating office, Renault Sport Formula One Team. “Having what I need to run my business available anywhere in the world is invaluable.” “We are bringing massive amounts of data into our business to help control building climates and horticulture environments. That is a huge business transformation, and the cloud was the only way forward for us to make that real,” said Paul Ossewold, vice president, Digital Operations, Priva. “To manage our company with 10 offices around the world, we need systems that are fast. That is what Dynamics AX in the cloud is giving us, and we couldn’t be more excited to be one of the first customers on board to take advantage of this new solution.” Modern solution for modern businesses Dynamics AX delivers a simple, beautiful, and modern user interface that is touch-enabled for the devices people use today. People can interact with the system with ease, as Dynamics AX works like other Microsoft applications that people are used to, increasing adoption and usage. The new intelligent user experience is also optimized to deliver value to organizations through the ability to make smarter decisions with increased speed. “ERP is core to our business operations and critical to building and delivering products to our customers,” said Ben Hagler, co-founder, Hagler Systems. “We chose Dynamics AX because of its robustness. The UI is amazing and available anywhere. It makes us device-independent. We can get work done everywhere with increased speed.” Dynamics AX delivers the proven business logic of a complete business suite, enhanced with new constructs such as Workspaces that provide a collaborative canvas unifying key performance indicators, business intelligence, views of critical data, processes and actions to power business user productivity. The Financial Period Close Workspace, for example, dramatically streamlines this critical, complex process. Software vendors that partner with Microsoft have expressed their excitement over the potential this new solution offers the industry, representing a turning point in the ERP industry as cloud ERP solutions are adopted by customers to run their business-critical operations. “This release is further proof that Microsoft is leading the charge with innovations not just in ERP but in cloud,” said CEO Peter ter Maaten from Microsoft partner HSO. “Dynamics AX will be a game changer for enterprise customers.” Customers can sign up for the service today as the new release is available as a monthly subscription in three simple versions that include a self-serve user, a Task user and an Enterprise user. Businesses can get up and running quickly and match their business growth easily by adding business processes and users with this simple and transparent pay-as-you-go model. More information can be found by visiting the Dynamics AX website. Those who want to see the product in action and the impact it is having for businesses can view the Dynamics AX virtual launch event. Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts . 2016-03-13 11:37 By Microsoft

34 FileHippo News - powered by FeedBurner The allegations were made using Google’s Google+ social networking platform, and also on Google Maps. When the reviews claiming that infants were not safe in the nursery were found by the small business, the owners originally approached Google and asked them to remove the offensive and untrue content. But the search titan refused to do so, using the argument that the posted material came under the auspices of freedom-of-speech, and therefore they were not obliged, or could find a justification for removing them. The unnamed nursery’s lawyer told TechCrunch that: “The judge balanced the interests of privacy against the interest of reputation (of this nursery). However, it considers the interests of protecting the reputation more important than the interests of Google to the interest of privacy of the Google Reviewers.” Speaking after he made his ruling, the judge in the case, CM Berkhout, differed substantially with the US firm’s point of view, instead finding that the reviews were indeed fake and damaging. He ordered Google take down the reviews. Berkhout also made a provision in his ruling that Google would have to provide details about the reviewers so that the nursery could, if it so wished, face the posters of the reviews and allegations in court. He said afterwards: “In my opinion, it was stunning that Google allowed this, as the practice of using someone else’s profile picture without consent is unlawful and infringing on portrait rights… and it only helps fake reviewers to hide behind a ‘trusted face.’ Hopefully, this decision will make Google rethink their own policies and the way they enforce their policies.” Google’s response was characteristically brief , utilizing their normal brevity in matters that have gone against them: “We’ve received the ruling and are currently reviewing it.” The post Dutch Court Orders Google To Hand Over Fake Reviewers IP Addresses appeared first on FileHippo News . It seems like you can’t do anything these days without dealing with the bureaucracy of it all. Forms to fill out, regulations to follow, miles and miles of red tape…and of course, the ever- present and usually outdated technology. Everyone from schools to retailers to even the government has to suffer under the weight of policies and procedures. Unless you’re a terrorist organization, in which case you can apparently toss all your information on a memory stick and leave it lying around an office somewhere. That’s the case with an ISIS faction, at least, and the end result was the loss of 22,000 registration forms for its members after a memory stick with the information was taken from the office of their head of security. These forms contained names, addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, even blood types on individuals who’d been recruited or volunteered for the terror organization. According to the Guardian , “The documents, thought to be from a border crossing into Syria , are questionnaires of each would-be recruit. There are 23 questions, including names, date and place of birth, hometown, telephone number, education and blood type.” Two different sources both claim to have possession of the information. A German intelligence agency acquired the forms, and Sky News reports being given the unencrypted memory stick after it was stolen by a former member who became disillusioned with the terror network’s practices. While security watchers were aware of a number of the names on the registration forms, there were also more than a few surprises. What is known is there were specific numbers of US, UK, and Canadian citizens who’d signed on to join ISIS’ efforts. Members from more than forty different countries were included in the leaked data. As with any data breach, the real concern now is what happens with the information. In a standard consumer data breach, citizens have to worry about monitoring their credit reports for any signs of suspicious financial activity; it’s not hard to imagine what the repercussions will be after handing over the names and addresses of known ISIS members and their families to the government. The post ISIS Struck By Internal Data Breach appeared first on FileHippo News . At more than a trillion dollars and what sometimes seems like a trillion glitches, and a trillion bad headlines, the latest issue with the F-35’s software has been found in the software responsible for the Radar it uses. The solution however is quite simple and straightforward, and one that IT Support staff have relied upon for years to solve problems in first line troubleshooting: Turning it off, and then on again. In the latest publicly released report on the joint strike fighter, US Air Force major general Jeffrey Harrigian states that: “What would happen is they’d get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail— something that would force us to restart the radar.” The latest report into the troubled development of the new fighter jet has been described as damning, listing as it does a multitude of deficiencies that seem to routinely being found as development of the fighter plane creeps ever closer to deployment. Many of the failures causing headaches for the US military and its designers is the fact that many of the issues are primarily due to buggy software. Not as crazy as it sounds It really isn’t. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, built by Lockheed Martin, is currently one of the most advanced and heavily software-driven warplanes ever designed and built. It is therefore also one of the most complicated and difficult IT projects ever undertaken. But it’s not just the software and onboard computer systems that Lockheed Martin have struggled with. The plane has also struggled with its apparent vulnerability to lightning strikes, landing gear issues, weight issues, and bomb bay door faults, depending on climatic issues in the hotter areas of the world. Hacker proof? Apparently not. The F-35 has yet to undertake any serious cyber security testing, something that could be a real possibility with cyber warfare an increasing threat across the world. something that has caused concern among buyers who have the joint strike fighter on back order, including branches of the US military, and the United Kingdom The latest Pentagon report quoted above stated that glitches were found … “…in fusion, electronic warfare, and weapons employment result in ambiguous threat displays, limited ability to respond to threats, and a requirement for off-board sources to provide accurate coordinates for precision attack.” Speaking to the Guardian newspaper , Keith Joiner, the man responsible for the final evaluation for procurement by the Australian Defence Force, said that “the only system that has done cyber security, vulnerability and penetration testing is the logistics software. So ordering spares. And it didn’t go very well.” The post F-35 Radar: Have You Tried Turning It On And Off Again? appeared first on FileHippo News . Google’s DeepMind division has pulled off an unforeseen victory that goes far beyond the rules and strategies of any game. Its AI software AlphaGo, which made headlines for its pending match-up against the reigning world champion of the ancient Chinese strategy game Go, has now defeated its human opponent in the first of five scheduled games. South Korean Lee Sedol has long been considered the world’s Go master, even from his prodigy status as a professional player at age twelve. His loss on Wednesday was a shock to both game fans and AI experts, who’d originally predicted that the complexities and required human emotional aspect of the game would mean artificial intelligence would require years of fine tuning in order to beat a human opponent at this level. Interestingly, the factor that may have most helped AlphaGo defeat Sedol could be those same human emotions that critics argued are vital to winning the complex game. Reportedly, both the software and the human player made critical mistakes early in the game, but unlike a human opponent, AlphaGo was unhindered by its error and (oversimplifying things, here) simply readjusted its strategy. That ability to remain emotionally detached from a mistake–something that could easily cause a human player to overadjust or question every further move–could have played a role in the software’s strategies moving forward. While Sedol has been very gracious about what many experts predicted would be a non-event, Google’s DeepMind has got to be ecstatic. Its “reinforcement learning” concept has meant that AlphaGo has a mechanism other AI attempts haven’t had, and that’s the ability to teach itself through intense trial and error. That innovation has certainly proven itself worthy for now, but there are still four more Go matches ahead of it. The post Game-Changing Victory For Google’s AI Software appeared first on FileHippo News . “Today I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined Google.” Commonly known as “moot” online, Poole began building the 4chan site in 2003 at the tender age of just 15. In the 12 consecutive years, he turned his bedroom enterprize into a 22 million active user image-sharing community with topics that were as diverse as pictures of cute kittens to hardcore porn. The idea behind the channel was that it was all anonymous. While 4chan was a winner for online freedom of expression, it also led to the common association with 4Chan and offensive and abusive material. It was also widely credited as being the epicentre of 2014’s leaking of images of nude celebrities following the now famous hack of Apple’s iCloud service. The incognito 4Chan however also served as a focal rallying point for online activism from groups such as Anonymous, and others. RickRolled The diverse and often anarchically themed 4chan community was also responsible for some the web’s more memorably popular and creative memes over the years, including both LOLcats, and the it was funny once, Rickrolling phenomenon that at one point seemed to dominate virtually every YouTube video going. In September 2015, 4chan was sold to a Japanese entrepreneur. Impressed “When meeting with current and former Googlers, I continually find myself drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm — as well as a universal desire to share it with others. I’m also impressed by Google’s commitment to enabling these same talented people to tackle some of the world’s most interesting and important problems.” Chris Poole retired as administrator of 4chan back in January 2015. While no details of his actual job role have been released or confirmed, other than that he has been hired by Google, he is expected to be involved with the social networking side of Google, an area where the browser giant has failed to compete with the likes of Facebook, et al. “I can’t wait to contribute my own experience from a dozen years of building online communities, and to begin the next chapter of my career at such an incredible company.” The post Google hires 4chan Creator appeared first on FileHippo News . A spokesperson for the Raytheon Company, Mike Doble, where Tomlinson still worked as a principal scientist said that Tomlinson was a… “true technology pioneer… the man who brought us email in the early days of networked computers.” Tomlinson was one of the early inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame, with his biography on the site stating that his invention of the modern style email program was: “…a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate, including the way businesses, from huge corporations to tiny mom-and-pop shops, operate and the way millions of people shop, bank, and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they are across town or across oceans. Today, tens of millions of email-enabled devices are in use every day. Email remains the most popular application, with over a billion and a half users spanning the globe and communicating across the traditional barriers of time and space.” Tomlinson created and amended the protocols that allowed him to send the first email in 1971, on the ARPANET system. ARPANET was a computer network created for the US government that is widely considered as an essential forerunner to the internet. “I chose to append an at sign and the host name to the user’s (login) name. I am frequently asked why I chose the at sign, but the at sign just makes sense. The purpose of the at sign (in English) was to indicate a unit price (for example, 10 items @ $1.95). I used the at sign to indicate that the user was ‘at’ some other host rather than being local.” Ray Tomlinson was the recipient of several awards for his work and held electrical engineering degrees from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and MIT. He is also ranked number 4 on the MIT list of the top 150 innovators to have studied at MIT. He began work for Bolt Beranek and Newman, known as BBN, in 1967. When the company was later aqquired by Raytheon Co, Tomlinson stayed on. The post Ray Tomlinson, Inventor Of Email, Passes Away @ 74 appeared first on FileHippo News . You know what’s missing from your workday? Losing access to a number of your key files after accidentally downloading some ransomware. Nothing makes the day go smoother than receiving a message, telling you to pay the Bitcoin ransom if you want to get your files back. Unfortunately, that was the reality for some users who’d downloaded Transmission BitTorrent Installer. This software for MacOS X (Linux version available, bundled with Ubuntu) doesn’t take up a lot of space so it runs in the background to install torrents quickly. It can even be operated remotely via the web. Sadly, versions of the software that were downloaded anytime on March 4th and 5th may have also been infected with KeRanger ransomware. First discovered by Palo Alto Networks, this ransomware was found on two versions of Transmission 2.90. Since Transmission is a fully open-source project, the researchers have speculated that the download website itself was compromised. According to their post on KeRanger by Claud Xiao and Jin Chen, the ransomware encrypts individual files to lock you out of them, a process that they’ll undo for a fee. The encryption process itself is pretty slick: “To encrypt each file, KeRanger starts by generating a random number (RN) and encrypts the RN with the RSA key retrieved from the C2 server using the RSA algorithm. It then stores the encrypted RN at the beginning of resulting file. Next, it will generate an Initialization Vector (IV) using the original file’s contents and store the IV inside the resulting file. After that, it will mix the RN and the IV to generate an AES encryption key. Finally, it will use this AES key to the contents of the original file and write all encrypted data to the result file.” But be warned: further investigation into the mechanism behind KeRanger uncovered an alarming feature, namely that it looked like there were processes involved that hadn’t been completed. Undetected, it’s possible these features could have been activated at a later date. “It seems like KeRanger is still under development. There are some apparent functions named ‘_create_tcp_socket’, ‘_execute_cmd’ and ‘_encrypt_timemachine’. Some of them have been finished but are not used in current samples. Our analysis suggests the attacker may be trying to develop backdoor functionality and encrypt Time Machine backup files as well. If these backup files are encrypted, victims would not be able to recover their damaged files using Time Machine.” Fortunately, Transmission’s developers have released a new version that fixes this vulnerability. For those who may already have been infected, Palo Alto Networks has complete clean up instructions here. The post Transmission Installer Update Fixes Ransomware Flaw appeared first on FileHippo News . With near-daily headlines about hacking events, data breaches, and new forms of internet scams, it’s a wonder anyone can go online anymore. Sadly, data is already showing that the majority of tech users have resigned themselves to the fact that their identities will probably be compromised, which is backed up by the reports that show most individuals’ identifying information is already floating around “out there.” Fortunately, there are steps individuals can take to minimize the impact of any compromising internet activity. While groups like the Identity Theft Resource Center push vigilant account and credit card monitoring and a number of software developers promote strong tech protections against malicious software, Avira Scout is working to keep your everyday internet activity from causing you further harm. According to the company’s plan for its secure browser, “Scout is built with your security and privacy as a central focus. Our award-winning technology, directly integrated into the browser, automatically blocks infected and phishing websites for you.” By calling on its extensive database of suspicious websites, Scout warns users before entering a potentially malicious site or phishing scam. Even more interesting than just warning you of scammy-looking websites, Scout automatically forces websites to use the https protocol. That’s especially important for one of the other warnings that security experts give: using public wifi. While internet users have long been warned not to connect in a coffee shop or airport for anything more sensitive than downloading an update for Candy Crush, Scout rewires your internet activity to help you safely take advantage of available public connections. Best of all, the privacy protections this browser affords you means no more tracking and no need for an add-on ad blocker. While it stops major-name tech giants from gathering up your activity data to see what you shop for and what you’re searching online, the browser itself is one of the few that does not gather and store any user data. The overall stated purpose is to produce a cleaner, worry-free web experience that protects your privacy and secures your internet use. The post Avira Scout Browser: Provides A Safer Web Experience appeared first on FileHippo News . This is the news that all Locally stored data on Amazon Fire devices using the latest Fire OS is no longer encrypted, and hasn’t been since last year. Anyone upgrading a Kindle Fire, or any Fire OS device to Fire OS 5 will be left really vulnerable to attacks from hackers. As well as this, any information left by users on their Fire device will be stored in plain text. While Amazon’s Fire OS 5 garnered generally positive reviews and was praised for its refreshing new look and extra features, it now seems that Amazon also removed device encryption support. Amazon contend that it has maintained security features between Amazon’s cloud service, and also device communication, but that will come as scant consolation for anyone concerned about the protection of their own personal and private data stored on Fire devices themselves. Amazon have responded to recent criticism with the following statement: “ In the fall when we released Fire OS 5, we removed some enterprise features that we found customers weren’t using. All Fire tablets’ communication with Amazon’s cloud meet our high standards for privacy and security including appropriate use of encryption.” Users do not, unfortunately, have many options available to them if they want to keep their Fire devices encrypted. They can if they want, not update to Fire OS 5 and retain device encryption, something that will not help anyone who has already upgraded. But this then leaves them vulnerable as they will not receive security updates. Another option is to, well, just upgrade, and hope that nothing bad happens. And of course, users could just stop using Fire devices. I appreciate this last option won’t help anyone who actually has a Fire machine. Amazon’s move seems to have gone against the current grain considering that almost all of its competitors are moving in the other direction and are making encryption on their devices as standard, and available as default. However, drawing a connection with Fire OS 5, and the current Apple and FBI iPhone legal battle, as several other websites have, would be wide of the mark, as Amazon released the OS a good few months before Apple fell foul of the FBI. Amazon’s decision to remove encryption protocols may however seem somewhat ironic given that Amazon has answered Apple’s call to arms against government intrusion, though unlike Google, and Microsoft, has itself failed to file an amicus brief in support of the iPhone maker. The post Amazon Disabled Encryption For Latest Fire OS appeared first on FileHippo News . Social media photo and video site Snapchat has had its share of headline-grabbing, embarrassing security issues over the years, some intentional and some due to its own inability to plan. When a hacker warned and then exposed nearly 5 million users’ accounts because of a bug that left the info vulnerable, that was bad enough. But when 100,000 or so shared videos and photos were accessed and released online (despite the company insisting that it doesn’t store the messages its users send, while forgetting that the cellular providers’ servers do store that information) some experts wondered if that might have been enough to seal Snapchat’s fate as an untrustworthy platform. But the news last week that Snapchat has experienced a whole new data breach only highlights what too many companies refuse to accept: your biggest security threat may very well be someone on your payroll. In an apology post on February 28 , Snapchat admitted that an employee had willingly handed over highly sensitive information on the company’s employees–everything needed to steal their identities–because of a phishing attack. The email appeared to come from the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel, requesting the payroll records of all employees. Unfortunately, at this time of year, that’s not an unheard of request since the tax filing deadline for individuals is next month. The recipient dutifully submitted the information; four hours later, Snapchat was on the phone with the FBI to report the breach. If Snapchat can take any consolation from this, it’s that human error is behind an increasing number of breaches, especially now that more and more companies are realizing (and believing) the need for tighter antivirus and anti-malware software across their entire networks. This is largely why “boss phishing” is becoming more and more common; as low-level hackers find themselves blocked at every turn, what’s easier than masquerading as the boss and getting an hourly-wage employee to hand over the information they want? A phishing email was behind one of the most infamous recent data breaches, the Target retail chain breach that affected as many as 121 million customers. The source of the bug that infected the store’s POS credit card system (thereby stealing credit card information) was spread via a link in a malicious email sent to one of Target’s air conditioner repair companies. Who needs to worry about pesky security protocols and tightened cybersecurity when you can get a secretary to install the bug for you by clicking on a link to a cat video? Unfortunately, the response in these cases is almost always the same: we’re shocked…we don’t know how this happened…we never thought one of our employees would do this. But that begs the question: Why not? Why don’t more companies realize that their workforce is made up of individuals who may or may not have the necessary training to prevent an attack or the right motivation to keep company data secure? More importantly, why are companies still surprised? The post Snapchat Breach And The Biggest Security Flaw Ever appeared first on FileHippo News. 2016-03-13 03:33

35 Should your business upgrade to Windows 10? Windows 10 is the latest operating system to drop from Microsoft, but whether it is the greatest is debatable. According to figures from StatCounter, Windows 10 ran on 14.86% of desktop PCs by the end of February this year. But Windows 7 remained the dominant OS with 46% of PCs running this software. Even the ancient Windows XP accounted for 7.61% of all PCs, despite support officially ending in April 2014. Microsoft's own figures put Windows 10 as running on more than 200 million devices. And looking at other figures , it's safe to argue that businesses aren't lining up to put the OS on their computers. The Cortana digital assistant is one new feature Windows 10 brought to the desktop But why is that? Mike Hickson, managing director of LSA Systems, argues that while Microsoft has promised to focus on business consumers and their needs, how much its latest operating system branched out and brought something new and unique to the market is still under debate. "Windows 10 can be praised for bringing voice command and a virtual assistant through Cortana, Enterprise Data Protection software as well as a self-updating operating OS under one roof," he says. "However, when contrasting the amount of resources and time it takes to upgrade an entire company's PCs with an operating system that contains functions that can ultimately be found elsewhere, Microsoft has still not produced a feature that is unique and highly beneficial, which has not already been done to some extent in the tech industry. " Indeed, the main problem here is the perceived cost of updating all of the company's systems with many equating the move to a full hardware and software upgrade across the board. As a result of this some are choosing to delay the upgrade and some are staggering the move by upgrading as they replace old hardware which is also slowing up the process. Shifting to Windows 10 is a major task for any company, to say the least Others argue that an OS migration is a huge undertaking and analysts recommend at least 12- 18 months to prepare for such a project. "As such, and despite apparent slow progress, there's a huge number of organisations that are in the process of upgrading and have been for some time – our customer conversations suggest two-thirds of organisations are looking to start migration projects now," says Andreas Fuchs, senior product manager at Heat Software. Windows 8 wasn't a great success, but if Windows 10 'solved' the problems Windows 8 created, why is Windows 7 still so popular? "First you need to ask: when is the right time to adopt a new OS? " says Fuchs. "The answer to which is when business apps are supported by the new OS and new hardware is purchased with the new, preloaded OS. While these criteria are not met, businesses are reluctant to upgrade. " 2016-03-13 09:00 By Rene

36 Microsoft reportedly installing Windows 10 without consent - - again We all know that Microsoft is using increasingly aggressive -- and desperate -- tactics to get people to upgrade to its newest operating system. A month ago it switched the update status from 'optional' to ' recommended' , and last week it snuck Windows 10 advertising into a security patch. So what dirty trick is next? Well, according to Reddit , it’s installing the OS without user consent -- and without much warning -- and hiding the decline button to make it much harder to abort the process. One Redditor describes the situation like this: Another user says: It’s likely, of course, that these unwanted installations have happened due to Windows 10 now being a recommended update. If your system is set to install all recommended updates -- y’know, for security purposes -- then you’ll receive Windows 10. SEE ALSO: Microsoft forcing Windows 10 onto people is wrong If you have been a victim of Microsoft installing an unwanted operating system on your PC, there is good news -- you can easily uninstall Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7 or 8.1, provided you act within 30 days. You don’t mind wasting your time removing an operating system you never asked for, right? Of course, it’s fair to say Microsoft will, at some point, put Windows 10 on your PC again, probably using some other underhand method to sneak it on there. Photo credit: www. BillionPhotos.com / Shutterstock 2016-03-13 08:10 By Wayne

37 Supporting EJB Transactions in Your Java App - Developer.com Managing transactions in an enterprise application requires making a conscious decision regarding the coordinated flow of persistent data through some sort of application logic. At the low level, a persistent storage system (typically a database) manages the decision when and where to cache data, how to resolve simultaneous access of the same resource, how to resolve errors due to violation of database constraints, and so forth. But then, these issues crop up at the business tier (application server) and client tiers as well. These concerns require special implementation logic for steady performance throughout the application. A full blown EJB transaction support from the underlying framework can leverage the productivity of developers to a great extent. This article explores the concept of EJB transaction management in a Java EE framework. Java EE 7 provides Java Transaction API (JTA), specified by JSR 907 through EJBs and Managed Beans. The APIs in thee javax.transaction package define the way to demarcate transaction boundaries with the help of a set of interfaces for the application as well as for the container. It designates the code to start, commit, or roll back in a resource neutral way, implicitly as well as explicitly. In case of a distributed transactional resource, it is handled with the help of XA transactions defined in the package javax.transaction.xa. JTA has been around in the JEE framework for quite some time, but the newest update in the genre is the alignment of a Managed Bean in the transaction process. In a nutshell, keeping aside transaction handling at the database tier, transactions can not only be handled at the business tier but also in the client tier as well through a Managed Bean. The transaction management support in Java EE7 can be designated into three categories: In CMT, a container is in control and it is the default arena for transaction management. The most important part of its support in EJB is that we can almost forget the complexity involved in describing the internal structure of transaction managers or resource managers. JTA abstracts most of the intricacies and delegates the responsibility of implementing low level transaction protocols to the EJB container. The container acts as a transaction manager involving JTA as well as JTS to participate in distributed transactions with other EJB containers or other transactional resources. The session beans demarcate the transaction boundary, call entities to interact with the database, or send a JMS message in the transaction context. For example, in the following code snippet there is no visible transaction designation in the form of code. No special interface is implemented nor any annotation applied. This reason is that EJBs are, by default, transactional and the container is solely responsible for managing the transaction using JPA and JTS implicitly. As soon as the client makes a request, the container intercepts the call and verifies if any transaction context is associated with the call. The container then begins a new transaction implicitly prior to executing the method. Depending upon the success or failure of the transaction, the container commits or rolls back, respectively. This simple behaviour can, however, be manipulated using metadata expression through either annotation or XML deployment descriptor. The attributes for transaction manipulation are as follows: These transaction demarcations can be applied with the help of a @TransactionAttribute annotation, as follows: In cases where a CMT needs to roll back a transaction, we can use EJB context to intervene the container because a CMT bean is not allowed to roll back explicitly. Demarcating with a EJB context such as session context is just an indication to revert the operation and does not effect immediately while the actual rollback is at the mercy of the container that does the real work when it is time to end the transaction. A session bean with CMT demarcation is only privileged to use this method. An example is as follows: There is, however, another simple way to inform the container to abort a transaction with the help of an exception, such as: In BMT, the programmer is in control and can choose to make a pragmatic decision regarding transaction demarcation. Here, a transaction attribute can be specified by using session context to commit or exceptions to roll back a failed transaction. This is particularly useful to attain fine granularity of demarcation policy using JTA explicitly. However, CMT can be easily switched over to BMT with a simple annotation, as follows: The core interface to handle BMT is through javax.transaction. UserTransaction. This can be used as follows. BMT thus provides a manual override of the transaction scenario, contrasting the container managed transaction in CMT. With transaction support in Managed Beans, Java EE 7 extended CMT transactions beyond the EJB arena. Transaction management in Managed Beans is particularly possible due to interceptors and CDI interceptor binding. CDI provided the ability to control transaction boundaries in Servlets, SOAP, and RESTful web services beyond Managed Beans. The core annotation to provide this ability is javax.transaction. Transactional and can be used as follows in a RESTful web service. This is almost a gross detail of what transaction management is like at the application level implementation in an enterprise arena. There are many subtle aspects and finer details to it, often more than meets the eye. CMT is headache free and the simplest means of transaction management. BMT, on the other hand, provides the means to create a fine grain demarcation policy. CDI binding opened the horizon of transaction processing onto many finer levels, such as Servlets and Web Service, apart from Managed Beans. 2016-03-13 00:00 Manoj Debnath

38 Artificial intelligence and language The concept of artificial intelligence has been around for a long time. We’re all familiar with HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey , C-3PO from Star Wars and, more recently, Samantha from Her. In written fiction, AI characters show up in stories from writers like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Isaac Asimov. Sometimes it seems like it’s touched on by every writer who has written sci-fi. While many predictions and ideas put forward in sci-fi have come to life, artificial intelligence is probably the furthest behind. We are nowhere near true artificial intelligence as exemplified by the characters mentioned above. Sometimes it seems like we’ve been waiting forever. We can ask Siri or Google or Cortana simple questions and they will answer, but everyone who’s used that technology eventually comes away disappointed. We thought Siri was the future when it first came out, but these days, most of us barely use it beyond simple Google searches and dead simple tasks, like setting timers. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ai.png The reason these software programs leave so much to be desired comes down to language. This is where natural language processing (NLP) comes into play. Artificial intelligence can grasp the meaning of simple language, and speak back to you, but it is limited by its literal interpretations of our questions. A computer can know the definition of a word, but it doesn’t understand the meaning of words within a larger context. image: Flickr / infobunny If you’re interested in tech or sci-fi, you’ve probably heard of the Turing test. Alan Turing was one of the first people to take the potential of AI seriously, and he knew that one day machines would match human intelligence. He had an idea for a simple test: If a human can’t distinguish between a machine and another human in conversation, then the machine has reached the level of human intelligence. The Turing test is a bit more complicated than that, but the concept is still useful as a benchmark for natural language processing. In other words, if it can think like a human, it can process language like a human. (Given the complexity of the human brain, a machine able to think like a human will be a huge accomplishment). Think of Scarlett Johansson’s character Samantha in Her. She’s a great example of AI that can understand language fluently. She understands everything said by Theo, played by Joaquin Phoenix. There are a few things she didn’t know, but when explained to her, she understood immediately and incorporated it into her existing knowledge. Just like a human would. The replicants in Blade Runner are another interesting form of AI. Not only do they process language easily, they’re even poetic. Consider this quote from the replicant Roy Batty: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain. Time to die.” It’s a famous line because it’s so beautiful, and so human. Do we want androids who spout poetry? Do we need them? That’s a topic for a sci-fi story, but the fact remains that Roy has a thorough understanding of language, and the emotion that comes with it. These types of AI are common throughout science fiction, and have been for decades. But we’ve failed to deliver on that. The more we’ve learned about how to build true AI and NLP, the more we’ve realized that we know next to nothing. This is largely because we understand next to nothing about the human brain. We haven’t been able to build anything that thinks like a human because we have no idea how the human brain thinks. At this point we’ve distinguished three levels of AI. I can’t put it much better than Tim from Wait But Why , so I’ll quote him here: AI Caliber 1) Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI): Sometimes referred to as Weak AI, Artificial Narrow Intelligence is AI that specializes in one area. There’s AI that can beat the world chess champion in chess, but that’s the only thing it does. Ask it to figure out a better way to store data on a hard drive, and it’ll look at you blankly. AI Caliber 2) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Sometimes referred to as Strong AI, or Human- Level AI, Artificial General Intelligence refers to a computer that is as smart as a human across the board — a machine that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can. Creating AGI is a much harder task than creating ANI, and we’re yet to do it. AI Caliber 3) Artificial Superintelligence (ASI): Oxford philosopher and leading AI thinker Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.” Something I heard awhile back that has stuck in my head is that humans are capable of calculating physics and trigonometry on the fly. When a football is flung into the air, we can tell when and where it will land; quarterbacks also know when they throw the ball. They make complex calculations and apply it to their physical movement. When you think about it, it’s incredible. And we have no idea how we’re able to do this. Donald Knuth, a computer scientist and former Stanford professor, once said, “AI has succeeded in doing what requires thinking but nothing that we do without thinking.” That’s really what this all comes down to, because we don’t understand how the human brain processes things without thinking. Including language. When listening or reading in a language in which we’re fluent, we don’t think about processing the words. It just happens. So how do we develop AI that can do things we don’t even understand? That’s what giants like Google and Palantir and many startups, including X.ai, MetaMind, Feedzai, Sigal n, Lilt and many, many others are working on. We’ve tried a few ways to move past this roadblock. Imitate evolution Although we don’t know much about how the human brain works, we know a bit more about how it got to this state: natural selection. So some people are trying to artificially replicate natural selection with machines — although it won’t take millions of years, because it’s less random. It’s called evolutionary computation, or genetic algorithms, and it sets up machines to do certain tasks; when one is successful through trial and error, it’s combined with other machines that are successful. But it’s an iterative process, which presents a problem: We don’t know how long it will take to create intelligence equal to our own. So far, this method has proved unsuccessful and it was mostly abandoned in the 1990s. Image: Warner Bros. Television Let nature inspire us Our brain is a biological neural network, so companies are building artificial neural networks. They’re trying to replicate the way the brain processes information by learning though trial and error which neural pathways lead to the right answer. In reality, artificial neural networks have much less in common with biological brains than the name might indicate. Artificial neural networks are a rough mathematical model, a draft , inspired by the little we know about the brain. Nonetheless, people are doing some crazy stuff with neural networks. Perhaps the most fun, or silly, application of the technology recently made the rounds online. A man named Andy Herd fed all of the scripts from the TV show Friends into a recurrent neural network. It was able to learn the style of the writing and the characters’ personalities and spit out scripts of its own. They are pretty ridiculous, and don’t make too much sense, but the fact that it’s able to do this at all represents a huge step forward from where we were just a few years ago. And through machine learning, the AI will continue to get better. But at this point, it’s captured the spirit of Chandler, at least: “Chandler: (in a muffin) (Runs to the girls to cry) Can I get some presents.” Anyone who’s watched Friends knows this is classic Chandler, even if the narrative is… nonsensical, to say the least. Andy used Google’s open source TensorFlow machine learning software library to build his hilarious and important script generator. Google has built it into many of their products, from Photos to Search to Gmail, and obviously Google Now, an app that essentially takes everything Google knows about you and uses it to provide helpful and relevant information. It’s also where the Google version of Siri lives. Deep learning has massive potential to revolutionize AI and help get us to the next step. But there are other solutions people are working on. Image: Warner Bros. Entertainment Make the machine design themselves It’s clear that replicating human intelligence is not easy, and no one knows if our other methods will work at all, or do it in a reasonable amount of time. So some people want to design machines to make themselves smart, by researching, learning and revising themselves. This is seemingly how Samantha from Her works. She is capable of learning just like a human is, although much faster. At the beginning of the movie, Theo needs to teach her a lot. But by the end, she has blown past him on an intelligence level. It’s an exponential process. In layman’s terms, the more she learns, the more she is able to learn, and so on. Perhaps this will lead to radically new types of intelligence, created by machines rather than humans. This brings us to the concept that artificial intelligence depends on: Moore’s law; the idea that computational power doubles every two years. Talk about exponential power. While the growth rate has started to slow, it’s still advancing exponentially. This already shows; deep learning was already around in the 1970s, but the exponential increase in computational power and data was largely responsible for the breakthroughs we are experiencing now. This is similar to Facebook’s new M service that lies within the Messenger app, aiming to be your personal assistant. Facebook says that M can do anything a human can — and that’s because their software is working with real humans. After all, AI isn’t capable of calling a restaurant and making a reservation, but the humans on the other side can. When you make a request, if M can’t do it alone, it sends the message to a Facebook contractor and, as they work with the software, the AI learns. M isn’t available to the public yet, but it looks like it has a lot of potential. Facebook is all in on AI. They’re developing a lot of different technology (like a feature that identifies what is in photographs so blind people can “see” them), but one of the coolest is their attempt to solve the “understanding” part of natural language processing. As we touched on before, AI isn’t yet capable of reading or listening like a human can — it only knows specific things. It knows what a word or sentence means, but it can’t summarize a paragraph. So Facebook is trying to tackle this. Last year they showed off some cool software. They fed in a synopsis of Lord of the Rings and the AI was able to answer some questions that look straightforward for us, but are very complex for a computer to answer. But one of the coolest applications of natural language processing is coming from Microsoft: they recently pushed out a feature in Skype to translate on-the-fly. So you can be on a call with someone who speaks another language, and Skype will translate it for you (almost) immediately. This is huge for global commerce, and society in general. Without language barriers , imagine how much more productive we could be, or how many people we could learn from or talk to that we previously couldn’t, or how much more successful global businesses could be — especially smaller companies that can’t afford a large staff of translators. Without language barriers, the world opens up, especially to those who don’t have the privileges of people in first-world countries. There’s a long way to go before computers can understand language. Every language is complex, with subtleties, dialects, slang, implications, emotion, tone, narrative and context, all of which are hard for machines to understand. While software like TensorFlow and CNDK are a massive step forward, we need human interaction to get there. And we will get there, but it will take at least 15 years. Samantha from Her, HAL from 2001 , C- 3PO from Star Wars — and all the other artificial intelligence we’ve been promised — are inevitable. It doesn’t need to be presented physically, as an android or robot. But it has to think like a human. Breaking open the language barrier will blow the potential of AI wide open. Until then, AI and humans working together is the best way to reap the benefits of existing technology. We don’t have to wait. We can use AI to change the world right now. Illustrations: Bryce Durbin 2016-03-12 20:16 Vasco Pedro

39 How to train your human, part II: Products that make habits last In the first part of this series, we learned about designing products that use good triggers and motivators to get users like Joe to engage in healthy behaviors. Now, how can we ensure that these new behaviors become long-term habits? In this second part, we return to Nir Eyal’s Hooked model to look at reinforcing Joe’s behavior through rewards and an investment in your product. Rewards serve as a way to positively reinforce users for the actions they take. Interestingly, brain imaging studies show that it’s not the sensation of the reward that excites us. Rather, it’s the anticipation of receiving the reward that activates the brain’s pleasure centers. When a reward is given each time after a good behavior, anticipation fades away, making the behavior seem dull and routine. However, when the reward is given in an unpredictable manner, we start repeating behaviors for the thrill of the chase. It’s the reason people play slot machines; they don’t win money each time — the thrill of hitting the jackpot is way more exciting than the money itself. So, variable rewards can also be very powerful in repeating healthy behaviors. In Nir’s Hooked model, there are three types of variable rewards: rewards of the tribe, hunt and self. We are social creatures. We crave belonging, connection and acceptance from other people. As such, rewards of the tribe are very powerful in encouraging repeated behaviors. Let’s look at some of these rewards. Rewards of competition Competition is a powerful social motivator. It establishes your status within the community, and gives users a good sense of self-esteem. Health apps use many gamification concepts such as leaderboards and user challenges to achieve this. The reward of winning is highly variable, because your rank is not only dependent on your performance, but also how others have performed. For the user, this causes a strong craving to reach the top. In fact, studies about gaming found that fear of losing in a competition is an extremely powerful motivator for users to get better next time! When users take an action and we reward them for it, they end up making a small commitment of time/effort in using your product. As product makers, we can leverage this small investment to encourage better behavior in the future. We are strongly driven to be consistent with our own past behaviors. Robert Cialdini, describing his principle of Consistency and Commitment, says that, “ Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.” Health apps such as Jawbone make an excellent use of our deep need to be consistent with ourselves. Jawbone asks users to make a small commitment in the morning to get to sleep by a certain time at night. And at night, Jawbone makes the big ask of reminding you to go to sleep at the time you committed to. And by simply clicking on the “I’M IN” button, 72 percent of their users were more likely to go to sleep on time! Users also irrationally value their own efforts, which Dan Ariely calls the IKEA Effect. Users tend to value way more a product they’ve spent effort and time on than a product in which they put no labor into. For example, the first time you open Carrot Fit , it only has a weight tracking function. The small action of regularly taking your weight earns you points and earns you new functionalities, such as workouts and new difficulty levels. The more effort you put into unlocking the app, the more you end up valuing the app as a result. By repeating tiny actions, we start valuing highly the results of those actions. And when this happens repeatedly, users start to change their attitude toward the new behavior, setting them on a path toward habit change. Health apps encourage these tiny actions, by getting users to invest their data, time, content or reputation. Investing data Lots of health apps encourage users to key in their weight or their fitness profile, or to import data from other apps. For example, apps such as Sleep Cycle and Pillow track your sleep data. Each day you track your sleep, the new data is used to recalculate your sleep patterns. This makes it much harder for users to leave the apps. Investing content Health apps also get users to invest a little bit of content, making it easier for them to repeatedly use the product. For example, Zipongo , a healthy recipe recommendation app, asks you to enter your food preferences and allergies during the onboarding process itself. So the first time you see recommendations, the content is highly curated for your needs. As you “favorite” more recipes, your recipe list gets more and more curated based on users who like similar recipes. By asking users to invest just a tiny bit of information about themselves in the onboarding process, Zipongo ensures that, as time goes on, each action becomes an investment into more curated content. This makes it easier for users to repeatedly use Zipongo for their cooking needs. Investing reputation Apps that focus a lot on social workouts, such as Strava , reward their users with trophies and ranks as a sign of their accomplishments. When users start to work out, they build up a list of trophies and followers. Over time, this becomes a big investment in the product as the user now has a reputation to maintain on the platform. Investing time By asking users to invest even just a few minutes of their time and effort, we can get them to keep repeating certain behaviors. Ginger.io is a product that helps users who struggle with depression. It uses short (two-five minutes) exercises to engage users in mindful thinking and behaving. Once the user completes an exercise, these are taken into account by the app to tailor future interventions based on the current exercise the user undertook. Setting up users for next steps During the investment phase, it is also important to set up future triggers to start the next habit- forming loop. For example, when I first sign up for Jawbone , Step 1 of my onboarding asks me to set my movement, sleep and weight goals. Sure, it’s an easy enough task, and I do it. Jawbone then uses this little information I invested to regularly send me new triggers to go to sleep on time and move more. It is important that during the investment phase we are able to get investment that can help trigger users to take action the next time. By doing this, we can increase the chances of a user cycling through the habit-forming Hooked model multiple times. Nir’s Hooked model is a great way to look at how we design products that help our users with long-term health behavior and habit changes. It’s important to encourage good behaviors by giving our users timely triggers, that have a clear call to action. We also need to give users the motivation they need to want to perform that action. By making the action as easy as possible, we also increase the likelihood the user will do it. A surprising and engaging reward at this time helps users form positive associations through repeated use. Through this process, users invest more in your product, making it more likely that they will cycle through the habit-forming loop. And voila! We’re on our way to forging long-term habits. The examples I shared are all interesting ways in which companies out there are tackling a difficult problem of habit change. However, these examples aren’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution. As product makers, we need to understand our users’ deep pain and what truly motivates them. Everything that we design must flow from that core. Once we understand our users’ intrinsic needs, the Hooked model can serve as a great framework to design for long-term healthy habit formation. 2016-03-12 20:16 Lakshmi Mani

40 Technology and the laws of power Is the tech industry partly responsible for the rise of Donald Trump? That’s what John Robb, who’s always worth reading, suggests in a series of recent posts, citing the great Nassim Taleb in support. His vision : “The nation-state as we’ve known it is rapidly hollowing out … this century’s spike in globalization, financialization, and technological change is gutting it…” Robb argues that America is increasingly fragmenting into two opposed groups: the technorati , “a class united by global outlook, education, financial success, status, and technological adoption,” and the left behinds , “the supermajority of Americans getting creamed by the hollowing out of America.” And he quotes Taleb : But wait, you say. They’re not talking about the tech industry, they’re really talking about the Establishment. Sort of! But — leaving aside the fact that the tech industry is increasingly becoming the Establishment, and vice versa — I’ve been arguing for some time now that as software eats the world, and leads to winner-take-most economics, it drags us all from Mediocristan towards Extremistan (to quote Taleb again.) There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with Extremistan. Its overall output is likely much greater than that of Mediocristan. But it is a land of power-law economic distributions, in which a minority will do very well … while a majority will count themselves lucky to stagnate. The tech industry and the Establishment are on course to be that wealthy minority, which Robb calls the technorati. The rest? They’re the left-behind. Imagine the inequities of present-day San Francisco as a microcosm of the future everywhere. That seems to be the direction in which we’re headed: The Economist writes: “America’s most successful cities, states and firms are leaving the rest behind,” in a fascinating piece called “The great divergence.” What’s causing that divergence? Our move towards Extremistan. What’s causing that? Technology, more than anything else. Even those not directly affected know that there is a new zeitgeist, a new Gilded Age, a new quasi-aristocratic class of the wealthy, privileged, hyper-networked tech elite, making six figures straight out of school, leaping from one plum job in one alpha city to another, exiting startups with millions or more. Whether or not this class is theoretically accessible to everyone is irrelevant to those who know in their gut they’ll never join it. And let’s not kid ourselves: tech may be more meritocratic than some other industries, but it’s far from a perfect meritocracy. Taleb rages at policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders … paternalistic semi-intellectual experts . (Which ought to make me uneasy, but fortunately, journalist-insider is a part-time gig for me, I spend my days writing software.) There’s no question that this rage has metastasized. But why now? The self-serving Establishment has been focused on perpetuating itself for decades now. This sudden hunger for revolution “worldwide, from India to the UK to the US”; this upending of seventy years of American precedent by the Trump and Sanders insurgencies; why is this happening now? Tech, again. There are no longer a handful of gatekeepers, readily influenced by the Establishment, who control all access to mass media. Now Facebook, and its users, exert profound collective control over the means of media distribution; now Trump can speak directly to his 6.8 million Twitter followers, without any filtering intermediaries. This ongoing in-part-tech-driven “Great Divergence” is very apparent to those who are not benefiting. They hear the “paternalistic semi-intellectual experts” telling them what to do; but now they hear other voices, too, telling the left-behinds that they have been cheated, manipulated, betrayed; telling them that the status quo truly only serves the smug preening Establishment. …Which is, to understate, not obviously wrong. So the fearful, hateful and/or authoritarian among them turn to Trump, or Marine Le Pen; the hopeful liberals turn to Sanders, or Jeremy Corbyn; but what they’re all really doing is turning away from the belief that the way things are can possibly work for them. The interesting question is whether the tech industry will support and ultimately merge with the Establishment — or, put another way, whether technology will ultimately increase equality of opportunity for everyone, or will intensify and calcify our existing inequities. Call me an inveterate optimist, but I think the former is more probable. Let me recommend to you a fascinating piece: “ Minimum Viable Superorganism ” by Kevin Simler: Politics is, to an extent, the art of creating superorganisms. Trump and Sanders have turned some of the vast masses of the left-behinds into “the Trump superorganism” and “the Sanders superorganism,” two entirely new beasts challenging the venerable Republican and Democratic superorganisms. But the key point is that new technology makes it vastly easier to create, connect, and inspire superorganisms … and to trigger hockey-stick hyper-growth in them when the conditions are right. It seems probable that none of today’s new political superorganisms will win the day; that in the end, the Establishment will triumph once again. This time. But as we move ever deeper into Extremistan, as the left-behinds grow angrier and more numerous, and as technology continues to foster superorganism inception and hyper-growth , it seems to be only a matter of time before some kind of profound political transformation is upon us. 2016-03-12 20:16 Jon Evans

41 OneDrive app update brings support for iPad multitasking on iOS Microsoft introduced support for Force Touch and the Apple Pencil in the last OneDrive update for iOS. Now the company has improved the app further and also made it compatible with the iPad's multitasking ability in its latest update. In addition to bug fixes and minor enhancements, the company has sneaked in the option to purchase an Office 365 subscription right from the app. The official changelog of the app mentions the following enhancements: Microsoft has been improving its services and creating compelling apps on competing platforms for the last few years. With the latest update, the company has once again shown its commitment to its own services without ignoring the features provided by iOS. Source: App Store via iMore 2016-03-12 16:06 Shreyas Gandhe

42 Microsoft is desperately nagging enterprise users to upgrade to Windows 10 -- even if they can't Microsoft's incredibly aggressive pushing of Windows 10 has been going on for some time now. In many regards it is something that home users have become accustomed to. While you might bemoan Microsoft constantly adverting Windows 10 to you if you've not yet upgraded, you must appreciate that it at last makes some sort of sense to the company -- it wants you to push that button and install the latest version of Windows. But while this sort of nagging is nothing new, it seems that some of Microsoft's marketing efforts are wildly wide of the mark, particularly when it comes to enterprise users. Many have already been upset by the appearance of Windows 10 ads in an Internet Explorer patch but there's another level to this insipid pestering. Described by some as 'malware' the IE update tries to foist Windows 10 onto enterprise users, encouraging them to nag sysadmins to upgrade to the latest version of Windows. Most sysadmins -- quite sensibly -- block the installation of new software, particularly new operating systems. But enterprise users are proving too slow to upgrade to Windows 10 for Microsoft's liking, hence the appearance of 'pester your system administrator' messages. It's something that has been noted by Woody Leonhard over on Infoworld , and he's not alone. In what amounts to using Windows Update to install a Trojan, Microsoft has used the Internet Explorer security update to simultaneously activate reminders to upgrade to Windows 10. In work and corporate environments where users have not been granted permission to install the operating system upgrade, a message is displayed: This is only going to result in poor sysadmins the world over being inundated with support requests from users confused by the appearance of the message. 'Why are you blocking upgrades, dude?' 'Why have you not upgraded us to the latest version of Windows? This one must be antiquated if Microsoft is pestering us like this!' Upgrading to Windows 10 -- or any operating system -- is not a move that people take lightly, and certainly not in the work environment. There are very good reasons why sysadmins may have decided to either not upgrade to Windows 10 at all or to postpone the upgrade. Tests need to be carried out. Hardware and software needs to be deemed compatible. Security checks have to be conducted. The time may or may not come when an upgrade to Windows 10 is on the cards, but system administrators certainly do not need users badgering them even more than they currently do. This is another badly thought-out move by Microsoft that will do little to win back some of the friends Windows 10 lost it. Sysadmins... you have our sympathies. Photo credit: pathdoc / Shutterstock 2016-03-12 13:00 By Mark

43 Essay: Will the First Amendment survive the information age? On the other end of the country, 10 separate lawsuits have piled up this year against net neutrality rules, with both sides claiming First Amendment rights in this long- running dispute over Internet service. This is Sunshine Week in the U. S., when news organizations put a spotlight on the public's right to know and size up the state of government openness and access to public records. This year, we should add a more sweeping question to the list: How will the First Amendment navigate the dramatic changes in information technology? Complicated disputes are popping up in both predicable and surprising places. Cases moving through the courts range from whether Facebook "likes" and Twitter posts are protected speech (both are for the moment) to what individual First Amendment rights should be granted to businesses (they're steadily expanding). The mere definition of free speech is getting clouded: Are video games a kind of speech? What about computer-driven content like searches and automated stories? Put another way, can iPhone's Siri claim First Amendment rights if she somehow offends or libels you? Free speech standards shaped over the past half-century are colliding with modern privacy concerns. Protests at a series of campuses the past year pitted press rights against the demand for "safe places" where students can avoid conflicting views. There's growing support for "right to be forgotten" laws that allow people to erase pieces of their past or otherwise rewrite digital history. When a humorist quickly gathered 50 signatures calling for repeal of the First Amendment as a joke a few months ago at Yale, nobody should have been laughing. FIVE KEY QUESTIONS The First Amendment has survived plenty of change in 225 years. Speech, press and expression rights have been expanded and hardened as they've adapted to waves of technology, including the telegraph, print, radio and television. Those who follow the topic most closely, though, say the information age started a whole new era. Here are key questions likely to shape the future of the First Amendment: How will the Internet alter free speech practices? There's still a lot of unsettled law about how speech and expression play out in a Facebook world. Scholars say rules taking shape will generally extend existing standards to the Internet. The challenge will be figuring out when speech is altered by the Internet's speed and reach, and how to handle all the new content types at a time when anyone can be a publisher. "The Internet amplifies everything," said Thomas Healy, a Seton Hall law professor and author of the book "The Great Dissent," about Oliver Wendell Holmes' free speech evolution. "It amplifies expression. It makes it more powerful, more dangerous, more offensive. Those things have to be taken into consideration. " Early court decisions hold that data-driven communications, such as computer-assembled news and Google searches, are indeed protected forms of speech. So is computer code itself, which is the basis of the First Amendment argument that Apple is making for refusing to crack open the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino mass shooters. Who's advocating for the public's interest? We should watch which players and what forces are trying to influence the rules as a changing of the media guard takes place. The newspaper and broadcast companies that championed speech and press rulings of the 20th century don't have the power or financial strength they once did. The dominant technology companies have not shown that same kind of stewardship of the First Amendment. John E. Finn, the Wesleyan government professor who taught the Great Courses series on the First Amendment, was speaking for his peers when he said, "I worry about the lack of well- funded institutions advocating for openness. " Who controls how information moves? Just as important as who creates content will be who distributes it, which is why the net neutrality rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission last year and now under appeal drew comment from a who's who of tech companies, from Netflix and Google to Comcast and Verizon. Current rules require service levels and rates to be the same for all. Internet providers say that curbs their business options, while content creators say reversing this would give the Internet's utilities too much power over the marketplace and lead, for instance, to download speeds based on your willingness to pay. While both sides claim First Amendment rights, self-interests show through in their positions. It's also becoming clear how much control already is in the hands of those who provide devices, pipelines and software that determine everything from what you find when you search to whose postings you see on Facebook and LinkedIn. "The people who develop our technologies," said Cindy Cohn, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which tracks digital rights, "are having a bigger and bigger role in all these things. " What will expanding business rights mean? A series of First Amendment rulings sought by private corporations has freed them from limits in such areas as advertising, ingredient listings and political contributions. About half of the successful First Amendment appeals to the U. S. Supreme Court today focus on corporate rights—a big change from previous decades, according to a survey of a half- century of court decisions by Harvard law professor John Coates. Some say that the expansion of any speech rights serves all comers. Others say this shift goes against the intent to protect the rights of citizens against powerful government and corporate interests. And finally, where do you stand? Here the news is encouraging: The amendment's simple, 45- word summary covering religion, speech, press, petition and assembly is woven into the American civil fabric. While percentages rise and fall slightly with current events, polls consistently find overwhelming support and admiration for the First Amendment from a vast majority of the population. Unlike almost any other topic in public life, those sentiments cut across political, ethnic, age and economic lines. Two-thirds of the world's population lives without religious and press rights, and many countries, from China to Cuba, are using technology to suppress rights. This makes the American model an even greater beacon if we succeed in using technology to extend freedoms. "We have the gold standard," said Alberto Ibarguen, director of the Miami-based Knight Foundation, which funds media innovation around the world. "It's our responsibility to make sure we maintain that.'" The First Amendment did not find its place at the core of our rights without many struggles over two centuries. Sunshine Week is a good time to remember there are fresh battles ahead. Explore further: Citizens United case unlikely to end corporate speech debate 2016-03-12 23:43 phys.org

Total 43 articles. Created at 2016-03-13 12:01