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Security breaches that get a lot of attention usually stem from human error.
The most common breach occurs when a hacker tricks someone into giving up their user name and password. Pretty soon, the password is hacked across multiple sites.
It is astounding that some applications have such low security thresholds for password recovery. Some applications will actually email the password. So, what if the hacker has access to your email account? Well, it’s not private anymore.
Most servers today are 2-4 socket systems (2-4S)–this is the sweet spot for both Intel and AMD. There are very few vendors who can design the custom chipsets (the glue) needed to scale up Intel systems to 8 sockets (8S). The most notable example is IBM, who has developed four generations of scalable chipsets and is about to release a fifth. We’ve previously discussed the X3 chipset which is largely similar to the current generation X4. Unisys also has an 8S system, albeit with lower performance. In theory, there are eight-socket AMD systems, but the scalability suffers because most processors only have three HyperTransport links.
The 8S+ market is small, reportedly around 1800 servers per quarter, or roughly 57K processors per year. One factor is that few vendors sell such systems and they are very expensive, another is that the x86 software stack was considered immature till very recently. Many IT shops are more comfortable with Oracle or SAP on a UNIX server, rather than using Linux/x86.
Different operating systems have different pros and cons, and customers make their mobile device purchases based on various criteria. Lately we’ve all been wondering what operating system we will be using on mobile phones in the future. RIM and Apple try to tie up users to their platform, while Google, Microsoft and Nokia try to push their solutions into the market.
Today there’s lots of interest in Android, a mobile operating system that uses a modified version of the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased by Google, and lately by the Open Handset Alliance. Google says that Android has what it takes to lead the phone OS market. I’m not so sure.
One of the biggest challenges IT managers face is how to keep their teams working efficiently and productively. Being online, it’s natural for many IT professionals to fully embrace social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. So, many managers are concerned that productivity is lost to these engaging applications. A study by Nucleus Research warned that Facebook reduced total office productivity by 1.5 percent. This is a new twist on an old concern, as we’ve seen these fears with Web surfing and online shopping in past years. Some IT experts have gone as far as to advise that managers check router logs for most commonly visited websites, and to discipline employees who spend too much time on them.
However, fixating on what employees could be “wasting” time on is focusing on the wrong problem. Instead, managers should spend their time managing and focusing on results. The work world is becoming increasingly integrated with the personal one. Employees can check work email all throughout the day now, so a little online shopping or surfing Facebook at the office should not be frowned upon. Of course, if an employee’s actual performance starts to suffer, then it is that performance that should be addressed, and not the spending of time on Facebook, which is more of a symptom of a deeper underlying problem.
PC power supplies usually come with some protections. The savvy user will always try to pick one that provides the most protections possible. But having protections available doesn’t mean that the power supply will in fact protect your equipment in case of malfunction. Let’s see why.
To start off, you need to know that most protections available on power supplies are not mandatory, which means that it is up to the power supply manufacturer to add them. So you cannot simply trust that the power supply you want to buy will have all necessary protections. You have to double-check this info on the product box or manufacturer’s Web sites. But even if you buy a power supply with all possible protections, they may not protect your system.
It doesn’t matter if you are a newcomer to the IT industry or a veteran with over 30 years of expertise: there are some movies that I love and think that all people working on the computer industry should watch. They are entertaining and educative at the same time.
The most famous is, of course, Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999), which shows the beginning of Apple and Microsoft. It is dramatized, meaning that actors play the role of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and others. Although very famous, this movie is not the best one on the subject – this title goes to Triumph of the Nerds.
MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failures. It’s a term that IT professionals use this number to predict the reliability of hardware devices, especially hard disk drives. But this idea is usually flawed. Here’s why.
To understand why comparing MTBF of different equipment may be misleading, we first need to understand how this parameter is measured.
In a lab, the manufacturer will run a test using an “x” number of samples of the product to be tested during “y” hours.
First the manufacturer calculates the total power-on hours (simply TPOH). This is done by multiplying the number of devices tested (”x”) by the number of hours that the test was run (”y”). Then the TPOH is divided by the number of devices that failed the test, and this result is the MTBF.
For example, if 1,000 devices are tested for 30 days straight (720 hours), we have a TPOH of 720,000 hours. If during this period only ten devices malfunctioned, we have an MTBF of 72,000 hours.
This number, however, does not mean that your should expect the product to fail, on average, after 72,000 hours, simply because each individual device wasn’t tested for 720,000 hours, but for only 720 hours.
And you can’t use this number to compare products that use different MTBF testing methodologies. For example, if you have a product with an MTBF of 72,000 hours like the given example and a competing product with an MTBF say of 100,000 hours, that does not necessarily mean that the second product has a higher reliability. The second manufacturer could have used a different combination of number of tested devices and power-on hours to achieve this result. Since the results were achieved using different methodologies, they cannot be compared.
So what does the MTBF of a piece of equipment mean? It means that on the test conducted by the manufacturer, one sample was defective every “x” hours of the testing time–the MTBF. In our example, a device was defective every 72,000 hours of testing running time, on average. But without knowing the exact methodology that was used, it is close to impossible to make correct comparisons between products.
To make things worse, the definition of failure may vary among manufacturers. For example, a manufacturer testing the MTBF of a RAID1 array of hard disk drives may consider it to be a failure when one of the drives fail, but another manufacturer may not, if the system was still fully operational even with one of the drives down (the mirror drive kicked in and prevented the user from stop working and losing data). The same goes for all other types of equipment. If a power supply shuts down during MTBF calculation but wasn’t “burned”, the manufacturer may choose to not count that as a failure (as the unit is still operational after being turned back on). Once again, you cannot compare MTBF values using different methodologies.
Reliability will depend on several other factors that are not measured by the MTBF calculation methodology. Just to leave you with a practical example, the standard lab temperature for testing equipment is 25º C (77º F), but several times components start failing at higher temperatures. So any kind of test conducted by the manufacturer may not necessarily reflect the environmental reality of where the product will be used.
(Gabriel Torres is the editor-in-chief of Hardware Secrets, a US-based website about PC hardware.)
For many technologists, there is nothing more rewarding than successfully finishing a project and getting to see the results. Unfortunately that enthusiasm is not always shared by users–some recent examples include the interface changes to Facebook and the privacy flap over Google’s Buzz. In the former case, the result was user confusion and frustration more than anything else–hardly the end of the world. In the latter case (and similarly Facebook’s Beacon ad feature), not only were users annoyed, but it was a pretty awful privacy violation and could have some serious implications. In all fairness these examples seem to be honest mistakes and are the exception rather than the rule. Google has pretty high standards for privacy; undoubtedly the development team for Buzz was convinced that they had an awesome product on their hands that would improve the lives of users.
Unfortunately, the benefit of a feature is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s pretty much impossible to please everyone. Even trying to please every constituent, stake holder or user is simply a recipe for failure; especially for consumer applications where individual tastes may vary substantially. Some features are not even beneficial and may be harmful to particular users.
Twitter has taken the world by storm. Bill Gates is on it. Jonathan Schwartz tweeted a farewell haiku on his last day at Sun. Every day, more CIOs tweet. Twitter is starting to play a big part in many compaies’ communication strategy. Though a lot of tweeting happens from the computer, a large part of the Twitter experience happens on mobile devices, and for one reason or another, there are many more Twitter clients for the iPhone than the BlackBerry.
Yet for the foreseeable future, BlackBerry will still be the preferred device for most enterprise users–BlackBerry’s security features and ability to multitask are both essential to many corporations. So, when RIM announced that it would be releasing Twitter for BlackBerry soon, enterprise users rejoiced.
Twitter for BlackBerry is still in limited preview, but I had the opportunity to take a look at it, and honestly, I must say that I am not really that impressed. Granted, it’s still in Beta, but even a Beta application should be good enough to withstand some constructive criticism.
On February 9, Cisco Corporation published a forecast paper describing global mobile data traffic projections and growth trends for the period from 2009 to 2014. As you can see from taking a closer look at this pretty detailed document, it gives you a vivid idea of the future of mobile technologies and their immediate uses.
Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2014, increasing 39 times between 2009 and 2014 reaching 3.6 exabytes per month or 40 exabytes per year by 2014. This astonishing number is an equivalent of a trillion music tracks in MP3 format.
However, music won’t be the biggest part of this traffic. Two thirds of the mobile traffic in 2014 will be video, another 17 percent–mobile internet (data and Web), and 8 percent–mobile peer-to-peer. The rest will be split between mobile games and mobile voice over IP.
Security breaches that get a lot of attention usually stem from human error.
The most common breach occurs when a hacker tricks someone into giving up their user name and password. Pretty soon, the password is hacked across multiple sites.
It is astounding that some applications have such low security thresholds for password recovery. Some applications will [...]
Most servers today are 2-4 socket systems (2-4S)–this is the sweet spot for both Intel and AMD. There are very few vendors who can design the custom chipsets (the glue) needed to scale up Intel systems to 8 sockets (8S). The most notable example is IBM, who has developed four generations of scalable chipsets and [...]
Different operating systems have different pros and cons, and customers make their mobile device purchases based on various criteria. Lately we’ve all been wondering what operating system we will be using on mobile phones in the future. RIM and Apple try to tie up users to their platform, while Google, Microsoft and Nokia try to [...]
One of the biggest challenges IT managers face is how to keep their teams working efficiently and productively. Being online, it’s natural for many IT professionals to fully embrace social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. So, many managers are concerned that productivity is lost to these engaging applications. A study by [...]
PC power supplies usually come with some protections. The savvy user will always try to pick one that provides the most protections possible. But having protections available doesn’t mean that the power supply will in fact protect your equipment in case of malfunction. Let’s see why.
To start off, you need to know that most protections [...]
It doesn’t matter if you are a newcomer to the IT industry or a veteran with over 30 years of expertise: there are some movies that I love and think that all people working on the computer industry should watch. They are entertaining and educative at the same time.
The most famous is, of course, Pirates [...]
MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failures. It’s a term that IT professionals use this number to predict the reliability of hardware devices, especially hard disk drives. But this idea is usually flawed. Here’s why.
To understand why comparing MTBF of different equipment may be misleading, we first need to understand how this parameter is measured.
In [...]
For many technologists, there is nothing more rewarding than successfully finishing a project and getting to see the results. Unfortunately that enthusiasm is not always shared by users–some recent examples include the interface changes to Facebook and the privacy flap over Google’s Buzz. In the former case, the result was user confusion and frustration [...]
Twitter has taken the world by storm. Bill Gates is on it. Jonathan Schwartz tweeted a farewell haiku on his last day at Sun. Every day, more CIOs tweet. Twitter is starting to play a big part in many compaies’ communication strategy. Though a lot of tweeting happens from the [...]
On February 9, Cisco Corporation published a forecast paper describing global mobile data traffic projections and growth trends for the period from 2009 to 2014. As you can see from taking a closer look at this pretty detailed document, it gives you a vivid idea of the future of mobile technologies and their immediate uses.
Globally, [...]
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