IBM: 'Your PC will read your mind by 2016'

IBM has released its annual predictions for the future of technology, and this year’s batch includes biometric security, replacing mice with brain sensors, and an end to the “digital divide” between those online and off.
Big Blue’s “5 in 5" predictions look at what technologies will be commonplace in five years time, based on the current state of play. This year, IBM has nominated personal-power generation, biometrics replacing passwords, mind control of PCs, the end of the digital divide, and automatic scheduling and purchasing software.
“A lot can happen in five years, but a lot of this stuff is closer than you think,” IBM Fellow and VP of innovation Bernie Meyerson told The Register. “A lot of this is either in development by IBM or by third parties already.”
By 2016, power generation will be built into almost anything, from running shoes to water pipes (so-called "parasitic power collection"), and IBM predicts tools such as battery chargers that clip onto your bike and charge as you cycle to work. Quite who’ll develop this isn’t known – El Reg can’t see the power companies being thrilled about it.
Biometric technology is nothing new, but IBM predicts that within five years it’ll be built into everything from laptops to cash machines. Retinal prints and voice-recognition software are the most likely contenders, but there are still technical problems with both areas which went unacknowledged in the predictions.
One of the most intriguing areas IBM nominated was mind control of PCs. While there are non-intrusive headsets already available for online gaming, they are expensive and seldom as efficient as manual controls. However, the increase in computational power and software sophistication is making mind-reading increasingly easy, Meyerson said.
“This is as much a software issue as a hardware issue,” he explained. “You need an algorithm that associates pattern with function and makes the correlation in terms of brain monitoring. The basic capabilities exist and they are coming on strong.”
However, there’s still a lot more than five years to go before the ultimate in mind control is reached – wetware that’s embedded directly in your skull. Meyerson said that a group of graduate students had recently pitched venture capitalists on this and found a lot of interest, even if the technology is many years away from fruition – and provided you can find beta testers.
The end of the digital divide is also predicted, with an estimated 80 per cent of the world’s population owning a reasonably smart handset and the signal to run it. Meyerson said he had been to China and talked to executives who were seeing millions of people signing onto mobile service in a few days as low-cost rural networks go up.
Finally, and perhaps most unlikely, Big Blue predicts spam will actually become useful, by programming devices to identify pertinent information from floods of emails, and include it in personal planning – such as automatically buying concert tickets for your favourite band. While this might make sense for IBM’s Big Data plans, El Reg has its doubts.

Chrome takes No. 2 browser spot from Firefox

Microsoft's Internet Explorer holds onto its lead in the desktop browser market, but the battle with Google is heating up
Google's Chrome has narrowly overtaken Mozilla's Firefox as the second most popular desktop browser behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which is holding onto its market-leading share of the market, according to one Web analytics firm.
StatCounter's monthly statistics for November show IE in the lead with 40.63 percent of the global market, followed by Chrome with 25.69 percent, Firefox with 25.23 percent, Safari with 5.92 percent and Opera with 1.82 percent.
BROWSER WARS: IE vs. Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Safari vs. Opera
"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, in a statement. "Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the Web also."
While Chrome for the first time surpassed Firefox on a global basis, that's not the case in the U.S., where IE maintains a larger share of the market (50.66 percent), and Firefox (20.09 percent) retains a lead over Chrome (17.3 percent), StatCounter reports. (See also: "Firefox 8 adds Twitter search, tightens add-on controls")
Two years ago, in November 2009, Chrome accounted for just 4.66 percent of worldwide browser usage. Chrome exceeded 20 percent of the global Internet browser market in June of this year for the first time, according to StatCounter. On a country basis, it surpassed Firefox and became the No. 2 browser in Ireland in May and in the U.K. in July. Chrome's steady increase since its introduction in 2008 has come at the expense of IE, primarily, and Firefox to a lesser degree.

Google protects its current HTTPS traffic against future attacks

Google has modified the encryption method used by its HTTPS-enabled services including Gmail, Docs, and Google+, in order to prevent current traffic from being decrypted in the future when technological advances make this possible.
The majority of today's HTTPS implementations use a private key known only by the domain owner to generate session keys that are subsequently used to encrypt traffic between the servers and their clients.
This approach exposes the connections to so-called retrospective decryption attacks. "In 10 years time, when computers are much faster, an adversary could break the server private key and retrospectively decrypt today's email traffic," explained Adam Langley, a member of Google's security team, in a blog post.
In order to mitigate this relatively low, but real security risk, Google has implemented an encryption property known as forward secrecy, which involves using different private keys to encrypt sessions and deleting them after a period of time.
In this way, an attacker who manages to break or steal a single key won't be able to recover a significant quantity of email traffic that spans months of activity, Langley said. In fact, he pointed out that not even the server admin will be able to decrypt HTTPS traffic retroactively.
Because SSL wasn't designed to support key exchange mechanisms capable of forward secrecy by default, the Google engineers had to design an extension for the popular OpenSSL toolkit. This was integrated into OpenSSL 1.0.1, which has yet to be released as a stable version.
The new Google HTTPS implementation uses ECDHE_RSA for key exchange and the RC4_128 cipher for encryption. Unfortunately, this combination is only supported in Firefox and Chrome at the moment, which means that HTTPS connections on Internet Explorer will not benefit from the added security.
This isn't necessarily a problem with Internet Explorer, which does support a combination of EDH (Ephemeral Diffie--Hellman) key exchange and RC4. EDH also provides forward secrecy, but Google chose ECDHE (Elliptic curve Diffie--Hellman) instead for performance reasons.
The company plans to add support for IE in the future and hopes that its example will encourage other service providers that use HTTPS to implement forward secrecy so that one day it can become the norm for online traffic encryption.

"Steve Jobs had personal moral failures, was no role model",says Dobrin

While everyone is admiring the legacy left behind by Steve Jobs, a professor of applied ethics at Hofstra University has joined the crew of Jobs-knockers, to say that the Apple CEO because of his well-documented bad behaviour.
Blogging on Psychology Today, Arthur Dobrin told readers that he would not be joining in on "the chorus of hosannas" praising Jobs. And that's because Steve was a very naughty boy...
Dobrin writes:
    His heroic status is seriously undermined by his personal moral failures, and it this which prevents me from holding him up as an icon for young people.
Turn away now children...
    Where there is no vision, a people perish, the New Testament says. But it isn't any vision that people need for sustenance. It is a moral vision that is essential.
Top of the hit list is Steve's much-discussed poor treatment of his first daughter; according to the recent Walter Isaacson biography, he had refused to acknowledge paternity until compelled to do so by a court order.
Dobrin pulls other incidents out of the Isaacson tome, including the great man's fussiness about the flowers in his hotel room, his habit of parking in handicapped spaces and tendency to break the speed limit and then yell at cops writing him speeding tickets that they weren't doing it fast enough.
Dobrin also vaguely blames Jobs for the "culture of the internet", though we feel that the decency doyen is on shakier ground here: "The impact of Apple's works on our social life is ambiguous, making us more connected to the larger world and alienated from our immediate surroundings, both at the same time. Just think of the person across from you at a table who is texting a friend from across the world."
Could be something to do with Dobrin's small talk?
However on the fraught question of whether visionary genius must accompanied by Jobs' brand of single-minded narcissism, the psychologist has no further insight to offer us:
Whether genius requires such narcissism is an open question. But if we are to venerate Steve Jobs, let's not be fooled into thinking that he was a good person.

This is getting interesting you would agree!

Oracle WebLogic 12c cloud-themed application server on the way!!!

TopGists can confirm that Oracle is planning to announce the next version of its flagship WebLogic application server during an online event Dec. 1, according to information on the company's website.
WebLogic Server 12c, in which the 'C' appears to be shorthand for "cloud," will succeed version 11g, which was first released in July 2009.
"Today most businesses have the ambition to move to a cloud infrastructure," Oracle said in a statement on its site. "However, IT needs to maintain and invest in their current infrastructure for supporting today's business. With Oracle WebLogic ... we provide you with the best of both worlds."
WebLogic 12c will be key to Oracle's Exalogic application server appliance, which has so far been overshadowed by the Exadata database machine, as well as its recently announced public cloud service.
Customers will be able to build out private clouds with Exalogic as well as use Oracle's WebLogic-based public cloud service, while easily moving the applications back and forth, according to Oracle.
Features of WebLogic 12c include Java EE 6, Active GridLink for RAC (Real Application Clusters), Traffic Director, and Virtual Assembly Builder, Oracle said.
Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java, is scheduled to speak during the event along with other executives. Oracle is also planning to run a "developer deep dive" event on the same day.
Current pricing for the high-end WebLogic Suite is $45,000 per processor, plus $9,900 in annual support. It wasn't immediately clear whether Oracle will institute a price increase upon 12c's release.
WebLogic 12c will compete with a variety of other Java application servers, including Red Hat's JBoss and IBM's WebSphere, as well as Oracle's own GlassFish, which was acquired through the purchase of Sun Microsystems.
GlassFish costs $5,000 per processor along with $1,100 in yearly maintenance fees, or about half as much as WebLogic Server Standard Edition. There is also a community-supported version of GlassFish available at no charge.

Who could have sponsored the Duqu computer virus project?

As experts learn more about the Duqu computer virus it becomes increasingly clear that the latest high-profile cyber bug poses no direct threat to most people.
But with it’s complex design and mysterious origins, Duqu is still captivating many.
The virus was first discovered by researchers two weeks ago, but appears so sophisticated that it could only have been created by a well-funded team of expert hackers, says Vancouver-based computer security expert Chet Wisniewski.
That knowledge in turn fuels speculation about exactly who might have bankrolled this project.
A government?
A military contractor?
An evil billionaire with political aspirations?
“It’s very sexy and 007-like,” says Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos Canada. “As researchers we’re all intrigued. It takes a lot of resources to develop something like this.”
On Thursday, security research from the computer security firm Symantec revealed that hackers had been using a Belgian server to mine data from computers infected with the Duqu virus, and said a similar operation had already been shut down in India.
So nine countries, including Sudan, Belgium and Vietnam, have had confirmed reports of the Duqu virus, but Wisniewski says the odds of the bug infecting any individual’s computer are almost non-existent because the bug can’t transfer from machine to machine the way standard viruses do.
And it’s not built to behave the way normal viruses behave, melting hard drives and erasing stored files.
Instead, the people spreading the Duqu virus target specific computers that contain sensitive information they want to steal.
Then they steal it.
In that sense Duqu is less like the viruses that cause regular people headaches and more like the Stuxnet worm, which experts suspect disabled a nuclear reactor where the United States claimed Iran was running a secret nuclear weapons program.
But just how often do virus attacks like these happen?
Almost never, according to the numbers.
Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report says attacks like Stuxnet and Duqu represent too small a fraction of cyber attacks to represent statistically.
But those figures aren’t air tight.
Winsiewski points out that the people employing the Duqu virus target intelligence agencies, military contractors and chemical companies, all entities unlikely to broadcast news of security breaches.
“If this were to happen to CSIS, they’re not going to go out and say anything about being hacked,” Wisniewski says.

Personally i wouldn't be surprised if none of the speculated above is the sponsor. It could be one of these big software developing firms we all know.

Anyways,let's forget Duqu and enjoy Salah.

Barka de salah to all the moslems in d house.

K Computer: The Fastest computer in the world

Hi Guyz,

It's been a while; you would say. Banky has been damn busy of late. This cashless Lagos project has sucked up all my time in the last few weeks. Thank God the pressure is bearable now.

One gist have got for you is about the fastest computer in the world at the moment.It's called the K Computer and it's topping 10 Petaflops.

The K supercomputer just got a bit quicker—boosting its computational output to 10.5 quadrillion calculations per second and making it the speediest number-crunching system on the planet.

The K Computer was built by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MoMESST) in conjunction with the Fujitsu Corporation and specifically aimed towards breaking the 10 petaflop barrier.

It employs processing clusters of over 88,000 specially-designed HPC Fujitsu SPARC64 VIIIfx chips as well as 864 server racks to perform its computational feats. The K currently resides at Fujitsu's RIKEN lab in Kobe, Japan.

According to industry benchmarks, the K computer is performing at 93 percent efficiency. However, given that it burned through $9.89 million of electricity yearly when it ran at just one petaflop, I'd rather not see the lab's current utility bill...lol.

Enjoy ur holiday!

Mac notebook supplies may reduce due to Chinese factory shutdown

The shutdown of production at a Chinese manufacturer may affect inventories of Apple's popular MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks, an analyst said Monday.
Catcher Technology, a Taiwanese company that has factories in the People's Republic, confirmed over the weekend that it had partly shuttered a plant in eastern China after local officials fielded complaints of a "strange odor" emanating from the facility.
Catcher produces 60 percent of the so-called "unibody" aluminum cases for Apple's MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, some casings for the iMac, and components for the Smart Cover that Apple sells as an iPad 2 accessory, according to Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities.
White said that the remaining 40 percent of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air cases are produced by rival Hon Hai Precision, part of Foxconn Technology.
In a press conference Monday, Catcher's president Allen Horng said, "Shipments to our customers will inevitably be affected. We already asked them to make adjustments to their (casings) procurement," the Wall Street Journal reported.
Horng added that shipments would fall 20 percent this month and perhaps as much as 40 percent in November if the production lines remain shut down.
Catcher has factories in Suzhou, an eastern Chinese city near Shanghai.
"This shutdown at Catcher is a wildcard and could have an impact on Apple's Mac business, especially the popular MacBook Air and MacBook Pro," said White in a note to clients Monday. "Furthermore, we believe a new MacBook Pro is set to be launched soon and this could [also] be impacted."
Mac notebook sales are important to Apple, accounting for 70 percent of the company's personal computer unit sales in the quarter ending June 30, and 69 percent of all Mac revenue in that period.
Apple will announce its third-quarter sales figures Tuesday. White expects that Apple will say it sold 3.1 million notebooks during the previous three months, and 4.2 million Macs overall.
Catcher Technology did not immediately reply to questions about the Suzhou factory shutdown.
Supplies of Apple's notebook -- all feature the unibody case milled from a single piece of aluminum -- were unchanged on Apple's website today, with all models showing an "in stock" message.

So guyz, go buy your Mac notebook now before it gets so scarce.

Cheers.

Google adds Cloud-based SQL database to App Engine

Google has created a relational database for its cloud-hosted App Engine application development and hosting platform, a much-requested addition, the company said on Thursday.
For now, the database, called Google Cloud SQL, is available on limited preview mode, which means that the company will hand-select the developers who get access to it.
During this preview period, Google Cloud SQL will be free of charge. Google will announce pricing a month before it starts charging for it.
"You can now choose to power your App Engine applications with a familiar relational database in a fully-managed cloud environment. This allows you to focus on developing your applications and services, free from the chores of managing, maintaining and administering relational databases," wrote Navneet Joneja, product manager for Google Cloud SQL, in a blog post.
An import/export feature will allow developers to move on-premise MySQL databases to Google Cloud SQL, where Google will handle back-end maintenance and administration tasks, while replicating data to multiple data centers, he said.
Google Cloud SQL also has a control panel for developers to engage in front-end administration of the databases. With Google Cloud SQL, App Engine developers get an option to Google's proprietary Big Table database.
John Rymer, a Forrester Research analyst, calls this move by Google "very significant."
"SQL is far more widely used by developers than key-value stores like Big Table. Absence of SQL options for App Engine has been a big barrier to adoption," he said.
Google App Engine was launched in 2008 for developers of consumer Web applications who wanted to host their software on the Google cloud infrastructure.
In mid-2010, Google unveiled an enterprise version of the service called App Engine for Business, but eventually folded it, although the company has said that its key features will find their way to the regular App Engine. The SQL database was one of those features.

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is dead at 56

Creative genius revolutionized computers, music, phones

Steve Jobs, Apple's cofounder and former CEO, has died. He was 56 years old.
His death was reported late Wednesday in a brief statement on Apple's website. Apple's homepage featured a black-and-white photo of Jobs with a closely trimmed beard bearing his name and the years 1955-2011.
"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," a statement by Apple said. "Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
Arguably the most influential and charismatic leader in the history of an industry stocked with high-profile personalities, Jobs created then later transformed Apple into a consumer electronics giant that redefined product elegance and ease of use.
Having both publicly and privately battled serious health problem for years, Jobs' death was not unexpected.

In August 2004 he revealed that he had a rare but survivable islet cell neuroendocrine tumor removed from his pancreas. At that time he told Apple employees that he would return in September. He did.
In January 2009, Jobs released an open letter in which he said that his severe weight loss – which had been "a mystery to me and my doctors" – had been discovered to be a "hormone imbalance".
Just over a week later, however, Jobs began a second medical leave of absence. In an email message addressed to "Team", he wrote: "I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought."
In June of that year, a spokesman for a Tennessee organ-transplant center confirmed that Jobs had received a liver transplant in April. Jobs returned to Apple on a part-time basis at the end of June, and in September he appeared at an iPod-introduction event, where he told the crowd: "I'm vertical, I'm back at Apple, and loving every minute of it."
During the later half of 2010, however, it became clear that Jobs' health was deteriorating. In January 2011, he began what was to be his third and final medical leave.
Jobs never returned to day-to-day duties at Apple – although he appeared to relish his appearances at the iPad 2 and iCloud roll-outs, over which he presided in his familiar black-turtleneck-and-jeans public personna.
During this third leave of absence, as with the first two, Apple's COO Tim Cook took the reins as acting CEO. Apple's board of directors, at Jobs' urging, named Cook CEO when Jobs resigned in August.
In his letter of resignation, Jobs wrote: "I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you."
Jobs was nothing if not a polarizing figure, but any honest member of the consumer-technology industry must thank him for the many years of being able to work alongside the mercurial visionary.
Adopted son of Paul and Clara Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs was born to Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali. He leaves his wife of 20 years, Laurene Powell Jobs, and children Lisa, Reed, Erin, and Eve.

Microsoft may bid again for Yahoo, report says

Just three years after a failed attempt to buy Yahoo, Microsoft may be considering whether to try again.
According to the report, Microsoft executives are split on whether the company should bid for Yahoo. A final decision has not been reached, the report noted.
Citing an unnamed "high-ranking Microsoft executive," the report said Microsoft is evaluating whether to pull in a partner for a joint effort to buy Yahoo.
Microsoft said it doesn't comment on rumors or speculation. Yahoo didn't respond to a request for comment on the report.
"As long as Microsoft is committed to growing its online presence, this makes sense," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "Yahoo has a large number of subscribers and regular visitors, many of whom are not considering going elsewhere. And that would be a good boost for Microsoft."
He also noted that Yahoo Mail, Yahoo's popular free email service, would combine well with Microsoft's own Hotmail service to create a very large base of email users.
"It looks like Yahoo is much more available than last time. More willing, or at least less unwilling," Gottheil added. "It's like a Jane Austen novel -- the Yahoo board no doubt regrets rejecting Microsoft's [past] advances."
In 2008, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo's argument that the bid was tool low prompted Microsoft to finally give up.
Since then, Yahoo has been dealing with some significant problems.
No longer the high-flying Internet pioneer of its heyday, Yahoo last month fired Carol Bartz, who had joined the company as CEO with high hopes that she could return the company to its past glory.
Yahoo is now searching for a new leader.
Once Bartz was out the door, industry analysts began speculating that Yahoo's board might be open to a solid acquisition offer.
However, Yahoo remains a large, unwieldy organization and thus a difficult aquisition target for many companies. Speculation has turned to Microsoft as a company large enough to handle the purchase.

iPhone 4 to be free' when new iPhones ship

iPhone 4S and 5 to be dual-mode. Other changes leaked
Schlumberger uses IBM BNT RackSwitch for HPC
Upon Tuesday's rollout of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, the existing iPhone 4 will be offered for the low, low price of nothing at all when purchased with a presumably two-year contract.
That is, if a pricing roundup leaked to MacDailyNews from "a sole source [who] has provided reliable information of Apple’s moves in the past" is accurate.
MacDailyNews warns that the leaked price sheet is to be regarded merely as a rumor, and we agree. But the specs included along with the prices are interesting nonetheless.
For one, the iPhone 4 – currently available in 16GB and 32GB models – will contain only 8GB of storage.
The iPhone 4S – $99 for 16GB, $199 for 32GB – will be bumped up from an A4 processor to an A5, as is in the iPad 2. In addition, both the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 – $299 for 32GB, $399 for 64GB – will be dual-mode GSM/CDMA handsets with 1GB of RAM, up from 512MB in the iPhone 4.
In addition, the iPhone 4S, like the iPhone 4, will have a 5-megapixel back-facing camera, while the iPhone 5's main camera will be an 8-megapixel shooter. The iPhone 4S is listed as being available in both black and white, while no color information is given for the new iPhone 5.
As we said, these are single-source rumors, so take them with the requisite grains of salt – but, hey, what's an Apple product roll-out without a healthy dollop of delicious rumor-mongering?

Facebook to enrich mobile with HTML5

Facebook has an internal tool for developing mobile applications primarily using HTML5, which eventually should allow it to bring every feature of its Web platform onto mobile devices.
Facebook used the tool, internally called Faceweb, to introduce continuous News Feed updates to mobile devices last week, said Erick Tseng, head of mobile products at Facebook. The company hopes to have conjoined launches of feature updates on both mobile applications and the Web, he said at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.
"The reason we're so excited about Faceweb is because by using HTML5 instead of all native development ... it allows us to actually keep pace with desktop features," Tseng said. HTML5 is a standard Web development language that can bring many capabilities of native apps, including offline operation, to the Web.
Facebook considers itself not a social network but a platform that can be pervasive throughout a user's mobile experience, Tseng said. Device makers including HTC and Sony Ericsson have already used Facebook APIs (application programming interfaces) to integrate Facebook functions deep in Android phones. This lets users plug into the "social graph" of the platform without even consciously going into a Facebook app or logging in. "That's a platform," Tseng said.
One new feature headed to mobile devices is Ticker, the real-time stream of friends' posts that appears in the corner of the Web browser. Ticker is especially well-suited to mobile because users can quickly check up on what's happening when they briefly have time, such as at a bus stop, Tseng said.
However, Tseng said he couldn't comment on whether Facebook will be integrated into Apple iOS 5, the new operating system coming in the iPhone 5, which is expected to debut next week. Apple disclosed earlier this year that the OS will include Twitter integration.
"I think it would be a great combination. Hope to see it soon," Tseng said.
Tseng also declined to comment on when an expected Facebook app for the iPad will come out.

Access Bank finally acquires Intercontinental Bank

Hi friends,

The new gist is that Access bank has finally acquired Intercontinental Bank Plc(IBPLC).This happened yesterday Sept 26,2011. 75% of IBPLC's stake was acquired for about N53.47 billion.

This doesn't sound like a good news to staff members of IBPLC.

Anyway,I wish all my friends in IBPLC the very best.

Have a great day

Google Wallet rollout going 'kind of slow,' Google rep says

Google Wallet has run into technical glitches, although the extent of the problems is not clear.

Google's Web site says the new mobile payment service is having "slower than normal wait times to add [credit and debit] cards to Google Wallet."

Also, Google Wallet over-the-air updates to Nexus S smartphones are going slowly and the app did not reach all users by late Friday, when Google had said the update would be rolled out.

A Google Help Desk representative named Dave said via phone on Saturday at 7:36 a.m. (ET): "The [Google Wallet] rollout is kind of a slow rollout. They are still working on that. There's no specific time frame for when it will be complete. You should see it soon."

Two Google spokesmen were asked to comment on the status of the rollout and the wait times for adding cards to Google Wallet, but did not respond as of mid-day Saturday.

Bob Egan, a mobile commerce analyst at The Sepharim Group, said the rollout probems "are a really big deal.... It shows Google's preparation for launch isn't production ready, especially in the context of a payments market" where security and customer expectations are heightened.

"If setting up Google Wallet is complex, unreliable or leaves consumers unexcited, where they find themselves asking, 'Why did I do this?' then Google Wallet will be stillborn," Egan added.

A Google spokeswoman had said Wednesday, that "100% of users should have the update by EOD Friday" after earlier saying the update would be completed on Wednesday.

Google launched Google Wallet on Monday, saying there would be an over-the-air rollout of the Google Wallet app and that the service was "now available on Nexus S 4G on Sprint."

A Sprint spokesman referred inquiries about the rollout to Google. Other partners in the venture could not be reached to comment.

Lengthy wireless software rollouts are common, usually taking several days so networks won't get jammed, analysts said. Google and various Android smartphone wireless carriers have come under fire for requiring Android OS version updates, but mainly for promising the rollouts would start at a certain time and then delaying the start of the rollout.

Consumer Reports blogged on Wednesday that Google had rushed to get the first digital wallet on the market, adding that Google's "promotional promises seem to have gotten a little ahead of themselves."

Such a delay might not normally be a concern, except that Google and its partners -- Sprint, MasterCard, Citi and First Data -- put enormous time and money into the Google Wallet app.

The idea of being first in the U.S. with a major rollout using Near Field Communications technology inside smartphones is notable. The stakes are high: the long-term future of mobile wallets is expected to be lucrative, worth many billions of dollars in the U.S., to banks that collect transaction fees and to technology companies such as Google that receive revenues for making coupons and other offers available to users.

Analysts questioned how serious the delay really is, and how many users are already connected. They also questioned whether the wait times for adding credit cards could be a sign of a bigger problem with the complex network, systems and the money exchange infrastructure behind Google Wallet.

The Google Wallet Web site first posted a notice on Wednesday of the problem in adding credit cards to the app, the same notice that was still live today.

Incredible!!! Interswitch loses bid for PTSP & PTSA. ITEX picks up CBN license for PTSP & PTSA

Guyz,

I think the news of the week so far is this emerging drama in the Banking Industry. After the Central Bank of Nigeria announced the Payment Terminal Service Provider(PTSP)' s licensing process last month,everyone believed Interswitch would certainly be on the final list. Not because Interswitch is an expert in the Point-of-Sale business but because of the 'big' name. What we all know Interswitch for is Switching,then maybe QuickTeller.

But as i gist you right now,5 companies have been licensed for PTSP and Interswitch is not one of them.

Interswitch also bidded for the Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA). This is the Terminal Management System (TMS) that will be active at the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement Scheme(NIBSS). This TMS is what all the 5 PTSPs will be connecting to. Itex Integrated Service (IISYS) is the licensed PTSA!!!

 The 5 licensed PTSPs are:

1) Itex Integrated Systems(IISYS)

2)ValuCard Nig

3)E-Top

4)Citi-Serve

5)PayMaster

So that's whatz up guyz. Promise to keep you updated.

CitiServe and PayMaster make CBN's list of licensed PTSP

Hi friends,

Just want to inform you guyz that PayMaster and CitiServe. 

Cheers

CBN licenses 5 Payment Terminal Service Providers

Hi dudes,

I'm glad to give you the hottest gist in town right now. As at this morning, the Central Bank of Nigeria has licensed 5 Payment Terminal Service Providers. Leading the list is ITEX Integrated Systems who have been the best in the system for years now. Also on the list are ValuCard Nig and E-Top Ltd. 

Speculation is that Pilot Test begins in Lagos early October with 50000 terminals.

Congratulations to our ITEX, Congratulations to all the PTSPs,Congratulations to Nigerians.

Google Wallet officially launched

Google officially launched its Google Wallet application late Monday for NFC-ready Sprint Nexus S 4G phone users.

The application launches initially for Citi MasterCard credit card holders, but Google also said Monday that Visa, Discover and American Express will be able to add their cards to future versions of Google Wallet.

The application, first announced in May, was described in a Google blog on Monday.

Google said it would begin rolling out Google Wallet to Nexus S customers through an over-the-air update; customers need to look for the "Wallet" app on the phone.

A two-minute video demo of the app is included.

"This is still just the beginning, and while we're excited about this first step, we look forward to bringing Google Wallet to more phones in the future," said Osama Bedier, vice president of payments at Google.

The Google Wallet works with MasterCard PayPass payment terminals with the transaction enabled via wireless Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Users must enter a PIN in the application to enable each payment, which is done by passing the Nexus S phone close to the payment terminal.

While Google says in its materials that there are "hundreds of thousands" of PayPass terminals, a MasterCard representative at a sneak peek last week said there are about 150,000 at various retail locations in the U.S. Some of the terminals still need software upgrades to work with the phones.

Some Google officials said the Google Wallet would launch in San Francisco and New York initially, but the Google Wallet site lists many in even small locations where there are PayPass terminals, including several drug stores in Harrisonburg, Va., a college town of about 40,000.

Visa said in a separate statement that its has licensed Google to use Visa's PayWave technology, used in "hundreds of thousands" terminals in retail locations worldwide.

Visa account holders will be able to use their Visa accounts to add their credit, debit and prepaid accounts to Google Wallet, but Visa didn't describe a timeline for when that function would be enabled.

Google officially launched its Google Wallet application late Monday

Google said it will allow users to add any bank card to a Google Prepaid Card and they will receive $10 to try the service. The card is virtual, not a physical card, and is available with the Google Wallet app on the phone, a spokeswoman said late Monday.

Windows 8: First contact with Microsoft Touch

Guyz we need to critically examine Windows 8.
Microsoft is facing up to the million-dollar question: how does it compete with Apple's iPad and Google's Android when Windows was designed for keyboard and mouse rather than touch control?

Microsoft's answer has been to create a platform based on Metro, the design style in Windows Phone 7. Metro apps run full-screen without any surrounding chrome, which is why Microsoft calls it an immersive user interface. Microsoft has used the opening of its BUILD conference in Anaheim, California, today to deliver the first developer preview of Windows 8, the first version of Windows optimised for touch.

For all the tablet focus, users expect a Windows PC to run Windows applications, so Windows 8 also supports the traditional Windows desktop. In the current build, Windows 8 looks much like Windows 7, aside from the disappearance of the old Start menu in favour of pages full of Metro tiles.

IE goes Metro: new menus top and bottom vanish when you tap the page, for a full-screen view

The Metro UI is not just an alternate shell. Metro is built on a new native code, Windows Runtime (WinRT), which can be called from two alternative view engines. The first is XAML, the layout language used by Microsoft's Silverlight media player and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), driven by code written in C, C++, C# or Visual Basic. The second is HTML and CSS, driven by code written in Javascript. Microsoft notes that the Metro Software Development Kit (SDK) "also includes a subset of traditional Win32, COM and .NET Framework APIs".

Microsoft has promised to clarify the Windows developer story at BUILD. So far, it looks like this: Metro is a new platform, and while you will be able to port code from existing Windows applications, they will need to be rewritten. XAML and .NET are supported, but this is not Silverlight or WPF – though the Silverlight plug-in still runs in the browser. Microsoft does seem to be promoting the HTML and Javascript approach here at BUILD, but says XAML and .NET have access to all the same features.

The Windows 8 Developer Studio features a Visual Studio 11 early build

Windows Phone remains a separate platform. Windows group president Steven Sinofsky told the press ahead of BUILD that the different form factor means that running the same app on phone and tablet is not an immediate prospect. That is missing the point though; in principle Windows Phone could have its own cut-down version of WinRT, but instead it has Silverlight and XNA. It seems that Windows developers will have to live with this diversity for some time.

I was given a Windows 8 Intel-based tablet by Microsoft to try, just ahead of its public unveiling at BUILD. Windows 8 will also run on ARM, but Microsoft says the ARM build is not yet ready to show. Once set up, it boots from cold in around 10 seconds – impressive. Resume from sleep is near-instant.

Windows 8 opens to a lock screen. Password entered, you see the new Start menu, formed by Windows Phone-style live tiles in a horizontally scrolling view. Tap a tile to launch an app, which presuming it is Metro-style will open full-screen. Application menus are accessed by a quick swipe top or bottom, letting you access, for example, open tabs in Internet Explorer.

Doctors can't wait to meet Mr. Watson

Are u a doctor?Then you should be dieing to meet with Mr. Watson..lol. He's no man anyway,just a new IBM computer named Watson.

It's going to help medical professionals diagnose and sort out treatment options for complicated health issues.

Watson appeared on the game show “Jeopardy” in February, defeating two human champs in a three-day match.

Now, IBM is looking to apply Watson in its first commercial endeavor. IBM announced on Monday it is partnering with WellPoint, a large health insurance plan provider with around 34 million subscribers.

IBM has been working on Watson for more than six years. In less than three seconds, Watson can sift through 200 million pages of data and provide a response.

Even more importantly, its computing system strives to understand language as humans naturally speak it – taking into account subtleties, irony and words with multiple meanings – making it easier to process, compute, and spit out information that is timely and usable.

Watson studies questions while considering a number of factors, from straightforward keyword matching to more complex aspects like homonyms and paraphrasing.

WellPoint will begin distributing the Watson technology in small clinical pilot tests in early 2012.

Dr. Sam Nussbaum, WellPoint's chief medical officer, said in a statement to CNN Money, “Imagine having the ability to take in all the information around a patient's medical care -- symptoms, findings, patient interviews and diagnostic studies. Then, imagine using Watson analytic capabilities to consider all of the prior cases, the state-of-the-art clinical knowledge in the medical literature and clinical best practices to help a physician advance a diagnosis and guide a course of treatment.”

Av a gr8 day!

Microsoft spruces up HTML capabilities in Visual Studio

Microsoft says it will make it easier to deal with HTML in the planned next release of its Visual Studio IDE, dubbed vNext, but it won't say when vNext will come out.
The HTML Editor capability in vNext will help developers quickly accomplish common tasks, said Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the company's developer division, in a blog post on Visual Studio's ASP.Net Web development platform. He said Visual Studio will be able to activate the "smart tasks" features of ASP.Net server controls, as well as connect server control event handlers without needing to switch to the vNext editor's design view.
Also on the horizon are improvements to ASP.Net Web forms and MVC (model-view-controller) capabilities, such as support for strongly typed data templates. "We've added the ability to declare what type of data a control is going to be bound to, by way of a new ModelType property on data controls," Guthrie said. "Setting this property will cause two new typed variables to be generated in the scope of the data-bound template expressions: Item and BindItem." Developers can use the variables in data-binding expressions and get IntelliSense and compile-time checking. Strongly typed data control support makes it easier to work with data-bound expressions, Guthrie said.
Similarly, Web forms will feature model-binding capabilities intended to simplify working with code-focused data access logic while retaining benefits of a two-way data-binding framework, Guthrie said. He claimed it will simplify work with code-focused data-access paradigms.

Yahoo boss fired over the phone

Yahoo boss Carol Bartz is now fired by the US internet company

Carol Bartz was brought on board to change the fortunes of the search and internet company

Yahoo's chief executive Carol Bartz has been fired by the internet company after two-and-a-half years in the top job.

The company said in a statement that Ms Bartz was removed by the board of directors, effective immediately.

Tim Morse, Yahoo's chief financial officer, will take over from Ms Bartz.

Yahoo has been struggling to increase its market share as it faces increased competition from rivals such as Google and Facebook.

Yahoo shares jumped more than 6% in after-hours trading after news of the firing broke, indicating they would trade higher when Wall Street opened for business on Wednesday. Yahoo's stock price was up at $13.72, an increase of 81 cents.

Mr Morse will serve as interim chief executive and the board of directors will look for a new CEO, the company said.

Please click here for further story.

Oracle adds new installer and failover to Windows MySQL

Good news guyz!!!
I'm pleased to inform you that MySQL Enterprise Edition has been updated with new features to make it more alluring to Windows shops
Oracle has updated the commercial edition of its MySQL database for Windows, adding a graphical installer and the ability to do failover clustering, the company announced Tuesday.
Both of these features should help make MySQL Enterprise Edition a more viable database choice for Windows shops, potentially expanding its user base beyond enterprise Linux users, noted Oracle marketing executive Bertrand Matthelié, in a blog post announcing the features.
Oracle designed the new MySQL Installer for Windows to simplify the process of installing MySQL and its associated tools. The new user interface guides the user through the wizard-based installation process. It can install not only MySQL on a Windows computer but other associated programs as well, such as MySQL Workbench and MySQL Query Analyzer. The software also can automatically update all the MySQL products with bug fixes and upgrades as needed.
Failover clustering has also been added. This feature can be handy for those organization that require constant uptime, or HA (high availability), of their databases.
When run on Windows Server 2008 R2, MySQL Enterprise Edition can detect when a copy of MySQL stops operating, either because of hardware failure or due to some failure in the database software itself. The administrative console alerts the administrator to restart the database or server, while moving the workload over to another, duplicate, database.
Although MySQL has been capable of offering HA for awhile -- through a special edition called MySQL Cluster -- this version is easier to set up, requiring as few as two servers to operate.
Oracle will hold a Web tutorial session on Sept. 15 to further explain how to use these new features.

Have a great day

Six major Windows 8 features for small business

With Microsoft's big BUILD conference right around the corner on Sept. 12, people are buzzing about the Windows 8 news that's sure to come, and for the last couple of weeks, Microsoft has been parceling out information. So far, the features we've seen look colorful, fast, flashy, and flexible -- but how much of a difference will they make for small-business users?

Let's take a look at the Windows 8 features that have already been revealed and see what kind of an impact they could make -- for better or for worse.

1. That Metro experience
The first thing you're likely to notice in a Windows 8 demo is the new Metro style and the fluid movement on the screen. Designed to be similar to the beautiful Windows Phone 7 interface, Windows 8 uses live tiles to surface need-to-know information right from the start. Live tiles are small, tap-able color blocks that display specific information -- such as how many email messages are waiting for you or what your next appointment in town is about.

To launch a program, you can tap the tile that represents it, or flick from the right edit of the screen to display the controls, then tap a button to launch the program you want to use. Once you're finished with that task, flick it away -- or move it up to the corner of the screen out of the way -- and tap a different program tile to open it. This means you can open and close and rearrange pieces of information on your desktop in much the same way you would on your physical desk.

A Windows 7 feature called Snap enables a side-by-side workspace experience. For example, you can add new customers to your contact list while watching a demo of a new sales training video, all using the same simple gestures as on your touchscreen smartphone.

2. It's keyboard- and mouse-friendly, too
If you're a holdout with a mobile phone without touch capability or using a notebook that doesn't support touch, you may worry that Windows 8 won't work for you. The design of Windows 8 is driven by an OS that's supposed to run seamlessly on touchscreens and smart devices -- with a fluid design for ultraportables, easy adaptability to mobile technologies, and an always-on, always-connected approach.

However, your keyboard and mouse should still work the way they always have. Familiar keys like PageDown and PageUp will work; the Windows key still brings up the Start menu; and you'll be able to navigate through programs and apps using the same point-and-click method as in Windows 7.

The flexibility of Windows 8 should enable you to switch easily back and forth between the Metro and the desktop views, so the way you interact with your PC will depend on what you want to do and what feels most natural. You might, for example, use Metro while you browse the Web, watch media, preview a presentation, or check email -- but switch to Desktop view when you want more precise control of files, folders, or data.

3. Faster boot, faster sleep
Another potential perk in Windows 8 is that it's meant to enable your computer to launch into life almost as soon as you push the power button. Microsoft vice president Mike Angiulo said in a demonstration in June that startup times of 6 or 7 seconds should be possible.

Additionally, when you wake your sleeping computer, it should return from sleep instantly -- which would be a relief after the horrors of Windows Vista and the improved but still lagging wake-up rate of Windows 7. When you're on a client visit, for example, your computer can be a more natural part of the process. You should have fewer delays when you want to show off a new design, share a proposal, or demonstrate a Web app once you open your notebook.

4. Smooth data and app sharing -- in the cloud and out
While Windows 8 developments are unfolding, Microsoft has been taking big steps in the online realm by launching Office 365, a new cloud computing service for small and large businesses. It's also promoting Office Web Apps, SkyDrive, and Azure as ways to collaborate in the cloud and reduce your IT overhead and hardware investments.

Working in the cloud means you and your team can work together virtually using the online version of tools that keep teams running smoothly in the face-to-face world: real-time communication, team meetings, task assignments, project management, file libraries, and workflow and reporting options.

We don't yet know any specifics about Windows 8 features that engage the cloud directly, but the OS will support app-to-app sharing (think of how your Twitter posts show up in your other social media accounts), so the convergence is likely on the way.

Windows 8 will also natively support USB 3.0, which should allow you to access and transfer files up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0. And that hopefully means a little less time standing in front of the room waiting for your presentation to load.

5. A Windows Explorer makeover
Over the last week or so, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, has written on the Building Windows 8 blog about some of the changes we can expect to see in Windows Explorer. In Windows 8, you should be able to copy, move, rename, and delete files -- especially large groups of large files -- faster and with better control. You should see the status of multiple file operations and even pause the ones that are slowing things down.

Another hoped step toward improved efficiency comes when Windows 8 finds a naming conflict while you're moving or copying files. If you try to drag a group of files to a folder that already contains files with those same names, Windows 8 will prompt you -- and show a smart Choose Files dialog -- to click the files you want to keep.

The big improvement appears to be that you will see a number of the conflicts in a single dialog box, along with the information needed to make the choice. And if you're still confused about which logo file you want to use, you can click the thumbnail to open the file and find out for sure.

What's not clear is what will happen when you have, say, 20 file conflicts in the same operation -- will the dialog box have tabs? Will you still have to click through multiple choices (similar to Windows 7)? That remains to be seen.

The menu and toolbar in Windows Explorer will be replaced with a ribbon layout, similar in style to the one in Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps. Depending on whether you love or hate the ribbon toolbar, you may like (or not) having the ability to touch your way through the Home, Share, and View tabs. Similar to the ribbon in Office 2010, the Windows Explorer ribbon includes contextual tabs to help you find the tools you need based on the tasks you're performing. And in case you just can't deal with the ribbon or prefer to stick with the keyboard, developers are adding something in the neighborhood of 200 new keyboard shortcuts.

6. Is there an app for that?
The Windows 8 App Store has lots of folks speculating. Is it real? What types of apps will it include? Windows 8 is designed for ultraportable and always-on computing, and to be truly competitive in a mobile and ever-evolving market, a Windows 8 App Store is a must.

Windows 8 will be built on HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. Microsoft VP Mike Angiulo says developers will be able to develop apps for Windows 8 right out of the box. What's more, Windows 8's sensor platform and support for roaming and location-based apps are likely to find creative development and a storefront on your computer in the form of the Windows 8 App Store.

Even though we're still working with early information -- and much more will be revealed at BUILD -- the Windows 8 features we've seen so far have appeal for small businesses. What's not to like about faster processing, a sleek touch-driven interface, true multitasking, seamless and quick file management, and easy app sharing? If these features deliver as promised, they will make common computing tasks more fluid and natural, freeing you up to focus on the work instead of the technology.

Microsoft: Stolen SSL certs can't be used to install malware via Windows Update

Microsoft said Sunday that a digital certificate stolen from a Dutch company could not be used to force-feed customers malware through its Windows Update service.
The company's assertion came after a massive theft of more than 500 SSL (secure socket layer) certificates, including several that could be used to impersonate Microsoft's update services, was revealed by Dutch authorities and several other affected developers.
"Attackers are not able to leverage a fraudulent Windows Update certificate to install malware via the Windows Update servers," said Jonathan Ness, an engineer with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in a Sunday blog post. "The Windows Update client will only install binary payloads signed by the actual Microsoft root certificate, which is issued and secured by Microsoft."
Seven of the 531 certificates now known to have been fraudulently obtained by hackers in July were for the domains update.microsoft.com and windowsupdate.com, while another six were for *.microsoft.com.
According to Microsoft, the certificates issued for windowsupdate.com couldn't be used by attackers because the company no longer uses that domain. (Windows Update is now at windowsupdate.microsoft.com..) However, those for update.microsoft.com -- the domain for Microsoft Update -- and the wildcard *.microsoft.com could be.
As Ness said, updates delivered via Microsoft's services are signed with a separate certificate that's closely held by the company.
Without that code-signing certificate, attempts to deliver malware disguised as an update to a Windows PC would fail.
Other vendors, including Apple, also sign software updates with a separate certificate.
The certificates for the various Microsoft domains were issued by DigiNotar, a Dutch company that last week admitted its network had been hacked in mid-July.
The company initially believed it had revoked all the fraudulent certificates, but later realized it had overlooked one that could be used to impersonate any Google service, including Gmail. DigiNotar went public only after users reported their findings to Google.
Criminals or governments could use the stolen certificates to conduct "man-in-the-middle" attacks, tricking users into thinking they were at a legitimate site when in fact their communications were being secretly intercepted.
Microsoft has added its voice to the chorus from rival browser makers, notably Google and Mozilla, about the seriousness of the situation. Like its competitors, Microsoft will also permanently block all DigiNotar certificates.
"We are in the process of moving all DigiNotar owned or managed [certificate authorities] to the Untrusted Root Store, which will deny access to any website using DigiNotar certificates," said Dave Forstrom, a director in the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group, in an emailed statement Sunday.
Forstrom did not set a date by when Microsoft would block all DigiNotar certificates, including those used by the Dutch government, which has been a major customer of the company.
Google updated Chrome on Saturday to block all DigiNotar certificates, while Mozilla plans to do the same on Tuesday for Firefox.
However, Microsoft's partial ban of DigiNotar certificates -- which it instituted last week -- and the complete sanction now in the works only protects users running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Customers still on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 must wait for an update specific to those operating systems; Ness said only that that update would "be available soon."
Until that Windows XP update is available, users can protect themselves by manually deleting the DigiNotar root from the list of approved certificate-issuing authorities. Microsoft has posted lengthy instructions for doing that on its "Security Research & Defense" blog.

Anticipating Windows 8 desktop

Hi guyz,
I'm so sure many of us have been eager to use the Windows 8 which is on the way. Let's see what new on the OS.

The Microsoft executive who heads the company's Windows division said Wednesday that the next edition of the operating system will let users treat the traditional desktop as "just another app" that loads only on command.

In a lengthy blog post, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, provided more detail on Windows 8's user interface (UI).

In June, when it unveiled parts of the Windows 8 UI, Microsoft said the new OS would feature a "touch-first" interface to help it compete in the fast-growing tablet market. Underneath that, however, would be a traditional Windows-style desktop. In demonstrations, Microsoft showed the touch-style start screen for Windows 8, and how users could switch to a more familiar icon-based design.

Wednesday, Sinofsky reiterated the dual nature of Windows 8, calling the design work a "balancing act."

"Having both of [the] user interfaces [work] together harmoniously is an important part of Windows 8," said Sinofsky.

The "Metro"-style UI -- the one inspired by Windows Phone 7's tile-based design -- will be the first to show up when a user boots a device. At that point, users reach a crossroads.

"If you want to stay permanently immersed in that Metro world, you will never see the desktop -- we won't even load it (literally the code will not be loaded) unless you explicitly choose to go there," said Sinofsky. "If you don't want to do ... 'PC' things, then you don't have to and you're not paying for them in memory, battery life or hardware requirements."

Users working on conventional PCs, where keyboard and mouse are the primary input devices, will run an "app" to load the desktop, according to Sinofsky.

"Essentially, you can think of the Windows desktop as just another app," he said.

The majority of the blog's 225 comments as of early Thursday gave Windows 8's split personality a thumbs up, although many advised Microsoft to create design continuity between the two to make switching less jarring.

To reach a traditional desktop in Windows 8, users will launch an 'app' from the tile-based interface inspired by Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft unveils file-move changes in Windows 8

Aims to fix comical download/copy 'time to go' estimates

Microsoft has been throwing out crumbs on forthcoming features for Windows 8, but dodged serving up the main course.
Windows 8 will clean up the system for downloading files to your PC and changing file names, Microsoft has said on its newly launched Building Windows 8 blog.

The successor to Windows 7 will combine file download dialogue boxes into a single box, you'll be able to stop and pause downloads, and rather than trying to estimate how long a download has left to run, the new operating system will instead feature a graph that shows the data transfer speed, transfer rate trend, and how much data is left to transfer.

Discussing the file changes in a video on the Windows 8 blog here – a video that doesn't work in Firefox – Microsoft acknowledged Windows' downloads estimates are something of a joke.
When it comes to re-naming files, Windows users get a dialogue box with thumbnails of files where there is a naming clash – and a check box next to each thumbnail which you can tick to show which files you want to keep.
In keeping with recently established Windows engineering team tradition, Microsoft has justified the changes by quoting telemetry data gathered on Windows PC users' habits.
According to that data, copying, moving, renaming, and deleting files are "far and away the most heavily used features within Windows Explorer" and account for half of all commands.
Microsoft had justified many of the changes in its Internet Explorer 9 web browser based on telemetry data, too; the IE team being part of the Windows group.
The jury is still out on whether such telemetry-sifting is doing Microsoft any good. While IE9's market share is growing, it has failed to arrest IE's overall market slide, now approaching 42 per cent or exceeding 35 per cent, depending on whose numbers you follow.
That means IE is precisely at the point it was in 1998 when it finally nudged past Marc Andreessen's Netscape to become the most widely used browser for the fist time. From then on IE did nothing but march north, consolidating Microsoft's postition as the number-one browser maker – a title it still, just about, holds.
The telemetry data-based changes to Windows 8 that Microsoft has flagged have generated plenty of discussion on the Windows 8 blog, but Microsoft has refrained from talking about the big architectural stuff it has promised and which will have huge implications for how Windows will look and where it will work.
Microsoft is yet to explain how Windows 8 will achieve compatibility with older apps built for x86 not running on ARM; Windows 8 will be the first version of Windows running on ARM to hit tablets. It has also dodged talking about how apps will be built for the tiled interface and how apps will be built for downloaded from Microsoft's Windows Marketplace.
For that, you'll still have to wait for Microsoft's Build conference next month

Potential pitfalls in Apple CEO transition, say experts

Steve Jobs, Apple's new Chairman of the Board.

Apple's new CEO faces a challenge putting his own imprint on the company as long as Steve Jobs sticks around, a management expert said today.

Jobs, who resigned from the CEO spot yesterday, was immediately given the title Chairman of the company's board.

On Thursday, Apple named Tim Cook, formerly the chief operating officer, as the new CEO.

"It's going to be extremely difficult for the new CEO to go his own way and succeed in a context like this," said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School and the director of its Center for Human Resources. "It's going to be difficult [for Cook] to do anything different with Jobs as chairman."

It's unclear what Jobs' role will be as chairman, but reports yesterday and today, including from long-time Apple observer Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, hinted that Jobs will continue to be involved in product development.

Most transitions of this kind -- when a CEO moves to the chairman role and a new CEO is appointed -- are fraught with trouble, but Apple is a special case, Cappelli said, because of Jobs' iconic stature in the industry and his perceived value as the firm's product development guiding hand.

"Every former CEO who becomes chairman says he will intervene only when it's something important, but then decides all kinds of things are important," Cappelli said.

If Jobs regularly overrules Cook, that puts the new CEO in a tough position, Cappelli continued. "Replacing someone like Jobs is a regression to the mean," he said. "There's no way to go but down."

Most, however, see Jobs' decision to remain with Apple, if only as its chairman, as a win for the company.

Today, for example, investors took Jobs' retirement in stride, with the news pushing Apple's stock down less than 1% by late afternoon during a day when the market overall was off 1.3%.

That was a minor blip compared to the nearly 11% drop Apple's stock experienced in October 2008 after a false report that Jobs had a suffered a heart attack made the rounds on the Internet.

And analysts yesterday were nearly unanimous that Apple is in great shape for the next two or three years -- or even longer -- simply because of the product road map that Jobs laid out before Wednesday.

Cappelli tacitly acknowledged the value of Jobs' remaining active with Apple. "The trick for them going forward is to persuade customers that they have enough of the Jobs' fairy dust even if he's not physically in the role of CEO," said Cappelli.

Michael Robinson, a senior vice president at Levick Strategic Communications, a Washington, D.C. consulting firm, pointed to other pitfalls in the transition to a new CEO.

Windows XP turns 10. But i believe the real XP was 2004's Service Pack 2

Guyz,I'm still of the opinion that Windows XP SP2 released 3yrs after announcement of Windows XP is the actual Windows XP. The question is: which is the XP users actually love? Of course, it's the SP2. Anyway,that's in my own opinion.But it will do us good to go down the memory lane:
Windows XP quietly turned 10 years old Wednesday, a milestone for the still-popular operating system that powers nearly half the world's PCs.

Microsoft did not celebrate the anniversary, eschewing any congratulatory blog post or press release.

On Aug. 24, 2001, Microsoft shifted Windows XP's status to RTM, for "release to manufacturing," a term it uses to mark the end of development and the move to duplication and release to computer makers. XP reached retail in October 2001.

One analyst questioned whether it was really the right anniversary to celebrate.

"The Windows XP that people loved wasn't [the original 2001] XP, it was XP SP2," said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft, a research firm that covers only Microsoft.

Windows XP SP2, or "Service Pack 2," shipped three years later, in August 2004.

That edition, which Microsoft itself acknowledged was out of the ordinary for one of its service packs, added new functionality and dramatically boosted XP's security. Among the security-oriented changes were a revamped firewall that was switched on by default, a new Security Center that monitored bundled and third-party firewall and anti-virus defenses, and the introduction of DEP, or "data execution prevention," Microsoft's first anti-exploit technology.

"Windows XP is old," said Cherry. "Ten years in this business is a lifetime."

That's exactly what Microsoft has been saying of late.

Last month, Microsoft told customers it was "time to move on" from XP, noting that it had less than three years left in its support lifespan. Even earlier this year, executives on the Internet Explorer (IE) team called XP the "lowest common denominator" as they explained why the OS wouldn't run the new IE9, or any future browsers.

Cherry concurred, more or less.

"I've been telling [clients] to move to Windows 7," he said, adding that the newer operating system, which Microsoft launched in October 2009, was suitably stable to replace the long-running XP.

Windows XP turned 10 on Wednesday, making it official: It's an old OS.

Windows 7 is the safe bet, said Cherry, even though Windows 8 -- which analysts believe will debut between April and October 2013 -- is looming.

If Windows 8 is solid, then moving to it from Windows 7 -- rather than from the aged XP -- will be a relative breeze, since Microsoft has assured customers that any PC able to run 7 will also handle 8.

And if Windows 8 stumbles, then Windows 7 becomes the safety net that XP served for Windows Vista, the 2007 edition that most users rejected.

Cherry has expressed concern about Windows 8 before, and repeated those worries today.

"It looks like they're changing a lot in Windows 8," he said, pointing to the hints that Microsoft gave earlier this summer as well as the tidbits it's been disclosing on the "Building Windows 8" for the last week.

To Cherry, a large number of changes in Windows 8 increases the chance that something may go wrong, either during development -- in which case, the upgrade could be delayed -- or after it ships, repeating the debacle of Vista when many customers complained about device driver compatibility.

According to metrics firm Net Applications, Windows 7 has been accumulating usage share at the expense of XP and Vista. At the end of July, Windows 7 accounted for 29.7% of all operating systems, while XP had a 49.8% share, the first time it had dropped under the 50% bar.

Microsoft plans to support Windows XP -- specifically SP3 -- until April 2014.

Can NewSQL could combine the best of SQL and NoSQL?

A database pioneer argues the best of SQL and NoSQL could be combined in database systems
Users who eschew traditional relational databases in favor of the newly emerging NoSQL databases might be "throwing the baby out with the bath water," warned a database pioneer before a roomful of NoSQL advocates.
Instead, SQL (Structured Query Language) can be adopted to newer systems with a few technical adjustments, giving it the full flexibility of NoSQL systems, argued Michael Stonebraker, CTO of distributed database software company VoltDB.
Stonebraker, making his argument at the NoSQL Now conference being held this week in San Jose, California, called this approach NewSQL.
While Stonebraker's company itself offers NewSQL-based database software, his advocacy for this new architecture does carry more weight than the typical vendor pitch. Stonebraker was the chief architect for both the Ingres and Postgres databases, and has contributed to many others. He also co-founded column-oriented database company Vertica, which Hewlett-Packard purchased in February.
SQL-based relational database systems are indeed as moribund as NoSQL advocates charge, he argued. But this is the fault of the database vendors themselves, not SQL. Calling traditional relational systems "elephants," he noted "Elephants are not slow because they support SQL."
Most of the commercial relational database software packages have been on the market for 30 years or more, Stonebraker charged. They weren't designed for today's automated, data-heavy transactional environments. They've acquired decades worth of questionable new features, often referred to as bloat.
"Oracle doesn't scale," he said. "If you don't need performance it doesn't matter, but if you do need performance [traditional SQL-based systems] don't deliver."
The sluggishness of database systems usually can be attributed to a number of factors, Stonebraker said. Such systems maintain a buffer pool, maintain logs for recovery purposes, as well as manage latching and locking data fields so they aren't overwritten by another operation. In one test held by VoltDB, these behaviors consumed 96 percent of the system's resources.
Many see the emerging popularity of NoSQL databases, such as MongoDB and Cassandra, as an answer to the limitations of traditional database systems.
In another session held at the NoSQL Now conference, consultant Dan McCreary explained some of the shortcomings of regular relational databases that spurred developers to create NoSQL databases.
Relational databases aren't very flexible, he said. The basic architecture was designed during the era of punch cards, and reflects a rigid approach to data modeling. If an organization needs to add another column of data, they must alter the schema, which can be tricky. The modeling process to create relational tables, called entity relationship modeling, also does not always accurately reflect how data exists in the real world.
"There are a lot of things that don't fit into tables well," he said. "It is too restrictive."
Another problem with SQL databases is that they do not scale very well, beyond a single server, McCreary charged. If the data grows beyond the capabilities of a single server, it must be sharded, or split, across multiple servers, which is also a complicated process. Also, executing some operations across multiple servers, such as outer joins, in which data from multiple tables is fused, can be problematic.

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