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created by the lack of effective metrics for productivity other than hours.

See this link for why metrics in IT (specifically) are not usually done well.

The author lays out why metrics are (usually) done poorly and don't (usually) measure what is trying to be done.

I don't agree with Thurrot's analysis that "the desktop is just an app." Oh really? The desktop is still there, with Explorer, the taskbar, the system tray, and every other feature the desktop has ever had, and Thurrot wants us to believe this is somehow just some little "app" that's running inside of Metro? Hardly. The desktop is still the desktop. It is Windows.

What Windows 8 has done is given us this new launcher application, called Metro, which accepts plug-ins, called apps, and which will now launch automatically when you login to the system and again every time you push the Start button. Metro feels like the ultimate terminate-and-stay-resident program from the 80s, where every time you push the hotkey it takes over your entire screen.

Also, try to spend a few minutes learning shortcuts etc. before dissing the experience. It's not a SP for Windows 7, it's a new OS.

No, it isn't. It really isn't. Keyboard shortcuts do not make an "OS." The fact that the device drivers for every weird hardware device on my laptops carried over from Windows 7 to Windows 8 without a hitch demonstrates that the two are essentially the same OS.

What Microsoft has done with Windows 8 is it has taken a UI that works and put a big curtain in front of it (Metro) so that every time you want to use the OS the way you're accustomed to doing, you have to push the curtain aside. And as soon as you push the wrong button (the Windows key) or you want to launch a new application, the curtain drops down again.

They envision that with Windows 8, most new monitors will be touch enabled because of the demand so that for some functions(like clicking on links), people can use touch.

Just because I can use touch doesn't mean I will want to. I am not going to be reaching across my desk to click on links when there's a mouse sitting in my right hand. I don't need a new repeat strain injury and I don't want to smear my monitor with fingerprints. Poking around in midair with your fingers looks cool in movies, but in practice what we do now is more efficient, which makes it preferable. It's not logical to get rid of the more efficient way of doing things for the sake of something that looks cool.

You may disagree with the vision, but you can't disagree that there is a method behind the madness.

I don't disagree that there's a method. But that doesn't mean it's not madness. When your friend guns his engine and says, "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing -- we can make it across the canyon," it's time to get out of the car.

"By the time you get close to matching iOS, Apple will have moved on to the next level of fashionable semi-functionality" link

And I stopped reading this MS puff-piece right there ..

iPad with external monitor and mouse

Infoworld had an article about the fallacies of IT metrics which I copied and have saved. If you want to read why measuring code in lines per day/month is the wrong metric (even if you already know why it's wrong), this article gives more reasons.

The link to the article is this one.

It should be mandatory reading for anyone who utters the term 'metrics' in a meeting.

http://www.infoworld.com/print/185555

Why do we have infoworld articles so often? The site only seems to link to itself (except for ads).

Page 3 reviews Comodo Dragon. What it doesn't mention is that if an HTTPS site uses a certificate that's domain validated, Dragon raises a warning "that the organization operating it may not have undergone trusted third-party validation that it is a legitimate business." Might this just be a way to threaten small-time webmasters, especially those who only started offering HTTPS to join EFF's HTTPS Everywhere initiative or to offer user accounts without running the risk of getting Firesheeped, into buying pricier EV certificates?

6 more goofy names that mean nothing (internet explorer? ok, Netscape Navigator? ok, SRWare Iron, Comodo Dragon, Iceweasel? wtf)

ps here is the print version, so you dont have to wade through 6 ad infested pages

http://www.infoworld.com/print/184923

http://www.infoworld.com/print/184491/

I think it has something to do with the advertisers on InfoWorld.

Really?

http://www.slashgear.com/windows-8-on-arm-wont-run-x86-apps-microsoft-admits-16180415/
http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/will-windows-8-run-x86-apps-arm-tablets-or-not-173498

There's tons more quoting Microsoft officials on this- ZDNet's the only one that says what you're saying. Reality is, in order to accomplish what you're talking about there, you're going to need a bit more oomph as emulation of the X86 on ARM's not exactly what one would call "stellar" and you're going to need that to make what you're talking to work. It might be doable if you were talking 2+ GHz A15's- but we don't have those yet and at that level, you're actually better off moving on to something else.

Palmisano was not well liked within IBM. He was after all the guy who told IBM's US employees they could take a job in the third-world at third-world wages or stay in the US and get sacked. For this Palmisano will be forever despised.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/ibms-palmisano-techs-slumdog-millionaire-257

Sure, the business press has wet dreams about Palmisano and Gerstner who picked him as his successor:

http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/03/forbes-india-person-of-the-year-sam-palisan-ibm.html

But the truth was really quite ugly. You won't read this in Forbes, but you will read it in - of all places - the reader feedback at Amazon:
It is strangely ironic that, after doing his best to suppress all negative communication within IBM, it should be the reader feedback on amazon.com that alerts Gerstner to what the world at large really thinks of him.

In the last five years, Gerstner has reaped a profit of [$$$] million in the sale of awarded stock options. These stock options were awarded while he held the joint positions of IBM CEO and chairman. During that period, IBM spent [$$$] billion buying back its own stock to drive the price up so that executives could cash out at handsome profits. This is money that could have been spent on developing new products, attracting new talent and honoring promises made to employees and retirees.

Where did all that money come from?

Not from profit growth, which remained flat at about 2 percent per year when you strip out the retirees' pension fund surplus "vapor profits."

It came from selling off large chunks of the company and its assets, laying off tens of thousands of employees and slashing pension and health care benefits for employees and retirees. In 2002 alone, IBM has quietly cut 15,000 jobs. Health benefits, which were promised "free for life," now cost retirees a substantial amount of their pensions. Only one minuscule cost-of-living increase has been awarded pension recipients in the past 11 years.

The greed doesn't stop there. Now, Lou had not only been retained as chairman of the board, he has been awarded a 10-year consulting contract, with fully paid expenses at his previous salary of $2 million a year. These expenses have been conservatively estimated to be $100,000 annually.

Save IBM? More like turning it into just another money grubbing corporation while lining his pockets. I would love to see a rebuttal book. God help us all if Lou's management methods become benchmarks for future corporate leaders.

http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnaround/product-reviews/0060523794/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/185-5256096-7601530?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

http://www.infoworld.com/print/181200 for one print page instead of three web pages.

I actually opted to RTFA and I'm not sure what the "5 technologies" are. I even looked at the printer friendly version so I wouldn't have to wade through tons of "next page" and didn't easily find the 5 technologies.

InfoWorld article quality is really declining when they put out stuff like this.

This means with 4g, US may get phone compatibility from different carriers finally. It might take them a while, though, as LTE only phones wouldn't exist for another 5-6 years.

Maybe, but I wouldn't count on it, http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/report-spectrum-fragmentation-will-result-in-costlier-lte-smartphones-181968

There's going to be so much fragmentation on LTE that likely most devices will only support a couple of the frequencies required. Plus the US cell carriers are going to do everything they can to make sure the devices are software locked to their specific service. Plus unless the major carriers agree to use the same frequencies for their LTE services, the phones themselves might not physically be capable of operating on other networks than their home network.

Actually, entry Level EC2 is free for 1 year, and has been since Nov. 2010.

You don't need to pay for accessing it, but you still need to pay for the processing power, storage and RAM in your EC2

See here:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/amazon-web-services-offers-ec2-access-no-charge-531

-- Terry

Lets all go post our feelings here: http://www.infoworld.com/t/consumerization-it/how-thwart-the-high-priests-it-180296

I just love his title "smart user"

In case you missed it, here is the link to the story.

If you want the article itself, there ya go.

Having read that article, and the ones the author links to, it is quite clear why IT, and business in general, is in such shambles. People want to continually measure things, but they don't know what they want to measure.

I hadn't realized it, but I have been saying the same thing the author of the article said for some time: what is your goal? I use this quote from Seneca:

If a man does not know to what port he is sailing, no wind is favorable

This simple phrase should apply to every project, every metric, every everything. What is your ultimate goal? What do you want to accomplish? Only then can you answer the question: how do I get to that point.

I just found this timely article over at InfoWorld: No overtime for IT? Occupy the data center!

It's about a bill currently being debated in the US Congress which would remove overtime pay for IT workers. It's co-sponsored by Senator Kay Hagan (Dem, NC) whose electorate apparently has a high concentration of companies with large numbers of IT workers.

Relevant quote from the article:

Because most IT workers are not members of a union (and don't seem to want unionize), it isn't clear who's fighting the bill.

Well doesn't that suck?

I found the print view

I scored 6 out of 20. I don't care, it's a test of random facts, not a test of skill.

According to someone who gave me and my housemate a ride home (and some confused looks) after clubbing on Saturday night, we're geeks since we were trying to work out something physicsy from first principles (I don't remember the details) while dressed, essentially, as humanoid robots from the future.

How do we rate your Geek IQ if you didn't find the Print Page?

http://www.infoworld.com/print/178807

1 Page and not an ad in sight!

Print pages are a beautiful thing.

"Researchers have demonstrated a vulnerability in the computer systems used to control facilities at federal prisons that could allow an outsider to remotely take them over"

By any chance are these SCADA units connected to the Internet, if so then the morons who implimented such a system should be locked up in prison, except they most probably would escape by utilizing some Windows virus. It is taken as given that these systems are running on Microsoft Windows? Give the history of these SCADA systems, who in their right mind, in this day and age would ever connect such systems to the Internet.

Slammer worm crashed Ohio nuke plant net Aug 2003

Did MS Blaster crash the power grid? Aug 2003

Just curious, can you name an OS that doesn't do it in one form or another?

I can name two that had a font-rendering kernel exploit in 2009. You'd have thought their manufacturer would check his other products for the same or similar problems...

And yes, I know quite a few OS who don't do complex operations like that in kernel space, but push it into user land and reserve the kernel space part to simple operations that are more likely to be done with less bugs.

Yes, you need to do stuff with data, and sometimes that data comes from the outside. But name me one reason why font rendering - instead of the pixel result that the graphics card needs to know - has to happen in kernel space.

Welcome to the new m$ business model. They most definitely do want you to be able to open it, but for a fee extorted by anyone writing the tool which lets you do so. Nowadays extortion beats innovation and as their relevance seeps away day by day it's their only desperate way forward.

A quick (and ironic?) Google search would have revealed that these terms were reached and disclosed this past March.

here

Oh yeah? Is that why RIM's morning general session at its conference had a heavy emphasis on games?

That's exactly why. They are already entrenched in the corporate market so they want to focus on the area they are bleeding like crazy, the consumer market. I thought that was obvious?

BB is still entrenched in Corporate America. There's massive inertia there.

Oh yeah? Is that why RIM's morning general session at its conference had a heavy emphasis on games? From what I can tell, the most recent BlackBerry hardware has been targeted squarely at the teenage/college student market. Apparently BlackBerry Instant Messaging is more popular than SMS in some parts of the UK and Europe. Meanwhile, white collar workers have increasingly been demanding to use their own devices in the workplace; The Economist even did a special report on the trend a week or so ago. You think the general public is buying up BlackBerrys? Nope. It's iPhones they want to use in the office, and once it's the C-level execs asking for it, the IT department won't have much choice but to allow it. Get rid of the BES lock-in and it's game over for RIM.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/wozniak-voice-recognition-computings-next-frontier-389

I remembered hearing about voice control on the next iPhone months ago. I guess he had some inside info.

It's 2011, and we're probably a decade too late for bringing heavyweight Java to the client. The future might be in languages like Dart or, for quoting the same Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister, Opa.

First FA

Second FA

(Third FA is a Slashdot link, so no need to provide more).

First FA

Second FA

(Third FA is a Slashdot link, so no need to provide more).

Here's the printer friendly version of said article: http://www.infoworld.com/print/173188

Ehhh? The summary seems a little cockeyed. Does anyone on /. really believe this is the first time Intel is using "the R-word'? Intel has been positioning its chips against RISC for ages. Yes, in the past it was using Itanium as its "high end" chip, because it was more directly competitive with IBM's and Sun's offerings (and it probably had bigger margins). But here's an article from 2004 which claims "Intel markets the [Itanium] chip as a replacement for RISC processors from companies like Sun and IBM" -- pretty much exactly what the summary is claiming is "a first" here.

If anything, Intel has chosen not to throw around a lot of rhetoric about x86/x64 as a replacement for RISC servers out of deference to its partners. Back in 2007, you will recall, Sun started marketing x86 servers in addition to its RISC product line. How would it look if Intel went around claiming x86 was a replacement for Sparc servers? Intel left it to Sun's marketing to clarify where it saw its x86-based products in comparison to Sparc. Similarly, around the same time HP was putting out x86 and Itanium servers -- Intel wasn't going to muddy the waters there, certainly.

On the other hand, Red Hat and Dell would certainly talk about Linux servers (read: x86) as replacements for proprietary Unix servers (read: RISC). So it's certainly not like this is the first time anyone floated the idea, and it's certainly not like Intel has backed off from competing with RISC at any point in the past, no matter which component gets positioned against RISC chips.

Ehhh? The summary seems a little cockeyed. Does anyone on /. really believe this is the first time Intel is using "the R-word'? Intel has been positioning its chips against RISC for ages. Yes, in the past it was using Itanium as its "high end" chip, because it was more directly competitive with IBM's and Sun's offerings (and it probably had bigger margins). But here's an article from 2004 which claims "Intel markets the [Itanium] chip as a replacement for RISC processors from companies like Sun and IBM" -- pretty much exactly what the summary is claiming is "a first" here.

If anything, Intel has chosen not to throw around a lot of rhetoric about x86/x64 as a replacement for RISC servers out of deference to its partners. Back in 2007, you will recall, Sun started marketing x86 servers in addition to its RISC product line. How would it look if Intel went around claiming x86 was a replacement for Sparc servers? Intel left it to Sun's marketing to clarify where it saw its x86-based products in comparison to Sparc. Similarly, around the same time HP was putting out x86 and Itanium servers -- Intel wasn't going to muddy the waters there, certainly.

On the other hand, Red Hat and Dell would certainly talk about Linux servers (read: x86) as replacements for proprietary Unix servers (read: RISC). So it's certainly not like this is the first time anyone floated the idea, and it's certainly not like Intel has backed off from competing with RISC at any point in the past, no matter which component gets positioned against RISC chips.

Sorry, I can't seem to find the article right now. Seems I didn't bookmark it.

But it was from earlier this year and an article similair the one below, but with bare metal as comparison as well.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/virtualization-shoot-out-citrix-microsoft-red-hat-and-vmware-666

Now there's an arms race in the technology industry, with patents playing the role of ICBMs. "Patents are emerging as a new currency," Alexander I. Poltorak, chief executive of the patent licensing and enforcement firm General Patent, told the New York Times. "I've recently received several calls from financial analysts and bankers who want to know how to value patents and what does it mean."

I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying, but Mr. Poltorak clearly has a vested interest in a patent war, or at least fear of a patent war.

I'm very surprised that Google would spend so much money on defensive patents for Android. Android can't be generating that much revenue, can it? I thought its selling point was that it was essentially free to carriers. The App Market can't be pulling in that much, can it? I feel like I'm missing something here.

Karma-whoring link to print version of TFA

http://www.infoworld.com/print/169844

You're welcome. ;)

Said native code can be the output of a compiler of any language - there are some restrictions on what the output can look like (e.g. opcodes must be aligned), but there's no inherent restriction on languages. Today, Google supplies a C++ compiler (modded Clang? not sure what it is) that respects those constraints, but anyone can do so as well, including VC++.

I guess in theory there's nothing stopping any compiler from outputting NaCl binaries, but at present none does, except for the aforementioned Google toolchain that comes with the NaCl SDK (which is a modded version of GCC). Code output for NaCl carries the extension ".nexe" -- technically it is native machine language, but the binary won't execute anywhere but inside NaCl. The SDK and its APIs are also changing a lot; .nexes compiled with earlier versions of the SDK won't work with Chrome 14 or later.

I kicked the tires on NaCl for InfoWorld earlier this year.

Really? The phrase "Take that Google!" appears in a subhead from an article from PDC from three years ago and you call the article slanted? Where's the slant? What about the part where he says, "Surprisingly, Office Web applications run in Firefox and Safari, not just Internet Explorer. Far less shocking: You won't get Office Web apps free and clear as you do Google apps." If you hadn't already made up your mind about it, you might take those lines as a little jab against Microsoft.

Here's the thing, too: Eric Knorr works full-time for InfoWorld. He's its editor in chief. I don't remember whether he had that role in 2008; maybe not. But as editor in chief, he really doesn't write very much. He has a column that appears once a week, but you should take that pretty much the same way you do the "letter from the editor" that appears at the front of a magazine. In other words, it's the page you automatically skip before you go to read the magazine.

As far as editorial being slanted, however, it may surprise you to learn that InfoWorld content is contributed by quite a wide variety of freelance writers, myself included, and they hold various opinions on various topics. You claim that InfoWorld takes money from vendors. Well, obviously they do; they accept advertising. But the editors responsible for the content are not the same people responsible for selling advertising. In fact, some of that is coordinated centrally by IDG, a multi-billion dollar privately held company of which InfoWorld is a subsidiary.

I'm sure Eric Knorr is at least aware of who advertises on InfoWorld. I, however, am not (I use AdBlock, for one). And if Eric is actively trying to please advertisers, then he certainly hasn't shared it with me, because nobody ever tells me what I'm suppose to write. In fact, I spend more time telling InfoWorld editors that they don't know what they're talking about than the other way around.

Want proof? You just cited Eric Knorr writing a few hundred words after being shown a demo of the Office Web Apps at PDC in 2008. Guess what we did once we could actually get our hands on the Office Web Apps, two years later? That's right, InfoWorld gave it to me. And this is what I said about it. So you tell me: Am I in Microsoft's pocket, Google's pocket, or exactly whose pocket am I in now?

Normally I don't get into these kinds of arguments, but you're basically calling me and the company I work for a bunch of crooks, and not only is that somewhat offensive, but you have absolutely no evidence to support it.

Here's an interesting slanted article written by our ol' pal Knorr, in which he uses the phrase, "Take that Google!" - Microsoft's either in his back pocket, or he's just like every other slanted writer that just spouts off their annoying opinions. If you want to provide good tech news, at least do the proper research.

http://www.infoworld.com/print/168900 and you're welcome. :)

I agree with you. InfoWorld has composed a barrage of Anti-Google articles for years now mostly because of Microsoft's hands being in their back pocket. Sorry but I'm getting tired of hearing their same crap. Google is simply not going anywhere. Especially when on the other side of the spectrum, you hear news about 25 million people signing up for Google+ in the matter of just a couple weeks. AdWords alone will grow substantially thanks to G+.

That could be. But have you ever seen Google sue anyone for patent infringement?

They just bought over 1,000 patents from IBM, so they're definitely playing the game. Maybe they don't have a choice, but you can't logically pretend they'll always take the high road just because they're Google.

They don't have a choice. They have to be realistic about the world in which they do business. But owning thousands of patents for countersuits is not really ethically equivalent to suing competitors. Grandparent post's point is correct in spirit: Google's business is to build mostly web-based services and pay for them with advertising, not to collect licensing payments as a result of patent infringement suit settlements.

I've seen some people suggest that Google would change its tune if it encountered a competitor in search. But they have, and they haven't sued. Consider that despite Bing's home page picture and other flourishes, their search results look an awful lot like Google's, not just in content but in presentation. Microsoft really adopted Google's design when they upgraded from MSN, yet we don't see lawsuits flying. We don't even see threats of lawsuits from Google (threats like the ones we heard from Microsoft a handful of years ago when they suggested Linux and Samba probably infringe hundreds of their patents). The most we've heard from Google is a stink about how unprofessional they found it when Microsoft altered Bing search results by watching which Google results people clicked.

So I think Google is acting quite a bit differently from these other companies, and are mainly treating patents as an insurance policy. Unfortunately for them, patents are only useful in countersuits if your opponent produces products. So-called patent trolls do not have to worry about such things, as RIM discovered several years ago when they lost more than $600 million to one.

That could be. But have you ever seen Google sue anyone for patent infringement?

They just bought over 1,000 patents from IBM, so they're definitely playing the game. Maybe they don't have a choice, but you can't logically pretend they'll always take the high road just because they're Google.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs basically said this when he announced Lion a year ago, so the fact that this financial analysis firm is predicting it a year later strikes me as worse than a non-story -- it's a moldy story that anyone who's been following the industry already knows. And both Lion and iOS 5 show this slow but deliberate merger in action. The real news is that Microsoft has decided to follow suit with Windows 8: http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/the-end-both-the-desktop-os-and-mobile-os-upon-us-168915

What the "Consumerization of IT" means to us really:

- thousands of morons with newly bought insecure devices grab them from the shelves and expect to plug them in behind the firewall at corporations or businesses where trade secrets, GLBA, HIPPA, FERPA, and other privacy or security regulations exist.

- thousands of morons are trying right now to install Dropbox, or some other crappy "sharing" software, on their work computer - in the process giving yet another way behind the firewall. Then they're putting sensitive company documents "on the cloud" to "share" them with co-workers. Their Dropbox (or other service) password is usually no more complex than 12345, the sort of password a fucking idiot would have on his luggage.

- IT gets to have phone calls from these morons at all hours from people traveling or just at home, about how their "iPad stopped working." It will turn out in 99% of these cases that the culprit is either their 3G/4G cell provider, or their home wireless internet, being down. No joke, I had to troubleshoot one of these morons about a year ago: it turned out that her AT&T DSL service was down and had been for close to a month, but she wouldn't admit the possibility or even call AT&T until we made her try it when she was visiting her brother in another state and her laptop worked fine in his house (with his open wireless connection). Instead, we were treated to 3 weeks of "why can't you fucking people make my laptop work at home" from her.

- "I don't see why I should have to change my password on my phone when I change my password on my computer in order to get my email on my phone." *HEAD. DESK. HEAD. DESK. REPEAT.*

- THIS. RIGHT FUCKING HERE, THIS.

Shall I go on?

"New data from Gartner and IDC show that sales of Macs in the United States have crossed the 10 percent threshold -- which hasn't happened since 1991"

"As U.S. PC sales declined 4.2 percent (according to IDC) or 5.6 percent (according to Gartner), Mac sales shot up more than any other PC line. Apple's performance far exceed the industry average"

"The high Mac sales figures comes on the heels of a report from Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry showing that one-third of big businesses now offer employees the option of a Mac, and that most employees offered the choice select a Mac rather than a Windows PC."

http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/apple-mac-sales-back-above-10-percent-after-10-years-002

less ads.

Print version

No ads.

I'm always dumbfounded to see someone on Slashdot not running ABP, yet I see it fairly often. You'd think the one thing that actually makes browsing the internet bearable to begin with would be at the top of every "nerd's" list.

less ads.

Print version

"Consumers hope to drop Apple as computer supplier"

It seems like quite the opposite is happening.