VMware CEO: Cloud to End Computer Desktop Era

The PC is DEAD!! Long live the…TERMINAL?!?!?!

IMHO, a cloud is theoretically a collection of networked computers that together create a virtual space wherein instances of OSes and programs run. Accessing these instances is accomplished with any mobile device that is powerful enough to access the Internet. Basically, the mobile-to-cloud process is an updated version of the terminal-to-mainframe process. The terminals are now portable or even pocket-sized and the mainframe is pretty much infinitely expandable, but the concept is the same. Our stuff is stored and processed on hardware we don’t own, but don’t have to maintain either.

“PCs are not the only animal in the zoo anymore. Increasingly, users are holding other devices in their hands,” he said, speaking at the kick-off of the VMworld 2011, being held this week in Las Vegas.

Within five years, less than 20 percent of computing clients will be running Microsoft Windows, he predicted. The job of providing applications and data “can no longer belong to any one device, or any one operating system. So we have to float away from that aspect of the desktop,” he said. Read more…

Just in case you were wondering, VMware makes virtualization software which is used in cloud computing systems both public and private. In other words, it is to his benefit that the PC go away since there will be more need for his company’s product.

There are benefits and drawbacks to The Cloud as I like to call it. The Cloud is accessible from any authorized device that can access the Internet, but your experience is defined by what you want to do versus your screen size. It is directly proportional. The more complex the activity, the bigger your screen needs to be for it to be comfortable. The Cloud does not require you to have a lot of horsepower under the hood of your device but is subject to Internet availability. The Cloud does not require you to maintain the computers but you have to have a service agreement which means you pay for Internet access and then pay extra for the service. The Cloud is hosted by someone else but your data is on someone else’s servers (unless it’s a private cloud but that is basically having the computers yourself).

Thirty dollars a month may not sound like much, but that would be $360 a year to start. If they raise prices, you have no option but to continue to pay or go somewhere else. If anything happens to you and for some reason you miss payment they will stop access; if the FBI serves a warrant to the company hosting your cloud, you could lose access (and not get any apology from the government whatsoever); if your mobile device gets stolen out of your pocket or you happen to leave it at a bar or restaurant you’ll need to get hold of your provider and change all access, etc. There is a lot of convenience to having your stuff hosted on an off-site system, but there’s also a lot of convenience to having your stuff on your own computer. There is also the fact that with a mobile terminal you are ALWAYS at work…not always a good thing.

Juror sentenced for trying to friend defendant on Facebook

I have two problems with this story: 1) I wonder what he thought was going to happen and 2) did he really think that no one would notice the attempt?

I know that Facebook provides some sort of catharsis for a whole lot of people but it seems to also have one, major detrimental effect on the psyche of a large number of its users: they don’t seem to remember that Facebook is not a piece of paper that only the intended recipient sees but a rock quarry wall-writing service that pretty much everyone can see. And the worst part about writing on a rock quarry wall is that it’s there effectively forever.

22-year-old Jonathan Hudson was removed from a trial after trying to friend the defendant, Courtney Downing, on Facebook. After trial recessed for the day on July 18, the young juror sent Downing the friend request and mentioned the case on the social network. The interaction came to light after the defendant told her lawyer about it, who in turn told the presiding judge. Hudson was dismissed from the jury the next morning, on July 19, according to court records. Read more…

Surprise! One of the jurors who is supposed to decide innocence or guilt contacts the defendant and offers friendship while the case is still ongoing. Um-hmm. Sure. Naturally the defendant will think of this as a good thing and accept the request; it would be great to have a juror in her corner to sway the rest, right? After all, no one would be looking at the defendant’s communication records in a courtroom, right? Who would know if she took the guy up on his offer and bedded him? For a not-guilty vote? Isn’t that worth it?

If you put it on the Internet expect it to not only leak out but have your name attached to it…forever. If you don’t want it to leak do not put it on the Internet. Notice how many people and companies get screwed (many rightly so) by their own emails? Here’s a hint: emails addressed to one, single person have at least two recipients. Email must go from you to the service that is actually attached to the Internet, copy 1, then from the Internet to the recipient, copy 2. Mind you, this is only if you and the recipient use the same service…if the recipient uses a different service then there is yet another copy. Be careful.

Jury tampering is a crime. It does not matter that the correspondence was initiated by the juror; any contact between the juror and the defendant would be seen as tampering. If you’re already in court the last thing you want is to have more charges added. She must have been really, really, really cute.

‘Kill tool’ released for unpatched Apache server vulnerability

Even open source implementations aren’t invulnerable. There are, however, many people looking at open source code specifically for flaws and patching them. Proprietary software gets patched because it’s a job; a lot of open source software is patched to just make it better.

“The attack can be done remotely and with a modest number of requests can cause very significant memory and CPU usage on the server,” according to an advisory that documents a denial-of-service flaw in the default Apache HTTPD installation. Read more…

There are going to be people out there who just want to create mischief. There will be those who think they are, or may actually be, part of a cause. Now, however the focus seems to be on money. Get into a system and grab stuff while causing havoc to hide what was stolen. That’s what it sounds like this actually is. A patch to fix this problem is expected soon.

Hackers compete in security breach league

If the targets are ones that have been set up by the RankMyHack then I could see this as a sort of National Breacher League or International Infiltration League. If the targets are actually real companies then this, IMHO, is a convenient list of more than the Usual Suspects.

Competitors win points on the leader board by breaching the security of websites. The bigger the website, the more points a hack is worth. Likewise more technically accomplished attacks attract more kudos.

The highest-scoring attack so far targeted Huffingtonpost.com, the American liberal political website. It was carried out by a hacker using the alias “Mudkip”, who currently leads the RankMyHack.com league, having breached the security of 16 websites since 28 July. Read more…

So, if a site was hacked now they know where to look. Sure, there’ll be resistance at first but at some point it will be worth the effort to listen in on the packets flying to and from this site. I understand bragging, but it is not necessarily the safest course of action when doing something illegal. Someone once said “I’m the best, not the most famous.” It’s very much like being in battle: move slowly, keep low, and you can put a bullet in your adversary; pop your head up and you will likely get a bullet in it which will ruin your squad’s day.

HP To Apple: You Win.

Some things work, others don’t. HP used to be pricey, then they bought Compaq and dropped to their level. Unfortunately, they seemed to rise to the same irritation level Compaq had as well. Still, that didn’t stop them from becoming huge. The only problem is that trying to compete with what is for all intents and purposes a luxury item using a bargain item is doomed from the start: you can get high numbers but your individual margin is slim. Think of it this way: a Bugatti Veyron and a Chevrolet Corvette are both sports cars but the return for a Veyron is much higher than that of  the Corvette. That’s not to say that the Corvette is a poor car; just that the profit margin is much slimmer.

After all, while HP may be the worldwide leader in PC sales with massive revenues, their actual profit from those sales has already been far surpassed by Apple. Further, while overall PC growth continues to contract, Apple’s Mac sales continue to grow and have outpaced the rest of the PC industry for 21 consecutive quarters. That’s over five consecutive years. That’s certainly another way to interpret ”Post-PC world”. Read more…

If we are now in the “Post-PC world” then that means that soon there will be no more Macs since those are “Personal Computers” too. But that would be fine with Apple; they want you to duplicate all your stuff on their servers anyway so that should some catastrophe occur you can simply reload from your backup. That’s great from their standpoint as it makes you more dependent on them. At some point soon we will go back to the ” you – terminal – mainframe” way of doing things. It’s just that it will be called “you – phone – cloud” which, IMHO, is the same thing.

Apple has figured out how to make people prefer a luxury item over a bargain item. In the scheme of things, that’s what every company wants. They will grudgingly have bargain items for sale, but they really want you to buy the expensive, luxury stuff which has higher margins. That’s tough to do if you’re seen as a “work” machine rather than a “cool” machine. And remember, Apple doesn’t have any bargain items; it’s all luxury.

Researchers modify harmless bacteria to kill harmful bacteria

Ordinarily, you would think that they perhaps took a predatory bacteria and modified something to make a species normally not considered to be prey worthy of reconsideration. Or perhaps they inserted a gene that excretes something not toxic to the engineered bacteria but very toxic to the target species. They actually did something similar to what is going on in the macro-world today: they made terrorists.

The general approach to treating it is massive amounts of antibiotics which don’t always work and also tend to kill off good bacteria in the process.

To get around this problem Poh and Chang modified the DNA of E. coli in such a way as to allow it to be able to detect LasR, a molecule used by P.aeruginosa bacteria to communicate with one another. When the LasR is detected, the E. coli begins producing a toxin called pyocin until it’s full, at which point it explodes releasing the pyocin which kills P.aeruginosa by eating holes in its exterior, allowing its innards to pour out.

They have made the bacteriological equivalent of suicide bombers. The thing I wonder is if there is any other way for P.aeruginosa to communicate other than LasR. If there is, these micro killers won’t be effective for long…just until they kill off the normal LasR-using sort. Hopefully the little equivalent of fanatics won’t then mutate to kill something else…something that may be beneficial like Lactobacillus.

PhysOrg

Four ways the Google-Motorola deal will change the tech industry

Yeah, I can see that there are definitely three (the fourth is iffy) but the most important of the group is patent windfall.

With Motorola’s 17,000 patents on its side, Google has essentially put an end to the Android patent wars. There will still be some final skirmishes, but don’t expect much carnage. Read more…

Since the plan of the day seems to be “Yes, we do infringe on a few of your patents BUT you infringe on more of ours…” Google needed a battleship.  They got a drone carrier. At first, it may seem that they got the short end of the stick but think of it this way: a battleship can launch a lot of shells on ballistic trajectories and a few guided missiles to specific targets but a drone carrier can launch a lot of guided munitions to specific targets and then rearm the drones to do it all again.

Google still has the Oracle problem and I’m sure the pit bull they have for a CEO will not give up chewing on the Google bone easily but things look a lot brighter for Google than they did a week ago. We will see if they manage to piss off any of their Android friends.

After 30 years, IBM says PC going way of vacuum tube and typewriter

Let me start by saying that, yes, tablets and smartphones are computers…but then again so is my digital watch. The memory in my watch is shared among functions and I have a limited amount of storage with a cumbersome input method. Smartphones and tablets have shared memory with a limited amount of storage but a friendlier input method. Are they great consumption devices? Sure, just like a TV. Are they great creation devices? Not really. They can do basic things but for real use they require help.

IBM, of course, sold its PC division to Lenovo in 2005. Dean, in a blog post, writes that “I, personally, have moved beyond the PC as well. My primary computer now is a tablet. When I helped design the PC, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to witness its decline. But, while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing.”

Dean’s remarks continue a debate over whether we are now in a so-called “post-PC” era, in which smartphones and tablets are replacing desktops and laptops. Not surprisingly, Microsoft — seller of 400 million Windows 7 licenses — isn’t a fan of that term. Read more…

I find it fascinating that so many consider the tablet and smartphone as PC replacements. While they can look like laptops if you add a few things the only way they can actually replace the laptop or desktop is to be connected to a repository of your information that is stored somewhere online. In other words, the device is serving as a display for the browser. The browser is attached through the Internet to the place where your information is actually stored. In this fashion, the tablet and smartphone can truly replace a PC. Mind you, in order for this to work someone else has your information. Someone who can be subpoenaed and forced to give up a machine that has your information on it because of someone else, or eventually charge you a monthly fee for access to your information because it’s on their machines.

I do not see the PC going away any time soon. Unless something dramatic happens with the Cloud (like the Singularity) any advance made in computing will be mirrored by handheld devices. They will become more powerful and they will reach a point where they will become the PC. Right now, the only thing happening is companies are trying to get you to go back to the old days when you had a dumb terminal which was attached to a mainframe computer. It looks much slicker now with networks replacing mainframes and terminals no longer being completely dumb, but the end result is the same: your information is stored on someone else’s network and accessed through a browser window on a terminal that happens to be wireless.

New software may end internet censorship once and for all

This is going to make the University of Michigan really popular with totalitarian regimes. There’s nothing they like more than having their carefully crafted dams and gateways made obsolete by people from a school in another country.

The Telex software can be made available to be downloaded from a site or a copy can be borrowed from a friend. Once installed, the user can access blocked web sites through Internet Service Providers (ISPs) outside the censoring nation that deploy equipment called Telex stations.

The process begins with the user establishing a secure connection to any password-protected site that isn’t blocked, otherwise known as a HTTPS website. This connection works as a decoy and allows the Telex software to mark it as a Telex request by inserting a secret-coded tag into the page headers. These tags utilize a cryptographic technique called “public-key steganography.”

“Steganography is hiding the fact that you’re sending a message at all,” Halderman said. “We’re able to hide it in the cryptographic protocol so that you can’t even tell that the message is there.” Read more…

It isn’t all gumdrops and roses though. To do it would require that a large portion of the Internet, namely ISPs, agree to use it. It sounds like a complicated set of permissions and requests but that would be needed to hide from a totalitarian regime anyway…it’s just that most of the world is not under absolute repression, rather they’re under some repression. There is the problem of any repression being repression that will slowly grow. perhaps the researchers at the University of Michigan are preparing for the time when repression is…a little closer to home.

Why do people fall for Trojans?

It is an undeniable fact: most malware requires active permission from the user to infect a system. Usually you have to click on a download to receive the bad payload. If you look carefully, there will probably be something that makes you uneasy but it won’t scream out at you. Why do people click on it? For the same reason that a person who drives a minivan can “drive” a Lamborghini: they seem to operate the same way. They both have four wheels that touch the ground, a steering wheel to guide the vehicle, a brake pedal, an accelerator pedal, and a gear selector. It’s the same…right up until you stomp on the accelerator. Only at that final nanosecond do you realize that you have made a mistake…and unless you’re very lucky by then it will be too late.

People get ripped off in the physical world all the time. You can get mugged on the street or have your pocket picked in the subway in any big city, anywhere in the world. If one of those unfortunate things happens to you, no one will tell you it’s your own damn fault.

And yet I hear that response regularly when people get fooled online by 21st Century Trojans. Anyone who would fall for that is lazy and stupid. They lack common sense. They should have their computing license revoked until they can pass an IQ test.

Here’s the trouble with that line of thinking. Modern computing is complicated. Even seemingly straightforward acts of online commerce involve many steps, with many trust decisions along the way. I thought about that today when I purchased and downloaded a new software package online. Read more…

Trojans today are just like their namesake: they look good and any slightly off clues can be easily attributed to paranoia or misunderstanding. That is how they get you. It is just like catching a cold: you know that you shouldn’t stand in front of that person who is coughing or sneezing into that napkin but they know the client with the liquid assets so just a little elbow-rubbing won’t hurt… You should not get programs from links you don’t know. If you are not sure, ask someone you trust. It will save big headaches for you and even bigger headaches for the person who has to clean your system.