Sold by weight, not by volume

So I'm sitting at the breakfast table this morning doing what 99.85% of Americans do every morning. Read the cereal box. And in the corner it says, "Sold by weight, not by volume." So I ask my daughter, "how many people do you think actually know what that means?" She says to me, probably very few. So then something else occurred to me. I looked over at the misses and said, "With me you got lucky. You go both weight and volume." Ha! Now that was puny or punny as the case may be.... BID.

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Then another random thought pooped into my head. What is there that has no weight or volume? Well, hm. I know! Diputs SEO companies. Absolutely no value what so ever. Pure marketing fluff. Kind of like eating a marshmallow. It's bad for you, gives you that empty feeling and is mostly just sugar. Nothing of value. Not unlike the unmentionables at the Fat Burning Furnace scam. A lot of empty pages, all saying the same thing, but in the end, you walk away with that kind of empty feeling inside. Almost as if someone skimmed all of the cream off of the top, and all they left you with is skim milk to put on your hollow empty crispy rice serial. Just plain nasty. And don't tell me you don't know what I am talking about. Remember, statistics are on my side.

So where are you going with this Inoun?

I am glad you asked.

Well, it's about statistical combinations. Picture this for a moment. SEO companies keep cranking out garbage that nobody really wants, and pretty soon, the entire Internet has turned into, well, the "stay puffed marshmallow man."

The only thing that even closely compares with THAT, is bloatware. And you know what I am talking about there. Software that is so big that your computer litter Ali cries when you turn it on. You know that sound it makes. Most tech guys will tell you it is a fan that is going out, or a bearing on the hard drive that is whining, but I still stand by my original story. The computer is crying.

Serially? I figured it out this morning. Some of you may be a little young for this, but you used to have to swap floppy disks in and out of the floppy drive to install software. Yes, this was before flash drives, dvd's, cd's, or vinyl records. For some reason, the opening scene of 2001 a Space Odyssey currently comes to mind. In other words, long before your time. My daughter found a brand new box of floppies at the place she works, bought them, and gave them to me a couple of days ago. I have them sitting right here. BID.

Do you know how many floppies it would take to install my video driver? 186. I can just see it now. The boss says to me, "What happened last week? Why didn't you get more billable hours? Hm? Hm?" My answer? "I was installing a new video driver on my machine. There was a security issue, and the IT guys forced me to do an upgrade."

To read the average floppy used to take about 2 minutes. So that would mean it would take you just over 6 hours to install an updated video driver. With the quantities of security updates coming out every day, it's a wonder we get anything done at all. I can just see it now, "Hi honey, how was your day? Oh fine. What did you do? I installed a video driver, and was forced to install the latest Flash update, which comes out about every 3 hours on any given day. Really, how's that workin out fur ya? Well, being an engineer, I went out and bought a pet monkey, trained him to swap floppies, left some rice crispies and skim milk on the counter for him, and he is swapping the disks as we speak. I am hoping to start on Adobe's PDF Reader tomorrow."

But to add insult to injury, I went and looked at the actual size of the video driver? You know, the one that actually displays the stuff on the screen? 12MB's. The rest apparently was created by the legal, accounting, and marketing departments and the fine SEO scam fat boys at the fat burning furnace.

But don't worry about it, it's just a little phlegm.

iPhone 5 rumor rollup for week ending May 27

By early the next morning, iFan had a new post, about how commenters to the first post had detected a reflection in the picture, revealing another iPhone 5 taking the photography. They say you can make out the Apple logo, and the widely separated flash and camera components (which are close together in iPhone 4).

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Then, iFan asked not one but two Adobe Photoshop wizards to manipulate the original image, a process that TFTS.com called, without a hint of irony, "forensic tech voodoo." Their conclusion: It's an iPhone 5!
iPhone 5 will have a curved glass screen

DigiTimes claims that unnamed sources say that Apple has bought 200-300 expensive glass-cutting machines to fashion curved glass screens for iPhone 5.

"That would seem to fly in the face of recent reports that the iPhone 5 would be very similar to the iPhone 4 in appearance," observed 9to5 Mac.

No fooling.

PC Magazine notes some phones already have a concave screen, including Samsung Nexus S. "The concave glass display of the Nexus S is often praised for feeling more comfortable when holding it up to your face. In fact curved glass displays are more about aesthetics and "perceived usability" (as Engadget notes in its review for the Nexus S) than any actual change to display quality," according to the post.

Amazon Launches Competitor to Apple’s Mac App Store

Amazon has unveiled the Mac Downloads Store, a direct competitor to Apple’s Mac App Store.

The new Mac Downloads Store is essentially a marketplace for buying and downloading Mac applications. Amazon has sold software downloads for years, but now it those software downloads have been organized into a one-stop shop.

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The biggest difference between the two stores is that Amazon’s store isn’t available as a desktop application. That means you can’t receive easy updates from the Mac Download Store, and because it’s not always present on the desktop, users might forget about visiting Amazon’s store on a regular basis. Amazon’s store also has a much smaller selection of titles — around 250 or so. Approximately 50 of those titles are games, which are actually part of a subsection of the Mac Download Store.

Amazon’s store includes a few titles not on Apple’s roster, the most prominent one being Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2011, which retails for $202.96 for the business version and $115 for the home and student version. Microsoft is currently “looking at” the possibility of Office on the Mac App Store, though we doubt Microsoft is willing to pay Apple 30% of its Office for Mac revenue.

The Mac Download Store is Amazon’s third application store after the Kindle App Store and the Amazon Appstore for Android. The latter has given Amazon some legal headaches; Apple has sued Amazon over its use of the term “Appstore,” claiming that it infringes upon its “App Store” trademark.

Huddle Seeks To Displace Microsoft SharePoint For Cloud Collaboration

Cloud collaboration and content management player Huddle is looking to woo users off of their legacy systems, namely Microsoft SharePoint, and into the cloud with the guarantee that businesses that make the leap will see 100 percent user adoption within 90 days or a refund will be issued.

The four-year-old Huddle, co-headquartered in San Francisco and London, offers cloud-based solutions to manage projects, share files and collaborate with other users inside of the company, securely. It offers tools online, on mobile devices, on desktops and via Microsoft Office applications. It also is available on major business social networks.

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Huddle is looking to supplant legacy Microsoft SharePoint installations, and to get users to give cloud collaboration a whirl it is promising a refund if 100 percent adoption is not achieved in 90 days. Even the company's tagline is a shot at its chief competitor: "Simply: if SharePoint was built today, they would've built Huddle." Huddle claims uptime of 99.9 percent and the company said it typically achieves 90 percent adoption across businesses, compared to SharePoint's adoption rate of just 32 percent within the first three months of roll out.

"Customers who have deployed Huddle to replace or work alongside SharePoint tell us that Huddle's adoption rate is three times higher than Microsoft's," Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell said in a statement, adding "Unlike SharePoint, Huddle offers mobile access, simple external collaboration and deployment within hours -- all at 10 percent of SharePoint's total cost of ownership."

With the Huddle Adoption Guarantee for its cloud-based collaboration platform, Huddle is promising users their money back if an organization doesn't hit 100 percent user adoption in 90 days.

"One of the biggest concerns when deploying any new enterprise application is user adoption," Huddle said in an announcement for the Huddle Adoption Guarantee, which also claims that Huddle has eight times the adoption rate of its main rival SharePoint. Huddle added: "We are so confident in the successful take-up of Huddle within your user community that we offer a unique Adoption Guarantee."

According to Gartner, more than 40 percent of enterprises don't properly consider process and organization issues when installing an enterprise content management system, which can lead to lack of adoption. Huddle's Adoption Guarantee states "that within 90 days 100 percent of your initial user groups will be trained and using Huddle actively -- or we will refund a full three months subscription value."

"Adoption is key to the success of a new technology deployment. However, with the rise of the consumerization of IT and high expectations from the user community, it's not easily achievable for most …," Mitchell continued. "Today, we're putting our money where our mouth is and guarantee that our software will be a safe investment for any CIO or CTO considering deploying or upgrading their collaboration and content management systems."

Microsoft online chief: I would never log into a Chromebook

The Microsoft/Google rivalry is one of the tech industry's fiercest, but it produces a few lighthearted moments now and then.

Google's love of inside jokes was on display this month at the Google I/O conference, where a demo of Google's new "Chromebook" computers used the login name "Tom Rizzo."

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Rizzo is the senior director of online services at Microsoft who has claimed that Google is "failing" in the enterprise.

BACKGROUND: Google launches Chrome OS, says Windows is 'torturing users'

When told about the demo, Rizzo said Google can keep using his name in demos because "me logging into a Chromebook will never be a reality."

"There is a little fun rivalry between those guys and us," Rizzo said during an interview with Network World. "But I fundamentally believe Office and Office 365 are much, much better than anything they have to offer."

While some executives have worked at both Microsoft and Google, Rizzo is a Microsoft lifer, working for Redmond since graduating from college 16 years ago.

Although Google is challenging Microsoft's Office business with Google Apps -- a combination of Gmail, Google Docs and Calendar -- Office has remained a lucrative business and Microsoft is expanding the franchise with the Web-based Office 365.

GOOGLE AND 11 MORE: Microsoft's top 12 rivals

Office 2010 was released almost a year ago, and has sold about one copy per second, Rizzo said. Over 11-plus months, that works out to more than 29 million. "Customers are deploying Office 2010 five times faster than Office 2007," Rizzo said.

Further, the Office 365 limited beta attracted 100,000 organizations using Microsoft's online products across 2.5 million seats. And Rizzo is basking in the glow of Microsoft winning a contract to move the city and county of San Francisco to Microsoft's cloud-based email. Google headquarters are located a few dozen miles away in Mountain View.

"When Larry or Sergey or Eric Schmidt go to court or go get their driver's licenses, they'll be using Microsoft technology on the back end to do all those things," Rizzo boasted. (Mountain View is in Santa Clara County but Google co-founder Sergey Brin is known to live in San Francisco.)

Google recently claimed that 75% of business users could be switched from Windows to Chromebooks, with a combination of Web-based applications like Gmail and Google Docs, and access to Windows applications through Citrix.

Rizzo scoffed at this estimate: "I think that is a very, very, very highly optimistic number from Google," he said. "I don't know why customers wouldn't just go get a netbook. It's pretty much the same thing."

Google would argue otherwise. While a netbook typically runs Windows, Chromebooks eliminate clunky, slow PC software and the need to run antivirus scans by storing most of a user's data and applications in the cloud, Google says.

"It sounds quite magical, I would say," Rizzo said. Because most Chromebook buyers are likely to use Google Docs, and won't get the "richer functionality" of Windows, "Chromebooks don't change the game at all from a productivity standpoint," Rizzo said.

Microsoft trialing ribbon UI for Windows 8

Windows 8 could integrate the company's successful ribbon user interface into the operating system, with pre-beta screenshots showing off the potential feature.

Windows 8 screenshots and revelations are arriving at a rate of knots at the moment, although key manufacturers are the only ones to have their hands on the latest code release from Microsoft.

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The use of the ribbon UI can hardly come as a massive surprise, considering it has become a popular addition to Office since the 2007 edition.

Twofold

The advantage of the ribbon are twofold – not only is it designed to simplify the menu systems but it also offers a much easier UI for touch.

So, it remains to be seen if the ribbon becomes a familiar everyday sight for Windows 8 users, or if the function can be toggled in order to be part of a more tablet-friendly offering.

Microsoft is working hard to make its OS friendlier for tablets – with Windows touch-capable but clearly falling short of an ideal option for slates.

Windows 8, as well as being capable of running on Arm as well as x86 chipsets, is likely to be a whole different ball game when it comes to tablets.

Six rising threats from cybercriminals

To keep such malware off users' phones, Joffe recommends that businesses institute strict corporate policies limiting whom employees can text using company networks and phones, and what kind of work can be done via text. Another option is a policy that disallows text messaging entirely, at least until the industry figures out how to deal with the threats.

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For consumers, common sense is the best defense. Avoid clicking on text-message links or attachments from anyone you don't know, and use extreme caution even with messages from known contacts, who might unwittingly be part of a botnet.

2. Hacking into smart grids

A common misconception is that only an open network -- say, your corporate wireless LAN for visitor access -- is hackable. Not true, says Justin Morehouse, a principal consultant at Stratum Security who spoke about network security at last year's DefCon security conference. Morehouse says it's actually not that difficult to find an access point into a so-called closed system.

For example, the Stuxnet worm last year infected tens of thousands of Windows PCs running Siemens SCADA systems in manufacturing and utility companies, most notably in Iran, and it was largely spread via infected USB flash drives. Even some nuclear plants and power grids have wireless networks for employees to use.

"Stuxnet proved that it is relatively simple to cause potentially catastrophic damage" to an industrial control network, says Neustar's Joffe.

According to Morehouse, another new attack point will be smart grids, which use electronic metering to streamline power management. Utility companies around the world have begun testing and rolling out smart meters to customers' homes and businesses. The technology, which can send data to and receive it from a central system, can also be very helpful for IT: You can open a console to see the power usage for one section of a building, for example.

But smart grids might be vulnerable to attacks that would allow hackers to cut off electricity to homes and businesses and create other kinds of havoc. One possible attack vector is a smart grid's communications infrastructure. For example, Morehouse says, a German utility company called Yello Strom uses a consumer smart grid system that works like a home automation kit -- the sensors report energy usage back to the central server via the user's home Wi-Fi network.

Because of this, Morehouse says, it is possible for end users to tap into their own networks and gain access to the substation used for delivering power. "Often it's the case that these types of networks are not properly segmented or protected," he says. "Once in, the attacker may be treated as a trusted user and have access to other areas. Is there the potential that they could disrupt the substation or city? Absolutely. They may plant a back door that could allow the grid to be powered down at a particular time."

Utilities in the U.S. tend to use their own proprietary wired or wireless connections to sensors, but Morehouse is concerned that some may follow Yello Strom's example and use home networks instead.

Six rising threats from cybercriminals

To keep such malware off users' phones, Joffe recommends that businesses institute strict corporate policies limiting whom employees can text using company networks and phones, and what kind of work can be done via text. Another option is a policy that disallows text messaging entirely, at least until the industry figures out how to deal with the threats.

Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com

For consumers, common sense is the best defense. Avoid clicking on text-message links or attachments from anyone you don't know, and use extreme caution even with messages from known contacts, who might unwittingly be part of a botnet.

2. Hacking into smart grids

A common misconception is that only an open network -- say, your corporate wireless LAN for visitor access -- is hackable. Not true, says Justin Morehouse, a principal consultant at Stratum Security who spoke about network security at last year's DefCon security conference. Morehouse says it's actually not that difficult to find an access point into a so-called closed system.

For example, the Stuxnet worm last year infected tens of thousands of Windows PCs running Siemens SCADA systems in manufacturing and utility companies, most notably in Iran, and it was largely spread via infected USB flash drives. Even some nuclear plants and power grids have wireless networks for employees to use.

"Stuxnet proved that it is relatively simple to cause potentially catastrophic damage" to an industrial control network, says Neustar's Joffe.

According to Morehouse, another new attack point will be smart grids, which use electronic metering to streamline power management. Utility companies around the world have begun testing and rolling out smart meters to customers' homes and businesses. The technology, which can send data to and receive it from a central system, can also be very helpful for IT: You can open a console to see the power usage for one section of a building, for example.

But smart grids might be vulnerable to attacks that would allow hackers to cut off electricity to homes and businesses and create other kinds of havoc. One possible attack vector is a smart grid's communications infrastructure. For example, Morehouse says, a German utility company called Yello Strom uses a consumer smart grid system that works like a home automation kit -- the sensors report energy usage back to the central server via the user's home Wi-Fi network.

Because of this, Morehouse says, it is possible for end users to tap into their own networks and gain access to the substation used for delivering power. "Often it's the case that these types of networks are not properly segmented or protected," he says. "Once in, the attacker may be treated as a trusted user and have access to other areas. Is there the potential that they could disrupt the substation or city? Absolutely. They may plant a back door that could allow the grid to be powered down at a particular time."

Utilities in the U.S. tend to use their own proprietary wired or wireless connections to sensors, but Morehouse is concerned that some may follow Yello Strom's example and use home networks instead.

Google plans expanded 24/7 phone support … but not just yet

Google also pointed out that the small business version of Microsoft's Office 365 advertises only "self-help and community support," although Microsoft's enterprise package does include 24/7 phone support.

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Google also said it offers "higher-touch support for our demanding (typically large) customers, including appointing an account manager for on-site deployment assistance and to offer customers a direct line of contact for any questions or issues they may experience."

A Google spokesperson further stated that, despite the limitations detailed on the Google support website, "A Google Apps for Business customer may call our support line at any time ... For any issue that is disruptive to their business, we will transfer to someone who can resolve their issue."

Businesses that use Microsoft software and are considering moving to Google services will closely watch Google's evolving stance toward customer support. While Microsoft offers more substantial support offerings to business customers than Google offers, Microsoft software products and services are also far more costly. (Also see: "Nonprofit treats Microsoft Outlook frustration with Google Apps")

Google's business products are primarily being gobbled up by small businesses and universities, but the company's increasing ability to compete against Microsoft in the largest enterprise accounts has been seen with recent customer wins such as the U.S. General Services Administration.

"We support the largest customers quite well," Girouard says. "It's harder to support the long tail of customers, the three-person companies."

Google, like any tech company, has been the subject of complaints about its customer service, from users of both its free services and its fee-based ones. But since its software is hosted entirely online, and Chromebooks provide little more than an inexpensive and convenient way to access the Web, customers have limited ability to fix problems themselves when things go wrong.

It's likely that Google can provide better uptime than many small IT shops achieve on their own, but meeting the "five nines" standard of mission-critical application availability is a work in progress for all cloud-based services.

Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud recently suffered a severe outage, and even the enterprise-focused Rackspace has been forced to apologize and pay out credits to customers in the wake of outages.

Microsoft's hosted email service went offline for some users this month, and Gmail has suffered numerous problems, including a recent issue that took some users' mail offline for several days. Customers have also complained about Google Calendar not reliably sending reminders before appointments.

Google has so many customers that downtime for even a small percentage can affect millions of people. Various backup systems ensure that even if services go offline, Google can restore customer data.

Once Google convinces customers their data is safe, there are other concerns. Can employees used to Microsoft products be trained to use Google ones? To that, Girouard counters that Google is providing online tools to train people in using Google products, and systems to automate the movement of users from Microsoft to Google.

Close to Customers to Improve The Quality of Stimulating Demand

Delta Industrial Automation as a family, a member of Delta PLC PLC compared with other brands has a unique advantage: 10 years hard drive Delta's customer base and market reputation as the Delta PLC created favorable conditions for the promotion of ; the same time, Delta complete product integration and close to the customer service platform has also helped Delta PLC achieved average annual growth of more than 5 consecutive 30% of the market in the mainland market share ranked the highest in a small PLC.

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Second half of 2008 financial crisis hit China's industrial economy, Delta to adjust market strategy: to enhance the low-end and OEM customer service levels at the same time, Delta in the industry leading customer service and high-speed high-precision applications can flex its muscles industrial bus and PM products are focused on the promotion. For buildings, HVAC, environmental, transport and other sectors concerned about increasing the degree of people's livelihood, but also makes Delta PLC products, sales in this financial crisis contrarian up. According to the Delta-CIMIC Corporation PLC product manager Zhang Shaokun, due to the successful operation, combined with the traditional advantages of industry recovery expected in 2009, Delta PLC's annual growth rate close to 30%.

PM optimistic about the series of products targeting specific market
In the past 10 years, Delta ES series products are mainly low-end applications in the face of the customer, in the EH series high-end application is recommended, but for high-speed, high precision applications, products in the field is always blank. Manager Zhang said: "When we are faced with a customer, there will be such a situation, the general application of the PLC is the Delta, the high-speed, high precision applications, PLC is imported brands, and now the situation will completely change . "As a new Delta family members, PM Series products are mainly located in the emphasis on the application of high-speed and high precision applications. General industrial machinery with ordinary small PLC to complete the specific functional requirements, but the high-speed, high precision industrial machinery you need to use the medium to large PLC, while the PM in the large-scale PLC products also have some of the features and characteristics of a small PLC.

Manager Zhang described the PM for our products powerful features: First of all, PM Series products are mainly characterized by high emphasis on electronic cam up to 2048 points, while the flexibility of a PLC; Another feature is the implementation of G code interpretation, and continuous path of treatment. Special CNC machine tool industry in general need to use the CNC controller to handle at this time if the use of PM controller will show a very high price. Test machine in a number of industry proven, in general, can not handle sites PLC, its performance remarkable. It is understood that PM products will increase next year, a new member of the 10PM, 10PM 6 groups can access the high number of counts, with hardware adjustable filter, 4 differential high speed output, a very open set of 4 high-speed output. The main application of multiple high-speed input and output in the high-end applications, while its operation speed will be further strengthened to expand and improve the Delta side of small PLC's high-end applications.

PM series comes to promotion, Manager Zhang stressed: "We will first PM in the traditional industries can promote products, such as high-speed online package packaging industry, trade skeleton winding machine winding layers, coating the electronics industry, dispensing multi-axis robot and welding industry. "achieved good results last year, based on the Delta this year, even extending their reach to real-time three-axis interpolation and the G code CNC download specialized areas, such as wood carving, glass engraving and Before cutting and other industries do not belong to the application of PLC.

Influence to change its role to deepen product
In recent years, the Delta-CIMIC PLC performance has maintained a high growth, has made remarkable achievements, Manager Zhang concluded: "From the product development side, PLC product's performance continues to improve, the series is constantly being improved among other ancillary products, more and more full-Delta; from a dealer perspective, the technology significantly enhance the dealer, most dealers shifted from trade-based system integration; from product application side, the use of products to use a single integrated product, mainly low-end applications in low-end applications and taste turned to high school; from the customer side, mainly the coexistence of small and medium customers to switch to medium and small customers, more and more industry leading customers to use Delta products. "of its own and the market fully informed at the same time, Delta has gradually deepened by the changing role of PLC products in the market influence.

It is understood that, in 2007, Delta PLC in mainland China sales over 100 million yuan. During the year, Delta is also aware it is not possible solely on their own long-term, high-speed development. That is, in the year, Delta will be the training of dealer application engineers to implement into a system. According to Manager Zhang introduced, adhere to this year, Delta accumulated more than 400 trained engineers, the engineers for the rapid growth of the Delta made a great contribution.

In the eyes of zhang, PLC is a cultural use, and the cultivation of this culture have to be renewed, Delta has started to plan large-scale investment in school-enterprise cooperation. Not long ago, was successfully held in Nanjing Institute of Automation Laboratory of the first opening ceremony of the Delta, the Delta will be set up in major cities across the country the same laboratory. Collaboration with tertiary institutions, the promotion of Delta products will be more in-depth, but also for school students in research and practice to provide more kinds of useful attempt.

New design is more close to user needs
Delta DVP-PLC products, higher than the industry because of its small PLC's implementation, communication speed and large capacity 16k steps and other characteristics, has become one focus of the industry. The product provides the industrial market is the most common communication format Ethernet (Modbus TCP, EtherNet / IP), DeviceNet, CANopen, PROFIBUS-DP, RS232/422/485, addition to the PLC communication modules, there are also various types of remote I / O and Gateway for the selection, more importantly, stable high-speed industrial networks through the combination of Delta to the full range of industrial automation products to meet customer applications more convenient and easy solution. Meanwhile, in order to achieve industrial-grade and stable quality, the chosen design elements are all industry standard, by design engineers to do a single component of the interference and resistance to environmental testing in the factory done by professional R & D engineers test the complete system application.

DVP-PLC's design philosophy is to meet customer's use, and to the higher functionality, simple operation, fast communication, enhance security and diversity of programming language is Delta International PLC department has been working hard in the direction, Delta in 2009 officially launched in June DVP-ES2 Series is designed and developed this idea. Manager Zhang also introduced this year to win the market launch of the Delta in addition to high praise of the DVP-ES2 Series PLC, also introduced a new line with the standard IEC61131-3 programming software ISPSoft, to meet the international standard controller editing syntax. Currently available Ladder, Function Block grammar, the future will be rolled out ST, SFC and other programming syntax. It is understood that Delta 2010 launch DVP-SS2/SX2 Qiangzai high functional PLC and DVP-10PM thin high-performance motion controller, and the AH series of medium-sized PLC.

As a small PLC based Delta PLC products, most of the applications in the industrial machinery industry, application level and the level of mechanical design are inseparable. Manager Zhang explains: "In a long period of time, the amount of winning depend on the situation will gradually develop both qualitative and quantitative development. Along with the emphasis on the strengthening of energy saving, high speed, high precision industrial machinery proportion increasing degree of automation is also driving the PLC to enhance the industrial requirements. "He also pointed out that the small PLC market in China, industrial bus will be in volume. In some areas, PLC and CNC cross each other, like a large PLC and DCS as the boundaries become increasingly blurred. More features will replace the mechanical structure and flexible action, machinery will become more simple, easy, efficient and less material waste. PLC market trends for precise control, but also makes the Delta PLC products will become the industry a much-anticipated weathervane.

NetApp offers Microsoft cloud blueprint

Hoping to ease customers' migration to the cloud, NetApp has released a reference architecture for deploying its storage systems as part of a Microsoft Hyper-V cloud system.

The reference architecture should help enterprises virtualize their NetApp block-based storage systems so they can be managed from Microsoft System Center.

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The architecture is part of Microsoft's Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program, which Microsoft introduced last November. The reference architectures can be used by customers for "building turn-key private clouds," said Robert Wahbe, Microsoft corporate vice president for servers and tools.

The reference architecture could "save months of configuration work," according to Phil Brotherton, vice president and general manager of the Microsoft Business Unit at NetApp. The architecture includes a design guide, a bill of materials and a template for requesting price quotes from channel partners, system integrators and service providers that might build the clouds.

The NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track architecture provides a blueprint for assembling NetApp storage-area-network hardware and software, along with Cisco and Microsoft components, into a functioning cloud system. .

"We've done some early validation of systemwide configurations," said Ryan O'Hara, Microsoft senior director for System Center. At the TechEd conference, being held this week in Atlanta, NetApp is running a system built using this architecture.

The architecture deploys NetApp unified storage systems running the Data OnTap storage operating system, with a software bundle that includes the NetApp OnCommand 3.0 plug-in for Microsoft, slated to be commercially available in August. It also uses Cisco Unified Computing System servers and Cisco Nexus switches. Also included in the design are Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and Microsoft System Center components, including Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, Microsoft System Center Service Manager and Opalis Integration Server.

NetApp is not alone at TechEd in releasing Fast Track reference architectures for Microsoft software. Cisco released a new set of SQL Server Fast Track reference architectures for building data warehouses. The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Fast Track Data Warehouse 3.0 for Cisco Unified Computing System provides a template for building data warehouses using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 on Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers, along with NetApp or EMC storage.

A second Cisco architecture, entitled Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 OLTP reference configuration for Cisco UCS, is optimized for online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, using UCS C-Series Rack Mount Servers, the Microsoft software stack, and EMC unified midrange and enterprise storage configurations.

Shakers and movers of yesteryear: Where are they now? Part II

Ed Guilbert. Sometimes called the "Father of Electronic Data Interchange," the early form of business-to-business e-commerce that preceded the Web, Guilbert played a key role as head of the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee in helping create EDI standards that went into wide use by the late 70s and were required in supplier communications by many companies, including Wal-Mart, in the early 80s. To rally businesses to the EDI cause, Guilbert used to wander through his business audience tossing out dollar bills, shouting, "This is about money!" Deceased, 1993.

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Jim Manzi. Chair, president and CEO of Lotus Development Corp. from 1984-1995, until it was acquired by IBM in a hostile takeover bid — that was fought by Manzi — for $3.5 billion. Lotus was founded in 1982 by Mitch Kapor (who helped found advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990) and Jonathan Sachs. Its early flagship product, Lotus 1-2-3, a combined spreadsheet, graphics and database package gained wide adoption in the early years of the PC. But in its networked product, Lotus Notes groupware, Lotus set a new pace again. Lotus, which prized its independent culture, grew attractive as a takeover target and IBM went on to snag it. Manzi left. He's now chairman of the board at ThermoFisher Scientific, as well as head of Stonegate capital, an investment firm he founded mainly to invest in startups.

Craig McCaw. The four McCaw brothers, as they were often called, were wheeler-dealers in wireless, buying up available cellular licenses, then MCI's cellular division in 1986, then selling McCaw Cellular to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994. Though they'd become billionaires, Craig McCaw, along with his brothers, didn't stop there. With Craig taking the lead, in 1995 they gained control of Nextel, which merged with Sprint in 2005. Craig went on to other ventures, founding Nextlink, merging with Concentric Network, which was renamed XO Communications. But that went bankrupt in 2002. In August 2003, McCaw founded Clearwire, a wireless broadband service provider. But on Dec. 31, 2011, he cut his ties with the firm he founded, whose majority owner is Sprint Nextel, by stepping down from his role as chairman of the board. Clearwire has been raising funds to help keep building out its wireless broadband network. It's quiet so far about what Craig McCaw will do next, but his Eagle River Holdings still holds a 4% stake in the company.

Barry Schrager. The "big iron" mainframe has been the workhorse of computing, since its early form in the 1960's. The pioneer in mainframe security, Barry Schrager, came along in the 1970's to invent the first mainframe secure-access software while assistant director at the University of Illinois computer center. With colleagues at the company he founded, SKK, he was designer and primary author of the ACF2 mainframe security system in 1978. Later sold, ACF2 is still on the market, marketed by CA. Schrager still keeps going in mainframe security as chief security architect at Vanguard Integrity Professionals.

Have The Best Cable Modem For Your Satisfaction

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Samsung Windows Phone updates resume

Microsoft has resumed rolling the first Windows Phone software update out to Samsung handsets.

Following reports of some users' phones being bricked by the installation, Microsoft removed the update for Samsung phones last week, but now feels ready to give it another go.

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Although Microsoft claimed that only 10 per cent of users experienced a problem updating their handsets, many reported stuck updates and bricked handsets that were completely unusable.

Fixative

The company appears to have fixed the issues that were playing silly beggars with Samsung's hardware.

Microsoft's Michael Stroh said in a blog post addressing the issues, "During the past week the engineering team has pinpointed and fixed problems that were preventing a small percentage of Windows Phones from installing the February software patch."

There's not much reward for all the drama that this update has brought though; it's simply a patch to make future updates easier to install.

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Chart: Apple's amazing year of iOS

Mobile devices running iOS generated $43.79 billion for Apple during calendar 2010, or about 57 percent of revenues. But it is the rise in overall revenue and net profit that is most significant, as seen from the chart above. Perhaps more surprising, Apple's calendar first quarter 2011 net profit was just slightly less than that of the holiday quarter, when iOS device sales were even stronger.

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The revenue curve from Q1 to Q4 2010 is simply stunning. Apple revenue nearly doubled, as did its net profit -- from $13.5 billion to $26.7 billion and $3.1 billion to $6 billion, respectively. In April 2010, Apple launched iPad, which generated about $10 billion in revenue during 2010. Without iPad, Apple would have generated only $66.28 billion last year -- still impressive.

By my reckoning, Apple sold about 81 million iOS devices during 2010 -- or about half the number Apple says had shipped by the end of first calendar quarter 2011.

While the gains across the metrics are absolutely impressive for calendar 2010, first quarter 2011 stands out by a different measure. Not surprisingly, Apple revenue fell by about $2 billion going from the holiday quarter, which is to be expected. What's startling: Net profit dipped slightly, $5.99 billion from $6 billion, during sequential quarters.

The revenue surge is over, and the chart for 2011 will likely be different. Apple is forecasting $23 billion revenue for second calendar quarter. Throughout 2010, Apple exceeded forecasts by at least $1 billion a quarter -- $2.67 billion for calendar Q1 2011. So calendar Q2 could still grow sequentially. Wall Street analysts are projecting $24.45 billion for the quarter, but their estimates have been running low, too.

Googles Chrome OS starts to get real but still falls shy

The all-in-the-cloud OS gains polish as Google prepares for the first Chromebooks to ship, but apps remain awkward

If the rumors are right, Google will announce today at its Google I/O conference that Samsung (and perhaps others) are shipping laptops running Google's Chrome OS this summer. There's been a sharp increase in Chrome OS beta updates in the last few weeks, so something is up; Google may be on schedule to deliver the shipping Chrome OS this summer, giving reality to the old "Webtone" promise of Sun Microsystems in which the Web is the operating system and devices simply are portals to it -- what we now call cloud computing.

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Chrome OS is basically the Chrome 11 Web browser running by itself on a laptop, which InfoWorld.com has dubbed a "Chromebook." There is no traditional OS like Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X underneath that can run other applications. Everything happens in Chrome OS, and most notions of what a computer provides, such as printer ports and removable storage, simply don't apply.

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A Chromebook has solid-state memory to hold the OS, cache files for when you're working, and stubs to the Web applications you run (essentially, glorified bookmarks), but everything else resides in the cloud, which is accessed via the Chromebooks' built-in Wi-Fi or 3G cellular service. Google hopes a lot of that activity will be on its cloud, such as Google Docs, but a Chromebook works with any AJAX-based website (sorry, no ActiveX) or service.

In recent weeks, the updated Chrome OS beta on a prototype Chromebook has become much more responsive and smoother. The betas in December through March definitely had that beta feel and stuttery performance, but not the betas that have been coming since late April. If you use the Chrome browser, you know the Chrome OS experience: simple, spare, capable, and fast.

The Chromebook isn't just a laptop with a new OS
But without a "real" OS underneath, you really are dependent on the cloud. Printing, for example, requires that you have an ePrint-capable printer (Hewlett-Packard makes a few models, which also work with iPhones and iPads) or route your print jobs through Google's cloud print service, which basically means through a networked Windows PC or Mac. People print less and less, but the process is clunky and will be more complex than most will find acceptable. It's probably a plus that fewer and fewer of us have items to print anymore.

Likewise, storage is delivered through the cloud, so you can't transfer your photos directly via a USB cable or thumb drive to work on them in, say, Picasa. Instead, your camera will need its own wireless connection to transfer the images to a cloud photo service, and you'll work on them over wireless from your Chromebook. When your'e not using a Wi-Fi connection, you should expect to quickly eat through 3G data plans. Of course, the advantage of cloud-based storage is that your files are available to any device compatible with that service: PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. You don't have to remember to bring the files once they're uploaded.

Microsoft Office 2010 takes on all comers

Microsoft Office 2010 takes on all comers: Google Docs
It may seem odd to include a SaaS offering in this mix, but SaaS applications have been repeatedly positioned as challengers to desktop applications, and Google Docs is one of the most visible incarnations of same. It's improved enormously since its original incarnations, but I'm still skeptical of using it for anything more than fairly rudimentary work. The feature set is extremely basic, and the limitations of what can be accomplished within a Web browser hinder you all the more.

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Google Docs can work one of two ways: as a creator for new documents (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings) or an importer for existing ones in many common formats (Word, Excel, ODF, PDF, and so on). The formatting of newly created documents is limited but stable. You can download Google Docs documents in Office and ODF formats, and you won't run into compatibility problems or document degradation when opening them in Office or OpenOffice.org. Documents imported from outside translate reasonably well, but only up to a point, and there's often not much way to tell what will be preserved without importing a file and inspecting it by hand. It's best if you don't intend to rely heavily on fidelity to the original document and just need to examine the text itself.

The feature mix for text documents in Google Docs is useful, but very limited. A document can feature headers, footers, footnotes, and tables of contents -- but no indices. There's apparently no way to edit the underlying style sheet for a document or create new style declarations, so formatting has to be done by hand. Page numbers are handled very awkwardly -- they can be added only when you print a document and at no other time.

Many of the little quirks I observed when working with imported text documents are reminiscent of the problems that can creep in when switching between Word and OpenOffice.org. If a Word document has formatting stored in its master template (paragraph spacing, the default font, and so on), they don't show up consistently when the document is imported into Google Docs. Since this can happen with other programs, this is probably not a limitation of Docs per se, but you should be mindful of the fact.

The same rules about formatting and features apply with spreadsheets. Basic worksheets upload and render fine, but the more complex the document, the less chance you'll have of being able to work properly with the end result. The mortgage calculator spreadsheet, for instance, broke completely when uploaded, although simpler spreadsheets (no graphs) worked fine. Presentations fared about the same: The more complex the original document, the less chance of it being rendered in anything like a useful fashion. Transitions aren't preserved at all, which makes sense since they can't be added to presentations created in Docs itself anyway.

A major limitation of Google Docs is the fact that it's an in-browser application, with all of the possible behavior quirks that go with such a thing. An easy example: the trapping of keystrokes. If the document itself has focus and you press Ctrl-A, Google Docs interprets that as a command to select all the text in the document, which is to be expected. But if some other part of the window has focus -- maybe because of a stray mouse click -- then the browser's select-all function is invoked. This can be frustrating and further underscores the difference between a stand-alone application and a mix of HTML and JavaScript running in a Web browser. On top of that are all the quirks manifested by different browsers themselves, which after all this time is still an issue, I'm afraid.

One thing about Google Docs that I did appreciate is the way any document can be exported in a variety of common formats: Office, ODF, plain text, RTF, HTML, and PDF. This makes it an easy way to create those document types if all you have access to is a Web browser. I also liked the way multiple people can collaborate on a document in real time, a feature that will no doubt only become more useful and widely demanded over time.

Windows Intune, Microsoft's new cloud solution, launches March 23

Microsoft on Monday announced that its new cloud PC management solution, Windows Intune, will be launched in its first complete RTM build on March 23 at the Microsoft Management Summit, and will be commercially available in more than 35 countries thereafter.

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Windows Intune is a cloud-based desktop management solution which lets IT techs manage remote systems through their browser. Microsoft is marketing Intune toward two different types of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs.) First, companies that don't yet have a PC management infrastructure, and want one that won't incur a big material cost; Second, companies that have lots of "virtual" and remote employees.

First launched in beta just under a year ago, Windows Intune has the ability to: Manage Microsoft Updates, firewall and malware protection, monitor remote PCs and provide assistance, and keep track of hardware inventory and software licenses and compliance.

Windows Intune will be available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, United Kingdom and United States.

Current beta testers will continue to have access to Windows Intune until April 18, and companies interested in trying out the solution will be able to sign up for a 30-day trial when it launches in the next few weeks.

Microsoft, Juniper urged to patch dangerous IPv6 DoS hole

He adds: “While individual vendors may put in patches to cover up the fundamental problem, the fact is that conforming implementations of the spec are inevitably vulnerable to route contamination even if they hide the resource exhaustion problem. Until the IETF fix the protocol the best course of action is to only accept routes from routers that you trust by whitelisting legitimate route sources.”

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If RA Guard is not available, another workaround within a Windows environments is to turn off Router Discovery, says Sam Bowne, a computer networking instructor at City College San Francisco who has also been pressuring Microsoft to fix the hole. Bowne has produced a video that shows how easy the exploit is to do. (See it yourself in a related blog post on Network World’s Microsoft Subnet.) Turning off Router Discovery “is a simple solution, requiring only one command, but it will prevent you from using Stateless Autoconfiguration. It's probably appropriate for servers, but not as good for client machines,” Bowne says.

Bowne says another possibility is to set your firewall to block rogue Router Advertisements, while whitelisting them from authorized gateways. But both Bowne and Heuse say that this method is easily defeated. Heuse is even planning on demonstrating an attack that bypasses this fix later this month.

Horley also says that the attack isn’t limited to those connected to a wired LAN, either. “It does affect Windows 7 and Server 2008 machines on wireless networks too,” he said. “There is no fix for wireless networks as RA Guard is not a feasible option on wireless.”

On the other hand, Horley also admits that on the wireless side, “the greatest risk of being affected is when joining an open network. Assuming the machine is on a trusted, secure wireless network, unless it is ‘owned’ there is no reason someone would run this exploit unless they were being malicious.” He also notes: “There are likely far better exploits out there then a simple DOS attack if you have managed to connect to the secure wireless network.”

Meanwhile Bowne is continuing to push Microsoft to take three actions: issue a security warning telling people to disable router discovery on servers and adjust their firewall to block rogue Router Advertisements on clients; shut Router Discovery off by default in future products; and patch the network software so that it limits the amount of CPU that can be consumed by the Router Discovery and Stateless Autoconfiguration processes.

Report: Open XML ISO Standard Unlikely

Microsoft is fairly likely not to have its Open XML document format accepted as a standard by the ISO, research firm Gartner said in a research note last week.

The reasoning behind this is that the standardization body has already approved the OpenDocument Format (ODF), and would likely not accept two standards.

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Gartner also had bright news for ODF, saying that it felt fairly confident that by the beginning of the next decade, half of all governments and a fifth of commercial organizations would use the format to exchange documents.

Microsoft's Open XML was submitted to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (Ecma) for approval in November of last year. Microsoft had hoped to use this as a prelude to ISO submission, but with ODF's approval the success of doing so is now unclear.

"Until Massachusetts' decision, Microsoft seemed to ignore growing support for ODF," Gartner said. "Microsoft plans to submit its XML format to ISO after Ecma approval. But ISO will not approve multiple XML document formats."

Gartner recommended that those who could be affected by more widespread use of ODF begin looking for applications that support the format now. However, it said migration to other platforms, while cheaper to acquire, might end up being expensive in the end.

"If you need compatibility with Microsoft Office formats or cannot cost justify a migration, lobby Microsoft to support ODF and look for plug-ins that allow you to open and save ODF files from within Microsoft applications," the firm suggested.

First 'Bluetooth Killer' Wi-Fi Direct hardware gets certified

Wi-Fi Direct certification has begun. The Wi-Fi Alliance announced today that products from Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Ralink, Realtek, and Cisco will be the first Certified Wi-Fi Direct hardware in the test bed for the new wireless networking standard.

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The key feature of the new Wi-Fi Direct standard is that it lets devices with 802.11 wireless radios communicate directly with one another without the need of a wireless router between them. Wi-Fi Direct devices near one another can transfer content at speeds 25 times faster than they could with Bluetooth 2.0. As a result, the standard has been referred to as a Bluetooth Killer in IEEE meetings.

"We designed Wi-Fi Direct to unleash a wide variety of applications which require device connections, but do not need the internet or even a traditional network," said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. "Wi-Fi Direct empowers users to connect devices - when, where and how they want to, and our certification program delivers products that work well together, regardless of the brand."

Because it's a Wi-Fi Alliance software standard, it has the added benefits of legacy compatibility with standard Wi-Fi client devices, support for WPA2 security, and widespread support from the hardware industry.

"Now that the final certification is in place, we expect that Wi-Fi Direct will enhance the tremendous growth of this already burgeoning market," Michael Hurlston, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's WLAN business said today. "Consumers will be able to connect whenever and wherever they want, unleashing a new realm of applications for device-to-device connectivity."

Broadcom's first Wi-Fi Direct certified product is a multi-antenna dual-band 802.11n PCIe card, but the company's participation in these early stages of development is significant because it's a majority player in the 802.11n Wi-Fi chipset business for mobile handsets.

Halo 2 Released for Certification

Bungie Studios has commenced the final countdown to Halo 2. Halo 2, a wildly popular Xbox title, has been turned over for release to certification (RTC). Barring any last minute showstoppers, the game is scheduled to hit the shelves November 9 -- just in time for the holidays. In Halo 2, the Covenant -- an invasive alien race bent on the destruction of mankind -- has set its sights on Earth. All that stands between the citizens of Earth and total annihilation is a genetically altered "super solider" named Master Chief. Halo 2 is available via preorder from most retail outlets.

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