Two months ago, my XBOX 360 that I purchased over a year ago came down with the infamous “Ring of Death,” a problem that all too many Xbox owners are aware of. In short, the Ring of Death makes your Xbox unusable due to a flaw in the connection between the CPU and motherboard. Microsoft has sold over 11 million Xbox systems and some estimate that between one third and one half of these suffer the flaw that results in the red ring of death symptom. Like Vista, this has proven to be a PR nightmare for the product line. As a result, Microsoft has extended its standard year warranty by an extra year so that any and all Xbox owners who experience the problem can get their box repaired for free by mailing in the unit with the supplied shipping box for UPS.
The fix has cost Microsoft nearly two billion dollars. The Ring of Death is also a classic example of how the Internet has become a highly used research tool to troubleshoot and find home remedies for broken products. One can go to YouTube and find dozens of videos showing how common users have temporarily remedied the Ring of Death through the “Towel Trick”. Using the towel trick, one wraps their Xbox in 3 towels and leaves the unit on for at least twenty minutes. Encasing the box in towels causes the unit to overheat the unit which actually reseats the CPU in the motherboard by heating up the solder connections. The fix is only temporary as it only lasts for a week or so, but allows you to finish your game.
One of my first postings was concerning virtual server technology and its industry leader, VMware. I am an avid user and supporter of VMware’s product and use it extensively in my employer’s network. Like many veterans in the field, I feel that virtualization is where the future is headed in IT.
Since that posting, VMware has been the victim of a roller coaster ride. The stock price last year shot up from its IPO in the upper 20’s to 125 a share only months later. Industry journals and magazines were continuing a steady stream of positive articles on the new virtual giant.
Since then, things haven’t been as rosy for the ten year old firm. While nearly all stocks have fallen, VMware’s stock price plummeted to $38. Its parent company, EMC, fired its CEO who led the company since its inception. These symptoms stem from the fact that a giant killer has its sights set on them, Microsoft. The software giant released its own hypervisor (the industry term for a virtual server manager) in July. Like the Internet Browser in the 80’s, Microsoft realizes that it nearly missed the boat on the virtualization market. Like most its first generation products, its hypervisor is not near the product that VMware has.
VMware’s Vmotion provides a degree of high availability for its virtual server that can’t be matched by any of its competitors. VMware also runs more efficiently and has a lower I/O rate than Microsoft. Can you sense a “But” coming. Here is the “But”. Microsoft has their hypervisor priced at only $28 when appended to the purchase of Windows Server 2008. VMware’s basic ESX hypervisor is priced at $495 per dual-core processor. $2,995 for its full package that includes Vmotion.
Though their product is superior, it is obvious that the company will not be able to sustain its pricing model in a growing competitive market. History also shows that Microsoft usually unveils a fully competitive product by its third generation so VMware is most likely on the clock. Microsoft has killed some mighty competitors in the past such as Netscape and Novel. The question that virtual advocates are asking is what will be VMware’s next move that will allow them to escape the same fate.
Thanks to Orin Optiglot for permission to use this Photo.
I was reading CSO magazine the other day (Corporate Security Officer) and came across a fascinating new security product for executives who transport highly confidential company documents. A pharmaceutical issued a high security briefcase for its research executives. The briefcase has two security modes. The “Loss Proof” function alerts the executive with an alarm signal when he is more than five meters away from the case. This is to not only discourage someone from lifting the case, but prevents the owner from leaving the case incidentally unattended.
The “Robbery Proof” mode is designed so that if the owner is accosted and forced to give up the case, the case will wait until the briefcase is more than 100 meters away and then send a 30,000 volt shock throughout the case as well as sound an ear shattering alarm. Click here to check out a similar case.
Thanks to tifotter for permission to use this Photo.
YouTube enthusiasts were denied access to their daily dose of online videos earlier this year when the site went down for two hours back in February. The culprit was not due to any type of hardware failure, but due to the direct efforts of the Pakistani government. Pakistan, like a number of countries, such as China, Thailand and Turkey to name a few—regularly attempt to monitor internet traffic by their citizens and block designated sites, especially YouTube.
Pakistan Telecom, and the country’s main ISP PCCW, blocked access by hijacking YouTube web address. Anyone based in the country who then attempted to visit the video sharing site was redirected to an unknown alternative site. Unfortunately, the hijack didn’t stop there, and was leaked to the wider Internet.
This meant that ISPs around the world started blocking access too, which resulted in the site being unobtainable by users in Germany, China, USA, Russia, the UK, and Australia. The problem lasted for approximately two hours, before YouTube engineers issued a statement concerning the problem, and PCCW stopped the blockage.
The event has proven to be more than just an embarrassing mishap for the Pakistani government, but has brought up concerns as to the vulnerability of the Internet. Is it now possible for a country to bring down designated website traffic world wide?
Thanks to David Cardoso for permission to use this Photo.
Ten years ago the big upgrade in network speed was from 10 MB to 100 MB. Organizations quickly began upgrading their LAN infrastructures to take advantage of this increase in performance. This meant of course that CAT 3 cable had to be replaced with CAT 5 cable and all the switches and routers that couldn’t handle 100 MB had to be replaced. Most organizations had to upgrade the NICs in all of their computers as well. Five years ago, organizations started upgrading their datacenter structure to 1 Gig for all of their servers in order to enlarge the pipeline of data moving into and out of the datacenter from users.
Although some organizations have provided 1 Gig throughput for their entire network, meaning that once again most switches, routers and NICs have to be replaced, many have not felt that the return on investment (ROI) is worth it. Despite this, vendors are now touting the new 10 Gig Ethernet standard. It will be interesting to see what type of demand for a speed that will most definitely require an organization to upgrade all involved switches and routers and NICS. The cabling for 10 Gig is different as well.
There are not many people who can seriously put into question the projected dominance of Google search technology in the future evolution of the Internet. Through his brilliantly engineered software architecture and conceptual maps of its' potential applications, supergenius Tim Berners-Lee, the acknowledged inventor of the World Wide Web, has for years been carrying his message of a "semantic web" that will make the current incarnation of the web seem like your Dad's Rolodex by comparison.
In Berners-Lee vision, the next generation of web technology will be semantic, i.e. all data will be interconnected and capable of communicating with other "information" through a common language so speak. The following article discusses the development of the semantic web alongside the related, but not parallel development of Google’s search, mapping, and tracking applications. Berners-Lee is not anti-Google, but he is passionately against the centralization of web data and any form of proprietary control over Internet content.
I also encourage you to check out this very insightful video presentation in which Berners-Lee takes you on a virtual tour of the Web from its’ beginnings into tomorrow. This is fascinating stuff. Please share your thoughts with the Ashworth Blog community after brainstorming on your own.
Johnny Lee is a brilliant technologist who’s become a YouTube star through his amazing demonstration of Wii remote hacks. After watching this video, you’ll never look at your Wii the same again. I love this video because Lee once again proves how integral human creativity and ingenuity are to the process of technological innovation. In this case, a relatively unknown guy like Lee on center stage at the famed TED conference, reinventing the very essence of what an already popular technology’s applications can ultimately be. These hacks are insane. Don’t miss this one…
Thanks to Jamie Hladky for permission to use this Photo.
You have to learn how to crawl before you learn how to walk, but once you learn a foundation of IT skills in Ashworth University’s information technology programs and anchor yourself in the IT labor force, here are the ten hottest tech skill sets you should aim to learn in the next five years according to Tech Republic.
Voice over IP - sales of pure IP PBX systems for the first quarter of 2007 increased 76% over the first quarter of the previous year
Unified Communications - the convergence of different communications technologies, such as e-mail, voicemail, text messaging, and fax
Hybrid Networks – Networks are no longer all Windows or all Linux, they are a hodgepodge of different systems and IT pros need to learn more than one of them.
Wireless Technologies – everything’s going wireless it seems.
Remote User Support – with more employees working off-site today, help support personnel must provide remote support to anywhere.
Mobile User Support – more and more organizations are providing blackberries and other smart portable devices for their employees that must be supported.
Software-as-a-Service – or SaaS as it is referred to in technical articles. With the popularity of Web 2.0, the trend is to now provide software applications over the Internet rather than installing them on each and every computer.
Virtualization – With the dominance of VMWare and the soon to be released 2008 Virtual Application from Microsoft, virtualization is THE buzzword today along with its countless benefits.
IPv6 – Although this standard has not grown in popularity as of yet, mostly because the wide usage of NAT has allowed us to not run out of IP addresses on the Internet as fast as predicted, this standard is going to come about within the next five years.
Security - A skill set that will probably always be in the top 10.
Thanks to Miguel Lopes for permission to use this Photo.
The architecture of cyberspace is interconnected, timeless, and invisible from the inside-out. On the Ashworth University Blog, we’re not afraid of the matrix and try to share perspectives from around the world, just a 0 1 code, on the technology issues that influence how this network will evolve in complexity, and most of us would like that evolution to be open rather than closed in principle. Earlier this year, the nation of Estonia was involved in what by any measure must be considered one of the most large scale and sophisticated “cyber attacks” in history, an attack that operated on several levels simultaneously, resulting in the virtual collapse of this nation’s electronic infrastructure. Instantly, the fundamental question, “who did this?” was buzzing with elements of fear and conspiracy. Did Vladimir Putin and Russia conduct this operation in the shadow of political revenge? Was the attack the work of loosely connected and politically marginalized hackers who were sending their own message to an establishment attempting to exert increased state control over the Internet, i.e. you’re more vulnerable than you think and we’re waiting for your next move. The following video consists of an interview with information security expert, Dmitry Skylyarov, in which he shares his inside perspective on what occurred and the big picture implications of what is perhaps the most misunderstood yet powerful of political weapons; the large scale, well conceived, organized, and executed cyberattack. This is a must watch interview. Click on the image above to watch this video. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
If you are in the IT Field or considering getting into it, you don’t need rose colored glasses to see a promising future for yourself. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that IT will be the fastest growing sector of our economy for the next ten years. They also report that the three fastest growing jobs in the US are network system and data communication analysts, computer systems analysts and software application engineers. In fact, in just about any top ten list, you will find IT has the most positions of any field.Now couple this tremendous growth with the following statistic:
The labor force for the 25 to 54 age group in IT will only grow at a dismal .2% between 2006 and 2016.
Do you want to be in demand for the next decade? Stay committed to your program studies and your hard work will pay off. The bottom line is that it’s important to obtain as many skill sets as you can in the rapidly expanding IT industry. If you need assistance with your lessons, I encourage you to reach out to me in the comments section of this blog. I always look forward to hearing from my students!
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