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.
With Apple continuing to dominate the headlines and industry buzz with one acclaimed release after another, it’s easy to forget that the so-called ”Evil Empire” has been rather quietly refining their Surface computing technology. We’re talking about more than multi-touch features for your mobile phone; Surface is perhaps most intriguing for its’ “surface” adaptability and potential virtual applications. Check out this video demonstration of Microsoft’s Sphere prototype. I’m an Apple guy myself, but I must admit that Sphere could be interesting…
Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University
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.
Thanks to Nick Cueva for permission to use this Photo.
There isn’t a profitable business segment today that isn’t competitive and that even includes the SPAMMING industry. Two of the biggest Spamming organizations, Nugache and Storm are currently going at each other head to head to dominate the SPAM/malware market. Yes, there is a market for SPAM and malware. Surprised? These organizations are not owned and operated by legitimate business people. No in is yet sure who is behind Storm but many IT security experts feel that Nugache is linked to the Russian Mob, aka the Russian Business Network.
Both of these organizations distribute SPAM through Zombie networks and both have been involved in highly criminal activities. Zombie networks are composed of PC’s across the globe, which have been compromised by some type of Trojan Horse which allows the Zombie controllers to then use them to send SPAM, conduct phishing attacks or other types of illegal activities. Each of these organizations control hundreds of thousands of computers. Take Storm for example. Some IT security experts have estimated that the Storm Zombie network, called the Storm Botnet, runs anywhere from one to fifty million computer systems. Even the most conservative estimates place the size somewhere around 150,000 to one million. The Storm Botnet in 2007 accounted for 8% of all malware on Microsoft Windows computers.
This year, Storm has an extremely viable competitor, Nugache. Although its zombie technology is not as sophisticated as Storm’s (for instance, Storm is somehow able to send SPAM in the native language of the receiver while Nugache cannot) Nugache has a big thing going for it right now, price. In an attempt to unseat Storm from its botnet dominance, Nugache has initiated a price war. Nugache will send one million emails for only $100. For $800 you can send 10 million emails.
It is because of the ridiculously meager amount of money that is required to SPAM a million people that SPAMMING is very profitable, even if the response rate to SPAM is only .01%. It is the sophistication of these controllable zombie networks that worry IT security professionals. Many fear that the current war for control of the malware market is only the beginning of this illegal destructive industry.
Thanks to David K for permission to use this Photo.
Back in 2000, we were constantly told that the world was running out of IP addresses. This was because IPV4, the IP standard we use for IP addresses only has so many mathematical combinations, thus there is a defined limit to the number of IP addresses that can be utilized. Due to the wide spread use of IP in the world, a usage rate far beyond what the creators of IP ever visualized; the IT world was stressing out as to how to address the problem. The solution was a new standard called IPV6 which introduced more bits into the addressing scheme. In turn, millions of additional mathematical combinations were created, resulting in an equal number of additional IP addresses.
Unfortunately, IPV6 is more complicated than its predecessor, requiring a degree of training for networking professionals. We were told back then that IPV6 would be implemented by the middle of the decade and alleviate the crisis.
Well guess what? It’s 2008 and the world hasn’t run out of IP addresses which is why IPV6 is barely used in the industry today. This is because of the wide popularity of NAT, Network Address Translation, which is used by most organizations that have a WAN presence.
For those unfamiliar with NAT, Network Address Translation allows a single device, such as a router to act as an agent between the Internet (or “public network”) and a local (or “private”) network. This means that only a single, unique IP address is required to represent an entire group of computers. This isn’t to say that IPV6 will wither on the vine. As of right now, government offices are required to transition to IPV6 within the next couple of years and other organizations are planning such an implementation in the future, but IPV4 is and will continue to be alive and well for some time to come.
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.
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