Category: Comments & opinions

Larry Page said European governments are not doing enough to develop technology Google’s CEO Larry Page claims European governments are not doing enough to invest in new technologies and, as a result, risk losing their competitive edge. Page told the Financial Times that innovation is driven by people being amibitious, not by technological advances. “Why can’t we get more of these things going in Europe? Like celebrating technology, having a friendly environment for it, having more investment in science and a basic understanding and entrepreneurialism and making money and moving quickly and…

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Stand outside a juice bar anywhere in Los Angeles from Silver Lake to Venice and ask the question, “Hey, how’s your screenplay coming along?” to 10 complete strangers and you’ll get 10 very passionate responses. I’ve been in L.A. for a while now and I’ve heard the jokes from my friends in San Francisco about “Hollywood Style.” It’s all about who you know, where you saw them and what outfit you were wearing when you pitched your latest project to their agent. Of course, that’s just a caricature of the…

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A company spokesman said the technology, especially the sensor hardware and algorithms, will be made available to other hardware makers. Microsoft plans to license its Microsoft Band smartwatch technology to other manufacturers, with an emphasis on the sensors powering them, a company representative said Friday. Whether Microsoft plans to put in place a formal program, such as it has for Windows Phone, remains unclear. The Band does not run an operating system per se, but on Microsoft’s wearable firmware, optimized for low-power micro devices, the spokesman said in an email.…

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London, 23 October, 2014 – On Thursday, October 23, 2014, Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened a new regional datacenter in Germany. The new “region” is located in the Frankfurt area and offers two availability zones, and each zone has dedicated servers, storage, power and Internet connections — so any problems with one zone should not affect the other. With the existing datacenters in Ireland, this means that AWS now has two “regions” and five (three in Ireland and two in Frankfurt) availability zones in Europe. Although AWS had been planning…

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We probably all know that obesity is becoming a big (pardon the pun) problem in the developed world and just becoming bigger. While we obviously need food to survive, Westerners in particular have access to so much food now that it has become unhealthy—and we are dying early as a result. It’s a mindset that more is always better — more food, more choices — but that’s not always the case. This is a similar phenomenon to the one I see with businesses and governments that are amassing data (big…

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After October 31, 2014 – Microsoft will no longer provide its PC partners or systems builders with copies of Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium and/or Ultimate to preinstall on new PCs. This means that OEMs will be able to continue to sell their stock of PCs running these versions of Windows 7, but they won’t be allowed to replenish their supply. (Last year, on October 31, Microsoft ceased selling shrink-wrapped copies of Windows 7 at retail.) That looming October 31, 2014 deadline does not apply to PCs preinstalled with…

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The Internet of Things is upon us and has the potential to dramatically change our lives at a dizzying pace. From wearable technology to fully connected homes and vehicles, Gartner believes that the IoT market will grow from 0.9 billion units today to 26 billion units by 2020. This is an almost 30-fold increase, which will diversify the industry and result in a $1.9 trillion global market value. Although it sometimes appears that IoT is all about connecting Things to the Internet its real value comes from merging and analyzing…

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Two of the greatest technological and entrepreneurial leaders of this age are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but how will we remember them in terms of their legacy of leadership and entrepreneurship? Who will we remember in years to come for their legacy to future generations? Gates has the advantage of still having time to shape his legacy, whereas Jobs’s deeds are now cast in stone and open to interpretation. Maybe it’s a little unfair to set this up as a boxing match between two entrepreneurial heavyweights, but my question…

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Hm. Do optimists really have more fun? QuoTW Google researchers came clean about a nasty little security vulnerability they discovered in SSL 3.0 this week, though not before El Reg first caught wind of it. The backdoor into the ancient old encryption standard can only be used if you can intercept the victim’s packets, potentially with a malicious Wi-Fi link, but once they’re in, hackers can slurp your cookie data. Security expert Robert Graham explained: POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) allows the hacking of clients – your web…

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For a long time now, the retail payment market has been an exemplar of stability with well-established and socially accepted payment methods and little incentive for breakthrough innovation. However in the last five years, thanks to technological evolution and the impact of new market entrants, an unprecedented change in the way card payment instruments are issued and processed has been taking place. For a long time now, the retail payment market has been an exemplar of stability with well-established and socially accepted payment methods and little incentive for breakthrough innovation.…

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