54818287
submission
dcblogs writes:
U.S. government contracts often require bidders to have achieved some level of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level. CMMI arose some 25 years ago via the backing of the Department of Defense and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It operated as a federally funded research and development center until a year ago, when CMMI's product responsibility was shifted to a private, profit-making LLC, the CMMI Institute. The Institute is now owned by Carnegie Mellon. Given that the CMMI Institute is now a self-supporting firm, any requirement that companies be certified by it — and spend the money needed to do so — raises a natural question. "Why is the government mandating that you support a for-profit company?" said Henry Friedman, the CEO of IR Technologies, a company that develops logistics defense related software and uses CMMI. The value of a certification is subject to debate. To what extent does a CMMI certification determine a successful project outcome? CGI Federal, the lead contractor at Healthcare.gov, is a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, it achieved the highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level for development certification, only the 10th company in the U.S. to do so.
54669191
submission
dcblogs writes:
This year may be remembered for its striking number of reports and warning of calamitous events. The National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report that included a number of dire possibilities ahead, including the prospect of a catastrophic solar storm, on par with the 1859 Carrington Event. Historical records suggest a return period of 50 years for a repeat of the Quebec-level storm that knocked out the power for 6 million in 1989, and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event, according to Lloyd's, in a report this year. Scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory recently demonstrated in tests that "geomagnetic disturbances have the power to disrupt and possibly destroy electrical transformers, the backbone of our nation's utility grid." This was also the year the average daily level of CO2 reached a concentration above 400 parts per million. In a recent National Academies report this year, "Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises," scientists recommend creation of a global early warning system to alert mankind to abrupt climate changes. A recent paper in Nature, Abrupt rise of new machine ecology beyond human response time, said financial trading systems are driving transaction times down to the speed of light, and "the quickest that someone can notice potential danger and physically react, is approximately 1 second."
54633735
submission
dcblogs writes:
The tech industry is seeing a shift toward a more independent, contingent IT workforce. About 18% of all IT workers today are self-employed, according to an analysis by Emergent Research, a firm focused on small businesses trends. This independent IT workforce is growing at the rate of about 7% per year, which is faster than the overall growth rate for independent workers generally, at 5.5%. A separate analysis by research firm Computer Economics finds a similar trend. This year, contract workers make up 15% of a typical large organization's IT staff at the median. This is up from a median of just 6% in 2011, said Longwell. The last time there was a similar increase in contract workers was in 1998, during the dot.com boom and the run-up to Y2K remediation efforts.
54199603
submission
dcblogs writes:
Cloud adopters face serious risk in the next two years because of the strong possibility that their provider will be acquired or forced out of business, according to Gartner.The research firm is predicting a major consolidation in cloud services and estimates that about 25% of the top 100 IT service providers in the infrastructure space won't be around by 2015. "One in four vendors will be gone for whatever reason — acquisition, bankruptcy," said William Maurer, a Gartner analyst. Most of the time, the changes will come through acquisition. There is pressure on providers to cut costs, but Maurer is advising enterprise users to be gentle with their vendors. "You need to make to make sure that your service providers are successful," said Maurer. "Give them a chance to make a reasonable return on their investments, give them a chance to make some money."
54120247
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dcblogs writes:
Goldman Sachs, a major player in one of the most risk adverse industries, embraces commodity approaches, open systems and platforms, and ultimately perhaps, the public cloud. Goldman Sachs has 36,000 employees. About 10,000 of those — more than 25% of the workforce — work, effectively, in technology. Of those tech workers, about 6,000 are developers. The investment bank's systems utilize, in total, about 500,000 compute cores. It believes commodity systems offer better protection against risk. Commodity systems allow for rapid change, said Donald Duet, global co-chief operating officer of the Goldman Sachs technology division. "Having more agility, having more ability to make changes rapidly, having more ability to move quickly, is a great risk mitigator," he said.
53987067
submission
dcblogs writes:
IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift is slowing the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. The increased use of SaaS is a major reason for the market shift, but so is virtualization to increase server capacity. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well, along with the purchase of denser servers capable of handling larger loads. The increased use of cloud-based providers is roiling the server market, and is expected to help send server revenue down 3.5% this year, according to IDC.
53899499
submission
dcblogs writes:
The National Research Council is recommending creation of an early warning system for abrupt climate change. Unlike like a hurricane warning system that's issued days in advance, or a tornado alert that arrives minutes ahead of impact, the climate change system would warn about events that could happen in a few years or a few decades but have consequences that last far longer than those of any storm. It says that abrupt climate has already begun, especially in the loss of sea ice. The report broadly calls the climate change threats "dragons," borrowing from the phase, "Here be dragons," that appears on a globe from the time of Christopher Columbus. The dragons are a "metaphor for unknown threats." The report recommends development of an "Abrupt Change Early Warning System" (ACEWS). Such a system would require significant computing power. "Computation resources, while increasing, still remain an obstacle for climate-scale high-resolutions simulations," the report said.
53881127
submission
dcblogs writes:
China overtook Japan in IT spending this year to become the world's second largest IT market, according to market research firm IDC. The U.S. remains the largest IT market in the world, still more than three times the size of China. China's overall IT spending is projected to hit $204 billion in 2014, versus $686 billion in the U.S. In 2013, China's IT spending will total $179 billion, beating Japan's $173 billion by $5 billion.
53845911
submission
dcblogs writes:
Internet security firm Symantec says it has discovered a new Linux worm that "appears to be engineered to target the Internet of Things." No attacks have yet been found in the wild, it reported. But as Alfred Hitchcock once said, "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." The worm discovered by Symantec attacks an old PHP vulnerability that was patched last year, and targets a small subset of Internet of Things devices, such as Linux-based home routers, set-top boxes, security cameras and industrial control systems.
53242141
submission
dcblogs writes:
In the global race to build the next generation of supercomputers — exascale — there is no guarantee the U.S. will finish first. But the stakes are high for the U.S. tech industry. Today, U.S. firms — Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel, in particular — dominate the global high performance computing (HPC) market. On the Top 500 list, the worldwide ranking of the most powerful supercomputers, HP now has 39% of the systems, IBM, 33%, and Cray, nearly 10%. That lopsided U.S. marketshare does not sit well with other countries, which are busy building their own chips, interconnects and their own high-tech industries in the push for exascale. Europe and China are deep into effort to build exascale machines, and now so is Japan. Kimihiko Hirao, director of the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science of Japan, said Japan is prepping a system for 2020. Asked whether he sees the push to exascale as a race between nations, Hirao said yes. Will Japan try to win that race? "I hope so," he said. "We are rather confident," said Hirao, arguing that Japan has the technology and the people to achieve the goal. Jack Dongarra, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and one of the academic leaders of the Top 500 supercomputing list, said Japan is serious and on target to deliver a system by 2020. Citing Japan's previous accomplishments in supercomputing, Dongarra said that "when the Japanese put down a plan to deliver a machine, they deliver the machine."
53116329
submission
dcblogs writes:
At this year's supercomputing conference, SC13, there is worry that supercomputing faces a performance plateau unless a disruptive processing tech emerges. "We have reached the end of the technological era" of CMOS, said William Gropp, chairman of the SC13 conference and a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Gropp likened the supercomputer development terrain today to the advent of CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor), the foundation of today's standard semiconductor technology. The arrival of CMOS was disruptive, but it fostered an expansive age of computing. The problem is "we don't have a technology that is ready to be adopted as a replacement for CMOS," said Gropp. "We don't have anything at the level of maturity that allows you to bet your company on." Peter Beckman, a top computer scientist at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, and head of an international exascale software effort, said large supercomputer system prices have topped off at about $100 million "so performance gains are not going to come from getting more expensive machines, because these are already incredibly expensive and powerful. So unless the technology really has some breakthroughs, we are imagining a slowing down."
53024557
submission
dcblogs writes:
The prospect of a big jump in the H-1B temporary work visas is worrisome to some academics, who say it will have consequences for students. Karen Panetta, a professor of electrical engineering at Tufts University, says a master's degree is the new bachelor degree in the employment market, and it is increasing the financial burdens on students. The cost of tuition in the U.S. "is so unrealistically prohibitive," what you are finding "is a class shift," said Panetta. These students will face increasing competition from lower-wage H-1B workers if the federal cap on visas rises — and Panetta doesn't believe people see the connection between student debt and H-1B workers. "We can't solve the problem unless we have all the parameters and variables of the equation," she said.
52988215
submission
dcblogs writes:
One year ago this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $120 million plan to develop a technology capable of radically extending battery life. "We want to change the game, basically," said George Crabtree, a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a physics professor who is leading the effort. The goal is to develop a battery that can deliver five times the performance, measured in energy density, that's also five times cheaper, and do it in five years. They are looking at three research areas. Researchers are considering replacing the lithium with magnesium that has two charges, or aluminum, which has three charges. Another approach investigates replacing the intercalation step with a true chemical reaction. A third approach is the use of liquids to replace crystalline anodes and cathodes, which opens up more space for working ions.
52730181
submission
dcblogs writes:
U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released 175 pages of "War Room" notes — a collection of notes by federal officials dealing with the problems at Healthcare.gov. They start Oct. 1, the launch day. The War Room notes catalog IT problems — dashboards weren't showing data, servers didn't have the right production data, third party systems weren't connecting to verify data, a key contractor had trouble logging on, and there wasn't enough server capacity to handle the traffic, or enough people on the help desks to answer calls. To top it off, some personnel needed for the effort were furloughed because of the shutdown. Volunteers were needed to work weekends, but there were bureaucratic complications. According to one note: "Donna's comp time approver is furloughed."
52661159
submission
dcblogs writes:
U.S. officials say the Healthcare.gov website is improving for its users, and in a press briefing Friday, Jeffrey Zients, the White House official in charge of ensuring the site gets fixed, touted the improvements so far: "The current page response times are now less than one second — or "1,000 milliseconds." But the only way to know for sure is to put their claims to an independent test, and that's exactly what was done by SmartBear. The Healthcare.gov homepage is loading quickly, ranging from 1.5 seconds to 4 seconds, according to this test, conducted during the workday Monday. The average time for the homepage was 3.04 seconds. Healthcare.gov was compared to a dozen other healthcare-related sites, which were also tested on Monday by SmartBear. It ranked well, placing fourth in this list. The Mayo Clinic was at the top with load times under a second, and the AARP was last, at well past 10 seconds. But once testing drilled past the homepage to interior pages, performance issues arose. Notably, there was an approximately 1.5-hour period during Monday's test when users were unable to fill out an enrollment application. The White House blamed the problem on load balancing.
