Cloud infrastructure is largely Linux-based, and cloud services’ overall growth is increasing Linux server deployments. As many as 30 percent of all servers shipped this year will be cloud services providers, according to IDC. This shift may be contributing to Linux hiring trends reported in a recent Dice study, which found that 77 percent of hiring managers have put hiring Linux talent on their list of priorities, up from 70 percent last year. In the third quarter of 2013, Linux servers accounted for 28 percent of all server revenue, compared to 21.5 percent in the same time frame of 2012. “The utilization of the Linux operating system is moving more and more up the stack,” says Dice president Shravan Goli. Linux is clearly the preferred platform for cloud computing deployments, notes Pund-IT analyst Charles King. Overall, 93 percent of the managers surveyed in the Dice report plan to hire Linux professionals in the next six months, while 86 percent of the Linux professionals responding in the survey said Linux proficiency has provided them with more career opportunities.
Author: Michael
Contagious wi-fi virus created by Liverpool researchers
A computer virus that can spread via wi-fi like a “common cold” has been created by researchers in Liverpool. In densely populated areas with lots of wi-fi networks, the virus can go from network to network finding weaknesses. Once in control of a wi-fi access point, it leaves computers on the network extremely vulnerable.
via BBC News – ‘Contagious’ wi-fi virus created by Liverpool researchers.
The Economist explains: Why South Korea is really an internet dinosaur
SOUTH KOREA likes to think of itself as a world leader when it comes to the internet. It boasts the world’s swiftest average broadband speeds (of around 22 megabits per second). Last month the government announced that it will upgrade the country’s wireless network to 5G by 2020, making downloads about 1,000 times speedier than they are now. Rates of internet penetration are among the highest in the world. There is a thriving startup community (Cyworld, rolled out five years before Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, was the most popular social network in South Korea for a decade) and the country leads the world in video games as spectator sports. Yet in other ways the futuristic country is stuck in the dark ages. Last year Freedom House, an American NGO, ranked South Korea’s internet as only “partly free”. Reporters without Borders has placed it on a list of countries “under surveillance”, alongside Egypt, Thailand and Russia, in its report on “Enemies of the Internet”. Is forward-looking South Korea actually rather backward?
via The Economist explains: Why South Korea is really an internet dinosaur | The Economist.
Three research positions at the French ANR project HPAC
Three research positions (postdoc or research engineer), offered by the French ANR project HPAC (High Performance Algebraic Computation), are open.
Title: High Performance Algebraic Computing
Keywords: parallel computing, computer algebra, linear algebra, C/C++ programming
Locations:
- Grenoble, France (LIG-MOAIS, LJK-CASYS),
- Lyon, France (LIP-AriC),
- Paris, France (LIP6-PolSys),
Starting date: between June 2014 and January 2015
Type of position: 3 postdoc or research engineer positions of 1 year each
More information: http://bit.ly/1ivuKAW
In London attending LSD & LAW 2014
At a conference in Rouen, France
Attending an interesting work-shop in Rouen, France, Working Full-Time on Strings, WFS2014, lots of good problems: http://bit.ly/1j2tB7f
Rouen is a medieval city, with an impressive Gothic cathedral, the historic capital of Normandy, and the place where Joan of Arc was executed in 1431.
One of the most impressive sites is the Gros Horloge, an astronomical clock from the 16th century, still working today.
The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind
Now comes a new kind of challenge to the evidence of a cognitive decline, from a decidedly digital quarter: data mining, based on theories of information processing. In a paper published in Topics in Cognitive Science, a team of linguistic researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany used advanced learning models to search enormous databases of words and phrases.
Since educated older people generally know more words than younger people, simply by virtue of having been around longer, the experiment simulates what an older brain has to do to retrieve a word. And when the researchers incorporated that difference into the models, the aging “deficits” largely disappeared.
“What shocked me, to be honest, is that for the first half of the time we were doing this project, I totally bought into the idea of age-related cognitive decline in healthy adults,” the lead author, Michael Ramscar, said by email. But the simulations, he added, “fit so well to human data that it slowly forced me to entertain this idea that I didn’t need to invoke decline at all.”
Two faculty positions at the School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University
The School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University invites applications for two faculty positions at the rank of an assistant professor, to begin in August 2014. We are looking for energetic, highly qualified academics who, apart from developing their own research programs, will strengthen some of the existing research areas within the School, or build bridges between them or with industry. Applications from all areas of computer science are welcomed, but of particular interest are candidates in systems, broadly construed, and other applied areas.
via Process Algebra Diary: Two faculty positions at the School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University.
Schumpeter: The not so Golden State
IN THE gold rush of the late 1840s, chancers dreaming of quick riches flocked to San Francisco. It is the same today, only this time they are armed with computer-science degrees rather than shovels and picks. It is boom time again in Silicon Valley. Startups are sprouting like mushrooms after rain. Investors are showering them with cash. Hoodie-clad geeks are quaffing champagne in trendy bars, as they celebrate their nascent firms’ multi-billion-dollar valuations. Meanwhile, Google and Apple continue their march towards world domination.Those observing from afar the valley’s burgeoning entrepreneurial scene could be forgiven for concluding that California must truly be a Golden State for business. But beyond the gilded strip of land between San Francisco and San Jose is another California, an inhospitable place plagued by over-regulation, mindless bureaucracy, high taxes and endless lawsuits. Last May, six months after the state raised its top income-tax rate to the highest in the land, Chief Executive magazine named it America’s worst for doing business—for the ninth year in a row. Four months later Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill raising the minimum wage from 2016 to $10 an hour, also the highest of all the states.
Microsoft’s Azure too expensive?
Azure positions Microsoft reasonably well to maintain its enterprise accounts. However, young Web-based companies generally do not use Microsoft products and services because they are too expensive. They prefer Linux and other free open source products, or hosting via Amazon, Google, and others. This preference does not bode well for Microsoft. The startup firms of today will become the larger customers of the future and, in general, they are not Microsoft customers.
via The Legacy of Steve Ballmer | January 2014 | Communications of the ACM.