Archive for February, 2012
RSA: Giant Robots, Sumos and Now Cloud Security
San Francisco’s Moscone Center is packed with wild and extravagant displays this week thanks to the RSA Security Conference. You can fight a sumo wrestler, get your picture taken with a giant robot, ogle Ferraris and other race cars, win game shows and take home a wealth of prizes. It’s a carnival for nerds, punctuated by the calls of carnival barkers endorsing their particular flavor of digital security. To believe their marketing is to believe in a state of perpetual war with unknown enemies on an ever-shifting battleground. And now that war is moving to the cloud.
Focus on the Future
Lytro’s light-field camera allows you to focus your photos after you’ve taken them.
Stop the ‘Do Not Track’ Madness
It’s human nature to want something for nothing. But when it comes to web services, that tendency seems to often blossom into a veritable psychosis. In the brick and mortar world, personally identifiable information has long been mashed into a commodity that is sliced, diced and sold. So is the situation better or worse for us in the digital realm? From the hue and cry over ‘Do Not Track,’ you might think the latter. You would be wrong.
AMD Enters Server Business With Bold Acquisition
Chip designer and chief Intel rival AMD has signed an agreement to acquire SeaMicro, a Silicon Valley startup that seeks to save power and space by building servers from hundreds of low-power processors. With the purchase, AMD will not only turn itself into a server maker. It will turn itself into a server maker that uses chips from Intel. Today, SeaMicro’s servers are built with chips from AMD’s biggest rival, including Intel’s Atom mobile processors as well as Intel Xeon chips.