John Deere plows into agile
John Deere & Co., has moved about 800 software developers into an agile development process, and did so in just over a year.
This effort involved recreating the farm equipment maker's software development effort around new teams that included developers, systems engineers, customer support and marketing personnel, testers, all working in lose proximity.
This company, which reported $32 billion in revenue last year, replaced its cubicles with U-shaped pods that removed barriers to team interaction.
The move to agile came "after some serious introspection in our development organization," said Tony Thelen, the director of the Intelligent Solutions Group, part of the company's enterprise IT operation. Read more...
Charge 16 gadgets at once with the PowerPad 16
How many portable gadgets do you own that need charging on a regular basis? A typical user may have a smartphone, a tablet, an e-reader, and a digital media player. Most will have fewer than those four core types of device.
I doubt anyone has 16 devices to charge, but if you do, there’s now a solution for charging them all over USB at the same time. It’s called the PowerPad 16, which has been created by Datamation Systems Inc.
Of course, the PowerPad 16 isn’t a charging solution aimed at the home user, but it could make your life easier when out in public. We take our devices with us to school, college, conferences, and on holiday. They need charging on a regular basis, which means searching out a power point, and hoping someone else hasn’t got there first. Read more...
Threatened by Anonymous, Symantec tells users to pull pcAnywhere’s plug
Symantec this week took the highly unusual step of telling users of its pcAnywhere remote access software to disable or uninstall the software while it fixes an unknown number of bugs.
Security experts said the move was unprecedented for a company of Symantec's size.
"This is the first time I have seen a company of Symantec's scale tell their customers to stop using a shipping product, especially one that many users depend on for remote access," said HD Moore, chief technology officer of Rapid7, and the creator of the popular Metasploit penetration testing toolkit.
"It's certainly a new precedent for a security breach," added Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security. "Talk about dirty laundry getting aired."
Symantec's recommendation was blunt. Read more...
Jailbreaking may again become illegal this year
If you plan on jailbreaking your iPhone 4S using the new Greenpois0n Absinthe software, you better hurry because there's a chance jailbreaking smartphones could become illegal again in the United States. Two exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allow you to jailbreak and unlock your phone are set to expire this year.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, is hoping to have both exemptions renewed. This time around, the foundation is also hoping to legalize jailbreaking for tablets and video game consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If the jailbreaking exemptions are not renewed, the foundation says, jailbreaking could carry some stiff penalties including hefty fines. Read more...
Nintendo cuts full-year forecast – by BILLIONS
The mighty yen and weak sales have combined to take a whack out of Nintendo, forcing the Japanese gaming firm to forecast an even bigger full-year loss.
The Wii and 3DS maker had previously estimated a net income loss for the financial year ending in March of 20 billion yen, but it's now preparing itself to lose up to a whopping 65 billion yen.
Nintendo's once-groundbreaking Wii has been overtaken by motion-additions to Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox, and is showing its age. Meanwhile, the new iteration of its handheld console, the 3DS, has failed to ignite the market.
The Japanese firm cut its sales forecast of the Wii for the year to 10 million from 12 million and now reckons it will sell 14 million 3DS devices instead of 16 million – despite a "significant price revision" in August intending to shift more of the handhelds. Read more...
Microsoft’s magic bullet for Azure: Red Hat Linux
If Microsoft loves money, and it does, then making Linux publicly available on its proprietary Azure cloud can't come soon enough.
Last June Microsoft ran a build of Linux on its Windows Azure compute fabric in the labs of the Server and Tools division, which is responsible for its cloud.
What flavour of Linux? Red Hat, sources close to the company now tell The Reg.
That's a critical pick given North Carolina's favourite brand of Linux continues to reign as the market's number-one distro and is a preferred choice for Windows shops when going Linux. Read more...
SAP’s HANA in-memory database will run ERP this year
SAP plans to roll out support for the ERP module within its flagship Business Suite product family on the HANA in-memory database platform in the fourth quarter of this year, executive board member and technology chief Vishal Sikka said in an interview Wednesday.
The vendor had previously stated its intention to support Business Suite on HANA, a move that would pave the way for SAP application-customer defections from rival Oracle's database, but until now no specific date had been made public.
"It's a bold statement to say they can do this by Q4," said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. "If they can do this, it means they've solved a lot of the technical issues with HANA. This means they have the beginning of a next-gen platform for their apps." Read more...
What JavaScript’s inventor really thinks about Google Dart
Google's Dart language, which attempts to address JavaScript's supposed weaknesses, is getting a mixed reaction from the inventor of JavaScript itself, Brendan Eich.
While admiring Google's efforts to make the Document Object Model more usable as part of Dart, Eich was skeptical about its chance for support in browsers. "Dart is one of the many languages that currently compiles to JavaScript, and that's a lot to say about that because like in Native Client from Google, I don't think Dart is going to be natively supported ever in other browsers. Not in Safari, not in IE (Internet Explorer)," said Eich, who is CTO at Mozilla, at the Node Summit conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. JavaScript has been supported in popular browsers, including Mozilla's own Firefox browser. Read more...
EMI Boss Opposes SOPA, Says Piracy is a Service Issue
The RIAA has been one of the most dedicated supporters of the PIPA and SOPA bills, but not all of the people they represent share their enthusiasm. EMI’s VP of Urban Promotions Craig Davis made some very reasonable remarks on the controversial anti-piracy plans, stating that “the method they’re using is incorrect.” In addition, the VP says that he’s no fan of DRM and that piracy is a service issue, not an issue of money.
In recent weeks millions of people have spoken out against the pending PIPA and SOPA anti-piracy bills, which have both been delayed as a result.
Today we can add a VP at one of the major RIAA labels to this list, which is quite unique and yet another game changer.
Speaking for himself, EMI’s VP of Urban Promotions Craig Davis said that the two pending anti-piracy bills are not the way to move forward. Read more...
HP’s open-sourcing of webOS begins today
The last time we heard about webOS, HP had opted to open-source the mobile platform, letting developers take a stab at breathing some life into it. It was an unconventional move, but not necessarily a bad one: it puts the platform largely in the hands of the development community, and it doesn’t require a large investment.
Today we found out more about HP’s plans for the second coming of webOS. The first step of the open sourcing process, the release of the Enyo application framework, took place today. The entire process is expected to be completed by September of this year. Upon completion of the open-sourcing transition, it will be known as Open webOS 1.0. Read more...