Computer reseller pilot fish gets a call one morning from the IT director at a nearby public school system. The problem: Every PC in one school's computer lab has gone silent.
“In the lab, the students could listen to a specific application,” says fish. “All the desktop computers fed into external speakers. There was no sound coming from the speakers.
“I asked the IT director if he'd checked all the connections. He assured me he had.
“I made the 45-minute trip to the school, and he showed me the problem. I noticed that all of the external speakers were getting their power from some daisy-chained power strips. I also noticed that the first one was turned off.
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I’m a car guy. I’m also a cloud guy. So, it is natural I would want to connect the two. But it’s not just me. In fact, the car-cloud connection is already happening.
Cars have been pretty stupid in the past, even with all of the computerization and automation that has come in recent model cars. They still can’t diagnose and fix themselves. Most cannot drive without a person controlling them. And, worst of all, they offer pretty complex features that many drivers can’t understand, and thus can’t use.
[ Learn all about the cloud at InfoWorld. Start with the basics: What is cloud computing? Everything you need to know now. Then learn what is IaaS (infrastructure as a service), what is PaaS (platform as a service), and what is SaaS (software as a service). | Get ready for the latest trend in cloud computing: What is multicloud? The next step in cloud computing. ] Over the last several years, cars have been more and more software-defined; Tesla is the best-kown example. We now have automobi..

Building installers on Windows used to be complicated. It all depended on which installation tool were you using and how was your code being distributed. Could you wrap an executable around a Zip file, or use the venerable XCOPY? Things got simpler when Microsoft introduced the Windows Installer, and its standard MSI format.
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(Insider Story)

The Oscar-winning writer-director Shawn Christensen says that it is the craft that holds him back in the film industry.

Vue CLI, which provides a standard build tool chain for applications built with the Vue JavaScript framework, has been rewritten in its Version 3.0 release, which debuted on August 10.
Called a “completely different beast” from its predecessor by Vue.js creator Evan You, Vue CLI 3.0 is intended to reduce configuration “fatigue” of front-end tools. Incorporating best practices in the tool chain was a goal as well.
[ Go deeper at InfoWorld: Beyond jQuery: An expert guide to JavaScript frameworks • The complete guide to Node.js frameworks • The 10 essential JavaScript developer tools • The 6 best JavaScript IDEs and 10 best JavaScript editors. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld’s App Dev Report newsletter. ] Vue CLI 3 provides Vue CLI projects out-of-the-box support for the following:
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Many of you are familiar with the “technology adoption life cycle” model, long a pillar of everything from new tech product pitches to IPO roadshows. However, overuse has eroded the model’s impact. Today, it’s less an effective visualization of market traction, and more a symbol of how distorted our tech industry’s blitzing and bandwagon-hopping is when it comes to emerging technologies.
In its simplest form, the adoption bell curve illustrates how a new product will be progressively accepted over time across innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. But today’s conversations about technologies often focus only on the stories of the most eager, cutting-edge innovators—ignoring 95 percent of the rest of the story; that is, the years (if not decades) that technology takes to reach mainstream adoption.
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I’m a huge Fire user, I have a fleet of the things and virtually every model they make. The one I carry the most is the 10-inch Fire HD because it is best for videos, I don’t have to flip the pages as much when reading, and it does a better job, in my opinion, than the smaller devices with web pages particularly those with forms. The new Microsoft Surface GO is in the same size class and I’ve been messing with it a bit. It stands out as being even better with web pages, it runs full Office, and it has a far better keyboard solution but the apps for movies and books aren’t as good as the Fire’s.
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Thank you to T-Mobile for getting it. They finally understand the fact that not every customer wants every bell and whistle connected to their unlimited plan. Many don’t watch Netflix on their mobile devices. Many don’t travel internationally. And this slice of the customer pie doesn’t want to pay for those features. They want to save as much as possible.
The customer who simply wanted unlimited wireless at a low cost was never the focus of many providers. That is changing thanks to two carriers, AT&T Mobility and now T-Mobile.
This new, lower cost unlimited wireless data plan from T-Mobile understands what many users want. Many wireless companies have been working more services into their plans, so they can charge more.
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Apple’s smartphones are the best-selling mobile device models in the world, particularly among enterprise users, so what should we expect when the company announces new models this season?
Faster processors Apple’s existing iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X models are reportedly faster than Samsung’s latest Galaxy range, and this advantage grows once again this year with the company expected to put a new 7-nanometer chip inside iPhones. TSMC began mass production of these back in April. Apple’s smartphone speed advantage is becoming so significant that the company recently ran a TV ad (Unleash) to celebrate it. The new models should boast up to 4GB RAM.
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July 2018 patches for both Windows and Office brought bugs and bugs of bugs — many of which haven’t been solved, even now. We have even reached the unprecedented stage where the .NET team openly warned people against installing buggy updates, and the Monthly Rollup previews got shoved down the Automatic Update chute to fix bugs in the primary Monthly Rollup.
July was more galling than most months because the patches caused widespread problems for many, while plugging security holes for exactly zero widespread infections.
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