Microsoft's support-stoppage mandate- Ready to discard IE old versions?

According to the mandate passed by Microsoft, around 70% of the IE users currently relying on the older version either have to upgrade to the new IE version or switch to another browser. The time limit set is 16 months. According to the Microsoft, their borrowers will be stopping the support function during the early part of 2016 hence it recommended for the current old version users to upgrade. But looks like the IE users are in no mood to let go their older versions.

Microsoft’s announcement can as surprise on 7th August wherein they stated that post January 2016, they will support IE.9 on Windows Vista, Windows server 2012 will need to have IE.10 and Windows 7 and 8.1 will need to have the IE.11 version. It was informed that IE 7 and IE.8 support will be completely dropped off and some other versions on specific editions like IE.10 on windows 7.

Even though the browser will continue to function; but there will not be any technical support provided by Microsoft and no security updates will be sent to the users after the versions will be banned.

It has been recommended that it will risky for a user to still rely on unsupported versions as Microsoft will no longer will be patching any bugs in the banned versions. Microsoft has always been constantly working on fixing bugs in the current versions. Microsoft has urged to their 2/3 of the old versions users to ditch the versions and upgrade to a supported version by the end of 2015.

IE.9 is the newest version able to run on windows vista and has been able to gain a stable ground. Vista which powers around only 3% of the windows computers and runs mainly on Windows 7 needs to be discarded by the users by Jan 2016.

Microsoft has announced that IE.8 will have more issues. The basic default explorer in many standard Windows XP computers has been adopted by many companies for being user friendly and has also been implemented on certain windows 7 by many businesses. IE.8 last month accounted for about 21.4 percent of all the browsers and 36.6% of different versions of IE. IE currently has 58.8% browser space share when compared to all the browsers available.

IE.6 and IE.7 was supported last month but IE.6 is still available on Windows server 2003 as it no longer supports windows XP. IE 6 is scheduled for being unsupported/retirement in July, 2015. IE 10 has barely shown improvement in terms of usage, it accounted at 6.2% among all the browsers and 10.6% among all copies of Internet explorer. IE.11 was able to show some improvement as it was averaging at 17.6% among other browsers and 30 percent of all copies.

With the above browser space %, IE 8 and IE 9 might have to be suppressed in order to increase the percentage share. The numbers are quite daunting for Microsoft has forced them to urge the users of old version to move to new upgraded versions.

PHP 5.6- Better namespace support through built in debugger

Server -side Web development’s popular scripting language PHP, has been upgraded by a new debugger in point release has got lot of attention.

Phpdbg debugger featured PHP 5.6 was released last week and easily downloadable at website PHP.net. The debugger has been implemented as Server API (SAPI) Module. According to Andi Gutmans, the CEO of the Zend Technologies, builder of PHP tool and an active member in the language development in email, a language built with a debugger will make it easily accessible by any other developer irrespective of the fact whether they are IDE user or not. According to the reports, the debugger features a step through debugging process, easily accessible current execution codes, and remote debug support along with Java GUI.

Even though PHP 5.6 features are amazing, it is still considered as a minor release by Andi Gutmans,as he stated that this is being carried out annually. Enhancement has been the main aim for this release but it will also aim to reduce any major backward-compatibility breaks to ensure that it gets easily adopted by everyone. The community themselves are already working on more advanced version PHP 7, which is primarily based on PHPNG code and will help considerably improve the PHP applications performance. According to Andi they are hoping that the version 7 will be ready for release in the next one to one and half year. But still this will depend on the time.

In order to deal with the functions and methods variable argument lists, this PHP version 5.6 also includes variadic functions. As per Gutmans, this will help in improving the readability and also reduce the complex code that is required with the variable argument lists.

Apart from the above mentioned updates, other updates included are namespace support enhancement, allowing the import of constants and functions and also importing of constant scalar expressions. The PHP documentations clearly states that it will be possible to provide a scalar expression which involves numeric and string literals and constants in contexts wherein PHP initially expected to have a static value.

Apart from the features, the newer PHP 5.6 version’s compatibility has got affected due to the changes. Overwriting of Array keys will no longer happen when array is being defined as a property of class through an array literal. Also, in JSON syntax parsing, the JSON_de-code function is expected to be stricter in decoding a JSON string. During the use of SSL/TLS, host names and peer certificates are verified by Stream wrappers by default and GMP resources will be now objects.

The Cybermen are coming

If you are a fan at all of the UK television series Dr Who you will be intimately familiar with the deadly threat to peace in the universe that is posed by the Cybermen. The Cybermen are a race of cyborgs who began as humanoids but began to implant an increasing array of artificial parts into their bodies, ultimately deleting their own emotions as an essential act of self-preservation. It may be a bit of a leap to say that the development of a robotic printer by Fuji Xerox is a step along the slippery slope of becoming Cybermen, but you can never be too careful. Actually, on the face of it, the robotic printer that has been developed by Fuji Xerox looks really cool.

How does it work? 

The printer comes to you - it’s as simple as that. This is particularly important for printing that you are doing that might be sensitive documents or contain commercially sensitive information. Of course the idea of secure printing isn’t a new one - there are already lots of different ways in which secure printing can be managed - but Fuji Xerox (the joint venture partnership between these two giants in the world of printing) have come up with the first printer that comes to you, the robotic printer and that’s fairly exciting. An example of how it would work would be if you were working in a shared business centre such as in a hotel or an airline lounge. Each desk is allocated a unique printing identity. When the user gives the print command, the printer then moves to that desk (using its sensors to avoid bumping into anything on the way), the user then presents a smart card to the Fuji Xerox printer that confirms their identity and the documents are printed out and readied for collection.

The obesity trap

Remember on the movie Wall-E when all the humans got so fat that they couldn’t really walk any more and just floated around while the robots did all the work? We need to heed that warning. If robotic printers are now bringing our printing to us at our desk, that is one less reason for us to get up out of our desks, that is one less reason for us to do some exercise. Do not give up that gym membership - the minute that we become too fat to walk is the minute that the robots take control.

Does anyone still print? 

You might be wondering what the big deal about printing is anyway - with the move to online storage, and electronic everything, gone are the days when we needed enormous piles of paper on our desk to prove that we we were being productive. It may feel a bit antiquated, but there are still things that need to be signed and often these are the most important and sensitive documents which makes secure printing more of a priority today than ever before.

Robotic printer. Definitely a step forward. Definitely a step towards the future. Not necessarily a step towards us all becoming Cybermen.

Samsung’s New Note

Samsung on 3rd September, 2014 has announced a big-screen phone known as Galaxy Note 4. And it’s even got a companion with the release of Galaxy Note Edge and Gear VR at a media event, ahead of IFA 2014 tech expo in Berlin. Samsung is known for the updating of its existing devices or products and has been proving to do so since many years. Once again it has proved that they are not the loser’s to stay behind and has launched a big screen phone rather we can say it has a Phablet, a week before Apple announced its big screen phone. From this to release, it is proved that Samsung is now more interested to manage the note line that has gained much popularity among the users. So let’s see what’s new with this Phablet.

Features 

This new Phablet comes with same 5.7 inch display size as that in note 3. But have successfully updated the display resolution from HD to quad HD. Most of you might think that this high resolution will consume large amount of charge but as per Samsung, they say that despite of this QHD resolution, Note 4 will deliver 7.5% more battery life due to an optimized interface.

Now when we are talking about battery let’s see what more it comes with. It comes with 3,220mAh battery, 20mAh more when compared to Note 3. The phone can be charged from 0-50% within half an hour due to the fast charging technology included in it.

Well. Depending upon the market, Note 4 comes with quad core or octa-core processor. For an Indian market, it comes with octa core processor and an international one has a 2.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor. At present, this quad-core processor is the most powerful in the world.

In today’s world, most of the people desire to have more storage capacity in their phone. Well, this might be a drawback for those as it comes only with 3GB of RAM but is expected to push the memory to 4GB. It gives storage option up to 32GB. There’s also a microSD slot to expand the memory up to 64GB.

It comes with high camera pixel. Rare camera has a 16MP resolution. Users can even enjoy the famous trend of selfie with this handset as it comes with 3.7MP front camera which allows taking wide angle selfies.

Software

Coming to the software side, note 4 uses an interface similar to that in Galaxy S5, i.e. Android 4.4.4 Kitkat. To make use of S Pen stylus, additional software too is optimized in it. Multitasking feature is improved when compared to its previous note.

Besides this, the most interesting thing that this note 4 comes with, which is not available in Note 3 is fingerprint sensor that is embedded in the home key along with a heart rate monitor on the back of the handset.

Conclusion

This is really an outstanding and amazing phone released to compete its competitor and hope will be accepted by everyone as it comes with all new technology as per the present world.

Google Begins Quantum Computing Research Project in Collaboration With NASA and USRA

Google, web search giant now is aim to crack the code of the next level in computer evolution. When compared to traditional computers, the quantum computers are considered as the Holy Grail of computing.

This will remove all the errors from the current traditional computing systems. According to Google Inc, the company will be joined by a research team headed by John Martinis (Physicist from University of California Santa Barbara), which will be working on building the superconducting electronics based new quantum information processors. This Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is partnership between NASA, USRA and Google. The aim of the lab is to study the application of quantum optimization in relation with the artificial intelligence.

The Quantum AI team will be able to test and implement the new designs that have been developed for quantum optimization and inference processor with an integrated hardware group. These designs are based on the theoretical insights and learning’s inspired from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture.

John Martinis who is professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, is one of the most prominent known names in the researchers who have given immense contribution towards the researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Google is working on quantum chips as they have the vision that one day these chips will make the machines perform like humans.

The designed Chips that will be able to work at sub-atomic levels in such a way; that they will be able to make the existing processors even faster.

As per the experts, the quantum bit will be having two different states at the same time. They will be able to improve the power and speed of computing today. Standard computer deals with binary data which is expressed normally in zero and ones. However the quantum computing will be encoding the data by using the sub-atomic particle behaviour.

Google has become focused on artificial intelligence past couple of years and also working on self driving cars projects and robots projects. Google has acquired artificial intelligence company DeepMind Technologies Ltd in January 2014. Even though the DeepMind Technologies Ltd Company has unable to produce any commercial product, they have been paid £242 million ($399 million) for their proficiency in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

This company has the aim of making computers think like humans. According to another founder in the company, Shane Leg, had warned that the artificial intelligence is the number one risk in the current century and might even lead to the extinction of the human race. In a recent interview he stated that one day human race has to extinct and the artificial intelligence will be the most prominent contributor towards this.

Google has ensured that an ethics board is overseeing all the processes under Artificial Intelligence.