Fusion-io's chief scientist breaks virtualization down into terms everyone can understand.

By Ricky Ribeiro, Biz Tech Magazine

As a co-founder of Apple in its early days, Steve Wozniak has earned a reputation as a geek’s geek. His granular-level knowledge of hardware and software makes him a sought-after guru on most things IT.

In 2009, Wozniak entered the storage business and joined Fusion-io as thecompany’s chief scientist. When he spoke with BizTech at the time, he envisioned the possibility for the company’s solid-state storage solutions to catalogue and index data at a scale previously unseen.

“[Y]ou can search through entire film archives online for people with Clark Gable’s facial features or for a line of dialogue from The Big Sleep. [Fusion-io’s storage technology is] an amazing tool that will enable that kind of interaction with media,” Wozniak said.

Now, Fusion-io is putting the Woz’s big brain to work in educating people on IT topics with its “Whiteboarding with the Woz” series. His explanation of virtualization makes the concept both easy to understand and relatableby using housing as an analogy.

“To understand how virtualization works, let's imagine a big house with only one person living in it. More room than one person needs. The owner decides he can rent out each of his extra rooms to put the space to use,” Wozniak says.

“Today's servers are similar. They have more processing power than one application may need. By adding virtualization, multiple applications can run at the same time on a single server, while sharing some resources like storage and memory,” he adds.

Wozniak goes on to address throughput issues and computing bottlenecks as well.

Check out the full video of Steve Wozniak’s virtualization explanation here.

By: Staff, PRWeb

Former Hewlett Packard CEO to Discuss the Role of HR Leadership and Innovation in Driving Sustainable Business Growth

Peoplefluent®, a leading social human capital management technology company, today announced veteran business leader Carly Fiorina as the keynote speaker at its WISDOM 2013 Global Conference, taking place September 22-25, 2013 in Orlando, Fla.

Ms. Fiorina is one of the most recognized business leaders in the world. In her keynote address, she will share insights on the importance of companies investing wisely in talent and innovation in today’s business environment. She will also comment on business lessons learned during her tenure leading Hewlett Packard, covering topics such as ways companies can boost their competitiveness in a fast-changing global economy and can foster change through their people.

As chairman and CEO of Hewlett Packard from 1995-2005, she was the first woman to lead a FORTUNE 20 company and was named one of FORTUNE’s Most Powerful Woman in Business for six consecutive years. Under her leadership, HP doubled its revenues, achieved market leadership and completed the acquisition and integration of Compaq Computer – an acquisition which is seen as the most successful high-tech merger in history.

“Peoplefluent is extremely pleased to have Ms. Fiorina address our audience as her professional career has driven organizational transformation through innovation,” said Charles S. Jones, chairman, Peoplefluent. “The WISDOM 2013 global event will help keep our valued customers positioned at the forefront of the evolution in human resources’ strategic role in businesses. Our experts will share insight and experiences as well as discuss collaborative human capital management tools organizations can use to drive growth and tangible results.”

The WISDOM 2013 Global Conference will bring together the brightest minds and visionaries in Human Resources (HR) from a wide variety of industries to discuss emergent HR trends and strategic ways for organizations to leverage technology to attract and retain high caliber talent. Peoplefluent experts in recruitment, performance, compensation, succession planning, learning, compliance and diversity, social collaboration, and workforce planning and analytics will be on site to help attendees determine the best mix of talent management and workforce solutions for their organization.

By: Gil Weinreich, AdvisorOne

Freedom activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains why eternal vigilance is the price we must pay to sustain our liberty

Investment conferences usually try hard to break up the monotony of hyper-caffeinated stock jocks yapping about efficient frontiers and how to generate alpha. That’s why they hire former presidents, retired generals and college sports coaches.

Some of these folks can spin a good yarn and others fall flat, but few if any could match the courage (that’s right, not even the generals) and character of the Somalia-born freedom activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom Altegris with great wisdom recruited to speak at its investment conference in Carlsbad, Calif. 

In fairness, generals typically have heard shots fired in anger, but they also have whole armies as their security detail.

Hirsi Ali, whose husband Niall Ferguson also spoke at the Altegris conference, is an intellectual, and the ideas she espouses require an enormous amount of courage to express given part of the audience that is listening.

The idea that Muslim girls and women deserve rights and protections those Western societies afford all citizens is threatening to Muslim fundamentalists, who have exhibited a tendency to counter such ideas through terror.

When Salmon Rushdie published a book that failed to win over this audience, he was forced into long-term hiding. The Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten also discovered that satirical cartoons involving Islam’s prophet Mohammed are no joke to those who answer ideas with death threats, not once but, as with Rushdie, over many years.

Many non-financial celebrities attempt to win over their investment conference audience with their own investment-related ideas. Not Hirsi Ali. She spoke about the area she knows best—freedom and threats to freedom—and my sense is that financial advisors appreciated the sincerity and urgency of the message.

Speaking to an audience of mainly wealth managers numbering over 400, she made the quite salient point that it was an earlier generation of Americans that created this country’s great wealth. Their children then expanded that wealth. Both those generations understood how hard it is to create and sustain wealth. But the current generation mainly consumes, and lacks a full awareness of what created America’s political freedom and economic prosperity.

By: Newt Gingrich, Human Events

The greatest difference in our generation may not be between liberals and conservatives, but between the pioneers of the future and prisoners of the past.

Let me explain.

Across America and around the world there are countless pioneers inventing the future. Many of their developments will change our lives.

The development of 3D printing is revolutionary. The impact of regenerative medicine will be extraordinary. The potential of drones and robots is close to science fiction. The entrepreneurs moving into space travel will reignite the excitement of the endless frontier of space. The Google driver-less car could change everything about insurance, trauma centers, etc. And the Kahn Academy and other massively open online courses could profoundly transform learning for all ages.

As California Lieutenant Governor (and former Mayor of San Francisco) Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, describes in his extraordinary new book, Citizenville, the developments in the use of the Internet for citizen solutions are transforming our approach to self-government and to problem solving (except in Washington and some large state capitals).

My friend Terry Balderson scans the Internet every morning and sends me 80 to 100 interesting stories. The contrast between the excitement of pioneering outside Washington and the banalities inside Washington is striking.

The mindless and even petty qualities of Washington politics and the news coverage of it are a remarkable feature of our times.

The Fiscal Cliff, the sequester, Bob Woodward’s hurt feelings, the Obama Administration’s falsehoods about lay-offs, the lack of interesting congressional hearings, the endless efforts at “bipartisan compromise” (especially in the Senate where it seems a cottage industry) — all these things have a mindless, automatic repeat quality to them.

The best way to understand our era is to contrast the pioneers of the future with the prisoners of the past.

When this thought hit me, I Googled the term and found Deepak Chopra had commented in 2011, “Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.”

In some ways this insight resembles President Lincoln’s admonition in his December 1862 message to Congress on the State of the Union:

“The question recurs, ‘Can we do better?’ The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

President Lincoln is the only president to hold a patent on an invention. He had been an attorney for railroads when they were among the highest technology and engineering institutions of his time. He had a deep personal interest in technological innovation (and during the Civil War visited with many inventors of new weapons and technology).

He was prepared to “think anew and act anew.” What a contrast with the current mood of Washington which is mired in the past, in ideological deadlock, and in pettiness.

I am going to dedicate a lot of my upcoming newsletters to the pioneers of the future and the great opportunities they are creating.

We are also going to create at GingrichProductions.com/pioneers a place where you can share with us the breakthrough ideas you run across or the new ideas you may be personally pioneering.

At Newt University we will be interviewing a number of these pioneers online so everyone can access them and learn from them.

With your help I hope we can get Congressional committees to devote at least a third of their time to exploring the pioneers of the future.

Consider just a few of the revolutionary developments that need thorough exploration:

• 3D printing may revolutionize logistics and save an amazing amount of money in the Defense Department. It may also revolutionize our capacity to go into space by allowing manufacturing on asteroids and the Moon with minimum weight requirements. 3D printing may also return manufacturing to the United States by eliminating the advantages of low cost mass produced production runs.
• The impact of regenerative medicine will be extraordinary. We are on the edge of being able to take your cells and grow the organs you need (and with 3D printing, using live cells to actually print out organs). Kidney dialysis may be replaced with new kidneys. Current disabilities may shrink dramatically so we can grow capabilities.
• Brain research will produce even greater savings in lives, quality of life, and cost. Brain research will affect autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and mental health. No single area will do more to improve the quality of life and reduce the cost of government than brain research.
• The potential of drones and robots is close to science fiction. Drones carrying freight may lower dramatically the cost of shipping. Drones over dangerous neighborhoods may increase public safety. Next generation drones may replace the entire F-35 project (today the most expensive acquisition program in the Defense Department).
• The new generation of entrepreneurs moving into space travel will reignite the excitement of the endless frontier of space. Already there are tourist runs to the space station and plans for suborbital space flights. Billionaires have jumped into the space race and may make a bigger contribution to manned space than NASA in the next decade.
• The Google driver-less car could change everything about insurance, trauma centers, drunk drivers and elderly citizens or visually impaired citizens retaining mobility. The driver-less car will represent trillions of dollars in savings when it is perfected sometime in this decade.
• Finally, the Kahn Academy and the massively open online course system could profoundly transform learning for all ages. We are on the edge of an era of decentralized online learning combined with mentors and apprenticeships which will transform virtually everything we currently assume about education. The improvements in outcomes and the decline in costs will be breathtaking.

Everything I just outlined in these 7 paragraphs is real and occurring around us right now.

The prisoners of the past who dominate Washington continue to focus on and fight about the trivia of the past and the dead ends of the present.

With your help I believe we can refocus the system on the opportunities of the future — and of the present, if we are willing to embrace them.

As President Lincoln said: “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Now we have to follow his advice.

By: Jim Martin, goerie.com

Carly Fiorina has seen plenty of the world while running one of the world's largest high-tech companies and during a run for the U.S. Senate.

But her visit to Erie, where she spoke Tuesday night at the Manufacturer & Business Association's annual event, was a sentimental journey of sorts.

Her husband, Frank, who was in the audience Tuesday, grew up in Pittsburgh in a family of modest means. They couldn't afford lavish vacations, she said, but they could afford an annual camping trip each year to Presque Isle State Park.

Fiorina, the former chairwoman and chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, retraced the trip the family made so many times as they drove from Erie to Pittsburgh.

Her talk Tuesday centered on her own journey and her conviction that even today it would only be possible in America.

A video introduction reminded most of the hundreds in the crowd at Erie's Bayfront Convention Center what they probably already knew about Fiorina. She was the first woman in the world to run a Fortune 20 company, one of the 20 largest companies in the world.

What she told them Tuesday was how she got there, not as a computer prodigy who grew up writing code or assembling computers in the family garage.

Instead, Fiorina said, she was the proud recipient of a degree in medieval history, whose first job found her pounding away on an electric typewriter as a receptionist.

Eventually, though, a couple of co-workers thought she showed ability and asked if she wanted to learn something about the business.

Years later, she shakes her head at the opportunities that came her way.

"Even today in 2015 [sic], it is only in the United States, where a woman can begin with a degree in medieval history and can rise to become chairman and CEO of one of the world's largest technology companies. That is only possible in the United States of America."

Fiorina's life hasn't been charmed, but she didn't take more than a few seconds to dwell on her stumbles or challenges Tuesday.

"My path hasn't been particularly smooth. That's now how life is," she said.

What Fiorina does lament is what she sees as a changing culture that throws roadblocks in the paths of innovators and regulates small business owners to discouragement.

"Entrepreneurship and small business creation are what made this country great," she said.

But statistics, she said, show our reputation as the cradle of the small business is in trouble.

"Fewer small businesses are starting and more small businesses are failing than in any time in the last 40 years," she said.

That's something that needs to change, she said.

But how?

Fiorina thinks she would start by cutting all the tax rates and closing every loophole.

But that's just a starting point.

The important changes, she said, come from leadership, which she defines as changing the order of things and making a positive difference.

"There are lots of people with big corner offices who never lead. But lots of other people lead every day," she said.

Fiorina concluded Tuesday by urging her audience to find their own ways to lead and to make a difference.

"Leadership matters," she said. "Leadership counts."

By: Hannington Dia, News One

Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons announced his support for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in the N.Y.C. mayoral race in a new ad that debuted Monday.

In the ad, Simmons explains why de Blasio is his top pick, “Bill de Blasio is the only person willing to do what it takes to make sure that New York City is a place where people who wanna live and work and raise a family have a shot at making their lives better.”

On the other hand, Simmons takes shots at the other Democratic challengers, saying about Council Speaker Christine Quinn, “The idea of a gay woman as mayor, but…she’s been bought and managed by special interests.”

He also labels former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the race’s only African-American candidate, as passive, “I don’t want a candidate who is too quiet. I want a candidate who is not afraid to offend a few people to support what he thinks is right.”

Simmons has a history of backing liberal causes.

He spoke out in favor of marriage equality in 2011 and against voter suppression during last year’s presidential elections.

This ad is just the latest in a series of endorsements for de Blasio, including famous members of the LBGTQ community Cynthia Nixon and Alan Cumming, at a”LBGT For BDB” fund-raiser Sunday evening.

By: Joanna Stern, ABC News

Newt Gingrich is “really puzzled.” No, not about whether he will run for office again — he’s got fairly clear answers to that — but about cell phones. Well, not about the devices themselves, he is more puzzled about what to call them now that the devices do much more than make a phone call.

The former House speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate took to the Gingrich Productions YouTube channel late last week to ask his viewers and fans what the modern-day cell phone should be called.

“Think about it. If it is taking pictures, it’s not a cell phone. If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location — that’s not a cellphone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google — that’s not a cell phone. If you can watch YouTube — that’s not a cell phone. Or Netflix,” Gingrich says in the video as he holds up his iPhone. “This device is something new and different. I have been calling it a handheld computer.”

However, Gingrich decides that that’s not the right word and that the term is misleading. “Its real power is not internal computation, its real power is networking,” he says.

Gingrich doesn’t refer to the term “smartphone” — the popular term for modern-day cell phones with touchscreens and app-based operating systems — in the video or post on the Gingrich Productions website. Commenters on the site and on the video have suggested that that the term “smartphone” is already the commonly agreed upon name.

When reached by ABC News, Woody Hales, Gingrich Productions Press Coordinator, said that Gingrich does not think the term “smartphone” fits either. “It’s not a smarter way to make phone calls,” Hales told ABC News. “The word still makes reference to a phone, but it’s not primarily a phone anymore,” he added.

Gingrich is no stranger to modern technology and has been a proponent of pushing forward innovations in health and manufacturing technology. “The development of 3D printing is revolutionary. The impact of regenerative medicine will be extraordinary. The potential of drones and robots is close to science fiction,” Gingrich wrote in an article on Human Events in March.

In the cell phone video he stressed the social, educational and economic impact of the should-be-named device. “What would you call this? So we can explain to people that they carry in their hand literally the potential to have a dramatic revolution in how we get things done, in how we take care of our own health, in how we interact with our government and in how we are productive.”