Opinion

Buying a hard drive? Stats say get Hitachi, avoid Seagate

Cloud backup outfit Backblaze crunched data on low-cost hard drives in its data centers to figure out failure profiles for consumer brands

Chrome spammers duped users, developers — and Google too

Loopholes in Chrome's add-on technology allowed spammers to get past several security checkpoints — including Google's

IBM drops $1.2B to significantly expand its global cloud footprint

Following a huge investment in SoftLayer, IBM plans to build 15 new cloud-based data center facilities worldwide

BrandPost: The Microsoft Licensing Corner #3

Navigating the Windows Server and System Center roadmap

BIG YoY jump in iPhone sales — HP launches Win7 PC promo — EBAY’s digital currency marketplace — YAHOO tops Google 6th straight month

Not just for Macs, Thunderbolt rumbles into PCs

The arrival of 4K video and the prevalence of Apple-inspired PC designs is making Thunderbolt suddenly sensible for PCs

DIY Internet of things: The ultimate maker project

With sensors and microcontrollers as cheap as they are, the Internet of things is poised for support from the maker crowd

PaaS isn’t dying — it’s becoming part of IaaS

PaaS's promise remains strong, but it's up to enterprises to exploit it

Java’s security dilemma: Old, vulnerable versions won’t go away

There are some ways to get rid of older Java versions, but there's no easy path to doing so

Hallelujah, the NSA has been reformed!

The president has deemed it so, but trusting the NSA to stop collecting communications information is no longer possible

Your guide to InfoWorld’s best tech of the year

Last week's 2014 Technology of the Year Awards honored 35 products, the best we encountered in 2013 — and the ones that animate the most important enterprise technology trends

Why Silicon Valley can’t find Europe

Those who forget past tech are doomed to be hacked

You can have your smartphone, tablet, wearable PC — hackers are targeting the legacy systems that power our daily lives

What Obama’s NSA reform means for tech

The few surveillance reforms described in Obama's speech leave too many unanswered questions about NSA's overreach into tech

Moot aims to revolutionize online discussion technology

JavaScript-based platform features better integration with websites, allows search engines to crawl discussion content

NSA collects 200M texts daily — OBAMA yanks NSA leash — GOOGLE’s smart contacts — IBM drops $1.2B in CLOUD — NBA’s Kings accept BITCOIN — Business hacked via FRIDGE

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This data will self-destruct: Snapchat meets encrypted messaging

Snapchat's model of deliberately ephemeral data is becoming a selling feature for commodity messaging and data storage

Cloud vendors, stop copying Amazon Web Services — or else

They can't out-Amazon by doing what Amazon does, and IT needs to drop those providers who keep trying that strategy

Patent trolls, tread carefully in 2014

After 2013's seemingly never-ending litany of patent troll misdeeds, a turning point may be in store for 2014

Dollars and cents: The real cost of a smartphone plan

Deals promoted by T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint aren't so easy to be had — or to decipher — but InfoWorld's tool can help

Net neutrality: Mostly dead or all dead?

This week's court ruling struck a blow to Net neutrality rules, but debate still surrounds the FCC's role in regulating broadband

Video: A toast to C# and lambdas, courtesy of Beer and Code

This video series can not only help make your coding tighter, it can introduce you to new brews

MAYER eats crow, cans No. 2 — Hey, APPLE, size matters in China — MICROSOFT flavor o’ the month: Ericsson’s Vestberg — ISAACSON shorts Apple

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Microsoft extends XP anti-malware support until July 2015

Microsoft will offer updates to Microsoft Security Essentials for XP well into next year, giving existing XP users even less incentive to leave

How to screw up your MongoDB schema design

Mongo has recently become a thing. Fortunately, some RDBMS skills port over easily — but schema design isn't one of them

Leader abandons Node.js project for Npm riches

Isaac Schuleter defects to his own Node-related commercial outfit, raising questions about his ambitions and Node.js itself

Silicon Valley’s ‘meritocracy’ hides a discriminatory streak

The latest evidence: Oracle is sued by a sales manager who says he was fired for refusing to pay less to IT workers from India

Fearmongers or fat cats? Pick your side in the Net neutrality fight

This week's court decision pushed the Net neutrality debate to new heights, but listen closely, and you'll mostly hear hot air

Java gives Android development an edge

Evans Data survey also finds app dev is quicker for Android than for rival OSes, due to improved tooling and cross-platform development

Here to stay: 4 reasons to stick with JavaScript

JavaScript has the staying power to outlast newer languages like CoffeeScript and Dart

Welcome to the Internet’s new toll lane

The recent Net neutrality ruling gives ISPs unprecedented freedom to charge a premium for preferred services

Net neutrality: We need a hero, from the unlikeliest of places

That hero is FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, but can he overcome his past allegiance to the cable companies?

NSA taps off-grid computers — RIP Net neutrality (thanks, VERIZON) — GOOGLE spent $17B on M&A in two years — Mega-Troll sues FTC

Did Microsoft (finally) fix Windows XP’s SVCHOST redlining problem?

XP users have complained for months about a bug that slammed Windows update to 100% utilization. January's Black Tuesday patch might solve the problem

Here to stay: 4 reasons to stick with JavaScript

All eyes are on Node.js, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, ClojureScript, and Dart, but they're shaping up as transitional tech at best

Whodunit: A Hyper-V failure may reveal fabled ‘escape attack’

New Hyper-V and SharePoint hacks mean you need to revisit your virtualization security

Abracadabra! Harry Potter, ghosts, and magic at the help desk

Skills or sorcery? When you're working tech support, sometimes you need a little of both to get to the bottom of the issue

More than money, bitcoin’s real value lies in its algorithms

Blockchain technology that powers bitcoin and other digital currencies is showing up in a variety of other applications

BrandPost: The Microsoft Licensing Corner #2

What’s the deal with subscription licensing?

GOOGLE buys your home, Droid moves in — iOS catches up to Windows installs — MESSAGING app use triples — 1 in 10K apps successful

Don’t believe the lies about Windows XP’s imminent death

On April 8, Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP, but XP-based PCs will continue to work just fine

Get real! Aereo’s legal battle has nothing to do with the cloud

The Supreme Court will hear a case involving streaming TV; it's portrayed as a major precedent for the cloud — but it's not

In excess we trust: Let us now praise over-the-top tech

4K HDTVs, fuller-than-full-size phablets — we scoff at them for the moment, but we'll all covet them soon enough

Dropbox glitch makes a strong case for encryption by default

It's easy, it's powerful, and it'll give users that much less to worry about. So why isn't it happening?

Google’s grand plan for Nest goes way beyond the Internet of things

Physical devices are becoming just as important as digital services in achieving Google's know-everything ambitions

Man or myth: The $3 million Google engineer

Is there really a software engineer at Google making $3 million a year? Maybe, but it would be unusual

Windows 9 due in April 2015, but coding hasn’t started yet

Windows guru Paul Thurrott says Microsoft is going back to the Windows drawing board after the Vista-level flop of Windows 8

Full speed ahead: Oracle to ship Java 8 in March, even with bugs

Company to focus on 'showstopper' bugs between now and then in JDK 8, and wait to fix lesser bugs later

Windows 8.1 pirate beta due any time, but it’s a yawner

The Windows 8.1 Update 1 leak is imminent, but a worthwhile upgrade is still at least a year out

Big data analytics star in VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.5 update

Log aggregation, analytics, and search platform adds support for Active Directory; improves content pack infrastructure