Gartner's 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

Hype Cycle 2014

As every year in august, the Technology Research branch of the Gartner Inc. publish his Hype Cycle For Emerging Technologies report.

Even without read the full report, from the graph we can see some interesting differences between the Hype Cycle of the last year and from the one of this year:

Hype Cycle 2013

In example the fast growth of the IoT from IT (innovation trigger) to the PIE (peak of inflated expectation) , or even the fast fall down of the Big Data from the PIE to the TD (trough of disillusionment). Is interesting also the growth from TD to the SE (slope of enlightenment) of technologies like 3D Printing and Virtual Reality, or the entry of the cryptocurrencies.

In my point of view something is too high and something else is too low in the graph, but substantially I agree with the researchers in the global view of what is the technologies future and the path to follow to monetize the progress of one or other of this technologies.

What do you think about this trending graph? Are you agree with Gartner?
 

Microsoft and PC are dead! But is this true?

Is PC, and therefore Microsoft, dead with no chance to be great again as every pseudo-expert over the internet (and not only) said in the last years?

Absolutely not, and not only in some single specialized market, but in every major market in our global IT ecosystem.

For let you understand my POV:
First: in the earliest months of 2014 there were a lot of studies that declare that PC is anything but dead, with much more profits and market share respect to console or to other computer platform (MacOs/Linux/Other). (I.E.: As Global PC Game Revenue Surpasses Consoles-Forbes , but it's only one of a long list, from both economist and gaming perspective).

Then this study from Gartner, which show us that Microsoft have not only an higher market share respect Apple, but will have also a bigger growth in the next years.

Pc and Microsoft are more alive then ever, and we can be sure they will be a major competitor in every IT challenge in the next years.

It is the Nadella's cure effect or it was the totally wrong previsions made in the past from some wannabe-famous author?

What do you think, Is PC( and Microsoft) dead?
Let me know in the comment.

PS: It's a long time since my last pure-techical post, and even more from my last Arduino post. I hope to begin to post again that stuff soon ;)

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs recommended system requirements explained

This post maybe can be a little off topic on this dev-blog, but "Hey! it's my blog!" so fuck off, I'll talk about alpaca if I want...
After this little preface we can start to talk about Ubisoft upcoming game Watch Dogs.
Some day ago Ubisoft release on Steam the prerelease purchase options of Watch Dogs, and then also the all-want-system-requirements, and on this topic the gaming community start the nth flame about this game.
Because if the minimum req are accessible to almost all gamers, the recommended leave the community with their mouth open.

Recommended System Requirements:

• OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.) 
• Processor: Eight core - Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz 
• Memory: 8 GB RAM 
• Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850 
• DirectX: Version 11 
• Hard Drive: 25 GB available space 
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers 
• Additional Notes: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer mode. Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series; AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200

If Graphics and memory requirements are the standard in this days, the community ask to herself why this game need to run properly an Intel Core i7-3770 or an AMD equivalent, pointing, as fact instead opinion, that the modern games are all powered by GPU and the processor do not do much work.

So let  start talk about "How games are designed".
I'm not a game developer, but as software developer, engineer, and last but not least, gamer, I know, or at least I imagine, how this work: The GPU and the video card do not calculate the algorithm needed by the AIs , the gpu simply elaborate the calculation needed for graphics, and all the powerful cards listed above are needed only for elaborate the HD texture of an "enormous" city, or at least a big part of it since the dev claim to don't love the load time present in many game so they reduce it to the minimum possible so, as you can imagine, if you want a fluid and smooth visual with synchronous rendering without texture-lag of  an entire living city you need a massive card.
In WD they also claim to recreate a living city, with thousand of NPC, every of them will have his personal dialogue scripts, story and background, so every single NPC will run a separate AI.
The AI will not run on a thread on your powerful Nvidia Titan Black/AMD HD Radeon R290, the AI instead create a thread on your processor. This things is clearly visible in other game like Assetto Corsa, by the Italian Kunos Simulazioni, which is in a sort of beta since they choose the pre-release method to sell their game, in this game when you race against the max number of opponents, the game engine put the CPU usage up to 95% suddenly and often crashes as you can see in these topics on the steamcommunity forum here and here.

This happen with less than 30 AIs which all run concurrently on your processor, now imagine what can happen if instead of 30 there are more than 100 AIs + lot of cameras + who-know-what ?
If your system is not powerful enough or the game is not properly optimised IT BURN YOUR FUCKING COMPUTER.

Yeah this image is a bit strong, but in my experience I can tell you that is not so far from reality.
With my I7 2600 in the summer of 2011, which was a REALLY HOT summer, with stock Intel cooler the temp on the processor hit the 90°C and shutdown. After that I buy a bigger dual fan tower air CPU-cooler, and after that I don't have any problem.

So, little crying guys, instead of arguing on the fact which in your opinion your Intel Quad Core from 2006 is still enough for playing games since for you it's all a GPU work, buying a new system and start talking about which cooler is better to prevent your system to burn you, your house and your neighbourhood.

With the hope that you paid for a proper cooling system, I salute you.
Ygy Freezone.

apt-get install debian PT4 (JDBC connector and Arduino IDE)

Here we are, today as you probably know we'll talk about installing JDBC connector for MySql/Tomcat/Eclipse and the Arduino IDE (in the top picture you can see my abnormal ability to modify images in paint).

JDBC connector:

First of all: you need to install it. To do so you tipe in a terminal: sudo apt-get install libmysql-java

This will extract the connector jar into the /usr/share/java/ directory

For install the JDBC driver into Eclipse you'll need to make it visible to Eclipse in some way.

Some guide tell you to put the jar into the Java Build Path libraries of your project. But, probably for some conflict between the CLASSPATH environment variables, in my case this does not work. Maybe it work in a non web project, but in my case with dynamic web project with tomcat as web-server it not.
So I put the jar into the lib dir of the apache tomcat's installation dir.
Doing this and run your project both on Eclipse or in the browser, the jar will be retrieved from the lib dir of tomcat instead to be retrieved from the build path.
If in the future I set the build path properly I'll either modify this post or do one new post.

Arduino IDE:

As you can see in the official website, the Arduino IDE has been packaged.
So to install it you only need to type sudo apt-get install arduino into a terminal and voilà, your Arduino IDE is ready to be used.
You need only to type arduino in a terminal and it will be asked to insert your user to the dialout group.
Click Add and then type the password.

After you has been inserted into the dialout group you can finally use your Arduino IDE:

At this point I don't need anything else on my new dev-machine.
If I find any other problem and relative solution I'll do another post.

See ya.
Ygy Freezone

apt-get install debian PT3 (MySql)

And finally here we are, installing dbms driver on our Debian machine.

First type this line into a terminal: sudo aptitude -y install mysql-server-5.5

Right after the download of the package it will be ask to insert the mysql root password.

At this point, to test your new MySql db type in a terminal: mysql -u root -p

If you see this line, congratulation! MySql is running on your machine!

Well, now you maybe need a workbench tool to manage your databases.

Type in a terminal: sudo apt-get install mysql-workbench

After the installation, for open your workbench you just type mysql-workbench in a terminal, and you can start manage your DB.

Now, to start developing with Tomcat and Eclipse, you need the jdbc-connector.

Type in a terminal sudo apt-get install libmysql-java , and voilà you have your connector ready to use.

Next time, "how put your jdbc connector on tomcat and eclipse" & "Arduino IDE".

See ya.

Ygy Freezone.