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A bill to restore consumers' rights to unlock their cellphones is one step from becoming law now that it has cleared Congress.

While Java may be a good choice for building business software, Google's Go language has advantages when it comes to building systems software, says a Java developer at Pivotal who has become a Go advocate.

Many companies that have had BYOD policies for a while have matured their thinking. They've grown from looking at employees' personal devices as something to lock down to allowing them in a limited fashion to fully embracing them.

They have moved from allowing only company-provided phones to supporting "COPE" devices (which are corporate-owned, personally enabled tools) to sanctioning true bring-your-own device setups, says Chris Marsh, an enterprise mobility analyst at Yankee Group.

There's no need for a portable phone charger to be boring -- here are 11 chargers for your smartphone (or tablet) that are both useful and creative Dek:  There's no need for a portable phone charger to be boring -- here are 11 chargers for your smartphone (or tablet) that are both useful and creative External Source:  computerworld.com Redirect Unpublished Slideshow to:  http://www.computerworld.com/slideshow/156087

If Oracle's licensing terms never struck you as invidious before, you might soon change your mind.

With all of the rumors, fakes, and howling inaccuracies floating around, it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and look at what we really know about forthcoming versions of Windows.

With all of the rumors, fakes, and howling inaccuracies floating around, it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and look at what we really know about forthcoming versions of Windows.

You love your broadband provider, don't you? Right down to the Netflix slowdowns and inscrutable surcharges. You'd never, ever consider switching to faster, cheaper public broadband run by your local municipality.

The new gold rush is mobile health apps, both to track medical conditions and fitness.

Android mobile devices, while not typically thought of as places where development work gets done, can offer surprisingly useful apps to help developers get the job done Dek:  Android mobile devices, while not typically thought of as places where development work gets done, can offer surprisingly useful apps to help developers get the job done External Source:  cio.com Redirect Unpublished Slideshow to:  http://www.cio.com/slideshow/159906

Good news for Microsoft: "Strong sales of cloud products to businesses helped lift Microsoft's revenue by 18 percent last quarter, though its profits declined," reports Reuters. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a call with financial analysts that commercial cloud revenue grew almost 150 percent year over year to $4.4 billion annually, driven primarily by sales of Office 365, the Azure IaaS and PaaS products, and Dynamics CRM Online.

Help is on the horizon for mobile developers dealing with the nuances of the numerous Android OS ver

Natural language is a wonder. Like the best poetry, everyday speech often expresses overlapping meanings in tightly wrapped verbal packages.

At the most fundamental level, the linguistic mechanisms for coding, decoding, and distinguishing these packed meanings are built into our brains. But they're also calibrated on the fly by the cultures in which we live. This mental processing spans the range from conscious to unconscious, with most of us barely aware of all the verbal vibrations we're putting out and absorbing as we move through the day.

In today's threatscape, antivirus software provides little piece of mind, and antimalware scanners on the whole are horrifically inaccurate, especially with exploits less than 24 hours old. Despite modern heuristics, virtualized environments, system monitoring, and network traffic detection, hackers still reach us on a regular basis. 

Nginx Plus, the commercial edition of the open source Web server that's elbowed out Apache HTTPD on many top-traffic sites, unveiled its fourth major version today.

Having a ton of data at your disposal isn't much good if you can't make sense of it, so users of big data analytics systems like Hadoop are also making use of data visualization tools.

Look for these cool capabilities in the OS X 10.10 Yosemite public beta Dek:  Look for these cool capabilities in the OS X 10.10 Yosemite public beta External Source:  infoworld.com Redirect Unpublished Slideshow to:  http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/160041

The giants are back. The classic tech companies that make computers, hard drives, and productivity software are soaring on Wall Street.

Credit: iStockphoto

Hey, it must be hard to be the only person on the planet who doesn't understand big data.

Actually, that's far from true: You're in good company. While Gartner finds that 64 percent of enterprises are investing in big data, a similar chunk (60 percent) don't have a clue as to what to do with their data.

The real problem isn't one of technology, but of process. The key to succeeding with big data, as in all serious IT investments, is iteration. It's not about Hadoop, NoSQL, Splunk, or any particular vendor or technology. It's about iteration.