Sunday, May 18, 2014

Computing's future is in fog, not cloud; Swiss reject highest minimum wage; India's Modi must seize the moment

1 Computing’s future is in fog, not cloud (Christopher Mims in The Wall Street Journal) Advocates of cloud are fond of declaring that 100% of computing will someday reside in the cloud. And many companies are in business to sell you on that notion. Here's the reality: Getting data into and out of the cloud is harder than most engineers, or at least their managers, often are willing to admit.

The problem is bandwidth. If you're a company simply seeking to save the cost and headache of storing data yourself, the cloud is great as long as all you need to do is transfer data back and forth via high-speed wiring. But in the world of mass connectivity—in which people need to get information on an array of mobile devices—bandwidth is pretty slow. That's one reason that mobile apps have become a predominant way to do things on the Internet, at least on smartphones. Some of the data and processing power is handled within your device.

The problem of how to get things done when we're dependent on the cloud is becoming all the more acute as more and more objects become "smart," or able to sense their environments, connect to the Internet, and even receive commands remotely. Everything from jet engines to refrigerators is being pushed onto wireless networks and joining the "Internet of Things."

Luckily there's an obvious solution: Stop focusing on the cloud, and start figuring out how to store and process the torrent of data being generated by the Internet of Things (also known as the industrial Internet) on the things themselves, or on devices that sit between our things and the Internet. Marketers at Cisco have already come up with a name for this phenomenon: fog computing.

Whereas the cloud is "up there" in the sky somewhere, the "fog" is close to the ground, right where things are getting done. It consists not of powerful servers, but weaker and more dispersed computers of the sort that are making their way into appliances, factories, cars, street lights and every other piece of our material culture.

The bottom line is, we just have too much data. So-called predictive analytics lets companies like GE know which part of a jet engine might need maintenance, even before the plane carrying it has landed. Why else do you think Google and Facebook are talking about alternate means of Internet access, including via balloons and drones? Existing carriers aren't getting the job done. The future of much enterprise computing remains in the cloud, but the really transformative computing of the future? It's going to happen right here, in the objects that surround us—in the fog.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304908304579566662320279406?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304908304579566662320279406.html

2 Swiss reject highest minimum wage (BBC) Swiss voters have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to introduce what would have been the highest minimum wage in the world in a referendum. Under the plan, employers would have had to pay workers a minimum 22 Swiss francs (about $25) an hour.

Supporters said the move was necessary for people to live a decent life. But critics argued that it would raise production costs and increase unemployment. The minimum wage proposal was rejected by 76% of voters. Supporters had argued it would "protect equitable pay" but the Swiss Business Federation said it would harm low-paid workers in particular.


3 India’s Modi must seize the moment (Straits Times) Sky-high expectations will have to be gently brought down to earth as Mr Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assume power after a landslide victory in India. A widespread yearning for change was inevitable following the Congress Party's years of stalled economic policies, large-scale corruption and a dysfunctional political system that conspired with bureaucratic sloth to bring about legislative-executive gridlock.

But popular expectations are overdone as there are limits to what Mr Modi can do to speedily restore growth, check high inflation, multiply jobs for restless youngsters and fix shoddy infrastructure. A rapid revitalisation for India is beyond anyone as substantive changes on the ground will take time - even with the return of badly needed investment, it will require a gestation period of three to four years to yield sufficient productive capacity, according to a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Mr Modi is seasoned enough to know the art of politics is to moderate overweening hopes while delivering incremental changes as he gets into his stride. Confidence is best sustained by focusing on high standards of governance with a firm eye on long-term structural improvements. Policy certainty will be the crucial game changer. Its absence was the key reason why investment nosedived, as the International Monetary Fund had noted.

Running a tight ship will be a signal accomplishment given the political bickering, vested interests and bureaucratic stonewalls that Mr Modi will have to contend with. Foremost among his obstacles is the difficulty of persuading state governments to give a fillip to worthy projects. For example, land acquisition at the state level is said to account for the fate of over half of the top 50 projects (measured by value) that have ground to a halt, according to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy. "All told, 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the problems on the ground are outside the direct jurisdiction of the central government," says a JP Morgan economist.

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/more-opinion-stories/story/seize-the-moment-mr-modi-20140519

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