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Download COMODO Internet Security 11.0.0.6744 – softpedia.com

January 31, 2019 | Author: admin

COMODO Internet Security Premium is an antivirus system that aims to protect your system, files and folders against online threats. It includes an antivirus module, combined with firewall features build an unbreakable shield.

COMODO Internet Security Premium offers to change your DNS servers to COMODO SecureDNS servers (it has a description), and to enable "Cloud Based Behavior Analysis" of unrecognized programs by submitting them to COMODO.

When the program is launched, you are welcomed by three windows. In one of them, COMODO searched for updates, another one informed us of how the firewall had detected a new private network that our PC was about to join, and another one which is the software's interface.

Updating takes several minutes, after which COMODO runs an automatic scan on your computer (which takes a really long time, but it's thorough). The GUI is very eye-catching and simple to follow.

COMODO seems to have a lot of features for each main function, but they are well organized. The antivirus section lets you run or schedule a scan (a full scan, on critical areas, or a spyware scan), configure the scanner settings, view antivirus events and quarantined items, but also submit suspicious files to COMODO to be further analyzed.

The firewall lets you view events and alerts that were possibly triggered by attacks on the computer, define a new trusted or blocked application, create a set of global rules, and configure various options.

Defense+ has some interesting features, such as running a program in the Sandbox (a "safe haven" for untrusted, restricted, limited or partially limited applications), adding or removing files to and from your local safe executable database, and viewing unrecognized files (which are automatically placed in the Sandbox until further notice).

Surprisingly enough, COMODO uses very little CPU and memory resources while scanning is active. But other system applications run slower.

To sum things up, COMODO Internet Security Premium is a brilliant security application, but that's only our opinion. You have to test it for yourself.

COMODO Firewall COMODO Antivirus Secure Internet Connection Firewall Antivirus Anti-malware Security

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How Does Quantum Computing Work? – ExtremeTech

January 31, 2019 | Author: admin

Quantum computing just plain sounds cool. Weve all read about the massive investment in making it a reality, and its promise of breakthroughs in many industries. But all that press is usually short on what it is and how it works. Thats for a reason: Quantum computing is quite different from traditional digital computing and requires thinking about things in a non-intuitive way. Oh, and there is math. Lots of it.

This article wont make you an expert, but it should help you understand what quantum computing is, why its important, and why its so exciting. If you already have a background in quantum mechanics and grad school math, you probably dont need to read this article. You can jump straight into a book like A Gentle Introduction To Quantum Computing (Hint, gentle is a relative term). But ifyoure like most of us and dont have that background, lets do our best to demystify one of the most mystical topics in computing.

In a few short paragraphs, here are the basics that well go over in more detail in this article: Quantum computers use qubits instead of traditional bits (binary digits). Qubits are different from traditional bits because until they are read out (meaning measured), they can exist in an indeterminate state where we cant tell whether theyll be measured as a 0 or a 1. Thats because of a unique property called superposition.

Superposition makes qubits interesting, but their real superpower is entanglement. Entangled qubits can interact instantly. To make functional qubits, quantum computers have to be cooled to near absolute zero. Even when supercooled, qubits dont maintain their entangled state (coherence) for very long.

That makes programming them extra tricky. Quantum computers are programmed using sequences of logic gates of various kinds, but programs need to run quickly enough that the qubits dont lose coherence before theyre measured. For anyone who took a logic class or digital circuit design using flip-flops, quantum logic gates will seem somewhat familiar, although quantum computers themselves are essentially analog. However, the combination of superposition and entanglement make the process about a hundred times more confusing.

The ordinary bits we use in typical digital computers are either 0 or 1. You can read them whenever you want, and unless there is a flaw in the hardware, they wont change. Qubits arent like that. They have a probability of being 0 and a probability of being 1, but until you measure them, they may be in an indefinite state. That state,along with some other state information that allows for additional computational complexity, can be described as being at an arbitrary point on a sphere (of radius 1), that reflects both the probability of being measured as a 0 or 1 (which are the north and south poles).

The qubits state is a combination of the values along all three axes. This is called superposition. Some texts describe this property as being in all possible states at the same time, while others think thats somewhat misleading and that were better off sticking with the probability explanation. Either way, a quantum computer can actually do math on the qubit while it is in superposition changing the probabilities in various ways through logic gates before eventually reading out a result by measuring it. In all cases, though, once a qubit is read, it is either 1 or 0 and loses its other state information.

Qubits typically start life at 0, although they are often then moved into an indeterminate state using a Hadamard Gate, which results in a qubit that will read out as 0 half the time and 1 the other half. Other gates are available to flip the state of a qubit by varying amounts and directions both relative to the 0 and 1 axes, and also a third axis thatrepresents phase, and provides additional possibilities for representing information. The specific operations and gates available depend on the quantum computer and toolkit youre using.

Groups of independent qubits, by themselves, arent enough to create the massive breakthroughs that are promised by quantum computing. The magic really starts to happen when the quantum physics concept of entanglement is implemented. One industry expert likened qubits without entanglement as being a very expensive classical computer. Entangled qubits affect each other instantly when measured, no matter far apart they are, based on what Einstein euphemistically called spooky action at a distance. In terms of classic computing, this is a bit like having a logic gate connecting every bit in memory to every other bit.

You can start to see how powerful that might be compared with a traditional computer needing to read and write from each element of memory separately before operating on it. As a result, there are multiple large potential gains from entanglement. The first is a huge increase in the complexity of programming that can be executed, at least for certain types of problems. One thats creating a lot of excitement is the modeling of complex molecules and materials that are very difficult to simulate with classical computers. Another might be innovations in long-distance secure communications if and when it becomes possible to preserve quantum state over large distances. Programming using entanglement typically starts with the C-NOT gate, which flips the state of an entangled particle if its partner is read out as a 1. This is sort of like a traditional XOR gate, except that it only operates when a measurement is made.

Superposition and entanglement are impressive physical phenomena, but leveraging them to do computation requires a very different mindset and programming model. You cant simply throw your C code on a quantum computer and expect it to run, and certainly not to run faster. Fortunately, mathematicians and physicists are way ahead of the computer builders here, having developed clever algorithms that take advantage of quantum computers decades before the machines started to appear.

Some of the first quantum algorithms created, and honestly, some of the few useful ones Ive found that you can understand without a graduate degree in math, are for secure cryptographic key distribution. These algorithms use the property of entanglement to allow the key creator to send one of each of many pairs of qubits to the recipient. The full explanation is pretty long, but the algorithms rely on the fact that if anyone intercepts and reads one of the entangled bits en route, the companion qubit at the sender will be affected. By passing some statistics back and forth, the sender and receiver can figure out whether the key was transmitted securely, or was hacked on the way.

You may have read that quantum computers one day could break most current cryptography systems. They will be able to do that because there are some very clever algorithms designed to run on quantum computers that can solve a hard math problem, which in turn can be used to factor very large numbers. One of the most famous is Shors Factoring Algorithm. The difficulty of factoring large numbers is essential to the security of all public-private key systems which are the most commonly used today. Current quantum computers dont have nearly enough qubits to attempt the task, but various experts predict they will within the next 3-8 years. That leads to some potentially dangerous situations, such as if only governments and the super-rich had access to the ultra-secure encryption provided by quantum computers.

There are plenty of reasons quantum computers are taking a long time to develop. For starters, you need to find a way to isolate and control a physical object that implements a qubit. That also requires cooling it down to essentially zero (as in .015 degrees Kelvin, in the case of IBMs Quantum One). Even at such a low temperature, qubits are only stable (retaining coherence) for a very short time. That greatly limits the flexibility of programmers in how many operations they can perform before needing to read out a result.

Not only do programs need to be constrained, but they need to be run many times, as current qubit implementations have a high error rate. Additionally, entanglement isnt easy to implement in hardware either. In many designs, only some of the qubits are entangled, so the compiler needs to be smart enough to swap bits around as needed to help simulate a system where all the bits can potentially be entangled.

The good news is that trivial quantum computing programs are actually pretty easy to understand if a bit confusing at first. Plenty of tutorials are available that will help you write your first quantum program, as well as let you run it on a simulator, and possibly even on a real quantum computer.

One of the best places to start is with IBMs QISKit, a free quantum toolkit from IBM Q Research that includes a visual composer, a simulator, and access to an actual IBM quantum computer after you have your code running on the simulator. Rigetti Quantum Computing has also posted an easy intro application, which relies on their toolkit and can be run on their machines in the cloud.

Unfortunately, the trivial applications are just that: trivial. So simply following along with the code in each example doesnt really help you master the intricacies of more sophisticated quantum algorithms. Thats a much harder task.

Thanks to William Poole and Sue Gemmell for their thoughtful input.

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Also, check out ourExtremeTech Explainsseries for more in-depth coverage of todays hottest tech topics.

Top image credit: IBM

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Altcointrader.co.za Review – Altcoin Trader, Login …

January 27, 2019 | Author: admin

Altcointrader.co.za Review Altcoin Trader, Login, Registration, News

Altcoin trader is a platform where you can buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in exchange for South African Rand (ZAR). It is sometimes called the helm of Crypto trading in South Africa. Altcointraders website was registered on the 1st day of July, 2014. To trade on Altcointrader, you must be 18 years and above.

How do you buy Bitcoins on the Altcoin Trader Platform?

Buying Bitcoins is a very simple process but when working with money you need to take care to not make mistakes!

You simply go to the Buy BTC section of the website then fill in the Amount of BTC to buy, Price per BTC and click the Buy BTC button.

Altcoin Trader promises a secured trading platform. This platform has been serving South Africans since 2014/2015 till date. This shows the site is genuine.

You can contact Altcoin trader using the details below.

support@altcointrader.co.zadocs@altcointrader.co.za(ID, Proof of residence)

P.O.Box 377RoodepoortSouth Africa1725

To access, Register of Login to Altcointrader.co.za, click the link below.

Access

Please also use the Live chat box herein to chat with real people to get a possible solution to your problem. You can always use the comment section to testify about the good and bad with regards to the reviewed platform. Email Testboo.com@gmail.com to report anything.

South Africans and Africans in general are still trading in AltcoinTrader.co.za and there are no negative complaints so far.

Irrespective of the decline in prices of Crypto currencies, Altcointrader.co.za is still buzzing with a lot of activities. This site has really come to stay.

NB There has not been any negative comment about Altcointrader on this platform. Notify the world and us if you are experiencing anything you do not like on Altcointrader .

NB Once you are asked to send money to claim any price, it is simply a scam.

Altcoin trader has proven to be one of the best trading platforms in South Africa.

Altcoin Trader Login

Summary

Altcoin trader is a platform where you can buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in exchange for South African Rand (ZAR)

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What Is Encryption, and How Does It Work?

January 26, 2019 | Author: admin

Encryption has a long history dating back to when the ancient Greeks and Romans sent secret messages by substituting letters only decipherable with a secret key. Join us for a quick history lesson and learn more about how encryption works.

In todays edition of HTG Explains, well give you a brief history of encryption, how it works, and some examples of different types of encryptionmake sure you also check out the previous edition, where we explained why so many geeks hate Internet Explorer.

Image by xkcd, obviously.

The ancient Greeks used a tool called a Scytale to help encrypt their messages more quickly using a transposition cipherthey would simply wrap the strip of parchment around the cylinder, write out the message, and then when unwound wouldnt make sense.

This encryption method could be fairly easily broken, of course, but its one of the first examples of encryption actually being used in the real world.

Julius Caesar used a somewhat similar method during his time by shifting each letter of the alphabet to the right or left by a number of positionsan encryption technique known as Caesars cipher. For instance, using the example cipher below youd write GEEK as JHHN.

Plain: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZCipher: DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC

Since only the intended recipient of the message knew the cipher, it would be difficult for the next person to decode the message, which would appear as gibberish, but the person that had the cipher could easily decode and read it.

Other simple encryption ciphers like the Polybius square used a polyalphabetic cipher that listed each letter with the corresponding numeric positions across the top and side to tell where the position of the letter was.

Using a table like the one above you would write the letter G as 23, or GEEK as 23 31 31 43.

Enigma Machine

During World War II, the Germans used the Enigma machine to pass encrypted transmissions back and forth, which took years before the Polish were able to crack the messages, and give the solution to the Allied forces, which was instrumental to their victory.

Lets face it: modern encryption techniques can be an extremely boring subject, so instead of just explaining them with words, weve put together a comic strip that talks about the history of encryption, inspired by Jeff Mosers stick figure guide to AES. Note: clearly we cannot convey everything about encryptions history in a comic strip.

Back in those days, people do not have a good encryption method to secure their electronic communication.

Lucifer was the name given to several of the earliest civilian block ciphers, developed by Horst Feistel and his colleagues at IBM.

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a block cipher (a form of shared secret encryption) that was selected by the National Bureau of Standards as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the United States in 1976 and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally.

Concerns about security and the relatively slow operation of DES in software motivated researchers to propose a variety of alternative block cipher designs, which started to appear in the late 1980s and early 1990s: examples include RC5, Blowfish, IDEA, NewDES, SAFER, CAST5 and FEAL

The Rijndael encryption algorithm was adopted by the US Government as standard symmetric-key encryption, or Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES was announced by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as U.S. FIPS PUB 197 (FIPS 197) on November 26, 2001 after a 5-year standardization process in which fifteen competing designs were presented and evaluated before Rijndael was selected as the most suitable encryption algorithm.

Many encryption algorithms exist, and they are all suited to different purposesthe two main characteristics that identify and differentiate one encryption algorithm from another are its ability to secure the protected data against attacks and its speed and efficiency in doing so.

As a good example of the speed difference between different types of encryption, you can use the benchmarking utility built into TrueCrypts volume creation wizardas you can see, AES is by far the fastest type of strong encryption.

There are both slower and faster encryption methods, and they are all suited for different purposes. If youre simply trying to decrypt a tiny piece of data every so often, you can afford to use the strongest possible encryption, or even encrypt it twice with different types of encryption. If you require speed, youd probably want to go with AES.

For more on benchmarking different types of encryption, check out a report from Washington University of St. Louis, where they did a ton of testing on different routines, and explained it all in a very geeky write-up.

All the fancy encryption algorithm that we have talked about earlier are mostly used for two different types of encryption:

To explain this concept, well use the postal service metaphor described in Wikipedia to understand how symmetric key algorithms works.

Alice puts her secret message in a box, and locks the box using a padlock to which she has a key. She then sends the box to Bob through regular mail. When Bob receives the box, he uses an identical copy of Alices key (which he has somehow obtained previously, maybe by a face-to-face meeting) to open the box, and read the message. Bob can then use the same padlock to send his secret reply.

Symmetric-key algorithms can be divided into stream ciphers and block ciphersstream ciphers encrypt the bits of the message one at a time, and block ciphers take a number of bits, often in blocks of 64 bits at a time, and encrypt them as a single unit. Theres a lot of different algorithms you can choose fromthe more popular and well-respected symmetric algorithms include Twofish, Serpent, AES (Rijndael), Blowfish, CAST5, RC4, TDES, and IDEA.

In an asymmetric key system, Bob and Alice have separate padlocks, instead of the single padlock with multiple keys from the symmetric example. Note: this is, of course, a greatly oversimplified example of how it really works, which is much more complicated, but youll get the general idea.

First, Alice asks Bob to send his open padlock to her through regular mail, keeping his key to himself. When Alice receives it she uses it to lock a box containing her message, and sends the locked box to Bob. Bob can then unlock the box with his key and read the message from Alice. To reply, Bob must similarly get Alices open padlock to lock the box before sending it back to her.

The critical advantage in an asymmetric key system is that Bob and Alice never need to send a copy of their keys to each other. This prevents a third party (perhaps, in the example, a corrupt postal worker) from copying a key while it is in transit, allowing said third party to spy on all future messages sent between Alice and Bob. In addition, if Bob were careless and allowed someone else to copy his key, Alices messages to Bob would be compromised, but Alices messages to other people would remain secret, since the other people would be providing different padlocks for Alice to use.

Asymmetric encryption uses different keys for encryption and decryption. The message recipient creates a private key and a public key. The public key is distributed among the message senders and they use the public key to encrypt the message. The recipient uses their private key any encrypted messages that have been encrypted using the recipients public key.

Theres one major benefit to doing encryption this way compare to symmetric encryption. We never need to send anything secret (like our encryption key or password) over an insecure channel. Your public key goes out to the worldits not secret and it doesnt need to be. Your private key can stay snug and cozy on your personal computer, where you generated itit never has to be e-mailed anywhere, or read by attackers.

For many years, the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol has been securing web transactions using encryption between your web browser and a web server, protecting you from anybody that might be snooping on the network in the middle.

SSL itself is conceptually quite simple. It begins when the browser requests a secure page (usually https://)

The web server sends its public key with its certificate.The browser checks that the certificate was issued by a trusted party (usually a trusted root CA), that the certificate is still valid and that the certificate is related to the site contacted.The browser then uses the public key, to encrypt a random symmetric encryption key and sends it to the server with the encrypted URL required as well as other encrypted http data.The web server decrypts the symmetric encryption key using its private key and uses the browsers symmetric key to decrypt its URL and http data.The web server sends back the requested html document and http data encrypted with the browsers symmetric key. The browser decrypts the http data and html document using the symmetric key and displays the information.

And now you can securely buy that eBay item you really didnt need.

If you made it this far, were at the end of our long journey to understanding encryption and a little bit of how it worksstarting from the early days of encryption with the Greeks and Romans, the rise of Lucifer, and finally how SSL uses asymmetric and symmetric encryption to help you buy that fluffy pink bunny on eBay.

Were big fans of encryption here at How-To Geek, and weve covered a lot of different ways to do things like:

Of course encryption is far too complicated a topic to really explain everything. Did we miss something important? Feel free to lay some knowledge on your fellow readers in the comments.

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The Pitfalls of Facebook Merging Messenger, Instagram, and …

January 26, 2019 | Author: admin

In an effort led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has plans to rearchitect WhatsApp, Instagram direct messages, and Facebook Messenger so that messages can travel across any of the platforms. The New York Times first reported the move Friday, noting also that Zuckerberg wants the initiative to "incorporate end-to-end encryption." Melding those infrastructures would be a massive task regardless, but designing the scheme to universally preserve end-to-end encryptionin a way that users understandposes a whole additional set of critical challenges.

As things stand now, WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted by default, while Facebook Messenger only offers the feature if you turn on "Secret Conversations." Instagram does not currently offer any form of end-to-end encryption for its chats. WhatsApp's move to add default encryption for all users was a watershed moment in 2016, bringing the protection to a billion people by flipping one switch.

Facebook is still in the early planning stages of homogenizing its messaging platforms, a move that could increase the ease and number of secured chats online by a staggering order of magnitude. But cryptographers and privacy advocates have already raised a number of obvious hurdles the company faces in doing so. End-to-end encrypted chat protocols ensure that data is only decrypted and intelligible on the devices of the sender and recipient. At least, that's the idea. In practice, it can be difficult to use the protection effectively if it's enabled for some chats and not for others and can turn on and off within a chat at different times. In attempting to unify its chat services, Facebook will need to find a way to help users easily understand and control end-to-end encryption as the ecosystem becomes more porous.

"The big problem I see is that only WhatsApp has default end-to-end encryption," says Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins. "So if the goal is to allow cross-app traffic, and its not required to be encrypted, then what happens? There are a whole range of outcomes here."

WhatsApp users, for example, can assume that all of their chats are end-to-end encrypted, but what will happen in Facebook's newly homogenized platform if an Instagram user messages a WhatsApp user? It's unclear what sort of defaults Facebook will impose, and how it will let users know whether their chats are encrypted.

Facebook can also glean more data from unencrypted chats and introduce monetizable experiences like bots into them. The company has had a notoriously hard time earning revenue off of WhatsApp's 1.5 billion users, in part because of end-to-end encryption.

"We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. "We're working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks. As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work."

Facebook emphasizes that this gradual process will allow it to work out all the kinks before debuting a monolithic chat structure. But encryption's not the only area of concern. Privacy advocates are concerned about the potential creation of a unified identity for people across all three services, so that messages go to the right place. Such a setup could be convenient in many ways, but it could also have complicated ramifications.

In 2016, WhatsApp started sharing user phone numbers and other analytics with Facebook, perforating what had previously been a red line between the two services. WhatsApp still lets users make an account with only a phone number, while Facebook requires your legal name under its controversial "real name" policy. The company maintains this rule to prevent confusion and fraud, but its rigidity has caused problems for users who have other safety and security reasons for avoiding their legal or given name, such as being transgender.

"If the goal is to allow cross-app traffic, and its not required to be encrypted, then what happens?"

Matthew Green, Johns Hopkins University

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Thursday evening, Zuckerberg wrote that, "Theres no question that we collect some information for adsbut that information is generally important for security and operating our services as well." An indelible identity across Facebook's brands could have security benefits like enabling stronger anti-fraud protections. But it could also unlock an even richer and more nuanced user data trove for Facebook to mine, and potentially make it harder to use one or more of the services without tying those profiles to a central identity.

"The obvious identity issue is usernames. I'm one thing on Facebook and another on Instagram," says Jim Fenton, an independent identity privacy and security consultant. "In some ways, having the three linked more closely together would be good because it would make it more transparent that they are connected. But there are some Instagram and WhatsApp users who don't want to use Facebook. This might be seen as a way to try to push more people in."

Such a change to how chat works on the three brands isn't just a potentially massive shift for usersit also seems to have stirred deep controversy within Facebook itself, and may have contributed to the departure last year of WhatsApp cofounders Jan Koum and Brian Acton.

End-to-end encryption is also difficult to implement correctly, because any oversight or bug can undermine the whole scheme. For example, both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger currently use the open-source Signal protocol (used in the Signal encrypted messaging app), but the implementations are different, because one service has the encryption on by default and the other doesn't. Melding these different approaches could create opportunities for error.

"Theres a world where Facebook Messenger and Instagram get upgraded to the default encryption of WhatsApp, but that probably isn't happening," Johns Hopkins' Green says. "Its too technically challenging and would cost Facebook access to lots of data."

And while end-to-end encryption can't solve every privacy issue for everyone all the time anyway, it's harder to know how to take advantage of it safely when a service doesn't offer it consistently, and creates potential privacy issues when it centralizes identities.

"I think they can work this out," Fenton says. "The bigger problem in my opinion is user confusion."

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What is cloud computing? | IBM

January 24, 2019 | Author: admin

Enterprises eager to undergo digital transformations and modernize their applications are quick to see the value of adopting a cloud computing platform. They are increasingly finding business agility or cost savings by renting software. Each cloud computing service and deployment model type provides you with different levels of control, flexibility and management. Therefore, its important to understand the differences between them.

Common convention points to public cloud as the delivery model of choice; but, when considering the right architecture of cloud computing for your applications and workloads, you must begin by addressing the unique needs of your business.

This can include many factors, such as government regulations, security, performance, data residency, service levels, time to market, architecture complexity, skills and preventing vendor lock-in. Add in the need to incorporate the emerging technologies, and you can see why IT leaders are challenging the notion that cloud computing migration is easy.

At first glance, the types of cloud computing seem simple: public, private or a hybrid mix of both. In reality, the choices are many. Public cloud can include shared, dedicated and bare metal delivery models. Fully and partially managed clouds are also options. And, in some cases, especially for existing applications where architectures are too complex to move or the cost-benefit ratio is not optimal, cloud may not be the right choice.

The right model depends on your workload. You should understand the pluses and minuses of each cloud deployment model and take a methodical approach to determining which workloads to move to which type of cloud for the maximum benefit.

Dive deeper into specific cloud service and deployment models, cloud computing architecture and cloud computing examples

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Quantum technology – Wikipedia

January 23, 2019 | Author: admin

Quantum technology is a new field of physics and engineering, which transitions some of the properties of quantum mechanics, especially quantum entanglement, quantum superposition and quantum tunnelling, into practical applications such as quantum computing, quantum sensors, quantum cryptography, quantum simulation, quantum metrology and quantum imaging.

Quantum superposition states can be very sensitive to a number of external effects, such as electric, magnetic and gravitational fields; rotation, acceleration and time, and therefore can be used to make very accurate sensors. There are many experimental demonstrations of quantum sensing devices, such as the experiments carried out by the nobel laureate William D. Phillips on using cold atom interferometer systems to measure gravity and the atomic clock which is used by many national standards agencies around the world to define the second.

Recent efforts are being made to engineer quantum sensing devices, so that they are cheaper, easier to use, more portable, lighter and consume less power. It is believed that if these efforts are successful, it will lead to multiple commercial markets, such as for the monitoring of oil and gas deposits, or in construction.

Quantum secure communication are methods which are expected to be 'quantum safe' in the advent of a quantum computing systems that could break current cryptography systems. One significant component of a quantum secure communication systems is expected to be Quantum key distribution, or 'QKD': a method of transmitting information using entangled light in a way that makes any interception of the transmission obvious to the user.

Quantum computers are the ultimate quantum network, combining 'quantum bits' or 'qubit' which are devices that can store and process quantum data (as opposed to binary data) with links that can transfer quantum information between qubits. In doing this, quantum computers are predicted to calculate certain algorithms significantly faster than even the largest classical computer available today.

Quantum computers are expected to have a number of significant uses in computing fields such as optimization and machine learning. They are famous for their expected ability to carry out 'Shor's Algorithm', which can be used to factorise large numbers which are mathematically important to secure data transmission.

There are many devices available today which are fundamentally reliant on the effects of quantum mechanics. These include: laser systems, transistors and semi-conductor devices and other devices, such as MRI imagers. These devices are often referred to belonging to the 'first quantum revolution'; the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) grouped these devices as 'quantum 1.0',[1] that is devices which rely on the effects of quantum mechanics. Quantum technologies are often described as the 'second quantum revolution' or 'quantum 2.0'. These are generally regarded as a class of device that actively create, manipulate and read out quantum states of matter, often using the quantum effects of superposition and entanglement.

The field of quantum technology was first outlined in a 1997 book by Gerard J. Milburn,[2] which was then followed by a 2003 article by Jonathan P. Dowling and Gerard J. Milburn,[3][4] as well as a 2003 article by David Deutsch.[5] The field of quantum technology has benefited immensely from the influx of new ideas from the field of quantum information processing, particularly quantum computing. Disparate areas of quantum physics, such as quantum optics, atom optics, quantum electronics, and quantum nanomechanical devices, have been unified under the search for a quantum computer and given a common language, that of quantum information theory.

The Quantum Manifesto was signed by 3,400 scientists and officially released at the 2016 Quantum Europe Conference, calling for a quantum technology initiative to coordinate between academia and industry, to move quantum technologies from the laboratory to industry, and to educate quantum technology professionals in a combination of science, engineering, and business.[6][7][8][9][10]

The European Commission responded to that manifesto with the Quantum Technology Flagship, a 1 Billion, 10-year-long megaproject, similar in size to earlier European Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship projects such as the Graphene Flagship and Human Brain Project.[8][11] China is building the world's largest quantum research facility with a planned investment of 76 Billion Yuan (approx. 10 Billion).[12] The USA are preparing a national initiative.[13]

From 2010 onwards, multiple governments have established programmes to explore quantum technologies, such as the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme, which created four quantum 'hubs', the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, and QuTech a Dutch centre to develop a topological quantum computer.[14]

In the private sector, there have been multiple investments into quantum technologies made by large companies. Examples include Google's partnership with the John Martinis group at UCSB,[15] multiple partnerships with the Canadian quantum computing company D-wave systems, and investment by many UK companies within the UK quantum technologies programme.

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What Is Cloud Computing? | The Basics of Digital Outsourcing

January 22, 2019 | Author: admin

Cloud computing: the synergistic boardroom buzzword that you still pretend to know about.

Luckily, its a pretty simple idea, technically demanding, but simple none-the-less. On paper, cloud computing is just another way for humans to share resources and increase production.

When you use cloud computing you are essentially outsourcing a computer-related task the same way a company may choose to outsource a task like accounting, manufacturing, customer support, or human resources to name a few.

Cloud computing instead outsources tasks such as data storage, web server hosting, Bitcoin mining (warning), and software management among others.

In order to really understand the perks of cloud computing lets paint a picture of two similar e-commerce businesses. Both businesses are selling a product and using a website as their primary sales portal. Both are also new businesses with a small customer base but can reasonably expect to increase traffic to their e-commerce store in the future.

The first business, lets call it Tods Toys, is running their website on locally installed servers and hosts all their own data. Not to worry though, Tods Toys has an excellent CTO running the operation and has the current hardware/software stack purring along.

The second business, this one named Guptas Guitars, is a little more bespoke and decided to instead opt for hosting their website on a cloud server. Guptas Guitars also has a capable CTO monitoring the online stores health.

In their beginning stages, Tods Toys and Guptas Guitars are seeing similar traffic rate to their stores. However, Tods Toys is noticing a higher operating cost coming from their web servers; they have more than they currently need. The toy store doesnt mind though, as they expect traffic to increase into the server capacity they have.

Guptas Guitars, on the other hand, paid for their server use much more ad hoc. Their server access scales with traffic, so the guitar store hasnt noticed any waste. In fact, while their traffic volume was low so was their cost for using the cloud servers. Naturally, they threw a guitar-fueled pizza party with their savings!

As predicted, both online stores begin to see a precipitous uptick in volume and sales. Guptas Guitars rejoices and probably throws another pizza party. Tods Toys, on the other hand, doesnt have as long to celebrate.

The online toy store quickly pivots to scaling their server hardware as demand on their self-hosted platform outpaces their capacity. Potential customers are served 404 error messages instead of the spectacular toys that Tods offers. *Sad face*

You can see, cloud computing let Guptas Guitars outsource their server needs and as a result, focus on other aspects of their business.

A ridiculously oversimplified example but the key point is there.

Cloud computing for businesses, as in the above example, is typically referred to as enterprise cloud computing. This differs from other cloud computing services that may be more consumer-facing like Google Drive or MegaUpload (R.I.P.).

In either case, cloud computing is actually a stack of three generalized cloud provided services. At the base of the stack is the infrastructure cloud services also known as infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The middle layer is the developers layer known as platform as a service (PaaS). The top and the most visible layer is the software as a service (SaaS) layer also known as the application layer.

IaaS (infrastructure as a service)is the foundational layer made up of all the necessary hardware that makes the digital cloud tick. Despite the reference to watery vapor above us, cloud computing is made of some serious hardware, real, tangible, and often loud. IaaS is all of the physical hardware that stores and moves our zeros and ones.

Examples of IaaS providers: CloudSigma, Digital Ocean, Linode, Cisco Cloud Infrastructure Services, Microsoft Azure, Citrix Workspace Cloud

PaaS (platform as a service)isthe next layer up, where the developers and programmers get involved. In this middle layer, IaaS providers lease chunks of cloud hardware to developers and programmers pre-installed with developer tools like Apache or MySQL. This middle layer is where IaaS providers and software developers overlap.

Examples of PaaS providers: Oracle Cloud, Salesforce Platform, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services

SaaS (software as a service)isthe topmost and more familiar layer of the cloud stack. This is where applications and software are, and we see some familiar names like Spotify, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Play Store, Storj, and Dropbox to name a few. The SaaS layer is essentially where cloud services become user-friendly for consumers and businesses alike.

Examples of SaaS providers: Slack, WordPress, Trello, Mailchimp, InVision, Zoom, Buffer, Contently, Netflix

The basic cloud computing stack

Each layer of the cloud service stack enables the one before it. In short, you can think of the three layers like this: first, you need hardware. Second, you need a platform to build from. Third, you need applications so people can use the hardware.

While each use case will have much more granular pros and cons, the following are a few general benefits and drawbacks of cloud computing.

The next evolution to the cloud service stack should be one that can support a distributed infrastructure layer. By fragmenting smaller pieces of a sizable cloud infrastructure, we might be able to shift the centralization of hardware and alleviate that security vector.

If only there were a system of organization that could incentivize hardware providers to come together in a distributed method in order to provide cloud-like services to platform and software developers. If only.

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10 Best Cloud Hosting Service in 2019 – AppModo

January 21, 2019 | Author: admin

Web hosting through the cloud is as big an issue in 2019 as it has always been: you will always need to host your website data in a way that is as safe and sound as it is reliable and easy to use. After all, if you opt to have your website set up with any old cloud hosting serviceand, especially, if you choose to go with one of the free ones, which are often not as effective as they might appear from their advertisingyou risk having your website be offline at odd hours, and risk not being able to access it to modify the content.

You definitely dont want these kinds of dangers to come into play when managing your website, since, if viewers see that you have no content available, they will assume that your website is not available in general, and will simply not return.

So, what do you do? The obvious answer is to start hosting with a company that you trust. And, in turn, this begs the question: which companies should you trust with hosting all of your website data, if you choose to do so in the cloud? Which companies are worthy and reliable, and will give I the service that they promise they can offer you? Well, this article was written to answer that question. In fact, over the course of this article, well discuss the best cloud hosting, operating through the cloud, that you can find on the Internet today.

InMotion is a great example of a cloud hosting service that uses all kinds of state-of-the-art cloud tech to offer you the best bang for your buck. You can customize the VPS solutions as will be necessary to resolve your problems. You have access to managed servers to deal with your domains. The servers are fully managed, allowing you to do everything you need to do on them.

The starting price, once youve signed up with InMotion, is 19.99$. A free SSD drive is included, and youll get up to 8 gigs of RAM in your package. Access to the control panel, with an SSL certificate, is also free. Site transfer is free, as are data backups.

The service will allow you to host an unlimited amount of both FTP accounts and MySQL databases. If you like, you can even use the root-access functionality to gain the best possible hosting experience. The free SSDs that come with your subscription will allow your VPS hosting to be 20 times faster.

This provider offers security patches at no cost to you, as well as root, reseller, and SSH access, which are provided to you thanks to WHM. The real-time redundancy allows you to protect your website from potential blackouts, and the operating system, CentOS, has the same level of quality required by many businesses.

This service has the beginning price of 19.99$ per month for brand-new customers. Owing to its power and capabilities, its a great selection for owners of websites and applications that have a lot of incoming traffic. Network uptime is highly efficient at 100%, and the speed of the SSD is incredibly fast. Its virtual services are of high quality, and they are compatible with Windows operating systems.

The bandwidth offered goes up to 5000 gigs, depending on your needs. Site migration is free, as is the SSD drive that LiquidWeb will send you so that you can get your website hosting up and running. RAM goes from 30 gigs up to 1.6 terabytes. The VPS plan is compatible with both Windows and Linux OSs, depending on what youre looking for.

Redundancy is built-inallowing you to protect your website (and your business) in the event that it goes down at an inconvenient point in timeand it has even been primed for automatic scaling, which will allow you to take care of different spikes and fluctuations in the level of traffic coming to your website.

The highly flexible LiquidWeb can easily deal with all kinds of elements involved in cloud hostingincluding storage, DANS settings, databases, and firewallsand the managed hosting plans are top-rated. Backups are built-in as well, and the SSDs will allow you to improve performance without sacrificing speed. The Heroic supportthat is, the support-staff employees at LiquidWebs call centerare available twenty-four hours a day, and the service also includes DDoS protection and Cloudflare CDN.

Bluehost is a great choice if you dont want to use shared hosting anymore. The scaling of resources is fast and easy to manage. You can have domain privacy with this service, as well as a dedicated IP address. The monitoring of resources is smooth and streamlined, and caching is integrated. Different options are available. In particular, you can have 2-8 CPU cores, and the RAM offered goes up to 8 gigs in total.

The company will provide you with premium hardware: a CDN and the ability for Varnish caching. Cloud Sites, a new platform available thanks to this provider, will mirror your data in case of redundancy, in the event that your website goes down at an inconvenient time.

As well, moving from one plan to another is a flawless process that wont incur any additional fees. With a standard package, for the first year, youll get a 30 240 GB SSD drive for free. The service also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if youre not completely satisfied with it.

You may not have heard of this cloud provider, but its a good choice for all of your needs, featuring a highly user-friendly set-up and strong computing power. It remains complex and powerfuloffering you a wide variety of options for everything that you ll need doing in hosting your websitewhile at the same time remaining an interface thats so simple, most people could use it with relative ease.

As a matter of fact, the hosting offered in this service is even managed by the top hosting providers, which you get to choose fromthese include Amazon, Google Compute Engine, Kypo, Linode, Vultr, and DigitalOceanand provides you with all kinds of features that you can use when hosting your website, while remaining as user-friendly as providers with simpler, less detailed offerings.

Cloudways functions by hosting your site on one server only and then providing copies of whatever content is placed there. The control panel allows you to This service offers ThunderStack, which can take care of every performance need that you have, from Apache and MySQL to PHP 7 and Nginx.

The price starts at the low 10 dollars a month for one core, which also offers 1 gig of RAM, 25 gigs of storage, and 1 terabyte of bandwidth. You can even look at the service, to see if its right for you, without providing your credit card information. Features available include one-click cloning, integrated Git, backup and restore, and tools for developers to work together. You can easily create a WordPress server app, this app, with other kinds of resources as well.

There are also 60 data centers available for people hosting websites with Cloudways; these are located in 25 different locations all over the world. There are also digital centers.

InterServer provides you with a way of both provisioning and configuring your cloud servers so that you can have a high level of flexibility and control in managing your services. You can start using InterServer for as little as 6 dollars for your first month. This service also offers an on-site data center to host your data. In case youre not satisfied with what youve signed up for, there is a money-back guarantee offered.

This web hosting service is a good choice if youre a user with more complex specifications that need to be tended to. In particular, this service is very flexible, to the point that its Droplets system has been characterized around the concept of virtual machines, which can be both sized and personalized to fit in with your precise tastes and specs.

The pricing system is highly transparentyou know exactly what youre paying for, and what youll receive with this serviceand you can customize your Droplets to get as much power out of your hosting as possible.

This is ideal, because, although the standard plans are a good deal1 core, with 1 gig of RAM and 25 gigs of storage, goes for five dollars a monththey might not be perfect for everyone, seeing as everyone can have wildly different needs when considering cloud hosting providers. Instead, you have the option of scaling the plan that you want, which is accomplished by adding storage, cores, or RAMall of which will be presented in one single, seamless unit by DigitalOceans console.

Features included in the different Droplets include alerts, snapshots, automated backups of the whole system, and performance monitoring. Many of these features are free for you, including a cloud firewall and the monitoring functionality. Others do cost money, but theyre priced very reasonably; the snapshot option, for instance, is only five cents per gig per month of usage.

Team developers can collaborate on their website together via the Droplets system: for example, they can make use of a special tool to spread traffic around the whole system available, and they can set firewalls up in the cloud.

All of this is set at a monthly billing price for you and the fellow owners or managers of your website so that you know what you pay every monthand dont go over the limit that you set, thanks to the monthly limits that are also offered by the service.

Of course, all of this together means that DigitalOcean is probably a better option for those who are looking to develop more complex websites, including sysadmins and developers, but theres no doubt that its a powerful, useful option for those purposes. Really, its no surprise that its regarded as one of the better-known web hosting platforms thats available out there.

HostGator is a very well-known cloud-based web hosting service, and with good reason: the prices are very affordable, and you get everything youre looking for, particularly if you run a small or medium-sized business. The service allows your website to load across many different instances of virtual servers, with the result that hosting is both much more reliable and much more scalable.

The service remains user-friendly and easy to master, and the discounts youll receive when starting to use HostGator make up for any hesitation that might be on your mind when considering the service. Servers are fully or semi-managed, and you can use root access with them.

The website builder, included with every package of HostGator, is completely free and includes thousands of templates, also free of charge. As well, the company offers you a large amount of storage with all the scalability the cloud provides. Youll find fully managed servers, with access to the control panel, and over fifty scripts that you can install right off the bat.

Prices are only a little me expensive than with standard hosting, but youll get a lot more usage out of the plans offered by HostGator. One example would be the Hatchling Cloud plan, in which support is offered for one web domain, including up to 2 gigs of RAM. In fact, if you pay ahead by purchasing service for many months at a time, you can even get service for as low as less than five dollars per month.

Among other plans, youll find the Business Cloud plan, which can be used to support an unlimited number of web domains, and which also offers a hefty discount for brand-new customers. The money-back guarantee lasts a full month and a half (45 days), and you can get 25 gigs up to 3 full terabytes of RAM.

This web hosting service is based in the United Kingdom. Bytemark provides users with an in-house platform that lets them manage Ruby on Rails, Perl, PHP and MySQL; manage and configure their firewalls; establish rules for treatment of spam; and install backups. Not only will users get access to a command-line client, but they can also automate common tasks; this is achieved via integration with the AP. Also, youll access a lot of flexibility, in that Bytemark s open-source setup will let you set up an e-mail system, a server, and other elements. You can even configure your servers with a total of 16 CPU cores if you so desire.

Uptime is set at 99.99%, and, in the event that uptime is lower than that amount, HostGator promises to provide you with a months worth of credit for every time that the server goes down. The standard price for this hosting service is 14$, which includes 1 core, 1 gig of RAM, 10 terabytes of bandwidth, and 25 gigs of storage, in addition to 1 IPv6 address. You can add more to this main package via a flat rate; there are separate flat rates for storage, RAM, and TB for traffic.

By spending an additional 2.64$ per each gig of memory, youll even have access to a Windows license. A free trial is also offered; this lasts seven days. Finally, if you need to reach the HostGator support staff to discuss issues with them, they can be reached twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for every day of the year. You can also use the portal offered by the company to look at video tutorials and search the forum boards for solutions.

Everyone knows that Amazon is the most successful online vendor in the worldand the reason its creator, Jeff Bezos, is one of the richest people on Earth. But did you know that Amazon offers a hosting service as well? In fact, this cloud hosting service has been present for a long time now and is optimal for business owners for all stripes.

In its hosting, Amazon allows you to control different aspects of your websitecontent delivery, storage, computing, networking, and databaseswhich you can customize according to the needs of your business. Amazon Backend will help you in rendering your website compatible with Internet-of-Things-enabled systems, and Amazon Snowball will help you store a lot of data in the cloud. Amazon SageMaker is responsible for the machine-learning end of things, as are quite a few other services, and theres also Amazon Aurora, a system for relational databases that can be used in conjunction with MySQL. The price you pay will depend on what services youve ordered, but it will always be reasonable vis--vis the quality that you get.

So, there you have it: the best cloud hosting services that the modern-day Internet of 2019 has to offer you. If you would like to continue maintaining a high-quality website, by using a cloud service, to host all of your data, then you would do well to choose one of these services for your beloved Internet platform.

However, if you do find that these choices arent compatible with your needs or tastes, you can always find other cloud-based services that offer the same level of quality in their web hosting. You simply need to do your research to find the service that fits you best, in terms of your needs, tastes, desires, and price youre willing to pay.

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Best Cloud hosting January 2019 | WebHostingGeeks

January 21, 2019 | Author: admin

Difference between cloud vs. VPS, Dedicated & Shared

Shared hosting happens to be the most popular, as well as, classic hosting plan among users around the globe. This is mostly because it is the cheapest hosting option and is suitable for most websites. It is associated with pros such as it is simple, affordable and does not require complex setup process. Nonetheless, shared hosting is associated with cons such as the user has no total control over the performance or server and there are frequently about 2000 shared hosting accounts on a single dedicated server, thereby impacting negatively on other server residents performance when one website demands more power form the CPU, Ram, I/O or bandwidth prospective. On the other hand, VPS (Virtual Private Server) pros include: hard allocated CPU, RAM, bandwidth; it is more powerful as compared to shared hosting; in addition to having better performance, as well as, faster loading times. It cons include the fact that it is more costly as compared to shared hosting and its set up process may turn out to be more technical.

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