Issue #162 / May 2014

Newsweek’s story uncovering the man they claim is the creator of BitCoin caused plenty of buzz. As this issue goes to press, the guy they fingered has announced he is filing a lawsuit, claiming that the assertions are false. But according to the story, his brother said “He’ll never admit to starting BitCoin.” So who should we believe?

Many commentators have argued that the story is not sufficiently corroborated and shouldn’t have been printed, which might be true. But the question of the story’s treatment of facts masks another question that is receiving much less attention: Even if the allegations are true, is this really a news story?

Updates on Technologies, Trends, and Tools

Globalization, rapidly increasing numbers of devices, virtualization, the cloud, and "bring your own device" make classically organized IP networks difficult to plan and manage. Instead of quarreling, some admins address these problems with a radically new approach: Software-defined networking.

The OpenFlow protocol and its surrounding technologies are bringing the promise of SDN to real networks – and it might not be long before you see them on your real network.

Several well-known companies are collaborating on the foundations of future SDN products under the umbrella of the OpenDaylight open source project.

Mininet lets you test new controller features for your software-defined network in a sandbox before releasing them onto your production network.

Increasingly, surveys that measure customer satisfaction, political opinion, and so on are conducted over the Internet. We researched which tools are suitable for online surveys and which help you the most with statistical analyses.

Since the release of the final version, Samba 4 has become increasingly significant in IT practice; now it has found its way into Jessie, the next Debian release. We take a look at the new features.

Klaus looks at problems with VNC-based shared desktops and a frozen screen with an Nvidia card.