Author: Nick Farrell

No one wants Apple Watch – not even Reuters

Posted on March 16, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 18.15.41Apple’s favourite news agency, Reuters, which normally churns out free adverts for Jobs’s Mob pretending it is news, has had to admit that no one is really interested in the iWatch.

The normally Apple friendly reporters thought that they were onto a winner when they commissioned a poll which was expected to say that everyone in the US wanted to buy one of Apple’s shiny new toys.  After all, wouldn’t everyone agree that Apple had created a game changer?

The problem was that  when he numbers came in, the report said the opposite and that Americans were spurning the Apple Watch as if it were a rabid dog.

Apparently more than 69 percent of Americans they are not interested in buying the gadget and would rather spend their cash on something more useful.

Reuters did its best to put some spin on the news, claiming that the survey also showed limited awareness of the watch.

The poll was taken after Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook rolled out the product on Monday, and only about half of respondents said they had heard news of the timepiece in the last few days.

However given that the watch has had two years free marketing bordering on hysteria, one has to question which planet those surveyed had been on. That suggestion also does not make much sense when you consider that most of those asked, thought the watch was a passing fad.

Ipsos surveyed 1,245 Americans online between March 9 and March 13. The data was weighted to reflect the U.S. population and has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
One-quarter of respondents said they were interested in purchasing the Apple Watch, but 69 percent said they had no desire, and six percent said they were unsure.

Initial demand for the watch is expected to come primarily from existing iPhone users, but its wider success is seen depending on whether developers create enticing apps tailored to the device, so-called killer apps.

Some 46 percent of respondents said that the Apple Watch had a “cool factor.” But only 29 percent said they were more interested in purchasing an Apple Watch than another brand of smartwatch.

Analysts expect that Apple will sell between 10 million and 32 million watches in 2015, which would probably account for those Apple fans who buy anything the company produces. Although we doubt it will even do that well. The watch is two years behind others on the market, and does much less than expected.

Big Blue suits fight over redundancy

Posted on March 16, 2015 by - News

Backstreet_Boys_-_Black_&_Blue_album_coverSuits in Biggish Blue’s Systems Middleware division are fighting over the right to flee the company and collect a nice redundancy.

Some 110 people want to be paid to leave the company which is way more than the ten per cent of the division’s 736-strong workforce that IBM wanted.

IBM has said that if too many people applied for redundancy then it would choose from the list of volunteers.

The voluntary redundancy process is “coming to an end” and some will be offered redundancy. But the sheer size of the numbers of people who want out will be bad for IBM. It shows staff no longer have much confidence in the company and would rather take the money and run.

IBM has also bought in spending and travel restrictions to manage costs and it is investigating property portfolio projects which are aimed at reducing overall occupancy costs across IBM UK.
IBM staffers asking for redundancy will leave on 5 April, and compulsory lay-offs are not expected – at least, by employees.

Big Blue has restructured internal divisions, placed a big bet on cloud systems. It is also cutting costs by reducing its worldwide headcount. This follows eleven straight quarters of revenue decline.
IBM said it would take a $600m restructuring charge to expunge several thousand people this year, although the number of leavers depends on their seniority and pay scale.

 

HP resolves Autonomy case with shareholders

Posted on March 16, 2015 by - News

INDUSTRY HP 1Maker of expensive printer ink HP has finally won court approval of its settlement with shareholders over its botched Autonomy deal.

US District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco granted preliminary approval to the accord Friday, saying that unlike the last proposal it doesn’t provide officers and directors with broad protection against possible lawsuits that have nothing to do with the Autonomy acquisition.

The settlement releases HP from investor claims related to Autonomy in exchange for a set of corporate governance reforms and no money damages.

Executives at HP and Autonomy have been spatting over who’s responsible for the $8.8 billion writedown related to the $10 billion 2011 takeover of the UK software company. HP blamed much of the writedown on inaccurate financial statements, said it was the victim of fraud by Autonomy’s managers. Former Autonomy executives say HP missed it all up.

They argued, HP should be forced to litigate the shareholder suit, because then it would have to reveal documents that the Autonomy bosses believe will exonerate them of any wrongdoing. That doesn’t seem likely to happen.

The governance reforms apply to both entities to be formed when HP splits into two companies.

The reforms include the creation of a senior executive-led risk management committee, modifications to board-level oversight of mergers and acquisitions and a new due diligence policy for mergers.

Kids say Apple watch uncool

Posted on March 13, 2015 by - News

uncool-yellowbutton_web-600While the Tame Apple Press and older people think that Apple’s new watch is a good idea, the kids of today think it is as uncool as your dad dancing at the school disco.

Marketing research company Fizziology analyzed nearly a million tweets around Apple’s big iWatch announcement, and it turns out that millennials aren’t as excited about the Apple Watch as many people may have thought.

According to the research, those over 35 years old were twice as likely to discuss the Watch than those under 35. In addition, the research showed that one in six tweets about the Apple Watch were negative.

This seems to indicate that Apple, rather than attracting the hipsters, is getting their parents with its iWatch. This will be the kiss of death for Apple’s normal target market. In fact analysts believe that sales of the iPhone stalled when kids realised they were popular with their parents.

The Tame Apple press attempted to reassure their readers that interest in the Apple Watch will pick up.

“Just because people aren’t talking positively about the new product doesn’t mean it won’t sell well: The iPad received extremely negative response after the announcement, and look at their sales now,”” sniffed Neowin. Given that sales of the tablet are falling fast, we are not sure what Neowin’s point was here.

BT needs to be sliced up

Posted on March 13, 2015 by - News

still_open_all_hours_6BT’s business rivals have called for the telco to be sliced up after having enough of the outfit’s monopoly like powers.

It all goes back to 2006, when Ofcom forced BT to set up Openreach as a separate division that manages its network infrastructure across the UK.

This was supposed to give rival telephone and internet service providers (ISPs) equal access to BT’s wide-reaching network of copper and fibre cables and promote competition.

The signs are that it more or less worked, but now, Sky and TalkTalk are urging Ofcom to split up BT and Openreach completely.

TalkTalk’s CEO Dido Harding says it’s “crucial” that Openreach is separated because it would encourage the subsidiary to focus exclusively on the quality of its network.

At the heart of the problem is the BT and EE merger because the pair will have too much influence over the UK telecoms market and reduce their level of investment in Openreach.

Sky holds a similar view saying that splitting Openreach and BT “is at the heart of creating a sustainable industry” that allows multiple providers to compete.

Ofcom just announced its second ‘Strategic Review of Digital Communications’ and since this was the first to led to the creation of Openreach, it is an opportunity for BT’s rivals to put the boot in.

Ofcom is expected to be releasing a “discussion document” this summer, but the regulator’s initial conclusions won’t be published until the end of 2015.

 

 

Swedish prosecutors want a word with Assange

Posted on March 13, 2015 by - News

chiefIt seems that Swedish prosecutors want to talk to Julian Assange who is still holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy.

The Wikileaks founder Assange skipped bail so that he did not have to be extradited to Sweden to face police questioning on sex charges.

Assange insisted that the whole case against him had been fabricated because the US government was desperate to extradite him to the US to face spying charges.

Assange denies all the sexual assault allegations against him. He has previously called on Swedish prosecutors to question him in London, either in person or via videolink. The Foreign Office said it would welcome this possibly, but prosecutors in Stockholm have argued against it as it is not normal practice.

Now it seems that Sweden has changed its mind and are asking to question Assange in London on allegations of sexual misconduct.

The prosecutor on the case, Marianne Ny, also said she wants to take a DNA sample from Assange.

We don’t think it is likely that Assange will agree to that. He is likely to come up with some excuse that if the Swedes have his DNA the US spooks could plant it in various crime scenes to force him to come to the US.

However one of Assange’s lawyers, Per Samuelson, has welcomed the offer. “This is something we’ve demanded for over four years,” he said.

“Julian Assange wants to be interviewed so he can be exonerated.”

Last year, a Swedish court rejected an appeal by Assange to have his arrest warrant over sexual assault allegations revoked.

The British government says it has spent $10 million policing the embassy to ensure Assange does not flee the country.

Qualcomm gives fingers for ultra-security

Posted on March 13, 2015 by - News

Churchill-first-V-signQualcomm has announced details of its Ultrasonic Finger Print Reader which is part of its  new Snapdragon processor.

The idea is that the tech can be used by smartphone ODMs and OEMs to provide ultrasecurity for their phones.

Qualcomm’s tech uses ultrasonic waves to scan all of the ridges and wrinkles of your fingers. This means that it can do a deeper analysis than the 2D image created by a fingerprint mashed up against a capacitive sensor.

It can also penetrate beneath the surface of your skin to identify unique 3D characteristics of your print.

Ultrasonic waves can go through glass, aluminum, steel and plastic housings of any phone, they don’t need a dedicated touch pad or button to work. You could conceivably touch any part of the smartphone with a finger to gain access to the phone itself.

While many might see the technology as a stab in the eye of Apple, which uses the old style of fingerprint technology. Qualcomm’s major competitor is MediaTek, whose processors and related technology are used in millions of phones, especially in China and areas where low cost smartphones are selling well.

Qualcomm’s new Ultrasound fingerprint reader means it has a weapon to counter MediaTek.

The thought is that this could win Qualcomm a lot of business.

 

 

US advances cyber threat bill

Posted on March 13, 2015 by - News

National-Security-Agency--008A move that would allow the US government to share cyber information with private companies has been given the nod by a key committee.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee voted 14-1 on Thursday to approve a bill intended to enhance information sharing between private companies and intelligence agencies about cybersecurity threats.

The Bill will go to the Senate where it is expected to get a full backing – after all many private companies would like all that data that the US intelligence services collect and are quite happy to pay their tame Senators to change the law to get it.

Privacy advocates opposed the bill, worrying that it would do too little to prevent more data collection by the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies.

Privacy concerns were cited by the only member of the committee who voted against the bill, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon who saw it as another surveillance bill.

In practice the law is targeted at preventing the major cyber attacks and co-ordinate companies and government departments better. Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and Morgan Stanley, had pushed for a such a threat-sharing bill.

 

Open Source hardware needs a supply chain

Posted on March 12, 2015 by - News

INDUSTRY HP 1The Open Compute Project, which wants to open up hardware the same way Linux opened up software, needs a supply chain badly.

OCP President and Chairman Frank Frankovsky said it formed OCP four years ago to spread the gospel of open hardware and eventually build a market for it.

It now has an impressive array of vendors and customers, including HP, Cisco, Juniper, Broadcom, and Samsung.

While companies looking to adopt this kind of gear include some blue-chip names Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Capital One are members, the weakness in the set up is the supply chain.

“You can’t download servers or boxes in the same way you can open source software,” Frankovsky said.

OCP is looking to business realities when members propose new contributions to the project. It wants the name of a lead customer that wants to buy the technology and the lead supplier that’s willing to build it, as well as whether it’s available from multiple channels so users will have a choice of where to buy it, he said.

Google’s Nearline could melt Glacier

Posted on March 12, 2015 by - News

bear_glacerGoogle is offering a new kind of data storage service which should go a long way to melting Amazon’s Glacier.

Nearline is for non-essential data, similar to Glacier, but it is offering it a cent a month per gigabyte. This is more than half the cheapest in the market place, which is Microsoft’s 2.4 cents a gigabyte.

Glacier storage has a retrieval time of several hours, and Nearline data will be available in about three seconds.

While three seconds is years for something like serving a web page, it is ideal for data analysis as well as long-term storage.

This could be Google’s cunning plan – positioning itself as the cloud computing company for all kinds of data analysis.

Tom Kershaw, director of product management for the Google Cloud Platform said that it is not about storage stupid. Its about what you do with analytics. Set ups like Nearline will mean you never have to delete anything and you can always use data.

Google announced plans with several storage providers, including Veritas/Symantec and NetApp, to encrypt and transport data from their systems onto Nearline.

On the consumer front, Dropbox charges about $10 a month to store a terabyte of data, which is the same price as Nearline and Glacier. However those businesses count on most of their customers storing well below their limit.

Either way it is looking like things are hotting up on the cloud with costs being driven down. Scattered showers much be expected.

 

 

Direct phone connections to Cuba on way

Posted on March 12, 2015 by - News

1920s-telephone-advertAn agreement to build a direct telephone connection between the United States and Cuba has been inked, Cuba’s national telecom provider announced.

The US-based IDT reached an agreement with Cuba’s Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba (ETECSA) to provide direct international long distance telephony.

This marks the first finalised agreement between companies from the two countries since the joint December 17 announcement by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro that they would restore diplomatic relations.

“The re-establishment of direct communications between the United States and Cuba will help offer greater ease and quality of communications between the people of both nations,” ETECSA said in a statement.

Phone communication between the two countries was only possible with with calls passing through third countries.

Obama used his executive authority to ease some of the travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and has asked the Congress to lift the embargo completely. Such legislation was introduced in the Senate but has been opposed by the Republicans, hoping to pick up the dissident Cuban ex-pat vote in Florida.

 

Chinese make iWatch for $40

Posted on March 12, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 18.15.41China is already making cloned copies of Apple’s Watch for just $40 which look the same and appear to do the same things.

Knockoff versions of the Apple Watch can be found at Huaqiangbei electronics market in the southern city of Shenzhen, and others are being sold nationwide via popular e-commerce websites.

The fakes look exactly like an iWatch but have names like “Ai Watch” and “D-Watch,” they cost between 250 yuan and 500 yuan ($40 to $80). Apples effort will set you back $300-$15,000.

They run Android and have been adjusted to look like an Apple interface. Some use Apple-like icons on the home screen.

The copycats say that the hardware is a doddle, but the software is the tricky bit.

Apparently the sellers will get better over time and soon it will be impossible to tell the two products apart. But the fact that they can make such clones based on leaks, and pictures released on Apple, makes you wonder why it took Jobs’ Mob two years to come up with the same product for nearly ten times the price.

Their efforts were made easier when Apple dropped most of the expected functionality while keeping the price the same. Still you get what you pay for… oh.

 

 

Kaspersky finds more US snoops

Posted on March 12, 2015 by - News

spyMoscow-based Kaspersky Labs has uncovered more evidence indicating that the US National Security Agency is behind a particularly successful hacking group.

“Equation Group” ran the most advanced hacking operation ever uncovered and was untouched for more than 14 years.

Kaspersky researchers did not say that the hackers were the NSA, saying only that the operation had to have been sponsored by a nation-state with nearly unlimited resources to dedicate to the project.

However the mountain of  evidence that Kaspersky provided  strongly implicated the spy agency.

The strongest new tie to the NSA was the string “BACKSNARF_AB25” discovered only a few days ago embedded in a newly found sample of the Equation Group espionage platform dubbed “EquationDrug.” “BACKSNARF,” according to page 19 of this undated NSA presentation, was the name of a project tied to the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations.

“BACKSNARF” joins a host of other programming “artifacts” that tied Equation Group malware to the NSA. They include “Grok,” “STRAITACID,” and “STRAITSHOOTER.” Just as jewel thieves take pains to prevent their fingerprints from being found at their crime scenes, malware developers endeavor to scrub usernames, computer IDs, and other text clues from the code they produce. While the presence of the “BACKSNARF” artifact isn’t conclusive proof it was part of the NSA project by that name, the chances that there were two unrelated projects with nation-state funding seems tiny.

The code word is included in a report Kaspersky detailing new technical details uncovered about Equation Group.

Among other new data included in the report, the timestamps stored inside the Equation Group malware showed that members overwhelmingly worked Monday through Friday and almost never on Saturdays or Sundays. The hours in the timestamps appeared to show members working regular work days, an indication they were part of an organised software development team.

The timestamps show the employees were likely in the UTC-3 or UTC-4 time zone, a finding that would be consistent with people working in the Eastern part of the US.

 

 

Microsoft opens up Visual Studio to Java developers

Posted on March 11, 2015 by - News

microsoft-in-chinaMicrosoft has opened its Visual Studio Application Insights cloud software telemetry service so that Java developers can come up with new Azure designs.

For those who came in late, Application Insights is part of the Visual Studio Online set of services that Redmond announced in November 2013. It gathers and generates reports on usage and performance data for online applications.

These can be accessed through the Microsoft Azure Portal – which means you need an Azure subscription to use Application Insights.

The service had only allowed for the connection web applications and apps written using Microsoft’s own ASP.Net framework. But the new rules allow the same kind of monitoring to Java applications.

Microsoft is also offering support for Application Insights in its new version of the Azure Tookit for Eclipse.

A free trial of Application Insights is available. After that, pricing depends on the level of Visual Studio Online service you need and the amount of Azure resources you consume each month.

Boffins make quantum leap

Posted on March 11, 2015 by - News

Wallpaper-quantum-leap-32404651-1280-720UC Santa Barbara’s physics professor John Martinis has come up with a “major milestone” towards quantum circuitry.

The team has apparently worked out a way to self-checks for errors and suppress them, preserving the qubits’ state and imbuing the system with some semblance of reliability.

Keeping qubits error-free, or stable enough to reproduce the same result is one of the major hurdles for boffins on the forefront of quantum computing.

Julian Kelly, graduate student researcher and co-lead author of a research paper that was published in the journal Nature wrote that one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing is that qubits are inherently faulty. If you store some information in them, they’ll forget it.

Unlike classical computing, in which the computer bits exist on one of two binary  positions, qubits can exist at any and all positions simultaneously. They hide in various dimensions and play with cats apparently.

This is called “superpositioning” and it gives quantum computers their phenomenal computational power, but it is also this characteristic which makes qubits prone to “flipping,” especially when in unstable environments.  It hard to process information if it disappears.

The error process involves creating a scheme in which several qubits work together to preserve the information. To do this, information is stored across several qubits.

If we build this system of nine qubits, which can then look for errors, they are responsible for safeguarding the information contained in their neighbours, he explained, in a repetitive error detection and correction system that can protect the appropriate information and store it longer than any individual qubit.

“This is the first time a quantum device has been built that is capable of correcting its own errors,” said Fowler. For the kind of complex calculations the researchers envision for an actual quantum computer, something up to a hundred million qubits would be needed, but before that a robust self-check and error prevention system is necessary. Well, let’s see, eh?