Author: Nick Farrell

Daft patent war averted

Posted on December 24, 2014 by - News


3fe8db8858c39f54433f183e26cf400f94346c028d4ae31c8ec349fc12868e98What was shaping up to be the daftest and most expensive patent war in history has been averted.

Apple and Microsoft had teamed up to form a super patent troll called the Rockstar Consortium in a bid to take out Android. The Troll outbid Google, Intel  – and a few others – in buying thousands of Nortel patents.

The “Rockstar Consortium” was not subject to promises that Apple and Microsoft initially made  to license the patents under reasonable terms and launched its patent attack on Android last year.

It seems that a a settlement of sorts has been reached. Rockstar has agreed to sell its patents to RPX (with Google and Cisco picking up much of the bill).  RPX has so far been a “good guy” in that it collects patents to stop trolling.

It’s making sure that basically anyone can license these patents under FRAND (fair and reasonable, non-discriminatory) rates. The price being paid is approximately $900 million.

This is considerably less than the $4.5 billion Microsoft and Apple paid but this was for only 4,000 of the 6,000 patents.  It is safe to assume that Apple and Microsoft kept the 2,000 valuable patents.

Google and Cisco will license these patents to stop the majority of the lawsuits and can defend themselves if they feel threatened.

Cisco’s Mark Chandler celebrated the deal as a “common sense” solution. And, it certainly beats all out patent litigation war. But it’s still just about moving money around, rather than encouraging innovation. He notes that in settling this as a group, it helps keep things from getting totally out of control.

Samsung begins production of 8Gb LPDDR4 memory

Posted on December 24, 2014 by - News

samsung-hqSamsung has begun volume production of its 8Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, with expected commercial shipments in 2015.

Moving to a new memory standard should significantly reduce the memory subsystem’s power consumption and will provide significant boosts to clock-speed.

Samsung claiming that its LPDDR4 can hit 3.2GHz, if the wind is behind it and it is going downhill. Meanwhile the mobile bus widths are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels used by desktops and the higher clock speed per chip will help close the gap between the two.

Vendors are claiming that LPDDR4 clock speeds will outpace DDR4 thanks to its higher amount of total bandwidth potentially delivered to tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, the power savings are expected to be substantial.

While there is no serious risk of a desktop or laptop DDR4 system being outperformed by a tablet or smartphone there is some indication that the gap might be closing a little.

So far no manufacturers have announced plans to adopt LPDDR4 in specific products, but once Samsung is shipping in volume it is going to happen quickly. Hot Hardware is predicting that the Galaxy S6 would be a good first candidate.

Ireland to hand over stored emails to USA

Posted on December 24, 2014 by - News

irelandThe Irish government told the Americans that it is OK for them to use a treaty to ask it to turn over emails stored in Irish servers.

Microsoft is appealing a search warrant in the US for private email communications located in the company’s facility in Dublin, arguing that US law does not allow the government to issue search warrants to obtain customer data stored overseas.

But the Irish have been telling the court that while it should respect “Irish sovereignty” there was another way that the US could get the email out of Microsoft.

Ireland has a legal treaty with the US which would require it to hand over any emails as part of a criminal case anyway.

Ireland is citing an existing mutual legal assistance treaty with the U.S. that law enforcement can use to obtain the email. In its brief Ireland said it “would be pleased to consider, as expeditiously as possible, a request under the treaty, should one be made”.

Dara Murphy, Ireland’s minister for data protection, ahead of the filing said that the right of individuals to the protection of their personal data is an essential foundation for modern society and the growing digital economy.”

“We must ensure that individuals and organisations can have confidence in the rules and processes that have been put in place to safeguard privacy.”

In other words, while Ireland is happy to hand over the emails, it can’t be done by a US court ordering anyone about.  It has to be done through the proper channels and at diplomatic levels.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a blog post that the warrant the US government wants means that US law enforcement has authority on Irish territory, something that can be done only with the consent of the Irish government.

It would set a dangerous precedent if the US court allows it. It will mean that US laws will effectively apply in other countries – ironically meaning that the mantra used by the US revolutionary’s about “no taxation without representation” is actually now referring to them.

 

Watchdog gives TripAdvisor poor review

Posted on December 24, 2014 by - News

The AnubiItalian antitrust watchdogs have been snuffling the rump of the travel advice site Trip Advisor and are unhappy with what they smelled.

The regulator complained that people reading TripAdvisor Italy were unable to distinguish between genuine and fake reviews posted on the site. It said both were presented by TripAdvisor as “authentic and genuine in nature”.

The site has been slapped with a $611,000 fine for unfair trade activity and “misleading consumers” The ICA also accused the travel company of failing to provide proper checks to weed out bogus postings TripAdvisor Italy had broken three articles of the Italian consumer code, “making it likely to mislead a wide audience of consumers”.

TripAdvisor has hit back, accusing the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) of being out of touch.

“We think the ruling is unreasonable, strongly disagree with its findings and will file an appeal,” it said in a statement.

“We firmly believe that TripAdvisor is a force for good — both for consumers and the hospitality industry.”

It claimed it took aggressive action to fight fraud and had adequate systems in place to prevent it but it seemed that the Italian watchdog’s “zero tolerance” rules meant it would be liable to the same punishment even if just one review out of millions was deemed questionable.

It said that the ICA’s recommendations are unwarranted and out of touch with commercial realities, not just of a user-generated content business, but of any company in any sector.

“The bottom line is, if people didn’t find the reviews helpful, they wouldn’t keep coming back to our site.”

 

North Korean unternet went dark

Posted on December 23, 2014 by - News

2014040401712_0North Korea experienced a complete unternet outage for hours before links were restored this morning.

At the moment it is unclear what caused the country’s internet to go dark – it could have been a technological glitch or a hacking attack. The US government denied that it was involved in any cyber action against Pyongyang in revenge for attacking its paymasters in Hollywood recently.

US President Barack Obama had vowed to respond to the major cyber-attack on Sony, which he blamed on North Korea, “in a place and time and manner that we choose”,

North Korea’s internet links were unstable on Monday and the country later went completely offline.

South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North, also had a motive. It recently revealed that a nuclear power plant operator had been hacked, probably by North Korea.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the leak of data from the nuclear operator was a “grave situation” that was unacceptable as a matter of national security, but she did not mention any involvement of North Korea.

Most North Korean’s would have been unaware that the internet was broken. Very few of its 24 million people have access.

Almost all its Internet links and traffic pass through China. North Korea is dependent on a single international provider, China Unicom.

Apparently the United States asked China to shut down servers and routers used by North Korea that run through Chinese networks.  It also asked them to identify any North Korean hackers operating in China and, if found, send them back to North Korea. It wants China to send a strong message to Pyongyang that such acts will not be tolerated.

If the Chinese had switched off the internet for a few hours to send a message to North Korea they did not tell anyone about it.

In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said while it opposed all forms of cyberattacks and that there was no proof that North Korea was responsible for the Sony hacking.

Internet spying proves useless to GCHQ

Posted on December 23, 2014 by - News

dn_dr_no_foto_sean_connery_james_bond_les_ambassadeurs_morland_cigarette_AA_01_01aFor all the internet spying that GCHQ has been doing, it does not appear to be helping it in its primary job of tracking down serious criminals and terrorists.

According to the Daily Telegraph, GCHQ has lost track of some of the most dangerous crime lords and has had to abort surveillance on others.

The spooks are blaming the fact that  Edward Snowden revealed their tactics, although, they pretty much would say that that anyway.

One major drug smuggling gang has been able to continue flooding the UK with Class A narcotics unimpeded for the last year after changing their operations, moaned the spooks.

More intense tracking of others has either been abandoned or not started because of fears the tactics are now too easy to spot and will force the criminals to “go dark” and be lost sight of completely.

They have also been stuffed up because telecoms companies are no longer grassing up customers and are refusing to hand over evidence on the likes of drug smugglers or fraudsters because they do not pose a “direct threat to life”.

“We have specific evidence of where key targets have changed their communication behaviour as a direct result of what they have read.

Apparently gangs have moved to more secure forms of communication or moved entirely on to the dark web where it is far harder to track them. However GCHQ seems to want people to believe that serious criminals were not using the dark web before Snowden and that James Bond can only get into Internet places which can be searched by Google.

All that major drug smuggling network did to make it become invisible is to change a few lines of code in its web-pages which stopped its actions being seen by search engines.

Intelligence officers are now electing not to order deeper surveillance on targets, in the hope of gaining sufficient evidence to prosecute them, because they fear it could alert them to the fact they are being watched.

Of course GCHQ’s answer to the problem is to bring in even more internet spying because that worked so well before.

HP: Flash will save everyone of us

Posted on December 23, 2014 by - News

flash_gordon (1)HP’s storage marketer Craig Nunes has said that the cost of flash storage to fall below that of spinning-disk storage within the next couple of years and widescale adoption is starting to rise.

Nunes said that if you can get the affordability right on flash, if you can drive it down and cross over spinning disk, people will buy it.

Flash is a far better alternative because it is faster and has better service levels and HP’s efforts to improve the cost-efficiency of its arrays are paying off.

The maker of expensive printer ink has shipped more flash capacity over the last few quarters than it has 15,000 RPM disks. These disks have historically been the medium of choice for mission-critical applications requiring fast storage. Now HP wants Flash to outsell its 10,000 RPM business and this could become a reality in a year.

An average enterprise should have the ability to deploy flash for more workloads without having to cut corners elsewhere.

Nunes said HP is also working on ways to make flash more scalable. The company’s flagship all-flash array, the 3PAR StoreServ 7450, offers 480 terabytes of raw storage capacity that can accommodate nearly 1.4 petabytes of data thanks to built-in optimization software.

Nunes said that HP’s 3PAR operating system also includes functionality that avoids the performance degradation all-flash arrays tend to suffer past a certain capacity threshold.

HP recently introduced a new add-on for its 3PAR arrays called Personas that make it possible for admins to change how information is exposed to applications with a few straightforward commands.

Personas evolved from virtualization technology with the kind of functionality and management features that users expect when managing servers. “Personas is not an emulation layer, it is not a management UI over a totally different architecture,” he said. “It’s the same thing that served up your VMware environments and KVM environments except it’s now serves up” blocks and files.

 

EU 4G speed trials completed

Posted on December 23, 2014 by - News

indy1909EE, Qualcomm and Huawei have completed a 4G trial which aimed to speed up internet connection and reliability on mobile gear.

The three said that they managed to achieve download speeds of up to 410Mbps when going downhill and with the wind behind it.

It is the first time that LTE Category 9 testing has been tried in Europe and should dramatically improve EE mobile broadband speeds across greater areas.

The test has proved the operator can aggregate 20MHz of 1800MHz spectrum with another 20MHz of 2.66GHz, and a third carrier of 15MHz of 2.6GHz.

Apparently they conducted the test using QTI’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and an integrated LTE-Advanced modem, on Huawei’s commercial infrastructure solution across EE’s LTE-A 4G+ network. Double sided sticky tape was not used and apparently the tests were conducted in front of a responsible adult.

Qualcomm said that transitioning from Category 6 to Category 9 LTE-A connectivity will mean 1.5x faster peak download speeds, swift application response times, reliable connectivity and connections to the fastest networks.

EE claimed that using its remaining 15MHz of the 2.6GHz spectrum enables the fastest speeds and an increase in capacity across its network.

EE’s director of network services and devices, Tom Bennett said that working closely with Qualcomm and Huawei on the next generation LTE Category 9 connectivity enabled the company to make full use of our spectrum holdings, and continue to offer world class network capabilities, innovating to stay one step ahead of operators in Europe.

Huawei described the test as “a truly ground breaking moment” in the move towards the 5G era. However, none of the firms confirmed when these speeds will become a reality.

 

Intel to spend $550 million in Israel

Posted on December 23, 2014 by - News

Intel-logoIntel has pledged to write a cheque for at least $550 million in the Promised Land over the next five years.

This is part of Intel’s promise to spend a total of $6 billion to upgrade its Kiryat Gat plant for the manufacture of new advanced chips for its next generation devices.

The $550 is part of Intel’s offset purchase arrangement with the state, which is providing the company with grants of up to $600 million over the next five years as well as a major tax break through 2023. Intel will get two $300 million grants, distribution of which will be spread over five budget years.

Although these figures look great for Chipzilla, executives will be happier with the news that it will only have to pay a corporate tax of only five percent until 2023.  Others in Israel have to give the tax man 26.5 percent. In return, Intel committed to hiring at least 1,000 new employees, at least half of whom will be residents of communities in southern Israel. In addition, the company promised to spend at least $550 million.

Intel is committing to spend what it is getting from the government in direct grants, but the Economy Ministry claims the arrangement was great for the Israeli economy.

“This arrangement will have a very positive effect on hundreds of small businesses and suppliers,” said Ziva Eiger, director of investments at the Industrial Cooperation Authority.

“Offset agreements such as this are platforms for leveraging public expenditures for the benefit of the Israeli economy, both for training and encouraging further expansion of small suppliers for the local and world market, and to enhance Israel’s brand as an attractive place for foreign investment,” Eiger added.

“As a result of this agreement, Israelis can look forward to thousands of more jobs being available. It is a model for offset agreements that can provide benefits to all sides.”

 

Dell cleaning up in India

Posted on December 22, 2014 by - News

Dell logoTin box shifter, Michael Dell is doing rather well in the growing Indian server market according to beancounters at IDC.

The analyst firm claims that Dell India has become the largest server player in the India market, doubling its shipments in the third quarter and commanding 38 percent market share in terms of revenue.

While the other players saw a decline in server shipments in the third quarter, Dell shipments more than doubled largely due to investments by the Retail industry.

HP, market leader in terms of overall shipments, saw a decline of 12 percent, while IBM’s market share dropped by about five percent. Dell grew by 17 percent in terms of overall shipment units, coming close second to HP, with about 29 percent market share.

“The non x86 server market saw a decline of 58 percent in terms of revenue in Q3 2014 as compared to Q3 2013 due to large refreshes in verticals like Banking and telecom being on hold due to various factors,” IDC said.

Dell India has been growing in the server as well as PC market as it completely revamped its go-to-market strategy in India after its privatisation.

It is now trying to offer integrated systems to enterprises as it attempts to fill in a void created by IBM’s exit from commoditised x86 server business, which is not only helping it expand its  market but also get higher value deals.

Google sues Mississippi Attorney General

Posted on December 22, 2014 by - News

516EDMTJSNLGoogle has sued the attorney general of Mississippi accusing him of conspiring with the movie industry.

The search engine claims that Jim Hood had been improperly influenced by major Hollywood studios that are trying to crack down on the distribution of pirated movies on the Internet.

The lawsuit also questioned the authority of state law enforcement officials to regulate Internet service providers.

Hood and Google have been at war for a while now. Hood issued a 79-page subpoena in October, asking that the company turn over information about its search engine and sales of illegal drugs, pornography and other materials. He suggested that the company was knowingly profiting from such sales and demanded a response from Google by early January.

However during the Sony hack Emails and other records showed how the movie industry, through a nonprofit group it funded, had hired the former attorney general from Mississippi, whom Hood used to work for, to put pressure on Hood to attack Google.

The Sony emails also showed how the major movie studios, working through the Motion Picture Association of America, had created what they called Project Goliath, to press state attorneys general to question, subpoena and sue the company.

All this is a bit tricky for Hood to squeeze out of – although he did have a go. Hood said Google was using its deep pockets in an attempt to “stop the State of Mississippi for daring to ask some questions.” Nevertheless, he said he would call the company and try to work out a deal.

It also accused Hood of essentially acting as a pawn for the MPAA., arguing that. Hood “took these actions following a sustained lobbying effort from the Motion Picture Association of America.”

The MPPA, which was clearly caught out, went onto the attack with its usual bile about how Freedom of Speech is being used as a shield for unlawful activities and “the Internet is not a license to steal.”

However if the case gets to court, it could be a mess for the studios. You can hardly play the victim when you are buying politicians to bully those who disagree with your business model.

HP’s Autonomy shareholder peace pact shelved

Posted on December 22, 2014 by - News

munich-agreemnetIt looks like shareholders are not allowed to collude with HP board members to blame its god-awful Autonomy buy on the British company after all.

Shareholders and HP agreed to bury the hatchet so that they could sue the former owners of Autonomy. US district judge has said that such a deal was wrong because it absolves HP completely from any blame.

Judge Charles Breyer concluded in a San Francisco court filing that the shareholders appear to be relinquishing a whole universe of potential claims regarding HP governance and practices with no factual predicates that overlap the Autonomy acquisition – the subject of this litigation.

He rejected the motion for preliminary approval of the second amended settlement. Judge Breyer added that HP had abdicated its duty to ensure that shareholders’ rights were being protected.

HP bought UK data search and analysis firm Autonomy for $10 billion, but a year later it claimed it found “serious accounting improprieties” and had to write off $8.8bn from the transaction.

Autonomy has denied any wrongdoing and argued that it played by the rules and HP knew about its accounting practices prior to the buyout.

HP said it was disappointed the court did not approve the settlement as submitted, the court recognised that a settlement releasing the HP directors and officers from Autonomy-related claims ‘represents a fair and reasonable resolution of the litigation’ HP remains committed to holding the architects of the Autonomy fraud accountable.

 

Anonymous prepares to launch banned Sony movie

Posted on December 22, 2014 by - News

o-ANONYMOUS-facebookAfter Sony refused to release “The Interview” because of pressure from a hacker group, it seems Anonymous is furious.

The hacker group has decided that since Sony is bowing to the will of hackers to pull the film, it will release it, itself.

Of course Sony is not happy about this, which Anonymous will be pleased about, but the question is why would one hacker collective rain on another’s parade.

Part of this appears to be because Anonymous does not think that “Guardians of Peace” who managed the Sony raid are true hackers.  They believe that the hacker group is a tool of the North Korean government.

Hackivism is one thing, but when you are hacking on behalf of a government you have broken the rules.  But according to the tweets, Anonymous is cross that Sony caved in so easily to the GoP demands and banned the film.

“Okay, for real though. @SonyPictures is a little bitch for giving in so easily. Then again, what do you expect from Sony other than that?”

“You’re gonna let Kim Junk Uno and his minions boss you, a multimillion dollar corporation responsible for billions of dollars in revenue?”

Anonymous claims that it infiltrated Sony’s systems long before North Korea and it was going to release the film “as a Christmas present.”

“We’re not with either side, we just want to watch the movie too…and soon you too will be joining us,” the group tweeted.

 

How Snowden put the brakes on Amazon’s cloud

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

snowdenWhile the industry is telling the world+dog know that 2015 was the year of the cloud, one has to wonder what it would have been like if Edward Snowden had not revealed high level snooping of off-site data centres.

This year Taser discovered first hand some of the problems. It won a high-profile contract to supply body cameras to the London police. But the deal nearly collapsed because video footage on Amazon’s cloud.

The deal survived only after Taser dropped Amazon.com because it did not have a data centre in Britain.  The UK coppers did not want their data going overseas where it could be snooped upon by the US.

Larger companies are getting worried about relying too heavily on Amazon’s public cloud servers, preferring to store data on their own premises or work with cloud providers that can offer them the option of dedicated servers.

It has opened the door for Microsoft which has flogged the private cloud over the public and offered companies more direct oversight of their data in the cloud.

Steve Herrod, the former chief technology officer of VMware now a venture capitalist at General Catalyst Partners said Edward Snowden did more to create a future with many clouds in many locations than any tech company has managed.

A web of new laws restricting how data can move across national borders creates another hurdle for Amazon and led for calls for it to build more localised clouds.

SAP has ruled out working with Amazon on many upcoming projects due partly to data-location issues.

Amazon insists that demand for AWS, including in Europe and Asia, has never been stronger, and that any contracts lost to rivals are the extreme exception. It said that it will build data centres in every large country over time, but that will cost a bomb.

However it is having to face that fact that the model it pioneered in 2006 is slowing down because it is UScentric – at least for now.

AWS is five times the computing capacity of its next 14 rivals, including Microsoft, Google and IBM, according to Gartner and analysts are predicting that AWS revenue will more than double from 2014 levels to $10.5 billion in 2017, faster than the market overall.

But Synergy Research Group said that it could have been a lot different. At the moment  AWS holds a 27 percent market share in the third quarter of 2014, compared to 10 percent for Microsoft’s Azure cloud business. Azure, however, grew 136 percent on a rolling annualized basis in the quarter, while AWS grew 56 percent.

Part of the reason that Azure did so well is because that Microsoft is willing to work with third-party data centre managers, such as Fujitsu, when clients are required to keep data within a country’s borders.

 

Vole is helping companies add cloud capabilities to their existing data centres and create a “hybrid” model that Amazon has only just started to offer.

Aix months ago, Barclays chose  Azure over AWS to power some development and testing work because of its private-cloud option, along with Barclays’ existing familiarity with Microsoft’s data-centre software.

Vole has the advantage that it knows a few people in corporate and government and is using them to  peddle Azure. AWS has only just started to build such ties.

It would have been different if it had not been for Snowden making those corporates and governments very nervous about allowing their data out of their sight.

 

Ebay boss will get $23 million golden handshake

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

Scrooge-Porpoise EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe will get an exit package worth an estimated $23 million after the company splits from payments unit PayPal next year.

Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan will get an exit package worth about $12 million. The figures could change depending on the performance of eBay’s share price.

That is good money considering that they do not really have to do much work to collect the cash other than just leave. After eBay announced its planned split with Paypal both of them said that they would be clearing out their offices.

To be fair, involvement with a much smaller company would be beneath them and EBay and Paypal would need CEO’s and accountants who were a little lower down the IT Industry food chain.

eBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller said in a statement that Donahoe’s transition package is closely tied to the performance of the company during the separation period and the company’s stock price at the time of separation

The terms were approved by eBay’s board on December 15. Other executives may also step down after the company splits its marketplace division from PayPal. Those other executives who leave will get benefits including a cash payment equivalent to 1.5 times their annual base salary, the filing said.