Author: Nick Farrell

Apple security adopts hauhau method

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

i_257It seems that the Apple Cargo cult is taking the same approach to security that the Maori Hauhau did during the New Zealand wars.

Like Apple, the Hauhau was a strange cult built by a bullied people but under a charismatic leader. The Hauhau also believed, despite evidence, that they could bounce bullets off their chests.

Apple has the same view about security. Apple’s security technologies for Mac OS X cannot for the life of itself see the iWorm, a piece of malware discovered in late September that infected thousands of computers.

Apple released an update for its XProtect antivirus engine to detect iWorm, but the update only detects when iWorm’s installer is launched.

Patrick Wardle, director of research with Synack, a computer security company based in Redwood City, California said that computers already infected with iWorm before the update would still be compromised.

Wardle said unless the user has another antivirus product installed that has a correct signature, those infections aren’t going to go away.

Wardle said Apple is likely aware of the Gatekeeper’s weaknesses, as it appears the way it works was a conscious design decision.

In other words, you cannot rely on Apple to secure your machine, probably because the belief that Apple’s do not get viruses is hardwired into the reality distortion field. Still you get what you pay for.

 

Dell counter attacks against rivals

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

Conan 1While Michael Dell was fighting to take his tin box outfit private, his rivals used the uncertainty to steal his customers – now he is counter-attacking.  

Dell opened the Dell World conference and wasted no time denouncing the “turmoil” his rivals in the industry are going through.

“They’re splitting away businesses, spinning off pieces of their businesses, and one has to ask the question: who is this for? Does this actually help the customers? Does it help them create the next great innovative products?”

It is deeply ironic for Dell. At the time HP Meg Whitman was calling Hewlett-Packard a “paragon of stability” compared to his company and IBM smugly told his customers that he was doomed.

Now Dell can point out that Whitman is breaking the the company in two. And IBM is selling its x86 server business to Lenovo and fighting to keep its profits above water.

Because the company is private, Dell does not have to worry about those quarterly targets and can plan.  He even had a dig at Carl Icahn who made him pay millions more to take his company private.

“Dell can focus on a future that’s “beyond the next quarter, the next year or the next shareholder activist,” he said.

Dell’s PC shipments grew almost 20 percent in the U.S. last quarter, Michael Dell said, faster than those of HP and Apple.

Today Dell is expected to announce a new “converged infrastructure” system called the PowerEdge FX, he said, which combines servers, network and storage in a new design that offers “the most density in the world.”

Tsar Putin bans iPhone and iPad

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

Movie-Ivan-the-Terrible-by-Sergei-EisensteinApple will be banned from selling its iPhone and Apple iPad in Russia, from January as the Russian Orthodox Tsar Putin orders a crackdown on the cargo cult.

Initially appeared that Apple was being banned from Russia because it has a gay CEO and Putin is homophobic in such a way which caused a business group to dismantle a memorial to Steve Jobs in St. Petersburg. It turns out that the reason is a little more sensible.

The iCloud that has Russian authorities concerned because data saved in it is not stored locally and is wide open to any US spook who wants to have a look at it. It could also contain pictures of homosexual romps in the Kremlin which could be distributed on 4Chan for a laugh.

The law was not created to harm Apple specifically, as it applies to all online services including social networks which have their servers in the US. However, it will probably harm Apple more.

Apple could put up a server farm in the country, but that that would mean that the data could be sniffed by the Russian spooks, and Jobs’ Mob only gives its data to the Americans.

What will get sticky is when Russia enforces the ban at the retail level. Those in Russia who currently own an iPhone or iPad that supports iCloud, might have to put up with relentless searches from the authorities.

It is not a big problem for Apple. Unlike China where there are people prepared to sell a kidney to own one of its phones, Russians are a little more pragmatic about handing over two months’ salary for a gadget which will be out of date in a year. An iPad and iPhone ban will only extend to the Russian mafia who are the only ones who can afford them.

 

Government to force better mobile coverage

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

TortureRackThe British government launched a consultation on new legislation to force mobile operators to improve coverage around the country.

Sajid Javid, the government’s culture secretary, said the  consultation will complement the work industry is doing and allow the Government to hear from the wider telecoms sector, businesses and the public,”

Traditionally governments hope that private enterprise will undertake such work voluntarily.  They drop some broad hints, coupled with threats of legislation and private enterprises rushes to it.  But for some reason the concept of rural coverage has not been a starter for the big telcos, so now the government has to make its threats clearer.

One possible option to eliminate poor coverage, which affects about one fifth of the UK, may include a national roaming plan, where subscribers will be able to switch between operators offering the strongest signal, the government said.

The government said it is keen to have comprehensive mobile coverage across the country to boost productivity and help provide jobs and economic security.

While this makes sense, it is the sort of thing that gives telecoms companies nightmares.

EE, the country’s largest mobile operator, said in a separate statement it does not want to implement national roaming as that would deteriorate network reliability and may also lead to price rises.

Vodafone agrees saying implementation “would be technically far more complex, slow to implement and would cause serious problems with network resilience”.

However the consultation include infrastructure sharing, allowing mobile networks to put transmitters on each other’s masts, and obliging the networks to cover a certain percentage of the UK.

What might happen is a group of telecoms will finally give in and agree to provide the sort of coverage the government wants.

Russians destroy shrine to Steve Jobs

Posted on November 4, 2014 by - News

Church fireThe Fruity Cargo Cult Apple’s attempts to spread the worship of its founder Steve Jobs has fallen foul of Russia’s backward homophobia.

This week Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed the badly kept secret that he was gay, and while that was well received in most of the world it has created a backlash in Russia.

The two-metre-high monument, in the shape of an iPhone, was erected outside a St Petersburg college in January 2013 by the West European Financial Union companies called ZEFS.

But Russia has strict laws against “gay propaganda” and ZEFS said that the memorial had been removed from the courtyard of the Techno Park in St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo.

“In Russia, gay propaganda and other sexual perversions among minors are prohibited by law,” ZEFS said, noting the memorial had been “in an area of direct access for young students and scholars.”

“After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values.”

The move is clearly an attempt to butter up Tsar Vladimir Putin who considers homosexuality a moral issue. Putin insists that there is no discrimination against gay people in Russia and the law was needed only to protect young people. It has also encouraged those of a less intelligent disposition to beat up and lynch young gay people.

But Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was not gay and it is not clear what  Maxim Dolgopolov, the head of ZEFS who ordered the removal of the monument

“Sin should not become the norm. There is nothing to do in Russia for whose who intend to violate our laws,” he said.

Dolgopolov’s implication is that Apple is a gay cult lead by its founder and ruled by its immoral boss and is working to subvert the children of Russia with its homosexual ways. The whole concept is silly, and if Apple were big in Russia it could have seriously damaged its business reputation.

Google is too grown up to “do no evil”

Posted on November 4, 2014 by - News

 darth-vaderGoogle thinks that it has matured as a company and it no longer needs its “do no evil” mantra.

Google’s chief executive Larry Page said that the company needs a new statement about its corporate ambitions but denies that he has joined the dark side.

He thinks Google is in uncharted territory and ‘trying to figure it out’ a new mission statement for the next 100 years.

Google’s chief executive Larry Page has admitted that the company has outgrown its mission statement to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” from the launch of the company in 1998, but has said he does not yet know how to redefine it.

However, Page thinks that in getting bigger, Google does not need to dump the altruistic principles that it was founded on in 1998. He and co-founder Sergey Brin were aiming big with “societal goals” to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Over the years, Google has been accused of doing evil by wielding too much influence over the internet.

It has faced anti-monopoly probes by the European commission and most recently pressure from Europe over the “right to be forgotten” forced to remove search listings to information deemed to be outdated and not in the public interest which saw Britons request over 60,000 links be deleted by October.

 

Intel releases Core M for OEMs

Posted on November 4, 2014 by - News

bendIntel has hit the market with a range of faster Core M chips which are hitting the shops just a few months after its first Core M lineup was announced.

Intel has added four more Core M’s to its list. Like the launch chips, these four are dual-core designs that support HyperThreading. Like the earlier chips, these are spec’d with a TDP of 4.5W.

However, these are faster than the launch models, with a base clock speed of 1.2GHz, which is burstable through Turbo up to 2.9GHz.

What really sets these chips apart from the initial Core M models is that their TDP is scalable, based on what the builder wants to do with it. For example if the chip is set to be used in a notebook with very little free space, the OEM could opt to drop the chip down to 3.5W and lose 600MHz in the process. A bulkier notebook could handle a hotter chip better, so a higher TDP can be used. Any one of these new chips could be tweaked to peak at 6W and add 200MHz to the clock. That would put a chip like the M-5Y71 at 1.4GHz, rather than 1.2GHz.

The chips also offer the same flexibility for graphics. The IGP in the initial Core M chips were clocked at 100MHz base, while these new CPUs start at 300MHz. The top-end clock for the top two models can reach 900MHz, whereas some of the launch models peak at 850MHz.

All four of these new models have officially launched, but it is likely that they will not hit the market until early 2015.

Xiaomi gets into TV content

Posted on November 4, 2014 by - News

tv58China’s Xiaomi, the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer, is stepping sideways and getting into television.

Writing in its official Weibo microblog the company said it will invest $1 billion in building television content.

The big idea is that providing TV content will help enrich the company’s content and becoming a ‘leading bellwether for the industry.’

Details of the move are sketchy at the moment, but Xiaomi is entering a rocky sea where many leading bellwethers, including Microsoft, Intel and Apple have run aground.

It most likely that the content that the company is thinking of creating will be for the Chinese market, and might provide a different sort of service to what has been attempted in the West.

However, the company’s business model does require it to provide more content. The company sells their phones at cost, stating that the hardware is the delivery vehicle for the software. It has its own ecommerce platform, which is the third largest in China and pushes itself as a form of social media.

IBM reshuffles its deck

Posted on November 4, 2014 by - Moving People, News

vov24k_mediumIBM has reshuffled its senior management in a bid to turn around the outfit’s flagging fortunes.

Martin Jetter, who was credited with fixing Biggish Blue’s  Japanese operation has been shifted to senior vice president and head of its global technology services unit.

Jetter, who currently heads IBM’s operations in Japan, will initially report to Erich Clemanti and will succeed him as head of the services unit on January 1, when Clemanti will move to another unnamed senior leadership role.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said that Jetter was Big Blue’s Mr Fixit and led a remarkable transformation of IBM Japan, returning it to growth. Previously he did the same thing with  IBM Germany and GBS in Europe. “In each case, he and his team have moved quickly to embrace new approaches and new thinking,” Rometty said.

IBM has been falling behind as it struggles to keep up with shifts in the industry as hardware becomes increasingly commoditized. Lately, the outfit which was once best known for mainframe computers, has been moving to higher-margin businesses such as security software and cloud services, but growth in those areas has failed to offset other company weaknesses.

Last month, IBM paid $1.5 billion to Globalfoundries to take its loss-making semiconductor unit off its hands.

Samsung turns to metal in China crisis

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

Iron_Maiden_2010Samsung has released two premium designed, mid-tier handsets designed to give its low-priced Chinese rivals a good kicking.

The company has been suffering lately and its global market share down on year for the third straight quarter and its profit scraping at a three-year low.

Samsung suffered the most in China which is the world’s biggest smartphone market and it was knocked off its number one slot by Xiaomi.

The Chinese seemed to have a problem that Samsung’s lower-end products were pricey and not different enough compared to Xiaomi and Lenovo.

The Galaxy A3 and A5 are seen by analysts as Samsung’s first counter-attack. Initially launching in China in November, they will be Samsung’s first devices to feature fully metallic bodies and its thinnest smartphones so far.  The A3 and A5 are comparable to those of the top-of-the-line Galaxy S5, but have a lower screen resolution quality.

Samsung classified the new phones as mid-tier, and said they will be launched in other “select markets”, without disclosing the pricing.

However, it still might have problems and much depends on price. In comparison to the A5, Xiaomi’s Mi4 device is thicker but has a  faster processor and better display.

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Nokia deal created anti-trust issues for Microsoft and Samsung

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

samsung-hqSamsung has told a court that its collaboration with Microsoft on Windows phones raised antitrust problems once Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business.

The filing comes from Microsoft’s lawsuit accusing Samsung of breaching a business collaboration agreement. It claimed that Samsung still owes $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying.

However Samsung said the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 deal with Microsoft because it effectively required the sharing of secret information with a rival.

Samsung said it agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for a patent license covering Samsung’s Android phones.

Samsung agreed to develop Windows phones and share confidential business information with Microsoft as part of that collaboration. Microsoft said it would reduce the royalty payments if Samsung met certain sales goals for Windows devices.

Once Microsoft acquired Nokia, it became a direct hardware competitor with Samsung, the filing said, and the South Korean company refused to continue sharing some sensitive information because if it had done so it would have breached US antitrust laws.

The agreements, now between competitors, invited charges of collusion,” Samsung said in the filing.

Antitrust regulators in the United States and other countries have approved Microsoft’s Nokia acquisition.

Security experts rubbish CBS hacking claim

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

face-palmSecurity experts have poured cold water on CBS hackettes Sharyl Attkisson’s claim that she was being hacked by the government,

In her new book Stonewalled, Attkisson claims that both her personal Apple laptop and a CBS News-issued Toshiba laptop were hacked in late 2012 while she was reporting on the Benghazi terrorist attacks.

In June 2013, CBS News confirmed that the CBS News computer was breached, using what the network said were “sophisticated” methods and unnamed sources confirmed for Attkisson that an unnamed government agency was behind the attack.

However Attkisson released a video she took with her mobile of one apparent hack of her personal Apple laptop. The video shows words typed into a Microsoft Word document rapidly disappearing. During the video, Attkisson’s voice can be heard saying she’s “not touching it.”

Computer security experts who reviewed the video have told Media Matters that Attkisson’s computer had a broken backspace key.

Matthew Brothers-McGrew, a senior specialist at Interhack was quoted as saying sometimes computers “malfunction, a key can get stuck, sometimes dirt can get under a keyboard and a key will inadvertently be held down.”

Brad Moore, also a senior specialist at Interhack said that based on what he saw and was able replicate, there were multiple explanations for this sort of action and a stuck backcase key was the easiest.

Peter Theobald, computer forensics investigator with TC Forensics said that if a hacker tried to infiltrate her laptop and delete her files there would be better ways to do it and it it wouldn’t be so obvious to her.

 

Disney patents anti-pirate search engine

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

hookMickey Mouse outfit, Disney has patented a search engine which it claims can keep the internet pirate free.

While it did not say where it would leave its Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean franchise which rely on pirates, it does beg the question why Disney would develop such a search engine.

Disney has obtained a patent for a search engine that ranks sites based on various “authenticity” factors. One of the goals of the technology is to filter pirated material from search results while boosting the profile of copyright and trademark holders’ websites.

The patent is titled “Online content ranking system based on authenticity metric values for web elements,” one of the patent’s main goals is to prevent pirated movies and other illicit content from ranking well in the search results.

 

According to Disney, their patent makes it possible to “enable the filtering of undesirable search results, such as results referencing piracy websites.”

“For example, a manipulated page for unauthorized sales of drugs, movies, etc. might be able to obtain a high popularity rating, but what the typical user will want to see is a more authentic page,” they explain.

Its patent describes a system that re-ranks search results based on an “authenticity index.” This works twofold, by promoting sites that are more “authoritative” and filtering out undesirable content.

“In particular, embodiments enable more authoritative search results … to be ranked higher and be more visible to a user. Embodiments furthermore enable the filtering of undesirable search results, such as results referencing piracy websites, child pornography websites, and/or the like,” Disney writes.

What Disney would do is give “official” sites priority when certain terms relate to a property of a company. These “authority” weights can include trademarks, copyrighted material, and domain name information.

What this will mean giving corporates more authority than those who might not like it. Therefore, a film review site will have less status than Disney’s official market site. Wikipedia will be much lower on the status list.

“The Disney.go.com web page may be associated with an authenticity weight that is greater than the authenticity weight associated with the encyclopaedia web page because Disney.go.com is the official domain for The Walt Disney Company. As such, with respect to the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs™ film, the Disney.go.com web page may be considered more authoritative (and thus more authentic) than the encyclopaedia web page,” Disney writes.

It is not clear what Disney will do with its new patent. While it is possible to see that other companies might like it, it is generally only the corporates who care enough to want this sort of product, most people would stick to Google, Yahoo or Bing, where they know they will not just get the company line.

 

Australia will give your personal data to anyone

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

van-diemens-land-film1-thumb-630xauto-37783The former British penal colony of Australia is so concerned that terrorists might want to take over its super-hot, poisonous creature-filled, desert that it is going to bring in one of the most elaborate forms of internet monitoring in the world.

Both coppers and communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull have suggested that Australia’s data retention bill will make China look like a liberal hippy commune in comparison.   Under the move, the government is going to hang on to all your browsing history and give it to whoever can get a court order.

However, it seems that terrorists are not the main target of the law. It seems that the whole thing is designed to protect corporates and movie studios from piracy.

Australian Federal Police commissioner Andrew Colvin said that stored telecommunications metadata would be used to go after people who infringe copyright online.

Turnbull then clarified the position saying that if film studios want to use metadata to sue Torrenters, all they would have to do is ask the courts to give them access to it.  However this makes things even worse.

Currently the Aussie ISPs are resisting legal action trying to force them to reveal subscriber information through the courts to a copyright troll. The logic is that the courts would hand over all your browser history to anyone with the dosh to establish a court case.

It could mean that metadata could be demanded in family law cases and insurance cases. After all what is the best way to make sure your partner should not have custody if it can be shown to a court that he or she spends their days on porn or dating sites.

What is even more alarming is that so far this daft law has not been noticed by the Great Aussie public and no one seems to care.

Sony saved by expelling the Welsh

Posted on October 31, 2014 by - News

hollow-crown-welshIt seems that getting rid of its Welsh CEO Howard Stringer has been good for the struggling Japanese outfit Sony.

Sony reported a second-quarter operating loss which was a lot narrower than the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street had predicted. Part of the reason was that the PlayStation 4 games console reduced the impact of its sluggish smartphone division.

Everyone expected a loss after Sony took an impairment charge of $1.58 billion on its mobile division but the fact that it was not grim was being seen as proof that the restructuring announced in May by Chief Financial Officer Kenichiro Yoshida is working.

Sony’s operating loss reached $77 million in July-September, compared with the $1.47 billion estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

The company posted a net loss of $1.22 billion for the quarter and held its full-year net loss forecast at $1.07 billion.

Sony upped its operating profit forecast for its gaming division to $300 million for the year after shifting 3.3 million PlayStation 4 consoles in the second quarter, moving it further ahead of rival Xbox One, made by Microsoft.

Weighing on electronics was the mobile division, where Sony lowered its smartphone sales outlook to 41 million handsets from 43 million, compared with 39 million last year.

Yoshida, the CFO, said the company would greatly shrink its smartphone business in China, where it has been squeezed by nimble local rivals like Xiaomi, while the incoming chief of the mobile division, Hiroki Totoki, would focus on improving carrier relationships.

Yoshida said a weaker yen was a negative for Sony as it loses 3 billion yen for every yen the Japanese currency falls against the dollar.