UK teams up with Israel over security

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-24 at 14.56.43Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office in matters of cyber security, said that the UK and Israel have established three collaboration ventures to get government funding for cyber security.

The governments will contribute £1.2 million of funding to create a bilateral cyber research programme, he said.

The Universities of Bristol and University College London will team up with Bar Ilan University, while the University of Kent will tie up with the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology.

The groups will work on six topics including identity management; governance; privacy assirance; mobile and cloud security; human aspects of security; and cryptography.

Maude said he wants the UK to be one of the safest places to do business online. “Cyber security is a shared global threat and I’m pleased that we are deepening our research relationship.”

The UK is a founding member of a global network called D5 – founding members also include South Korea, Estonia, Israel and New Zealand.

 

Aussie scientists bend light

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

aussie minersPhysicists at the Australian National University said they’ve made a material which can put a perfect bend in light.

The device, called a topological insulator, has the potential to aid the telecomms industry to create a computer chip using light.

And Professor Yuri Kivashar, from the university, said the material may also have use in microscopes, aeriel designs and quantum computers.

He said that scientists had searched for similar materials in photonics, but they tended to use large complicated structures.

But his team have used a zig-zag structure to make a prototype of the materials.

The structure makes a coupling that prevents light from travelling through the centre and instead is channelled to the edge of the material. That lets light to be bent around corners without loss of signal.

HP goes Bang. And Olufsen

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

HPHewlett Packard has decided to strike a deal with Bang & Olufsen to bring its sound systems to its PCs, to its tablets, and to its accessories.

Under the deal, HP said it will custom tune every notebook, desktop and tablet it sells for “precise sound”. Bang & Olufsen kit won’t be in all of the machines it sells, however.

The company said it will create what it describes as a “dedicated audio island” which isolates the sound system from other signals on motherboards. The headphone jack also has a limited amount of metal parts to cut down ground noise.

HP will provide an audio control pane to let people either choose from optimised presets or manually tune the sound.

The first systems with the B&O tech will be available in spring on its Spectre, Omen, Envy and other PCs. The B&O Play brand will be incorporated into HP Pavilion PCs, tablets and some audio accessories.

Mooly Eden quits Intel

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

Intel Q4_14_ResultsCharismatic Intel executive Mooly Eden said yesterday he had resigned from the company.

Eden, senior VP of Intel International, was renowned for his off the cuff and sometimes pungent remarks. He was one of a few executives who were press friendly, rather than regarding us as the enemy.

He was in charge of the Israeli team who created both the Centrino brand the Intel Pentium M microprocessors.

He said in a press release that he was leaving Intel with a sense of satisfaction, after working with creative people who later became good friends.

Three years ago he went back to Israel from California and became president of Intel Israel, according to the Jewish Business News.

Eden was a member of the so-called “Old School” at Intel. He started working for the semiconductor company in 1982.

It’s unclear what his plans are for the future.

Judges scrap Indian Facebook law

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

India_flagThe Supreme Court in Delhi has decided that a law which could have people sent to jail for making pretty harmless comments on Twitter and Facebook is unconstitutional.

The judges say section 66A of the Information Technology Act breached the Indian constitution and struck it from the statute book.

The order was made after it was successfully argued that this section of the law violated the principles of freedom of speech and expression.

The law allowed people to be sent to prison for three years for sending emails or other electronic communications that upset or annoyed other people.

Several people have been arrested for posting comments about politicians on Facebook, and for sending tweets that annoyed people.

 

Italians about to charge Apple with tax evasion

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

iconItalian police are about to finger the collar of the fruity cargo cult Apple which owes the Italian government nearly a billion dollars in unpaid tax.

Italian prosecutors have wrapped up an investigation into allegations US tech giant Applefailed to pay corporate taxes to the tune of $964 million.

The investigation apparently now has enough evidence to ask a judge to drag Apple kicking and screaming into a court room.

The investigations, covering the period 2008-2013, involve two managers from the Italian subsidiary of Apple operations and one from its Irish-based subsidiary Apple Sales International, the sources said.

The probe claims that by having profits generated in Italy booked by the Irish subsidiary, Apple reduced its taxable income base and saved just under 900 million euros in the period, the sources said.

Apple said it was one of the largest tax payers in the world and paid every euro of tax it owed wherever it did business. Although that is a stretch of the truth. It might be obeying tax law by funnelling funds through Ireland or Luxemburg but it is certainly not paying every cent it should be paying.

It said the Italian tax authorities had audited Apple’s Italian operations in 2007, 2008 and 2009 and confirmed it was in full compliance with the OECD documentation and transparency requirements.

“These new allegations against our employees are completely without merit and we’re confident this process will reach the same conclusion,” it said.

Tax authorities have pledged to crack down on domestic and multinational companies in moves that could help shore up stretched public finances and sort out the country’s financial problems.

Boeing patents Star Trek shields

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

cheap_shields_03The US aircraft maker Boeing claims to have invented Star Trek style force fields even before it has built the US enterprise.

Everyone knows that the first Enterprise shipped with ablative plating and any defence involved charging the plating and real shielding did not come until much later.

However Boeing’s patent number 8,981,261 describes a force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage.could provide a real-life layer of protection from nearby impacts to targets.

At the moment it will not protect from direct hits from a rifle, let alone a Klingon Bird of Prey.

The system can sense when a shock wave generating explosion occurs near a target. An arc generator then determines the small area where protection is needed from the shock waves.
It then springs into action by by emitting laser pulses that ionise the air, providing a laser-induced plasma field of protection from the shock waves.

“Explosive devices are being used increasingly in asymmetric warfare to cause damage and destruction to equipment and loss of life. The majority of the damage caused by explosive devices results from shrapnel and shock waves,” the patent says.

While Boeing may been granted the patent, it’s unclear how long it will be before the company deploys the real-life force fields.

Legal challenges mount against US net neutrality

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

1920s-telephone-advertUS Telcos and ISPs have started their first wave of legal attacks against the US’s attempts at net neutrality.

In the US the telcos have done all they can to make sure that they can charge their customers twice by insisting that the big internet users have to give them more money to use their tubes. The government has said twice that they can’t and asked the FCC to regulate ISPs and telcos which setup such schemes.

On Monday, US Telecom — a group that includes some of the nation’s largest Internet providers — filed suit in Washington, while Alamo Broadband sued the Federal Communications Commission in New Orleans.

US Telecom President Walter McCormick said in a statement that he did not believe the Federal Communications Commission’s move to utility-style regulation invoking Title II authority is legally sustainable.

Alamo alleges that the FCC’s net neutrality rules apply onerous requirements on it.

“Alamo is thus aggrieved by the order and possesses standing to challenge it,” the company’s lawyers wrote in the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

The challenges were expected, and it looks like any battle will be a show down between a democratically elected government and the bit corporates who really run things in the US.

However the legal challenges are coming much sooner than expected. Many analysts believed that Internet providers would have to wait until the FCC’s rules were officially published in the Federal Register before being eligible to appeal.

In a statement, the FCC called the petitions “premature and subject to dismissal.” It is unclear whether the FCC will be immediately asking for the cases to be thrown out.
Consumer advocacy groups that had pushed hard for the strong new rules said Title II was “the right law” and insisted that the FCC has a strong case.

Google Glass isn’t dead yet

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

gglassGoogle’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has said that the technology behind his outfit’s Glass project is too important to throw away, and that the programme has been put under the control of Nest’s Tony Fadell to “make it ready for users”.

After Google stopped selling its wearable Glass device in January this year, many people speculated that the controversial gadget was on its way out for good. However Schmidt said that Google had only ended the Explorer programme and the press claimed that it had cancelled everything.

“Google is about taking risks and there’s nothing about adjusting Glass that suggests we’re ending it.” Schmidt added that Glass remains a “big and very fundamental platform for Google,” and that just like the company’s self-driving cars, the wearable device is a work in progress that will take years to come to fruition.

It’s like saying the self-driving car is a disappointment because it’s not driving me around now, said Schmidt.

Reports last December suggested that Google might be planning to launch a new, cheaper version of Glass this year, based around Intel parts with the updated model also reportedly offering a refreshed design and longer battery life.

However the list of “fixes” needed before Glass was viable was extremely long. However, Schmidt is suggesting that the company is committed to getting something like it into the shops.

 

Hutchison Whampoa to buy 02

Posted on March 24, 2015 by - News

oxygen_maskHutchison Whampoa is expected to finalise a deal to buy Telefonica British mobile unit O2 for $15.70 billion today.

The companies did not face any major issues during the two months of due diligence, which could allow the deal to be announced on Tuesday.

The deal could be announced as early as this morning, but there is some possibility that it might be delayed.

Hutchison is chatting with wealth funds including China Investment Corporation, Singapore’s Temasek and GIC, and one of Qatar’s big government-sponsored outfits to provide the cash.

The company has plans to sell stake worth about 3 billion pounds, which makes about 30 percent of the group to outside investors, the newspaper reported.

Hutchison Whampoa is owned by Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, and there might be those in the British government who are not that keen to have a British asset like O2 in the paws of the Chinese. However since no one minded when an Armada of Spanish financiers took the outfit out of British ownership, it is too late to bang Drake’s drum now.

Dell hires ex-AMD man

Posted on March 23, 2015 by - News

AMD, SunnyvaleHardware and software vendor Dell said it has hired two people to key positions in its enterprise sales and technology departments.

Rory Read, who was the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, will be the chief operating offier and president of worldwide commercial sales. He will have overall responsibility for market initiation and all channel sales planning

Paul Perez formerly worked at Cisco where he was VP and genera manager of the firm’s computing systems product group. In his role at Dell, Perez will be the chief technical advisor for its enterprise solutions group.

Perez starts at Dell’s HQ today, while Read will join the company on April 6th next.

Both will report to Marius Haas,who is the chief commercial officer at Dell.

Michael Dell was wheeled out to welcome Read and Perez to the good ship Dell. He said they will add enterprise IT expertise and depth to Dell’s management team.

Read said: “Dell is one of the most exciting companies in the industry right.” He said Dell is the only credible end to end IT company.

Dell hits the high spot

Posted on March 23, 2015 by - News

Dell logoEven though terminal clients are in an inexorable decline, thin clients performed quite well in 2014, with growth up 4.6 percent compared to the year before.

And there may be brighter news ahead for thin clients, according to a report from market research company IDC – enterprises are expected to resume projects in 2015 that were delayed by the worldwide slump.

The biggest beneficiary of client devices was Dell, which in the fourth quarter of last year had a 27.2 percent share.

HP took second place, with 25.5 percent of the market, followed by Centerm (10.8%), Igel (5.2%) and NComputing (5.1%).

The total number of units shipped in the quarter amounted to 1,418,402 units, a decline of 12.5 percent from the same period in 2013 – and the decline was due to terminal clients being rather old hat.

Dell did well because it won some key sales in the financial sector, IDC said.

NComputing saw its position in the pecking order drop to the number five positionm for the quarter.

Packing “peanuts” used for batteries

Posted on March 23, 2015 by - News

alkaline batteryScientists at Purdue University said that they have converted packing peanuts into high performance carbon electrodes for lithium-ion (Li-on) batteries.

Packing peanuts are not peanuts but fill for boxes to protect goods being shipped. They’re made out of starch.

The researchers said the electrodes will outperform conventional graphite electrodes and is a n environmentally friendly approach.

The Purdue scientists have gone one step further because they have also made carbon nanoparticle anodes from polystyrene.

There’s a mystery here though, because a research assistant said “We were getting a lot of packing peanuts while setting up our new lab”. A professor decided to see if it was feasible to use the packing peanuts in a creative way.

Professor Vilas Pol said that while packing peanuts are used worldwide to ship goods, they’re very hard to break down, and only 10 percent are recycled. That means the majority of them end up in landfills.

Pol said that the method for using these packing peanuts as electrodes is cheap, environmentally friendly, and practical for large scale manufacturing.

 

IBM cosies up to China

Posted on March 23, 2015 by - News

ibm-officeThe CEO of IBM said she has a strategy in which her company will share tech with Chinese firms.

Virginia Rometty was speaking in Beijing at a government sponsored conference, according to Reuters.

She said that a country of over one billion people needed its own IT industry and it was unfair of foreign multinationals just to milk the market or use it as a place to manufacture kit.

Many foreign companies have made successful businesses in China by taking a partner in the country – the government makes this something of a condition in order to trade there.

The report said that IBM would let local companies build servers using the Power chip and also use the software for the mainframes.

The first beneficiary of the deal is a Chinese firm called Suzhou Powercore, which will manufacture the Power chips for home grown servers.

Rometty didn’t appear to speak of human rights in China, which remain an obstacle for other firms.

UK spooks can spy on anyone anywhere

Posted on March 23, 2015 by - News

GCHQ buildingThere has been a gasp of horror after it was announced that US spooks wanted the power to spy on anyone, anywhere – but it turns out that their British counterparts have been doing that already.

The UK, granted similar powers to its own intelligence services and is now revealing it.

According to Privacy International , the British Government has admitted its intelligence services have the broad power to hack into personal phones, computers, and communications networks, and claims they are legally justifed to hack anyone, anywhere in the world, even if the target is not a threat to national security nor suspected of any crime.

The admission was was made in what the UK government calls its “Open Response” to court cases started last year against GCHQ.

Buried deep within the document, Government lawyers claim that while the intelligence services require authorisation to hack into the computer and mobile phones of “intelligence targets”, GCHQ is equally permitted to break into computers anywhere in the world even if they are not connected to a crime or a threat to national security.

The intelligence services are allowed to exploit communications networks in covert manoeuvres that severely undermine the security of the entire internet. This was how GCHQ hacked into Belgacom using the malware Regin, and targeted Gemalto, the world’s largest maker of SIM cards used in countries around the world.

Many people had assumed that this was the case. But court cases against the UK’s GCHQ are ferreting out numerous details that were previously secret. This shows the value of the strategy, and suggests it should be used again where possible.