Adblock Plus asks for “security” money

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

shut-up-and-take-my-moneyThere have been howls of derision on the interwebs after it was revealed that ad-blocking browser Adblock Plus  has been paid off by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Taboola.

What appeared to have been a brilliant bit of software which kept adverts out of your browser, has turned into something of a debacle.

PC Mag said that  that one digital media company, which asked not to be named, said Eyeo had asked for a fee equivalent to 30 percent of the additional ad revenues that it would make from being unblocked.

What this means is that all you need to do to make a bit of dosh is write an ad-blocking code, it does not even have to work that well, and show up at the Big IT companies and say: “That is a nice bit of advertising, it would be terrible if something happened to it” and collect your cheque.

PC Mag ummed and ahed about how advertising drives the free Web and sites were not staying in business long these days, but the fact that you have to pay people who write anti-advertising software to look the other way does strike us as the central part of the story.

What this means is that the big companies who can afford to pay,  can run adverts while the smaller magazines will see their sites blocked.  In short the big guys win and the little sites are stuffed.

Motorola Solutions thinks selling itself is the solution

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

motorola-solutions-partner-expoWalkie-talkie and radio systems maker Motorola Solutions is looking into a possible sale.

According to Bloomberg, potential buyers could include private equity firms and defence contractors including Raytheon, Honeywell and General Dynamics.

The 87-year-old company is working with financial advisers as it looks for a buyer.

We are not holding our breath. The sale process has been going on for several months, and a deal isn’t on the immediate horizon.

Motorola  was split up four years ago into Motorola Solutions and a handset unit after a campaign by billionaire Carl Icahn. The handset business was sold to Google which then sold most of it to Lenovo.

Things are not going that well for Motorola Solutions. It has poor earnings performance, with 2014 earnings dropping 33 percent as sales declined six percent. The outlook for this year remains stagnant — the company projects 2015 revenue will be flat to slightly lower.

In other words, Motorola probably should not have listened to Icahn. Lenovo is doing well with the bits of the company it bought and saw its bottom line grow because of its investment.

 

TSMC flees Chinese unions

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

tsmcTSMC is set to invest US$15.8 billion in the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP).

The outfit is set to start building its 18-inch wafer foundry in March which will apply the 10 nanometre manufacturing process with a target for mass production in 2017.

However the location of the plant, away from mainland China has raised an eyebrow or two.

Last year the BBC ran a yarn about how China’s labour unions were getting antsy at Apple’s broken promises on work conditions.

Apple’s response to the BBC’s report at the time was that it strongly disagreed: “We are aware of no other company doing as much as Apple to ensure fair and safe working conditions. We work with suppliers to address shortfalls, and we see continuous and significant improvement, but we know our work is never done.”

However, another news site in China is reporting that “in response to the growing criticism of Foxconn’s treatment of its employees, the company has invited its critics to visit its production bases to get a better understanding of its operations”. During the visit, the critics could also talk to the employees to hear their views,” Foxconn said.

But it is starting to look like another row is flaring up between Foxconn via the labour unions – this time  it is about overtime. It seems that there has been a rash of suicides at its plant, and the unions are blaming them on the overtime.

So it does seem that Foxconn is avoiding any conflict with the Chinese unions getting in the way of its relationship with Apple by shifting its new plant to Taiwan.

 

ARM buys OffSpark

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

lightningBritish chip designer ARM has bought Dutch firm Offspark, which is an open source security software outfit.

It is all part of ARM’s cunning plan to make chips for the internet of things.  It seems that the move by Intel to buy McAfee is starting to make some sense and ARM is seeing the wisdom of having inhouse security software.

Offspark’s PolarSSL technology is designed for sensor modules, communication modules and smartphones.

ARM said buying the group would add its security and software cryptography to its IoT platform, designed to link billions of devices online.

It is not clear how much ARM paid for the security outfit. ARM has promised that the  technology will remain open source and will be made available to developers for commercial use.

It complements ARM’s Cryptobox technology of mbed OS that enables secure execution and storage.

Apparently ARM is to  release mbed OS under an Apache 2.0 licence which will include mbed TLS, Thread, and other key technologies toward the end of 2015.

The release of mbed TLS 1.3.10 is now available under GPL and to existing PolarSSL customers on polarssl.org.

 

Notebook sales plummeted in January

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

notebooksMajor and minor vendors saw precipitous falls in shipments of notebooks  in January.
That’s according to Digitimes Research, which said HP saw its shipments fall by 45 percent and Lenovo fall by 30 percent compared to the previous month.
It wasn’t just the big names that suffered – the original design manufacturers – including giant Compal – saw its shipments fall too.
However, Compal supplies machines to both HP and Lenovo, the market research firm said.
Microsoft has been forced by incursions from Chromebooks to slash its licensing rate – but these machines are not immune to a more general decline in notebooks.
The news may be bad for HP and Lenovo but could be good news for people looking for notebook bargains – most of the machines sitting in warehouses are aimed at home use.
It’s still not entirely clear how Microsoft will approach the thorny matter of Windows 10 when that’s launched in the third or fourth quarter of this year.  It also hasn’t disclosed how many different varieties of Windows 10 it will offer at launch.
There is some sentiment that people are holding off buying notebooks until they have a clearer picture of what is going to emerge from Redmond.

 

Panda blamed for healthcare hack

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-06 at 15.29.14A report said that investigators into a hack at US healthcare firm Anthem are blaming the Chinese government for the breach.
Bloomberg, which said it has spoken to three people on conditions of anonymity, claim the hacks are to provide the Chinese government with data on government workers and others.
Hackers managed to grab as many as 80 million details of Anthem’s customers.
The wire is blaming an espionage unit dubbed “Deep Panda” for orchestrating the attack.
China consistently denies that it hacks into organisations or into other countries’ computer systems.   It’s widely believed, however that many countries, including China, have cyber warriors testing others’ systems.
“Deep Panda”, if it exists, is alleged to have made hacking attacks on contractors and other health care companies over the last few months, Bloomberg alleges.
The investigation into the Anthem attack is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Anthem has not yet explained the vulnerability in its IT systems which allowed its data to be hacked.

 

Tablet makers rethink their plans

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

cheap-tabletsDisappointing shipment numbers for tablets last year are forcing vendors to contemplate their marketing navels and come up with new ideas.
According to Digitimes, one way vendors want to turn the market round is to persuade their suppliers to slash the cost of their components so they can cut prices on production.
And Apple, the wire reports, had disappointing sales of the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, which were launched last autumn.
Sales of HTC products and Xiaomi products haven’t been that brilliant either.
Apple is rumoured to be introducing a 12-inch iPad that it hopes will cause waves of excitement.
The problem is that once you have a tablet, there isn’t much desire to get a new one that’s shinier unless you’ve more money than sense.
Apple appears to believe it can launch all sorts of new applications for the 12-inch iPad when it appears.

Google toys with Glass again

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

glassesAfter an ignominious end to the much hyped Google Glasses, it appears the company hasn’t abandoned the whole effort.
According to a feature in the New York Times, a jewellery designer and a former Apple product executive are working at Google to redesign the thing from scratch.
Ivy Ross apparently runs Google’s “smart eyewear division” while Tony Fadell who created Nest are going back to the Glass drawing board.
Fadell told the NY Times that early Glass experiments had “broken ground” and he and Ivy are learning the dismal lessons of the past by redesigning the things from scratch and not releasing product until it is ready.
Diane von Furstenberg wore a red pair of Google Glasses at a fashion show in 2012, while models on the catwalk wore different coloured ones.
She told the NY Times that Google Glass was the first time people talked about wearable technology.
Actually, as a matter of fact, it’s not.  In the early 90s Dutch firm Philips talked about putting a computer in a tie while later that decade the CEO of IBM told an audience at the Comdex trade show that we’d soon be wearing shoes with computers inside them.

 

GCHQ rapped over US links

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

GCHQ buildingThe agency that is watching you watching me has been criticised for hiding how it shared data with the USA.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) said that before it changed its rules last December, GCHQ breached human rights law, as embodied in the European Convention of Human Rights.
Last December, GCHQ said that it usually needed a warrant to share information with the US security services.
But before it made this disclosure, the IPT said that the soliciting, storing and transmission by UK authorities of private communications of people here and obtained by the US authorities contravened either articles eight or 10 of the European Convention.
Article 8 relates to privacy while article 10 refers to the right of freedom of expression.
The Home Office said in a statement that the UK government is committed to transparency.

 

SEC investigates Blackberry deals

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

watchdogWatchdogs  for the US Securities and Exchange Commission are snuffling around the rump of a January 14 spike in trading in BlackBerry options that took place hours before Reuters reported that Samsung Electronics was in talks to buy the Canadian smartphone maker.

One trade took place at 12:06 p.m. on that day, when there was a purchase of options with the rights to buy 200,000 shares of BlackBerry stock at a strike price of $10 a share.

In the afternoon, Reuters reported that Samsung had offered to buy BlackBerry for as much as $7.5 billion, valuing its stock at between $13.35 to $15.49 per share.

BlackBerry’s stock shot up 30 percent on the news meaning that someone was laughing all the way to the bank. If the buyer had been able to sell the options at that high they would have been able to make a profit of $490,000 on a $20,000 investment.

Both companies later denied they were in talks and BlackBerry’s shares tumbled. Reuters subsequently corrected its story to make clear that the discussions were between advisors.

Radio Shack goes bankrupt

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

1980-radio-shack-catalogAs we predicted, a century after it opened its first store and sent out its first catalogue, RadioShack (RSHC) has declared bankruptcy.

In its final hours it struck a deal to sell up to 2,400 of its approximately 4,000 stores and wireless company Sprint (S) will create a “store within a store” in up to 1,750 of those.

What is left will be shut.

RadioShack’s franchise locations, as well as stores in Mexico and Asia, are not included in any deals and it is not clear what their future will be.

RadioShack products, services and accessories will still be available at the approximately 1,750 stores where Sprint will open shop. In fact, Sprint will occupy just one third of those locations, where it will sell devices and plans.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)  suspended trading of Radio Shack shares on Monday. And RadioShack (RSHC)workers have told CNNMoney that some locations have already been converted to clearance stores.

Closing stores is expensive, due to the cost of redundancy, liquidating merchandise and paying penalties to get out of leases and the outfit has been too broke to close them.

Last March, the company wanted to close about 1,100 stores, but it was only able to close 175 stores through the end of October.

RadioShack has come a long way since the days it could brag about its vast retail network, saying that 90 per cent of Americans lived or worked within a few minutes of a RadioShack location.

Ironically, the Internet and Online shopping helped kill the outfit off – making all those stores an albatross.

RadioShack goes back to 1921, when it opened a store and mail-order operation in Boston to serve the needs of radio officers aboard ships. It was bought in 1963 by Tandy Corporation, a retailer that started as a supplier of leather parts to shoe repair shops.

RadioShack introduced one of the first mass-market personal computers, the TRS-80, in 1977, and one of the first laptops, the Model 100, in 1983. It also was an early seller of both mobile phones and satellite TV.

Coca-Cola quotes Hitler

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

coca-cola_olympic_games_in_berlin_1936Coca-Cola has been forced to withdraw a Twitter advertising campaign after a counter campaign tricked it into tweeting large chunks of the introduction to Hitler’s getting to know you book Mein Kampf.

Marketeers thought that the campaign dubbed “Make it Happy” during the Super Bowl, Coke invited people to reply to negative tweets with the hashtag “#MakeItHappy”.

The idea was that an automatic algorithm would then convert the tweets, using an encoding system called ASCII, into pictures of happy things – such as an fluffy mouse, a palm tree wearing sunglasses or a chicken drumstick wearing a cowboy hat.

Apparently, this was going to make people want to drink some sweet brown liquid with bubbles in it which can also be used to clean toilets.

In a press release, Coca-Cola said its aim was to “tackle the pervasive negativity polluting social media feeds and comment threads across the internet”.

Gawker editorial labs director, Adam Pash, created a Twitter bot, @MeinCoke, and set it up to tweet lines from Mein Kampf and then link to them with the #MakeItHappy tag – triggering Coca-Cola’s own Twitter bot to turn them into cutesy pictures.

For two hours on Coca-Cola’s Twitter feed was broadcasting big chunks of Adolf Hitler’s text, albeit built in the form of a smiling banana or a cat playing a drum kit.

Gawker managed to quote the words “My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duty very conscientiously” in the shape of a pirate ship with a face on its sails – wearing an eyepatch – before Coca-Cola’s account shut down.

In a statement to AdWeek, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola said: “The #MakeItHappy message is simple: the internet is what we make it, and we hoped to inspire people to make it a more positive place. It’s unfortunate that Gawker is trying to turn this campaign into something that it isn’t.”

The statement concluded: “Building a bot that attempts to spread hate through #MakeItHappy is a perfect example of the pervasive online negativity Coca-Cola wanted to address with this campaign.”

 

 

Cisco promises partners a sticky end

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

 honey1Cisco Systems executives have been promising their channel partners that its Cisco ONE Software Suite will be stickier than a hive of bees who stuck super glue on their feet and went skating on the honey combs.

Cisco ONE (Open Networking Environment) is a software licensing program that provides flexibility for customers to acquire the latest software for infrastructure. Yes, apparently, you can be sticky and flexible at the same time; we looked it up.

The networking supremo appears to be removing the la carte method with separately priced products it has also removed the concept of a software license being tied to hardware.

Under the new system, Cisco ONE covers data centre, WAN and network access software as a subscription. Later this year Cisco ONE will offer perpetual licenses and hearing aids for those who were damaged by Cisco shouting ONE at them all the time.

John Brigden, senior vice president of software strategy and operations for Cisco, said all this means that Cisco is now in the business of flogging “business outcomes” instead of products.

Cisco ONE provides flexibility and drive greater deal sizes as well as more margin incentives through the Value Incentive Program (VIP), OIP, and TIP, he said.

For the channel it prevents multiple sales cycles because it is software tied to maintenance and support with SmartNet brings in a more predictable revenue stream.

“This is very sticky for partners.”

Top encryption software project nearly went under

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

Glens_EnigmaA free email encryption software project which was used by whistleblower Edward Snowden nearly went under this week when the bloke behind it ran out of cash.

Koch’s code is behind most of the popular email encryption programs GPGTools, Enigmail, and GPG4Win.  If he packed it in, he would create a nightmare scenario for the security industry.

Werner Koch appealed for cash to keep his Gnu Privacy Guard project going.  He wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.

He has been running the project more or less for free because he believed there was a need to have some sort of open saucy encrypted software.  In 2013 he was all set to pack it in and then the Snowden news broke, and he realised that this was not the time to cancel.

It is not as if the industry has been particularly helpful, despite its dependence on him, the security industry has not been that helpful.

Koch could not raise enough money to pay himself and to fulfill his dream of hiring a full-time programmer. He has been living off $25,000 per year since 2001 — a fraction of what he could earn in private industry. In December, he launched a fundraising campaign that has garnered about $43,000 to date but he needed $137,000 to pay himself a decent salary and hire a full-time developer.

A lifeline was thrown to him this week. He was awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative. Donations flooded Werner’s website donation page and he reached his funding goal of $137,000. In addition, Facebook and the online payment processor Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a year to Koch’s project.

The cash gave Koch, who has an 8-year-old daughter and a wife who isn’t working, some breathing room. But when Propublica  http://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke asked him what he will do when the current batch of money runs out, he shrugged and said he prefers not to think about it. “I’m very glad that there is money for the next three months,” Koch said. “Really I am better at programming than this business stuff.”

It’s the internet of everything

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

Internet of ThingsSome call it the internet of things (IoT), some call it the internet of everything (IoE) and some even call it the internet of fangs (IoF).
These terms are not, as yet, perfectly defined and there is a complete lack of standards defined, just like in the “cloud” space.  But there’s one thing for sure, and that is it’s going to be worth a lot of money so as many vendors as possible are getting on board the gravy train.
Future Market Insights (FMI) prefers the IoE and said that the market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4 percent between 2014 and 2020.
It will be the Asia Pacific market which will kick off the growth, synched to the arrival of big data. That’s because there will be investment in so called “smart cities” and smart grids, financed by the Indian, Chinese and Japanese governments.
FMI divides the market into business to business (B2B) and IoE vertical markets.
The verticals include manufacturing and public sector, but the health care sector will grow by 20.6 percent CAGR during the period, followed by utilities.
The major players in the market are Cisco, Samsung, IBM, Apple and Accenture – these vendors had over 50 percent market share in 2013.