QR codes can go 3D

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

qrcodesA team of optical engineers from the University of Connecticut has managed to securely display three dimension QR (Quick Response) images without accessing the internet. There’s those little boxes you can see in this illustration.

The researchers added an array of small lenses to an ordinary smartphone  and believe that the data storage and display scheme could transform personal 3D entertainment and offer secure 3D storage and transmission.

Lead researcher Bahram Javidi said that the method lets encrypted 3D info to be securely displayed on mobile devices.  He said: “The QR codes we developed store compressed and encrypted images which can be easily scanned, decrypted and decompressed by commercial smartphones.”

In developing the system, the researchers said that if links to websites are stored in the QR code, a smartphone auto links to the website but it may continue malware.  Javidi said that the team store self contained slices of data in the QR codes themselves, so cutting out the need to access the internet.

But the system is not yet commercially available but it won’t be long before it is, Javidi said.

Entry level storage systems up

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

seagate-hddThe third quarter of 2014 saw personal and entry level storage shipments up by 4.8 percent compared to 2013, with 19 million units shipping.

That’s according to IDC analyst Jingwen Li.  “The personal and entry level portion of the market saw good growth in higher capacity portable devices as well as personal cloud devices.”

Cloud storage is typically used for an entire household with entry level systems have higher capacity and at a price which people can afford.

While the market continues to be dominated by mainstream non hard drive vendors, with 50.5 percent market share, dedicated HDD vendors like Western Digital are nibbling at this dominance.

IDC predicts further growth in unit shipments in this, the fourth quarter, up by 15.1 percent year on year.

Single bay storage continues to be the most popular choice with 97.5 percent of the market, but dual bay and multiple bay systems are becoming more popular.

USB is still the most popular interface with Ethernet and Thunderbolt taking minor shares in the market.

Your car will be watching you

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

bigbrotherBy 2019 shipments of factory installed driver monitoring systems (DMS) with inward facing cameras will reach 6.7 million in number.

The systems include eye tracking technology which analyses the movements of your eyelids and the direction you’re gazing in and allows for personalisation in your vehicle, security, health tracking, distraction and detection of fatigue, according to market research firm ABI Research.

Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Volkswagen already have some of these features but Toyota has deployed advanced eye tracking systems in its Lexus brand and both Volvo and General Motors will install similar systems in the future.

And in a further twist, chip companies Nvidia and Intel ears are perking up as they sense business headed their way.

It’s not just cars that will deploy such systems, however.  ABI Research said in its report that companies SmartDrive and Lynx are targeting commercial vehicle fleets.

Apple quizzed over health data

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

tim-cook-glareMore bad news for Apple’s iWatch vapourware – it looks like it has attracted the attention of a US privacy watchdog.

Apple’s iWatch has been blighted by product delays and the fact that even its hype has been outclassed by products its rivals have put into the shops. Now it seems that the US Federal Trade Commission is worried about how Jobs’ Mob is going to use the sensitive health data collected by its upcoming smartwatch and other mobile devices from being used without owners’ consent.

Jobs’ Mob representatives have met on multiple occasions with agency officials in recent months, to promise that it will not flog its users’ health data to third-party entities such as marketers or allow third-party developers to do so.

The fact that you have to trust Apple with all your health data and that it the fruity computer seller is secure enough to protect it is a cause for concern. After all as attractive actresses who placed their naked pictures on the iCloud found out, Apple security is not that great.

Apple developed its new HealthKit platform, which manages data from mobile health apps, to give consumers control over how their information is used and shared. “We designed HealthKit with privacy in mind,” Apple insisted.

It is not clear if the FTC intends to launch a formal investigation or inquiry into the matter, but the dialogue underscores the agency’s interest in how the increasing wealth of consumer-generated health and fitness data will be safeguarded.

The FTC is paying particularly close attention to Apple’s upcoming smartwatch, which can track a user’s pulse and potentially store health-related information.

The FTC found in a recent study that many developers share or sell health data. The study found that developers of 12 mobile health and fitness apps were sharing user information with 76 different parties, such as advertisers.

In fact Apple did not tighten its privacy rules until August of this year to ensure that personal data collected through HealthKit would not be used by developers for the purposes of advertising or other data-mining purposes. Apps that access HealthKit are required to have a privacy policy, although it remains to be seen how Apple will enforce this.

 

Oracle and SAP bury the hatchet

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

9545Oracle and SAP have settled their long-running copyright litigation for $356.7 million over improper downloads of Oracle files.

For those who came in late, Oracle sued SAP over its TomorrowNow unit, which the German company bought to provide software support to Oracle customers at lower rates than what Oracle charged, hoping to persuade them to become SAP customers.

In 2007 Oracle noticed thousands of suspicious downloads of its software. A California jury awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in 2010, but that amount was knocked down in subsequent judicial rulings. Earlier this year a federal appeals court said Oracle could either accept $356.7 million, or opt for a retrial against SAP.

Oracle’s general counsel Dorian Daley called the end of the case a “landmark recovery “ and was “extremely gratified that our efforts to protect innovation and our shareholders’ interests are duly rewarded”.

SAP said it was pleased that the courts “ultimately accepted SAP’s arguments to limit Oracle’s excessive damages claims and that Oracle has finally chosen to end this matter.”

SAP conceded that its employees were illegally downloading Oracle files, but it could not agree with Oracle on how much it should pay. The 2010 trial between the two companies was widely watched, as top Oracle executives Larry Ellison and Safra Catz testified.
There was also a criminal probe, which SAP agreed to pay $20 million to make go away.

Motorola discovers US does not rule the world

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

courtroom_1_lgIt appears that Motorola’s US court case against several Asian suppliers for alleged price fixing is coming unstuck.

A US appeals court appeared sceptical of mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility’s attempt to sue  AU Optronics, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, HannStar Display, LG Display, Samsung, Samsung, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba.

A three judge panel of the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals questioned whether the allegations had enough connection to the United States to be heard in US courts.

Motorola Mobility is now a unit of China’s Lenovo Group, but it sued the suppliers in Chicago federal court in 2009, saying some of its subsidiaries had overpaid for liquid crystal display screens because of a conspiracy in Asia. Some screens entered the US market, the lawsuit said.

Judge Richard Posner, a member of the appeals panel, pointed out that Motorola treated the foreign subsidiaries as separate for tax reasons, but for antitrust purposes, they are seen as part of Motorola.

Motorola Mobility lawyer Thomas Goldstein said the company should be able to sue under US law because a former Chicago-based parent negotiated its supply contracts.

Lenovo bought Motorola Mobility in October for $2.91 billion from Google which had bought it in 2012. Motorola Mobility says it paid the LCD makers more than $5 billion from 1996 to 2006.

The appeals court ruled against Motorola Mobility in March but agreed to hear the case again after the Obama administration said the ruling threatened its ability to prosecute global price fixing.

The US Justice Department, whose investigation of global LCD price-fixing led to more than $1.3 billion in criminal fines, asked the court to find that the conspiracy directly affected US commerce.

Belgium and Japan filed briefs criticising the reach of US antitrust law and urging the court to rule for the suppliers.

Ubisoft in face off over reviews

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

face offUbisoft’s PR and Marketing policy has come under the spotlight after it released a buggy version of its Assassin’s Creed: Unity game.criticised for widespread glitches

The game came out of the box full of more bugs than an ant farm which has evolved its own love cult.  The problem is that Ubisoft managed to keep people buying the game because it had silenced reviewers.

When the game was released, Ubisoft gave out review copies but only on the condition that the review did not come out until 18 hours of the US release. This meant that people everywhere frantically bought the game blissfully unaware that it should never have been released.

Ubisoft said that it is working on an update that will help address some of the specific problems  some players are having including: the hero Arno falling through the ground; the game crashing when joining a co-op session; Arno getting caught inside of hay carts; delay in reaching the main menu screen at game start, it said. PC users also have images of people missing part of their faces

Ubisoft insisted that its control of the reviews was nothing to do with censoring reviews that it knew were likely to be bad. It said that the complexity of creating a multiplayer title was the reason that the game had only became available for review relatively late in the day.

In fact, a patch to tackle “random crashes” and some animation issues beat many of the bad reviews to press.

Activision’s Destiny and Sony’s Driveclub also had post-release embargoes placed on them this year, while Sega did not send out any pre-release copies of Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal at all. All three received mixed reviews.

There are major questions as to how the software could have been released in such a state and no one saw it.

Assassin’s Creed: Unity is set in the French Revolution, and its simulation of Paris streets and buildings is more complex than anything attempted  before.

One suggestion was that the company had been under pressure to meet the titles’ scheduled release dates after announcing lengthy delays to other high-profile games: Watch Dogs, which ultimately went on sale about a year later than expected, and The Crew, which is running roughly nine months late.

 

Apple made into security lemon curd

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

LemoncurdAlthough the Tame Apple Press makes much of the security features of the iPhone, it is still the easiest phone to hack.

The Mobile Pwn2Own competition that took place alongside the PacSec Applied Security Conference in Tokyo on November 12-13 has a long tradition of knocking over the latest smartphones and always finds Apple smartphones the easiest.

If you believe the Tame Apple Press, the iPhone  with its sandbox technology was supposed to be super-secure. However it turns out that the iPhone continues to be a doddle. In fact, it has become traditional for the first day of the competition for Apple to be shown up.

In this case, members of the South Korean team lokihardt@ASRT “pwned” the device by using a combination of two vulnerabilities. They attacked the iPhone 5s via the Safari Web browser and achieved a full sandbox escape.

The competition, organised by HP’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) and sponsored by BlackBerry and the Google Android Security team, targeted the Amazon Fire Phone, iPhone 5s, iPad Mini, BlackBerry Z30, Google Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, Nokia Lumia 1520, and Samsung Galaxy S5.

Later in the day, Team MBSD from Japan hacked Samsung’s Galaxy S5 by using a near-field communications (NFC) attack that triggered a deserialisation problem in certain code specific to Samsung. Jon Butler of South Africa’s MWR InfoSecurity also managed to break the Galaxy S5 via NFC.

Adam Laurie from Aperture Labs hacked an LG Nexus 5 using NFC.  This was an interesting hack because it used a two-bug exploit targeting NFC capabilities on the LG Nexus 5 (a Google-supported device) to force BlueTooth pairing between phones.  This was a plot point on the telly show ‘Person of Interest’.

Kyle Riley, Bernard Wagner, and Tyrone Erasmus of MWR InfoSecurity used a combination of three vulnerabilities to break the Web browser on the Amazon Fire Phone.

Microsoft’s Nokia Lumia 1520 came out of the competition quite well with contestants only managing partial hacks. Nico Joly, managed to exfiltrate the cookie database, but the sandbox prevented him from taking complete control of the system.

Jüri Aedla of Estonia used a Wi-Fi attack against a Nexus 5, but failed to elevate his privileges, HP said.

 

Ofcom gives 4G the thumbs up

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

thumbsupA report from UK comms regulator Ofcom said that the four operators who offer 4G in the country offers twice as much speed as 3G.

Ofcom conducted research in five UK cities where 4G was offered by network operators EE, O2, Three and Vodafone.

It measured download speed, upload speed, web browsing speed and latency.  Over nine million people in the country can now access 4G and Ofcom said this figure will increase as coverage increases and additional 4G enabled devices come onto the market.

Ofcom conducted 210,000 tests in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. It pointed out that with only nine million 4G subscribers, “networks may be lightly loaded” and increased network congestion may dampen down the performance.

The tests showed that 4G download speeds were over twice as fast as 3G speeds, with an average for 4G being 15.1Mbit/s but for 3G only 6.1Mbit/s.

Upload speeds were even better, with 4G seven times faster that 3G.  Although there was less difference between browsing web pages, 4G networks have a lower latency than 3G networks.

Ofcom said that EE had higher download and upload speeds, while Three was better at web browising and latency.

Tablets are the flavour of the enterprise month

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

cheap-tabletsIf an enterprise is thinking of deploying BYOD (bring your own device) programmes tablets are better than notebooks or smartphones.

That’s according to Gartner, which said that if an enterprise spends half a million dollars to deploy 1,000 enterprise owned tablets, it’s making a mistake.  Because the same enterprise could support 2,745 user owned tablets at the same price.

Federica Troni, a research director at Gartner, said direct costs of user owned tablets are 64 percent lower and offering a BYOD option is the best way to keep costs down while broadening access.

She said that users’ own smartphones have a total cost of ownership similar to enterprise owned smartphones. They will only deliver savings when organisations don’t reimburse or subsidise voice and data plans.

There are problems, however, in the tablet BYOD idea.  Users will have to at some extent doing their own support and they will also have to be to some degree IT savvy, she said.

Social networking can damage your business

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

University of Bergen researcher Cecile Schou AndreassenA study of 11,000 Norwegian employees has led researchers to the conclusion that allowing people to play with personal social media at work can be detrimental to business.

The University of Bergen’s Cecile Schou Andreassen and her colleagues concluded that using personal social media during working hours impairs employees’ performance.  “This type of distraction has a negative effect on self reported work performance,” she said.

However, the researchers cannot rule out that some workers can benefit from using their own social networking to stimulate creativity and inspire some people.

She said: “Employers typically fear financial loss due to employees cyber loafing.”  It is the first study of its kind she said, and further research is needed.

Earlier this year the same university showed that policies prohibiting the personal use of social networking at work could benefit businesses.

The 11,000 people studied included 811 top execs, 1,821 middle managers, 2,764 other people with leadership roles, 5,622 work proles. The median age of the participants was 35.4 years.

Semiconductors to become one atom thin

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

silicon-waferScientists at North Carolina State University (NC State) have released research which allows the transfer of one atom thin semiconductor films onto arbitrary substrates.

The researchers claim that the method will perfectly transfer the thin films from one substrate to another, without defects.

The material in question used for the thin films is molybdenum sulphide (MoS2) which is inexpensive and has similar optical and electronic properties to existing semiconductor materials.

Dr Linyou Cao, a professor at NC State, said: “The ultimate goal is to use these atomic layer semiconducting thin films to create devices that are extremely flexible, but to do that we need to transfer the thin films from the substance we used to make it to a flexible substrate.”  He added that the thin film can’t be made on a flexible substrate because they won’t tolerate the high temperatures required.

The MoS2 films can be up to five centimetres in diameter and the scientists found a way to move the thin film without wrinkling it or crackling it.

Existing tech for transferring thin films from one substrate to another use chemical etching but that can contaminate the film.

The researchers said that the thin film uses room termperature water and a pair of tweezers.

The University has started work on developing devices that use the tech the scientists invented.

Intel drives down Chromebook prices

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

Intel-logoLenovo and Asustek are expected to release Chromebooks next year that will cost $149.

The machines will be powered by Rockchip technology and that is in the embrace of Intel for design and distributing its SoFIA chips, according to Digitimes Research.

The price will be around 25 percent less than the cheapest machine on the block – the C720 from Acer.

But the move is also likely to put Intel at loggerheads with its long time partner Microsoft, which is desperate to knock the Google Chromebook project on the head, and has lowered its licensing fees in a bid to be competitive and keep its place in the notebook market.

The research outfit thinks that both machines will use an 11.6-inch screen. The Lenovo device is likely to appear early next year.

Open sorcerers praise Microsoft’s change of heart

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

8246ad6f-df76-4aa3-98e5-3667af1d35fbMicrosoft is making huge gains into the hearts and minds of the Linux community, only a few years after describing it as software cancer.

‎Executive Director at Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin wrote in Linux.com  that Microsoft moves to open sourcing the server side .NET stack and expanding it to run on Linux and Mac OS platforms were important.

“All developers will now be able to build .NET cloud applications on Linux and Mac. These are huge moves for the company and follow its recent acknowledgement that at least 20 percent of Azure VMs are running Linux,” Zemlin wrote.

He said that these sorts of changes made everyone keenly aware of how much the software business has transformed over the last decade.

Microsoft is redefining itself in response to a world driven by open source software and collaborative development and is demonstrating its commitment to the developer in a variety of ways.

A few years ago Microsoft was among the top 20 corporate contributors to the Linux kernel. It participates in the open SDN project, OpenDaylight, and the open IoT effort the AllSeen Alliance. This year Microsoft joined the Core Infrastructure Initiative focused on funding critical open source projects running the world’s infrastructure.

While Zemlin did not agree with everything Microsoft does the new Microsoft is a different organisation when it comes to open source.

Today most software is built collaboratively and open source development accelerate’s technology, which is why competition today is so fierce and things move faster than ever before.
Microsoft understands that today’s computing markets have changed and companies cannot go it alone the way they once did, Zemlin said. He didn’t seem to mention that Microsoft makes a bundle of money out of Linux and hardware and the like.

Microsoft loses ground in schools race

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

1920-track_field_bellcounty_30yd_dashSoftware giant Microsoft is losing ground to the likes of Apple and Google in the race to get its gear into schools.

According to consultant Pablo Valerio,  the reason is nothing to do with marketing to kids and parents, but because it is falling short when it comes to providing teaching apps and its licencing arrangements.

Apple’s Teacher Tools and Google’s Chromebook Management Console are fuelling the adoption of Chromebooks and iPads, leaving Microsoft behind.

The recent Microsoft TechEd Europe event showed that Microsoft was close to sorting out the lack of Apps with the upcoming Windows 10 operating system.

However, Microsoft has not solved the issue of having to purchase a licence for each user as each user that logs into a device will use a licence, so that license will be taken down and it would not go back dynamically.

This will cause a heavy bill for schools with limited numbers of computers and hundreds of students using them.

Google Chromebooks have Chrome OS with specific tools for schools to manage the devices, their apps and users. Its Chromebooks for Education program is helping schools deploy large numbers of devices with an easy management system.

While it is possible to buy a small Windows laptop for about the same price of a basic Chromebook, the associated management and support costs are enormous in comparison. Also Chromebooks are pre-loaded with apps such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, with similar functionality to Microsoft’s Office.

Apple is the leader in the education market thanks to having the biggest collection of education apps available today, plus some unique management tools, some by Apple and some by MDM providers such as AirWatch, he said.