Lenovo in talks to buy Blackberry

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

ripeunripeChinese telecom gear maker Lenovo is in talks to buy Lenovo and is expected to offer the company $15 a share later this week.

Lenovo and BlackBerry refused to comment and this is not the first time that the two have been rumoured to be involved in a tie up.

Senior Lenovo executives have indicated an interest in BlackBerry as a means to strengthen their own handset business. Last year, when BlackBerry said was exploring strategic alternatives, Lenovo was named as an obvious buyer.

The Canadian government put the brakes on any deal when it announced that any sale to Lenovo would not win the necessary regulatory approvals due to security concerns. At the time, the Canadian government had swallowed the US Cool aid which stated that Chinese companies were turning over data to their government through secret spyware. In fact, US companies were turning over data to their government.

BlackBerry’s secure networks manage the email traffic of thousands of large corporate customers, along with government and military agencies across the globe. Under Canadian law, any foreign takeover of BlackBerry would require government approval under the Industry Canada Act.

Analysts also say any sale to Lenovo would face regulatory obstacles, but they have suggested that a sale of just BlackBerry’s handset business and not its core network infrastructure might just sneak past the regulators.

BlackBerry was believed to want to off-load its handset business, even as the arm turned a profit before special items in the last quarter.

BlackBerry chief executive officer John Chen has said in the past he sees the handset business as core to the company for now, as it will foster sales growth over the next few quarters until the software and services business begins to generate new revenue streams in the first half of 2015.

The internet has a snooze

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

sleepyScientists suggest that the internet goes to sleep a bit like human beings do.

According to Professor John Heidemann at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, the results of a survey he conducted will help people to make better systems to measure and track internet outages.

“Understanding how the internet sleep will help avoid confusing a sleeping internet with an internet outage,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, the richer a country is, the more likely it is that the internet will develop insomnia rather than nodding off and having a good nap.

“While the internet is always up and running for some, such as those with broadband access in the US and Europe, in other areas, people’s access to the internet varies over the course of the day, notably in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe,” said Heidemann.

To discover the way the internet works, Heidemann and his team pinged 3.7 million address blocks – that’s about 950 million addresses – every 11 minutes over two months.

Bring your own device use grows

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

tesco-hudl-tabletAs many as 40 percent of US citizens who work for large corporations use their own smartphones, desktops, laptops, and tablets to do business.

That’s according to IT market research company Gartner, which recently surveyed over 4,300 people about their technology and attitudes.

Amanda Sabia, a principal research analyst at Gartner, noted in her report that the lines beween work and play are becoming ever more blurred.

The Gartner survey demonstrated that personal desktop PCs were used the most for work at 42 percent, smartphones by 40 percent, laptops at 36 percent and tablets at 26 percent.

But it appears that enterprises aren’t putting pressure on people to use their own devices with only 25 percent of employees asked to do so by their employers.

The trend is firmly in favour of smartphones and tablets, with 32 percent of those surveyed likely to buy a smartphone, 23 percent to buy a notebook, 20 percent to buy a tablet and 14 percent a desktop PC.

Four out of five of those surveyed have downloaded mobile apps, said Gartner.

Bleak outlook for notebooks – report

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

notebooksThings continue to look less than rosy on the notebook front with shipments worldwide expected to drop in the fourth quarter of this year.

That’s according to Digitimes Research, which said the downward movement is in spite of Intel and Microsoft applying subsidies in a big to boost demand.

The report suggests that global notebook shipments will drop 4.4 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The fourth quarter always used to be a buoyant period for the PC industry, but those rules now seem to be things of the past.

Digitimes Research said that Lenovo and Asustek will do better than the rest of the pack and are expected to show growth in the quarter.

Acer will see a hit, it reports while Lenovo appears to be having some success in Europe, shipping 10 million units in the quarter.

It appears that at the consumer end of the market few have been convinced that Windows 8.1 is the bee’s knees.

Avnet picks up Lenovo’s server business

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

avnettsMegadistributor Avnet said it has been appointed as a global Lenovo route to market.

This follows Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s System x (X86) server business early in the month.

Avnet said it will sell Lenovo servers in over 40 different countries around the world.

As well as Lenovo System x systems, Avnet will sell BladeCenter and Flex System blades and switches, X86 integrated system, NextScale and iDataplex servers, software and maintenance.

But this does not mean Avnet is waving goodbye to IBM. It’s worked with Big Blue for nearly 30 years and will continue to distribute IBM Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power Flex servers, training, software and services.

Tony Madden, a senior VP at Avnet Global said: “Avnet is working closely with Lenovo to ensure a seamless transition for existing System x channel partners and their customers.”

EU lets Huawei off the hook

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

huawei-liveChina and the European Union have decided to bury the hatchet over subsidies made to telecoms giant Huawei and others.

The EU was worried that the government of China was subsidising Huawei and ZTE, so threatening European vendors’ ability to compete.

But, reports Reuters, EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said the telecoms matter has now been resolved.

De Gucht said that the EU takes every opportunity “to level out the playing field” for European vendors.

Both China and the European Union are expected to hammer out a free trade deal in the near future.

Huawei was started by a former member of the Chinese PLA.  It has come under repeated criticism in the USA because of fears by some politicians that its gear is embedded in American infrastructure.

Microsoft has a smartwatch. Again

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

fobwatchNever let it be said that Microsoft doesn’t copy its competitors. Because it always has, and always will and has never “innovated” anything apart from marketing hype.

So it is no surprise to read that Microsoft is going to launch a so-called “smartwatch” in a few weeks, according to a report in Forbes. It has dabbled in these waters before, but without any conspicuous success.

While analysts predict that the so-called “wearable” market will be worth millions in a few years, the jury is still well and truly out on whether people will want to pay good money for smartwatches.

Forbes predicted that the Microsoft watch will track your heart rate and work with different operating systems than just Windows.  And it claims it will have a battery life of only two days.

Apparently Apple’s smartwatch has to be charged every night, which is a bit of a pain in the butt.  There’s no word on pricing.

PC shipments still shrinking

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCWhile Intel turned in remarkably buoyant financial results last week, the news remains somewhat gloomy on the PC front.

Figures released by IDC showed that shipments to consumers in the potentially lucrative Asia Pacific region in the third quarter of this year fell by five percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Sales were up compared to the previous quarter by eight percent and totalled 26.6 million units.

China and India showed better than expected shipments in the quarter.

Handoko Andi, research manager for client devices at IDC said: “[Windows] XP migration helped boost commercial PC spending earlier this year.  But in recent quarters, we have seen Microsoft add a lot to the entry level segment by launching the Windows 8.1 with Bing programme.”

Lenovo is numero uno iin the region, followed by Dell, HP, Acer and Asus.  HP showed a decline of 16.1 percent in shipments in the region compared to the same quarter last year, while Acer showed an 11.2 percent decline.

Scientists solve superconductor conundrum

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

A building at MITMicroprocessors using superconducting circuits can be 50 to 100 times more energy efficient and faster than Intel chips but obstacles have prevented the dream being realised. Yet.

Now MIT researchers claim to have developed a circuit design that will make superconducting devices cheaper to manufacture using so-called Josephson junctions.  MIT said chips using these junctions clock at 770GHz – that’s pretty fast, folks.

Adam McCaughan and Professor Karl Berggren have dubbed their circuit the nanocryotron.

McCaughan said that the world has seen devices come and go without real world applications.  “We have already applied our device to applications that will be highly relevant to future work in superconducting computing and quantum communications,” he claimed.

The cool thing about superconductors is they don’t have any electrical resistance. When electrons trundle along copper wires or circuits in regular chips, they tend to keep bumping against atoms and that generates energy, that is to say heat.

The good Professor’s lab uses superconducting circuits made from niobium nitride, operating at the rather chilly temperature of minus 257 degrees Celsius.  The scientists are experimenting with liquid helium.  “Superconducting computation would let data centres dispense with the cooling systems they currently use to keep their banks of servers from overheating.”

Apple says that it is the Bose

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

J.C.BoseIt seems that the Fruity Cargo cult Apple is being a little childish with its old chum Bose.

For years, Apple sold Bose gear in its cathedrals of delight for the terminally shallow until the outfit decided to buy Beats. Bose had a few problems with Beats which it thought had nicked its noise cancelling technology and sued the company.

Apple responded by removing all Bose gear from its shops.

Bose and Beats then buried the hatchet but it seems that Apple is still deeply annoyed that Bose dared to sue it. The ban on Bose gear is still on.

According to 9to5 Mac all Bose speakers and headphones have been purged from sale through the Apple Online Store and several Apple Retail Store locations they contacted confirmed Bose stuff is no longer available.

 

 

t’s possible, though, that Apple is simply removing a similarly priced competitor from its retail channels to focus on promoting Beats now that it owns the brand, but then it also still sells competing headphone brands including Bowers & Wilkins, Urbanears, RHA, and Sennheiser. We guess they never accused an Apple subsidiary of stealing its ideas.

Apple falsely believes it invented most technology ideas, including the mouse, the PC, the MP3 player, the tablet, the smartphone and the rounded rectangle.

Apple is also about to remove products from the company Fitbit, which was a little slow at endorsing Apple’s HealthKit platform and might find itself in competition from the mythical Apple Watch.

 

Gamergate geeks shocked as their heroes snub them

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

amazonGamers who have been waging a war on women have been surprised and shocked to discover that their heroes think that they are  socially retarded.

For a while now “Gamergate” has been waged against those who think that games should be more inclusive and less sexist.  A hard core of male gamers has taken it upon themselves to threaten anyone, particularly women, with violence, threats and general abuse.

For a while they have genuinely believe that sort of misogynistic behaviour was “cool” and that somehow becoming a gamer Taliban made them something special.  However over the weekend a number of tweets has put them in their place.

The tweets have come from nerd heroes such as Patton Oswalt who said that the “The misogyny of “GamerGate” sickened me.” Seth Rogen called for people to stop supporting this “stupid cause.”   Joss Whedonm responding to an article about the GamerGate tactics, said that it was not terrorism blowing things up, but it is using a fear of violence to “cow us and control our actions.”

Felicia Day dubbed the gamers a “cliched bloodthirsty roaming gang from post-apocalyptic fiction” while Tim Schafer (LucasArts) called on everyone to watch the video on sexism in games that set everything off. Mariel Cartwright the illustrator of Skullgirls said she found the whole thing depressing.

The gamers were initially shocked that the people they idolised considered them the backward scum of the earth and the only famous person who backed them was Alec Baldwin.

One person, without a trace of irony, or intelligence actually wrote on 4Chan: “Even misinformed people can put out their opinion on whatever they want, and they’ve got a large platform to do it with via the internet.”

SAP loses money because of the cloud

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

cloudThe esoteric management software outfit, SAP, which makes expensive software which no one actually can say what it does, is starting to lose money on its cloud set-ups.

SAP, which was slower than many expected to set up cloud offerings,cut its outlook for full-year operating profit amid an accelerating shift by customers to buy its software over the internet rather than as packaged software.

The company said that this has delayed recognition of those sales and now expects its expects operating profit of $7.14-7.40 billion down from $7.65 billion.

Company executives said the accelerating switch from licence-software sales to internet-based, so-called cloud software is to cut into its 2014 profit, but that these sales would begin to bolster revenue and profit in coming quarters.

SAP Finance Chief Luka Mucic told reporters on a conference call that there were no plans to give up on the cloud based systems and it was “hitting the gas pedal as much as we can.” He is confident that “SAP will see the positive returns in the longer run”.

SAP’s customers, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Vodafone, prefer cloud computing because there are no upfront costs for software licences, dedicated hardware or installation, giving  customers more flexibility to respond to shifting market demand.

But cloud sales are recognised gradually over three years. They require more upfront investments and will bolster sales and profit in future quarters.

 

Internet trolls face two years porridge in Blighty

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

trollUK justice secretary Chris Grayling has promised to drag internet trolls from under their bridges and lock them up for longer.

Grayling has announced a plan to change maximum prison sentence for online abuse from six months to two years

Grayling spoke of a “baying cybermob” and believed that the changes will allow magistrates to pass on the most serious cases to crown courts.

The case appeared to have been inspired by Chloe Madeley, the daughter of television presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, who was trolled after she defended her mother’s remarks about the convicted rapist Ched Evans.

Madeley faced rape threats on social media after she defended her mother’s remarks that Evans, who was released from prison last week after serving half of a five-year sentence for raping a 19-year-old woman, should be allowed to resume his career as a footballer because his rape had not been violent and he had not caused “any bodily harm.”

Grayling told the Mail on Sunday: “These internet trolls are cowards who are poisoning our national life. No one would permit such venom in person, so there should be no place for it on social media. That is why we are determined to quadruple the six-month sentence.

“People are being abused online in the most crude and degrading fashion. This is a law to combat cruelty – and marks our determination to take a stand against a baying cyber-mob. We must send out a clear message: if you troll you risk being behind bars for two years,” he said.

Chloe Madeley told the Wail on Sunday that the law needs to be reviewed. It needs to be accepted that physical threats should not fall under the ‘freedom of speech’ umbrella. It should be seen as online terrorism and it should be illegal.

 

 

 

2014 the best year since 2001

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

2001The tech industry is in its best state since 2001, according to figures from TechAmerica Foundation analysts.

Before the bubble burst, and payrolls shrank dramatically, the tech industry employed 6.5 million people.  In 2014 we are just 200,000 jobs shy of equalling that figure.

Tech industry employment reached 6.3 million in the first half of this year, a gain of 118,800 jobs, up 1.9 percent compared to the first half of 2013.

Oddly that is below the 3.7 percent growth rate overall for private-sector employers and the weaker rate of growth is an anomaly for the industry.

Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO of technology industry trade group CompTIA, which bought  TechAmerica, said that the tech industry often experiences a better employment situation than the private sector.

In 2011 and 2012, the tech industry outgrew the overall private sector. In 2009, while the private sector saw employment fall by 5.5 percent. The employment decline in the tech industry was slightly lower at 4.5 percent.

Some of the slowing down of growth might be due to the fact that some big names like HP and  Microsoft have been cutting back, and in the first half of this year there were nearly 50,000 tech industry layoffs.

Safer areas to work have been R&D, testing and engineering services, which saw 54,100 new jobs. IT services was next, with a gain of 36,000 jobs.

Computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing saw employment rose from 156,000 jobs in January 2013 to 166,000 in June 2014.

Apparently, the tech industry is one of the best-paying sectors of the economy. The average annual salary for a tech industry employee is $93,000, compared to $47,400 for the private sector.

IBM pays Globalfoundries $1.5 billion to cut losses

Posted on October 20, 2014 by - News

IBM Not Servers Not SemisUpdate: IBM advised late Sunday that it will be making “a major business announcement” Monday morning along with its’ third-quarter results according to Bloomberg News.

This comes as no surprise to industry watchers. Sanjay Jah, CEO of Globalfoundries Inc. is well known as a shrewd negotiator – fees for taking over IBM’s semi ops were reported as high as $2 Billion.

IBM is shedding the company’s brick and mortar structure piece by piece to facilitate what the company sees as its new destiny. Commoditisation of semiconductor and hardware server content is seen as the motivation.

Margins in both businesses have decreased to the point where economies of scale must come into play – requiring ever-larger investments with ever decreasing margins draining capital away from the company’s core business strategy.

IBM announced that it is investing $3 Billion over five years on semiconductor research in a move to reassure its customer base that the company is continuing basic research to advance hardware and software technology indicating that the company will still be supporting high end research.

What’s not clear at this time:

  • Number of people affected
  • Timeframe
  • Whether all semiconductor operations are included
  • Power PC
  • Intellectual Property
  • Operating charges

We’ll be following up on details as they become available.

Update:

In a statement made this morning IBM will pay Globalfoundries Inc. $1.5 billion over the next three years to take over the company’s loss ridden semiconductor operation.

Globalfoundries will become IBM’s exclusive server processor foundry for 22nm, 14nm and 10 nm server and Power processors for the next decade.

IBM will take a third-quarter pretax charge of $4.7 billion.

 Job Retention

Globalfoundries will offer jobs to those affected in East Fishkill, New York and Essex Junction, Vermont. Workers at IBM’s commercial microelectronics business are also included in the offer.

Globalfoundries will gain access to IBM intellectual property and technologies related to IBM Microelectronics under the 10 year partnership agreement – making the foundry one of the largest semiconductor IP portfolios holders in the world.

 Trusted Foundry

The U.S. Government has used IBM as a supplier as a “trusted foundry” supplier for decades. Globalfoundries is privately owned by United Arab Emirates company called Advanced Technology Investment Company, or ATIC, a subsidiary of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

There’s speculative agreement that Intel is the most likely candidate to take over the “trusted foundry” business from IBM.