Sony kills ebook reader

Posted on August 5, 2014 by - News

additional-oxford-dodo-bookSony has confirmed that it will not make any more eBook readers, not even in Japan where it can still sell them.

There will never be such a gizmo with the catchy title PRS-T4 and the Sony Reader PRS-T3 will be sold until it runs out. Since that was launched last autumn and only in the EU, Sony could not have have many left.

Sony pioneered the idea of an E-ink ereader in 2004 when it launched the Sony Librie in 2004.

The company worked with E-ink and Toppan Printing Co of Japan for several years to develop the first generation of the 6″ screen which was used in the Librie, and later the Sony Reader, Kindle, Nook, and other ereaders.

Sony released the first 6″ screen, it also followed it up with several cutting edge devices. It was also the first to adopt Epub, and to combine an E-ink screen with a touchscreen and a frontlight.

But Sony was largely aced by the Nook-Kindle price war in June 2010 and lost out in the price drop that followed.

 

IBM applies science to HR cloud

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeBig Blue said that it has introduced cloud software and initiatives aimed at using analytics and workforce science to human relations.

The buzzwords IBM is using are “workforce engagement and transformation” – it is introducing a talent and change consulting practice supported by 100 behavioural scientists.

The big idea is to use social analytics to identify “top performers”, and guard against people leaving or being poached.

IBM did a survey which revealed that two out of five CEOs believe a big threat to keeping top people on comes from organisations outside their sectors.

The three cloud based applications are Kenexa Predictive Hiring, Kenexa Workforce Readiness and Kenexa Predicting Retention. IBM is starting to sell these cloud based products today.

Viglen wins Toshiba gong

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

ViglenBritish outfit Viglen said Toshiba likes it so much it has given it Platinum Partner of the year and Education Partner of the year status.

Qualification for these accolades is based on successful reselling of Toshiba products and adding value to the mix.

Viglen said it is now one of the biggest Toshiba resellers in the UK, meaning it can offer better support, reduce costs, and simplify IT procurement.

Viglen CEO Bordan Tkachuk said his company offered a set of value added services, including besoke service.

It considers itself to be a leading IT supplier in the UK education and public sectors.

Pictured here from left to right are Toshiba’s Mark Byrne, Nick Offin, head of channels, Viglen’s CEO Tkachuk and Neil Bramley, sales director Europe, Toshiba.

Apple wins approval for settlement

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

novità-apple-2013The fruity cargo cult Apple has managed to get a court to accept a settlement in a case where it ran an ebook racket with other publishers to jack up the price.

Apple has always denied that its super cool pricing cartel idea was illegal and that it did anything wrong.  In fact it is appealing its conviction.  The settlement is conditional on Apple not getting the case overturned on appeal.

US District Judge Denise Cote approved a $450 million settlement of claims Apple harmed consumers by conspiring with five publishers to raise e-book prices on Friday. In approving the settlement, Cote overcame concerns she had expressed over a settlement provision allowing Apple to pay just $70 million if related litigation were to drag out.

That accord calls for Apple to pay $400 million to consumers and $50 million to lawyers if the federal appeals court in New York upholds Cote’s findings, and nothing if the Cupertino, California-based company wins its appeal.

But if the appeals court overturns Cote and returns the case to her, perhaps for a new trial, Apple will owe only $US50 million to consumers and $US20 million to lawyers.

But in Friday’s decision, she noted that the states and consumers “strongly believe” such a scenario is unlikely, and that the settlement has provisions to reduce its likelihood.

She also said the plaintiffs agreed to provide more details about the settlement to consumers, to help them decide whether to accept its terms or sue Apple separately.

Homeland Security wants to save Expendables

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

Expendables-3_Expendables-2US Homeland Security, which is supposed to be defending the country from terrorists, is using taxpayer money to defend the business model of Big Content.

The US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement is investigating the piracy of the Lionsgate action flick The Expendables 3. Lionsgate made calls to several law-enforcement agencies to using their spying technology to locate the pirates, who are accused of leaking a full version of the pic on various file-sharing sites last week.

Apparently, it is not so unusual lately for the men in black, who you would think would be dealing with people with guns trying to bring down the government, to be defending big corporate interests. U.S. Customs was merged into USDHS, and it investigates illegally distributed copyrighted materials, including media content.

In the past, it has actually seized domain names of websites used to illegally distribute media content and/or counterfeit goods.

Lionsgate filed suit against the sites hosting the pic and the same day it dropped the final trailer (see it below) that opens wide August 15.

The digital copy was stolen from the Studio last week and news of the download surfacing wide by the time Comic-Con was in full swing last weekend. There were 250,000 downloads on that first day and an estimated two million afterwards.

China bans Symantec and Kaspersky

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

great wallThe Chinese government has banned anti-virus companies Symantec and Kaspersky Lab from working on government contracts behind the bamboo curtain.

A Chinese media report suggested Beijing is expanding efforts to limit use of foreign technology and Symantec, which is owned by the US and Kaspersky, which has Russian owners are no longer allowed to apply for government contracts.

The state-controlled People’s Daily reported that government procurement office had approved the use five anti-virus software brands, all from China: Qihoo 360, Venustech, CAJinchen, Beijing Jiangmin and Rising.

Kaspersky is apparently not giving up and is going to have a word with the Chinese authorities about this matter. It is too premature to go into any additional details at this time.

Beijing is keen on promoting use of domestic information technology products after leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden raised concerns about foreign surveillance programmes.

Symantec said that that China had banned use of one of its data loss prevention products and it was currently in talks about the ban. However, a Symantec spokeswoman said that there was no indication of a ban on the company’s flagship anti-virus software programs.

In May Chinese authorities had banned government use of Windows 8 “to ensure computer security after Microsoft ended support for its Windows XP operating system”, which was widely used in China.

Microsoft nukes Samsung

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

rage-explosionIt seems that Microsoft really has copied Apple in its treatment of the smartphone maker Samsung.

According to a company blog, Microsoft is suing Samsung over its version of Android software in the Southern District of New York.

David Howard, Vole’s Deputy General Counsel said that Microsoft did not take lightly filing a legal action, especially against a company with which it had enjoyed a long and productive partnership. However it appears the pair have fallen out.

“ After spending months trying to resolve our disagreement, Samsung has made clear in a series of letters and discussions that we have a fundamental disagreement as to the meaning of our contract,” he wrote.

Microsoft said that Samsung voluntarily entered into a legally binding contract with Microsoft to cross-license IP which was extremely beneficial for both parties.

Since Samsung entered into the agreement, its smartphone sales have quadrupled and it is now the leading worldwide player in the smartphone market and decided late last year to stop complying with its agreement with Microsoft.

When Vole bought Nokia Devices and Services business, Samsung began using the acquisition as an excuse to breach its contract, Howard alleged.

He added that Microsoft and Samsung had a long history of collaboration. Microsoft values and respects its partnership with Samsung and expects it to continue. It is simply asking the Court to settle the disagreement, and is confident the contract will be enforced.

Microsoft prepares to Sway

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

art.wozniak.courtesyThe dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth rumour which claims that Microsoft is preparing to launch a new product called Sway.

Microsoft has been a busy Vole registering some domain names that use the term CDN and Sway.

For those who came in late, CDN is content delivery network which means that Vole is getting into the entertainment biz.

Microsoft has registered a trademark for “Sway” with a fairly wide brief, covering computer software; computer application software; online computer software and software as a service.

What appears to be happening is that Microsoft likes the moves that Apple and Netflix have made to move content on to their own CDN services and away from those provided by third parties to improve content streaming to improve and better control the quality of service.

But there is a slight problem with the rumour. Microsoft already has its own CDN services and offers this as a service to third-party developers, via its Azure platform. In fact its existing product is something that Apple can only dream of.  Another theory is that Microsoft is planning a new marketing push to “sway” more developers to its platform and away from the likes of Amazon’s Cloudfront.

Another idea is that Microsoft wants to create a new streaming service. There have been mutters about Microsoft launching a streaming gameplay service. Vole has Twitch embedded in Xbox, but with a $1 billion acquisition of Twitch by Google all but confirmed, Microsoft wants to get a new product to replace it.

Conservative social network killed by trolls

Posted on August 1, 2014 by - News

ronald_reaganAn attempt by US conservatives to set up a social networking site has collapsed under a sea of trolls and spam.

Ohio Republican Janet Porter pre-launched ReaganBook – “Facebook for Patriots”. The move was a reaction against employees from the better known social media site took part in a LGBT rights demonstration in San Francisco.

To be fair it was more a reaction to those “evil homosexuals” thing rather than an attempt at a real site. But several “left-leaning sites” (for European readers that is the same as centre right) gave the site more attention than it was read for.

Soon the real social network’s members were drowned out by a flood of phony accounts including Vladimir Putin, Sarah Palin, and Manuel Noriega and more sock puppets than a Muppet Theme Park.

Even Conservative blogger Amy Jo Clark thought the idea was half baked. She said that they should not have used Reagan as a brand.

Many users posted profane criticisms of former President Ronald Reagan, while others posted pornographic images.

Porter, who is president of the anti-abortion group Faith2Action, pledged to cull out all the duff posts.

She is claiming that what users saw was actually the pre-launch which gave the site the chance to tighten our security for the real launch.

Porter said that the fact that so many leftists have invested so much time in the site, “it provides confirmation that we’re on the right track,” she said.

We would have thought that actually all she has done is given “leftists” an avenue to give conservatives a good kicking.

Attempts to weed out the trolls and socks proved a little different. In the end it looks like Porter gave up. The site was taken offline by Wednesday afternoon. All this happened about 24 hours after the site launched.

Without a shred of understanding the PR implications, Porter asked users to be patient while we make the necessary changes to keep the site free from obscenity, pornography, and “those intent on the destruction of life, liberty, and the family”.

She promised that when the site opened it would have additional protections in place. “As Reagan taught us, trust, but verify,” the site said.

USB drives pose big risk

Posted on August 1, 2014 by - News

Dangerous-USBUSB drives are so insecure they should not be allowed near a corporate network, according to the latest research from two security boffins.

SR Labs’ Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell have come up with a collection of proof-of-concept malicious software to show how the security of USB devices is fundamentally broken.

The malware they created, called BadUSB, can be installed on a USB device to completely take over a PC and alter files installed from the memory stick, or even redirect the user’s internet traffic.

BadUSB does not live in the flash memory storage of USB devices, but in the firmware that it. The attack code can remain hidden even if the data has been wiped.

The researchers said that there is no easy fix because it exploits the way that USBs are designed.

They reverse engineered the firmware that runs the basic communication functions of USB devices which is the controller chips that allow the devices to communicate with a PC and let users move files on and off them.

Unless the IT guy has the reverse engineering skills to find and analyse that firmware, “the cleaning process doesn’t even touch the files we’re talking about.”

All USB devices from keyboards and mice to smartphones have firmware that can be reprogrammed in the same way.

Nohl and Lell have tested their attack on an Android handset plugged into a PC.

And once a BadUSB-infected device is connected to a computer, Nohl and Lell could do more or less what they liked.

The malware can hijack internet traffic too, change a computer’s DNS settings to siphon traffic. It can also spy on a computer’s activity.

BadUSB’s ability to spread from USB to PC and back raises makes it impossible to use USB devices securely at all.

 

HP does u-turn on OpenVMS

Posted on August 1, 2014 by - News

utrunThe maker of expensive printer ink, HP, has changed its mind on OpenVMS.

For a while now HP has been pushing its users off the system, but now it says that it has licensed OpenVMS to a new firm that plans to develop ports to the latest Itanium chips. It is also promising eventual support for x86 processors.

This is a u-turn from last year when HP declared OpenVMS as following the path of the Dodo. It said it would not validate the operating system to its latest hardware or produce new versions of it.

The new move involves licensing the OpenVMS source code to a new entity, VMS Software. Of course HP is not saying that action a reversal, or that it changes the previously announced roadmap for the OS.

The move will allow OpenVMS customers want is to stay on the OS.

VSI is funded by the investors of Nemonix Engineering, a longtime support and maintenance firm of OpenVMS systems.

It wants to validate the operating system on Intel’s Itanium eight-core Poulson chips by early 2015.  It also wants to support for HP hardware running the upcoming “Kittson” chip. It will also develop an x86 port, although it isn’t specifying a timeframe.

OpenVMS has a strong customer bas and is used in nuclear power plants, in process control systems in all industries. It is good at disaster recovery, security and clustering.

An OpenVMS user group based in France recently went public with its complaints, calling HP’s decision a mistake.

Lords want end to online anonymity

Posted on August 1, 2014 by - News

house of lordsThe British House of Lords is gearing up for a campaign to remove online anonymity.

The Communications Committee of the House of Lords has now issued a report concerning “social media and criminal offenses” in which they basically recommend scrapping anonymity online.

What it wants is for web services to be required to collect real names at signup, but then could allow those users to do things pseudonymously or anonymously.

It means that their actions could then easily be traced back to a real person if the “powers that be” deemed it necessary.

The Lord’s report said it would be reasonable to require the operators of websites first to establish the identity of people opening accounts.

However it is also reasonable to allow people thereafter to use websites using pseudonyms or anonymously.

“There is little point in criminalising certain behaviour and at the same time legitimately making that same behaviour impossible to detect,” the Lord’s report said.

The report notes that the findings are “tentative” and that these recommendations might possibly “be an undesirably chilling step towards tyranny.” but they do not seem that concerned about it, or they would not have made the general recommendation in the first place.

If the scheme goes ahead it will mean that most people will be anonymous, but armed with a court order, or a warrant, the authorities, or libel lawyers can find out who you are.

Nokia buys a bit of Panasonic

Posted on August 1, 2014 by - News

panasonicThe bit of Nokia, which is not busy merging with Microsoft, has just written a cheque for a slice of Panasonic’s electronics business.

The former rubber boot maker, which sold off its phone unit said it will buy Panasonic’s mobile phone wireless base station system business for operators as well as related wireless equipment system business.

No one is saying how much Nokia paid for it but the company expects to have completed the transaction by early 2015.

Nokia made 5.5 billion euros when it sold its phone division to Microsoft three months ago. Meanwhile Nokia has been buying up other businesses such as the Chicago-based SAC Wireless.

Japan is one of the new Nokia’s most important mobile network market areas and it controls a quarter of the Japanese market. This acquisition will bring that up to about one third.

Rauhala suggests that while this is not a “giant deal”, it is probably worth tens of millions of euros.

Panasonic is short of cash at the moment and needs the readies.

 

 

Jesse Jackson calls for technology diversity

Posted on July 31, 2014 by - News

Reverend_Jesse_JacksonUS civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has called on the government to investigate the tech industry’s lack of diversity.

Jackson told USA Today  that the government has a role to play” in ensuring that women and minorities are fairly represented in the tech workforce.

He said the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission needs to examine Silicon Valley’s employment contracts.

Jackson said that the tech industry’s demands for foreign workers need to be silenced after data shows Americans have the skills and should have first access to high-paying tech work.

There was no talent shortage, but an an opportunity shortage and Silicon Valley “far worse” than many others such as car makers that have been pressured by unions.

Tech giants have largely escaped scrutiny by a public dazzled with their cutting-edge gadgets, Jackson said.

Jackson has lobbied nearly two dozen tech companies to disclose hiring data, and about a dozen have done so.

According to the figures, men make up 62 per cent to 70 per cent of the staffs of Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, while whites and Asians comprise 88 per cent to 91 per cent.

Their dominance is highest in computer programming and other tech jobs that tend to pay the most.

Jackson said that work equality was the next step in the civil rights movement. Minorities represent a sizable share of tech consumers but not its workers. Of Twitter’s U.S. employees, only 3 per cent are Hispanic and 5 per cent black, but those groups along with Asian Americans account for 41 per cent of its US users.

 

 

London student possesses another’s body

Posted on July 31, 2014 by - News

ExorcistYifei Chai, a student at the Imperial College London, has worked out how to use virtual reality and 3D modelling hardware to “possess” another person.

Chai’s method does not involve vomit or turning heads, or even an invocation to the Prince of Darkness. One person wears a headmounted, twin-angle camera and attaches electrical stimulators to their body. Meanwhile, another person wears an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset streaming footage from their friend’s camera/view.

A Microsoft Kinect 3D sensor tracks the Rift wearer’s body. Chai’s system then shocks the appropriate muscles to force the possessed person to lift or lower their arms.

The person wearing the Rift looks down and sees another body, a body that moves when they move—giving the illusion of possessing another’s body.

It is all a bit rough at the moment. Watching the video there is a noticeable delay between action and reaction, which lessens the illusion’s effectiveness.

You can only control 34 arm and shoulder muscles and Chai’s thinks that he can improve it with high-definition versions of the Oculus Rift and Kinect to detect subtler movements.

One thing he thinks the idea might be used for is to encourage empathy by literally putting us in someone else’s shoes. A care worker, for example, might be less apt to become frustrated with a patient after experiencing their challenges first-hand.