Tag: newstrack

Lenovo, IBM deal sealed

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

ibm-officeBig Blue and Lenovo confirmed they have completed the sales of IBM’s X86 server business, as expected.

Under the terms of the deal, Lenovo will buy System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, X86 based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers as well as software, blade networking and maintenance operations.

IBM will keep its System z mainframes, its Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power based Flex servers and PureApplication and PureData appliances.

The two companies will collaborate in a deal where Lenovo will act as an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) for IBM, and will also resell some products from Big Blue’s storage and software portfolio.

The change starts today in most major markets. IBM said the deal will also be completed in most other territories in the next month or two.

Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s Intel based servers means that it’s now able to offer the entire range of X86 based systems, from humble notebooks up to high end  servers.

3D printer could build a house in a day

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

Contour CraftingA company called Contour Crafting that offers a method of 3D printing large structures direct from CAD packages, has won a prize in a design competition.

Contour Crafting claims it automates building whole structures and cuts down the time and cost of construction.

It said the 3D printing technology may lead to printing affordable high quality low income housing, quick construction of emergency shelters and “on demand housing” in response to disasters.

NASA, claimed the firm, is investigating its technology to build bases on the moon and on Mars.

Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis, from the University of Southern California invented the concept and claims it’s viable.

“Bringing 3D to construction is bringing a concept to a proven application.  For many years, building has been done in layers – concrete foundation blocks, brick laying, structural framing and the like,” he said.

Samsung tablets up, Apple iPads down

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

cheap-tabletsA report from ABI Research said that sales of branded tabets such as those from Samsung and Apple only grew by 2.5 percent in the first half of this year.

The report said that sales of Apple iPads fell by 13 percent while sales of Samsung tablets grew by 26 percent year on year.

Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI Research, said: “The roller coaster ride from the leading two tablet vendors has market watchers looking to other vendors to create sustainable growth. All eyes are on Lenovo as it is one of the few to demonstrate consistent growth over the past year.”

But there is some good news for Intel. It is showing progress towards the goal it set itself of 40 million devices using its microprocessor in 2013. Orr described 2014 as the “tipping point” for Intel’s mobile stategy.

”Forty million units is only a minor dent in ARM’s domination of tablets, though Intel is quickly becoming a formidable applications processor architecture competitor,” Orr said.

Microsoft loses the count on Windows 9

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

Count_von_Count_kneelingSoftware giant Microsoft appears to have lost count with Windows 9 and has instead jumped to Windows 10 as the next version of its operating system.

Microsoft today skipped a number and announced Windows 10, the OS formerly known as Threshold and the successor to Windows 8/8.1.

Windows head Terry Myerson said during a press event with a small gathering of reporters in San Francisco that Windows 10 will be Vole’s most comprehensive platform ever and “it wouldn’t be right to call it Windows 9”.

We can’t see the logic of this, sure coming up with a different name is one thing, but changing the number order just says “we can’t count and Mrs “Hookjaw” Anderson is going to terrify us when we have to show up at her maths class to recite our seven times table.”

So what is really so different?  Windows 10 is designed to run on a wide range of devices with screen sizes running the gamut from four inches all the up to 80 inch surface. Microsoft will have a single application platform with one integrated Store to deliver Windows experiences across all those devices.

Unfortunately, for those of us who use real computers this means that Windows 10 has been built for a “mobile-first, cloud-first world”. This means more of all the sort of thinking that made Windows 8.1 useless to serious computer users.

However, word on the street says that Windows 10 looks a bit like Windows 7. It has a hybrid Start menu that combines Windows 7 era features with Windows 8 style tiles.

Microsoft appears to have realised that it has to think about the enterprise so that business users coming from Windows 7 or Windows 8 so they can hop right in and be productive. Microsoft’s second priority is “modern management” of lots of computers.

The “Modern UI” hacked off power users has  gone in Windows 10. In place of the Modern UI are Live Tiles integrated into the right side of the Start menu on the Desktop. On the left side are pinned and frequent apps.

There’s also a refreshed taskbar with a new “task view” that presents all of your running apps. Windows 10 allows you to tile up to four apps on the same screen.

There is a command prompt that allows you to use keyboard shortcuts, along with copy and paste, and a Charms Bar that may or may not make it into the final cut.

We expect to see a technical preview of Windows 10 next week and the launch of the OS by spring 2015, assuming that Microsoft can count that far.

 

Ellison still a draw at Oracle conference

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

Larry EllisonDespite his surprise exit from Oracle, Larry Ellison was still the main draw at Oracle’s annual conference in San Francisco.

Ellison has given up his position as chief executive of the enterprise software behemoth he co-founded 37 years ago, however he stuck to his tradition of delivering the main presentation at Oracle OpenWorld. Oracle will now depend on a two headed CEO monster based around presidents Safra Catz and Mark Hurd.

The 70-year-old Ellison is staying on as executive chairman and chief technology officer and as far as developers were concerned it was him that they had come to hear.

Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd in a football-field-sized room, Ellison mostly pitched Oracle’s newest offerings in software and cloud computing.

But he won laughter with a handful of off-script comments about his new role at the company, including one during a demonstration of a new service that lets customers easily move applications from their own data centres to Oracle’s cloud.

“I’m CTO now, I have to do my demos by myself. I used to have help, now it’s gone,” Ellison joked. “I love my new job by the way.”

As he filled in a webpage as part of the same demonstration, he joked, “They took away my CEO title, they took away my name. It’s been a rough few weeks.”

In an IT world which has lost Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs over the last few years, Ellison was one of the few left who could still rustle up a good show.

Close to 60,000 people were enrolled for this year’s OpenWorld, which includes technical courses, cocktail parties and a concert by Aerosmith

Ellison apologised to the assorted throngs for skipping his keynote speech at last year’s OpenWorld to be on the water with his Oracle Team USA sailing team during the final neck-and-neck races of the America’s Cup regatta.

It was the second presentation in three days that Ellison devoted to talking up the progress Oracle has made in cloud computing, which accounts for just five percent of his company’s revenue.

Hong Kong protestors use Mesh

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

hong kong protestHong Kong’s activists are relying on a free app that can send messages without any mobile phone connection.

The move comes about because of fears that the Chinese government would block local phone networks to stop protestors organising.

However activists have turned to the FireChat app to send supportive messages and share the latest news. The app was downloaded more than 100,000 times in Hong Kong, its developers said.

FireChat uses “mesh networking,” that allows data to zip directly from one phone to another via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Ordinarily, if two people want to communicate this way, they need to be close together. However, as more people join in, the network grows and messages can travel further.

Mesh networks were designed for people who are caught in natural disasters or, like those in Hong Kong, protesting under tricky conditions. FireChat came in handy for protesters in Taiwan and Iraq this year.

However Hans-Christoph Steiner at The Guardian Project, which helps activists circumvent censorship, warns that Firechat has no built-in encryption, so messages can be read by anyone within range.

FireChat has said it aims to add encryption in the future. Bluetooth communications come with an identifier called a MAC address, which could also be used to track down protest ringleaders.

Chinese authorities could also use radio jamming to shut down mesh networks in a local area, or prevent more people from joining by cutting off access to app stores.

Tame Apple Press claims Bendgate is a conspiracy theory

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

truthDesperate to keep Apple afloat after it released a phone which was easy to bend and break, the Tame Apple Press is actually releasing stories claiming it is all a conspiracy theory “on a par to 9/11.”

BGR  insists that all the videos  you see where the phone is being bent are all doctored, just like the moon landings.  If you are dumb, enough to think that Americans walked on the moon then you are stupid enough to think an iPhone bends, apparently.

It was especially sure that this video, which bends the iPhone 6 Plus so easily that we actually do have a hard time believing the device wasn’t doctored somehow beforehand.

Another video made by Lewis “Unbox Therapy” Hilstenteger’s original video was a fake because of time discrepancies. The time shown from earlier in the video before the phone was bent is later than the time shown in the video after the phone was bent.

However Hilstenteger said that he had to reshoot part of the video because of glare problems, but that is just what “they want you to think.”

BGR reports that fans think that Samsung has hatched an international conspiracy so vast that it’s paid lots of YouTube users to fake bending their iPhones in the exact same way.

To be fair, BGR does say that “obsessing over the nuances of the bent iPhone 6 Plus [videos] in the same way conspiracy theorists obsess over grassy knolls and moon landing videos” is nutty. However, the question is why are the Tame Apple Press unable to accept that Jobs’ Mob made a design flaw?

Why would respectable technology magazines actually try to bury the news that a phone is faulty instead of warning its readers about the problem. So far there is a lot of empiratic evidence that the iPhone6 and iPhone 6+ is structurally weak and susceptible to bending.  It is fairly clear that the conspiracy is not to tell lies about Apple, but to bury the truth which is already out there.

German watchdog barks at Google

Posted on October 1, 2014 by - News

AnubiA German data protection watchdog has snarled at the search engine Google for the way it creates data profiles from its various services.

The data protection commissioner for the German city state of Hamburg has ordered Google to take the necessary technical and organizational measures to guarantee that their users can decide on their own if and to what extend their data is used for profiling.

Commissioner Johannes Caspar growled that Google had refused to grant users more control over how it aggregates data across its services including Gmail, Android and the web search engine.

The Hamburg watchdog said it represented Germany as part of a European task force evaluating Google’s privacy policy.

Processing data that reveals financial wealth, sexual orientation and relationship status, among other aspects of private life, is unlawful in Germany unless users give their explicit consent, it added.

Google is not saying anything about the comments, although the Financial Times earlier quoted a company spokesman as saying Google was studying the order to determine its next steps.

European data privacy regulators last week handed Google a list of guidelines to help it bring the way it collects and stores user data in line with EU law.

Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands, have opened investigations into Google after it consolidated its 60 privacy policies into one and started combining data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps.

Security incidents soar by 48 percent

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

PwC logoA report from PwC said the number of reported security incidents with tech rose 48 percent in 2013 to hit 42.8 million attacks.

That, said PwC, is equal to 117,339 attacks every day.  The Global State of Information Security Survey said the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) has increased by 66 percent year over year since 2009.

But the reported security breaches and the cost are probably just the tip of the iceberg, according to David Burg, PwC’s cybersecurity supremo.  “The actual magnitude of these breaches is much higher when considering the nature of detection and reporting of these incidents,” he said.

PwC said that large organisations with annual revenues of $1 billion or more detected 44 percent more incidents this year.  But medium sized organizations, which PwC defines as having revenues of $100 million to $1 billion saw a 64 percent increase.

But even though the breaches have increased, the amount of money devoted to security fell by four percent compared to 2013.

But high profile attacks by nations, gangsters and competitors are the lest frequent incidents yet the fastest growing. The survey claimed a compromise by nation states increased by 86 percent, while there was a 64 percent increase in security incidents associated with competitors.

Only 49 percent of respondents said their organisations had a cross enterprise team to dicuss, coordinate and communicate info security concerns.

British don’t understand the interweb

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

ukflagA survey showed that UK users of the internet are still a bit confuzzled by the pesky thing.

Tata Communications revealed its report today – garnered from 9,417 people across the world – and including 1,770 internet users in the UK.

Two thirds of Brits, for example, think that the World Wide Web and the internet are one and the same.  And 62 percent suffer from anger or anxiety when they’re unable to connect to the net.

But 72 percent of Brits say the internet belongs to everyone, compared to Germany where 80 percent of people say the same. This is, technically, the wrong answer but demonstrates a sense of freedom.

People in the UK between 15 to 35 use the internet for six or more hours of day.  And five percent of 12 to 25 year old people say they couldn’t survive “even 15 minutes” without an internet connection.

What do people want to see next.  Fast downloads (35%) and smart cities (17%), it appears.  Only 15 percent are looking forward to wearable technology.

Lenovo carves up Chinese server pie

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

lenovo-logoAs we reported yesterday, Lenovo will acquire Intel’s X86 server business this week and that means it will be the biggest server company in mainland China.

Market research firm IDC released its figures for server sales in China for the first half of this year and Lenovo – which includes prior IBM system business – comes out the leader at 23.91 percent (see chart).

IDC said that the Lenovo/IBM X86 server line and IBM’s System x mainframes are highly complementary and Lenovo will use that synergy to sell more X86 systems into large organisations.

But Dell has been highly competitive in the Chinese market, and Lenovo’s entrance into this space is likely to lead to even more competition.

IDC thinks that Lenovo will integrate channels to market of IBM’s System x machines with its own routes to market and the entry of Lenovo as a player is likely to lead to better cooperation with Microsoft and VMWare.

And in the global market, Lenovo shows up as a leader with a market share of 11.7 percent.
Global X86 server market 1H 2014
China X86 server market H12014

Zuckerburg buys a stately pleasure dome

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

Mark Zuckerberg - WikimedaIt seems that all empire builders at some point have a crack at building their personal Xanadu, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg is no different.

He has written a cheque for a 357-acre beachfront plantation on the island of Kauai in Hawaii — a space zoned for 80 well-appointed homes.

According to Pacific Business News, Zuckerberg dropped $66 million on Kahuaina Plantation on the northeast corner of Kauai. The estate is billed as one of the last large beachfront parcels on the rainforest-filled island, “a vast and pristine oceanfront property that offers the rare opportunity to create a stewardship to last for generations,” according to its brochure.

The property has all necessary permits, a wide variety of development options, and access to nearly 2,500 feet of white sand beach. Zuckerberg will have 27 acres to grow “organic crops including ginger, turmeric and papaya” if he should want it.

Of course this is not as good as Larry Ellison who bought pretty much all of the island of Lana’i in June 2012, but then Ellison has got pots more money than Zuckerburg.  On the other hand Ellison is 70 years old and Zuckerburg has more time to catch up.

Of course neither Ellison or Zuckerburg can match Bill Gates who never bothered creating Xanadu for him and his rich chums, but gave it all up to help humanity survive and Olivia Newton John is not involved.

StealthGenie about to be bottled

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

idreamofjeannie1-300x193The US government has arrested the chief executive officer of a mobile spyware maker  and charged him with allegedly illegally marketing an app that monitors calls, texts, videos, and other communications on mobile phones “without detection”,

Hammad Akbar, 31, of Pakistan, was the first person to be banged up in connection with advertising and the sales of mobile spyware targeting adults—in this case an app called StealthGenie.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement that selling spyware is not just reprehensible, it’s a crime. Apps like StealthGenie were expressly designed for use by stalkers and domestic abusers who want to know every detail of a victim’s personal life—all without the victim’s knowledge.

We guess that is the government’s job.

Akbar, as CEO of InvoCode marketed the spyware online, produced an app that works on the Blackberry, the iPhone, and phones running Android.

He faces charges of conspiracy, sale of a surreptitious interception device, advertisement of a known interception device, and advertising a device as a surreptitious interception device. He was arrested in Los Angeles on Saturday. The spyware was hosted on servers run by Amazon Web Services in Ashburn, Virginia, the government said.

StealthGenie could record all incoming/outgoing voice calls and intercepted calls on the phone to be monitored while they take place. It allowed the purchaser to call the phone and activate it at any time to monitor all surrounding conversations within a 15-foot radius monitor the user’s incoming and outgoing e-mail messages and SMS messages, incoming voicemail messages, address book, calendar, photographs, and videos.

All of these functions were enabled without the knowledge of the user of the phone in real time.

The app required “physical control” of the phone, but the purchaser could then review communications intercepted from the monitored phone without ever again needing to touch the phone again, the government said.

While parents may use surveillance software to monitor their minor children’s mobile phones, InvoCode also marketed the spyware to “potential purchasers who did not have any ownership interest in the mobile phone to be monitored, including those suspecting a spouse or romantic partner of infidelity.”

Apple suffers more iCloud woes

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News

stormNot satisfied with a security hole which allowed 4Chan users access to minor celebrities’ porn stashes, the Fruity Cargo cult Apple has some more problems with its cloud.

According to MacRumours there is a serious bug with the “Reset All Settings” option in iOS 8, causing users who activate the feature to lose all of their iWork documents stored in iCloud Drive.

Using the “Reset All Settings” option under General –> Reset has caused documents to be permanently deleted from iCloud Drive.

The “Reset All Settings” option explicitly says that “No data or media will be deleted,” which means that Apple was lying when it told users they were safe. It is meant to reset all user preferences to the default out-of-the-box settings not kill the documents.

MacRumours tested the bug and found that “Reset All Settings” deleted all iWork documents stored in iCloud Drive on the iPhone and on iCloud.com.

“After allowing time for syncing to a Mac running OS X Yosemite, all of the documents disappeared from that machine as well. Preview and TextEdit documents, which cannot be accessed on the iPhone, remained untouched on the Mac,” the magazine said.

HP says “Don’t cross the Streams”

Posted on September 30, 2014 by - News, Products

gb_pee-764695The maker of expensive printer ink, HP, seems jolly keen on putting Google’s Chromebook out of business.  This week it announced several new stream notebooks.  For those who came in late the Stream series is HP’s version of the low cost Windows laptop, meant to compete head to head with Chromebooks on price.

The difference between the two is that the Streams still offer a fully fleshed out operating system. The Stream 14 is available to purchase now for only $299, and comes with an AMD A4 APU, 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of eMMC storage.

Now HP has fleshed out its range and announced two additional laptops, and two tablets.

The laptops come in two screen sizes with the smallest being 11.6” and the mid-size being 13.3” and these are to compliment the already released 14” model.

HP is not saying what the exact specifications have not been disclosed yet, but both units will be powered by an Intel dual-core Bay Trail Celeron processor. This means that it is a fanless device, and both come with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC storage. The 13.3” device has an optional touchscreen to go with the 1366×768 resolution that both laptops share. The 13.3” model also is available with optional 4G connectivity. HP is including 200 MB of free data every month for the life of the device. As another value add, HP is offering one year of Office 365 personal, which includes 1 TB of online storage and 60 Skype minutes per month.

Battery life is eight hours and 15 minutes for the 11.6” model, and seven hours 45 minutes for the 13.3” model.

The HP Stream laptops are available in several colours, and will be priced at $199.99 for the 11.6” model and $229.99 as the starting price for the 13.3” model.

HP also announced the HP Stream 7 Tablet, which is a 7” Windows 8.1 that comes in at only $99.99. There is also the HP Stream 8 which has a starting price of $149.99. Both tablets are powered by Intel Atom quad-core processors, and 1366×768 screens. Like the larger of the two laptops, the 8” tablet, if equipped with the optional 4G, comes with 200 MB of data per month for the life of the device, and both also come with Office 365 personal for one year.