Tag: newstrack

Virgin too fast and loose for ASA

Posted on September 17, 2014 by - News

rbransonAdvertising watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a TV, website and several press adverts for Virgin Media’s cable broadband service saying that they were misleading punters.

Rivals BT and Sky Broadband (BSkyB), moaned that the Virgin promotions “misled” consumers by claiming the service offered Internet download speeds that were “5x faster than Sky and BT’s regular broadband”.

Virgin Media’s TV promotion claimed that customers would be able to “download five times faster than BT’s regular broadband. It invited viewers to visit virginmedia.com/ourspeeds “for verification“.

BT said that the webpage in question did not provide sufficient information for viewers to verify the comparison that had been made.

Both BT and Sky Broadband complained against several almost identical claims made in other ads. Both ISPs described the “5x faster than Sky and BT’s regular broadband” claim as “misleading”.

They said that not all Virgin Media customers would always be able to “download 5x faster” than Sky’s and BT’s broadband customers.

Virgin Media and its advertising partner, Clearcast, felt that the webpage listed above did provide “all of the necessary information to allow viewers to verify the comparisons” and that the “5x faster” statement would understood by viewers not to be “absolute”.

The ASA disagreed and concluded the information provided was not sufficient to ensure the details of the comparison could be verified.

In its ruling it said that while consumers were likely to be aware that the speed of broadband services would vary according to factors such as the time of day, claims that consumers would be able to “download 5x faster than Sky and BT’s regular broadband” were not in conditional language.

It was considered they were likely to be understood to mean that Virgin’s superfast service was always five times faster than Sky’s and BT’s regular services, even when normal variations such as the time of day were taken into account, the ASA said.

As a result, Virgin Media has unfortunately seen a bunch of its adverts banned in their current form and the provider has once more been told to “ensure they provided sufficient information about comparisons to allow them to be verified” and warned to stop making absolute claims if they could not be proved.

Obituary: Dave Evans – 1950 to 2014

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

It’s going to be difficult to say how much I miss my dear friend Dave Evans, who died last Saturday, after fighting hard with cancer for way too long, but I’ll have a bash.

I first met Dave in 1989 when he worked at ICL Today and I was editing PC Business World.  Both were IDG publications, although ICL Today became Fujitsu Tomorrow.

But we only really met properly at an Ingres launch in some giant castle in Shannon, Ireland. Ingres had shipped in must have been hundreds of journalists and proceeded to treat us to so much booze that out of the hundreds of hacks, only five turned up to hear at the very early press conference that Ingres had been bought by a company – a company that time forgot. Dave was there.

At that time, Dave worked, I believe, for Fujitsu Tomorrow but it wasn’t long before Computer Weekly noticed his talent and snapped him up as its features editor.  John Riley writes eloquently about this in a Facebook post on news of his death:

”Dave was a beautifully fluent writer who could somehow always conjure up compelling copy out of the most unpromising leads. It’s fitting that he was the first journalist in the UK (maybe the world!) to order a beer electronically (at the Mondex e-cash card press launch in 1995.”

I am unsure how Dave E’s next gig became Computing – the VNU rival to Computer Weekly. But there we renewed our acquaintance because Dave was the acting, some might say, re-enacting features editing at the ‘Ting.

At that time I was working on the VNU Newswire and regularly, at say 11AM, there’d be a knock on the door and Dave would say: “Fancy a cup of tea, Mike?”  A cup of tea meant a visit to the John Snow in Broadwick Street and I’d watch him strike out yards of copies from freelancers on paper, and then use his antique Psion Organiser to write entire features of his own.

Back in 2001, I was sitting in a pub in central London with Dave and Tony Dennis  – it was a Monday – when a call came through on my mobile telephone device. Sun Microsystems’ general counsel complained about a story we’d written. Dave whispered to me: “Tell her you’re with your lawyer, and he’d like to speak to you.” I said OK and handed him the phone. He said: “Why don’t you eff off you effing idiot,” and then hung up. That was the kind of delightful guy he was.

Before his tech journalism, Dave Evans was a mainstream journo, working at the Currant Bun, the NoW, the Daily Mail and doubtless many other publications in Fleet Street. In a strange coincidence, we found ourselves in Fleet Street on 9/11 as it’s called. I had a meeting and went down to see the second plane crash into the second tower. Dave had met loads of important people in the course of his Fleet Street journalism job.  Imagine it!

But this is my overwhelming feeling about dear Dave Evans. He was a deeply compassionate and kind man, went completely out of his way to make people feel welcome, and was a top readable journalist with both wit and wisdom. He was also a very dear dear friend of mine, I love him, and I will miss him. He is survived by his wife Ann, his daughter Carla and his son in law, Ed..

His funeral will be at Beckenham Crematorium, on the 24 September 2014 at 1:30PM, followed by a wake. Ann and Carla would prefer donations to any cancer charity rather than flowers or cards. If you are going to attend, please email scottishplay2011@gmail.com.

Intel bullish on tablet front

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

Intel-Core-MA Taiwanese supplier has received strong order for Intel based Android “white box” tablets.

So says Digitimes, which quotes an insider at Insyde Software as spilling the beans. Insyde has investment from Intel inside.

He or she said Intel will ship 40 million tablet processors this year, according to the report. But as well as hoping to sell Windows tablets, the same report suggests Intel will push Android based tablets too, based on a reference design it showed off at last week’s Intel Developer Forum.

Apparently Intel is teaming up with original design manufacturers Pegatron and ECS in the hope they can bang out ultra cheap tablets.

Intel is way behind in its smartphone and tablet dreams, and is desperate to show it has what it takes to compete with ARM based microprocessors.

The chip inside with the Insyde BIOS will use entry level Bay Trail processors, says Digitimes, here.

Swiss watchmakers rubbish Apple’s designs

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

Swiss Watches the BrandThe Swiss watchmakers, who Apple believes it will put out of business, have mocked Jobs’ Mob’s poor design efforts.

Luxury giant LVMH’s watch guru and industry legend Jean-Claude Biver told AFP  that he expected a bit more from Apple and he was a bit disappointed.

Biver said the gadget, which will be released early next year, is not the “revolutionary product” it claims to be.

The timepiece, with its square touch-screen face and curved edges, lacks “sex appeal” and is too feminine, he said.

But Biver went a bit further and rubbished the abilities of Apple’s hallowed design team, saying it looked like it was done by students in their first semester.

With pricing set to start at $349, Apple’s watch will not be playing in the same league as the Swiss watchmakers who dominate the luxury end of the market.

Jerome Bloch, who heads the men’s fashion unit at Parisian style agency Nelly Rodi, said Swiss luxury watchmakers had nothing to fear and comparing Apple’s new device to many Swiss watch offerings was like comparing a Mini Cooper with an Aston Martin.

Biver added that luxury was eternal, it is perennial and  not something that becomes worthless after five years. Apple watches were “doomed to become obsolete”.

 

 

 

Snowden did not seem too worried about snooping

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

snowdenThe NSA has poured cold water on the central plank of Edward Snowden’s statements that he was worried about overwhelming government spying and could not make anyone listen.

Snowden said that he had complained to his fellow workers about the snooping programmes but had to take action when no one listened.

The NSA said that it had reviewed all of Edward Snowden’s available emails in addition to interviewing NSA employees and contractors to determine if he had ever raised concerns internally about the agency’s vast surveillance programs.

According to documents the government filed in a federal court last Friday, NSA officials were unable to find any evidence Snowden ever had shared his concerns with anyone.

In a sworn declaration, David Sherman, the NSA’s associate director for policy and records, said the agency launched a “comprehensive” investigation after journalists began to write about top-secret NSA spy programs upon obtaining documents Snowden leaked to them.

The investigation included searches of any records where emails Snowden sent raising concerns about NSA programs “would be expected to be found within the agency.”

Sherman said the NSA searched sent, received, and deleted emails from Snowden’s account and emails “obtained by restoring back-up tapes.”

Still, the agency says it did not find any evidence that Snowden attempted to address his concerns internally — as he has said he did — before leaking the documents.

This is problematic for Snowden’s supporters because VICE News filed a case against the NSA earlier this year seeking copies of emails in which Snowden raised concerns about spy programs he believed were unconstitutional.

However if he did not then some of Snowden’s reputation as a whistleblower suffers. If Snowden was really concerned about the antics of the NSA he never even mentioned his concerns to his colleagues.   Of course that might mean that he simply did not want to end up unemployed, or given a nice walk around a German forest somewhere, but it could also mean that he was not concerned about snooping.

Of course, there is the small matter if you believe the spooks, whose reputation for truth is about on a par with Robert Maxwell’s.

So far, the NSA has found a single email Snowden sent to the NSA’s general counsel in April 2013 in which he raised a question about NSA legal authorities in training materials.

That email poses a question about the relative authority of laws and executive orders — it does not register concerns about NSA’s intelligence activities.

 

Data centre readies for nukes

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

atomJust in case you thought that the fear of a nuclear attack was so 1980s it was not worth worrying about, a US data centre is advertising that it can survive a nuclear event.

The centre in Boyers, is a 2,000-sq.-ft. building purpose-built to protect against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).  To be fair an EMP burst could also come during a solar storm, but it does indicate that someone is still worried about nukes in the US.

The company that built the facility is not disclosing exactly how the data centre was constructed or what materials were used. It appears that the structure has an inner skin and an outer skin that use a combination of thicknesses and metals to provide EMP protection.

So far, the only other data centres that protect against electromagnetic pulses are underground, or offer containers and cabinets that shield IT equipment from EMPs.

While it sounds groovy, it is not clear how concerned people have to be about EMP protection. Most solar storms are not strong enough to hurt electronics, though they could disrupt GPS and radio communications. Sure there could be an apocalyptic storm, but if that were the case, your data might be safe but there would not be a single working PC in the United States.

The last one which happened was the 1859 Carrington Event, a solar storm that disrupted and knocked out the telegraph.

Then there is the question of a nuclear attack, which means you have to start worrying about Russians and Chinese again, which is unlikely. Finally, you have to worry about terrorists getting their paws on enough uranium to build an EMP device. Then you would have to be worried that instead of detonating it in New York, where they would do the most damage, they would chose to drop it in Boyers.

If you are worried about those sorts of things then EMP protection is exactly what you need for your data protection. Of course, you are also the sort of person who wears belt and braces and probably does not leave the building out of a fear of badgers falling from the sky and killing you.

 

 

Doom for hacked printer

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

doom_sprite_wallpaper_by_bobspfhorever78-d6lij4oIn what has to be the best proof of concept hacking of a printer, Context Information Security analyst Michael Jordon managed to get a Canon Pixma printer to run the game Doom.

Jordon said that Canon Pixma wireless printers have a web interface that shows information about the printer, for example the ink levels, which allows for test pages to be printed and for the firmware to be checked for updates.

He found that the interface doesn’t need any sort of authentication to access and while you would think that the worst that anyone could do is print off hundreds of test pages and use up all of the printer’s ink, Jordon found a hacker could do a lot more damage.

The interface lets you trigger the printer to update its firmware. It also lets you change where the printer looks for the firmware update.

A hacker could create a custom firmware that spies on everything that printer prints, it can even be used as a gateway into the network.

To show what was possible Jordon got the printer to run Doom.

Canon offers very little protection against this. If you can run Doom on a printer, you can do a lot more nasty things. In a corporate environment, it would be a good place to be.

Who suspects printers?  Well other than Nigel from accounts and he thinks aliens are trying to take over the coffee machine.

Canon has promised that it is working on a fix and is taking a chainsaw to the problems highlighted by Contecxt.

“All PIXMA products launching from now onwards will have a username/password added to the PIXMA web interface, and models launched from the second half of 2013 onwards will also receive this update, models launched prior to this time are unaffected,” Canon said.

 

UK biggest public sector IT spender

Posted on September 16, 2014 by - News

ukflagWhile the UK is the biggest IT public spender, growth is very slow.

That’s according to a report from IDC, which surveyed western European spending in the IT sector.

The big five western European countries – the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy –  represent over 75 percent of the $53 billion spent on hardware, software and IT services by the different government.  Over 50 percent of the spend takes place in local government.

IDC says that public administration and compulsory social activities are larges spenders within the sector.

It predicts that investment in pension administration, tax and revenue collection managment will grow more than investments in public safety and security.  Some areas, however, such as immigration and borders are attracting spends.

Germany will show the highest compound annual growth rate with a measly 1.2 percent, while Spain and Italy will suffer the biggest slump.

Driverless car growth set to surge

Posted on September 15, 2014 by - News

Rolls Royce Silver GhostA staggering 42 million driverless vehicles will be on our roads by 2035.

That’s the prediction of market research company ABI Research which said the numbers of driverless cars will ramp from 1.1 million in 2024 to over 42 million in 2035.

But these optimistic forecasts don’t take into account bottlenecks including user acceptance, security, liability and regulation.

Google has already been forced by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test prototypes with steering wheel, brake and acceleration pedals installed.

Tesla said last week that it will move into the driverless car market but other car manufacturers are havering over making a decision.

“While autonomous driving under the control of a human standby driver is quickly gaining acceptance, robotic vehicles mostly remain out of bounds, especially for car manufacturers, despite Google’s recent announcement to start prototype testing. However, only driverless vehicles will bring the full range of automation benefits including car sharing; driverless taxis, and delivery vans; social mobility for kids, elderly, and impaired; and overall economic growth through cheaper and smoother transportation critical in an increasing number of smart mega cities. Many barriers remain but the path towards robotic vehicles is now firmly established with high rewards for those first-to-market,” said ABI Research director Dominique Bonte.

Pishing Eskimo twitches to steal Steam Wallet

Posted on September 15, 2014 by - News

Greenland in the 19th century - picture Wikimedia CommonsA new piece of pishing malware has taken over Twitch’s user pool tempting users to go into a fake sweepstake or lottery, so that it can nick cash from their Steam Wallets.

For those who came in late, Twitch is a video game-centric website on which people show live streams of game play to others. Amazon bought the site and it has about 50 million users, paying $970 million in cash.

Dubbed Eskimo, the malevolent bot does not look out of place to usual visitors to the streaming site — live streamers, who earn cash via viewer subscriptions, frequently use bots in the chat area of their channels to push donations, inspire supporters and run promotions.

However one of the bots has been cleaning out Steam inventories, which might hold rare digital collectibles, and Steam Wallets, which are source by real-world funds to purchase games on Valve’s admired distribution platform.

F-Secure said Eskimo can wipe your Steam wallet, armory, and inventory dry. It even dumps your items for a discount in the Steam Community Market. Earlier variants were selling items with a 12 percent discount, but a recent sample showed that they changed it to 35 percent discount — to sell the items faster.

According to F-Secure, Eskimo requests users to track a link to fill out a form for a raffle, which it claims provides them an opportunity to win digital weapons and collectibles for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

As it has the right to use a Steam account, will get screenshots, add new friends on Steam, accept friend requests, deal with new friends, buy items with Steam funds, send trade offers and accept trades, F-Secure says Eskimo. Once all of a user’s money has been used to purchase collectibles, the malware will trade all of the victim’s digital items to their new “friends.”

F-Secure says, “It might be helpful for the users if Steam were to add another security check for those trading several items to a newly added friend and for selling items in the market with a low price based on a certain threshold. This will help in lessening the damages done by this kind of threat.”

 

World moves to smartphones

Posted on September 15, 2014 by - News

shoe phoneFortune tellers at the Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA) have been consulting their tarot cards and are predicting that either there will be a tall dark stranger who will ask them out to lunch, or by the end of the decade, there will be nine billion mobile connections across the globe.

If it is the latter meaning, GSMA predicts that while three billion of those connections will be data terminals, dongles, routers and feature phones, the other two thirds will be smartphone handsets.

The organisation claims that the smartphone market is poised for huge growth over the next six years.  There are currently two billion handsets in active use.  It predicts that the demand is being driven by people in emerging countries.

In a report with the catchy title,  Smartphone forecasts and assumptions, 2007-2020, the GSMA said that developing economies overtook mature markets such as the US and western Europe in 2011.

GSMA chief strategy officer Hyunmi Yang said that in the hands of consumers, these devices are improving living standards and changing lives, especially in developing markets, while contributing to growing economies by stimulating entrepreneurship.

“As the industry evolves, smartphones are becoming lifestyle hubs that are creating opportunities for mobile industry players in vertical markets such as financial services, healthcare, home automation and transport,” he said.

Asia Pacific already accounts for half of global smartphone connections yet smartphone penetration is still below 40 percent in the region, even when China’s 629 million smartphone connections are included.

By the end of the decade, emerging countries will account for four in five smartphone connections, as regions like North America and Europe hit the 70-80 percent mark and growth drops off.

The fastest growing region is expected to be sub-Saharan Africa. When figures are based on smartphone adoption as a percentage of all mobile connections, the region currently has the lowest adoption rate of 15 percent in the world.

However, the wider availability of affordable handsets and the roll-out of networks are expected to change everything.

The GSMA claims that the main factors driving smartphone adoption in emerging countries is falling prices. The price difference between feature phones and smartphones is getting smaller and smaller and $50 smartphones are now a reality.

Mature markets have seen operator subsidies and the roll-out of 4G networks helping to maintain growth in the premium end of the market, while more intelligent, individualised data plans are also helping to win consumers over from feature phones in all markets.

“Smartphones will be the driving force of mobile industry growth over the next six years, with one billion new smartphone connections expected over the next 18 months alone,” said Yang.

Comcast declares war on Tor

Posted on September 15, 2014 by - News

Newspaper Seller, 1939The most popular telco in the US, famous for its happy customers and commitment to a positive future for an open internet, Comcast has declared war on the encrypted system Tor.

Comcast agents have contacted customers using Tor and instructed them to stop using the browser or risk being cut off.

According to Deep Dot Web one Comcast agent named Jeremy insisted Tor an “illegal service” and was against usage policies. The Comcast agent then repeatedly asked the customer to tell him what sites he was accessing on the Tor browser. Of course the customer told him to go forth and multiply.

What is scary is that Comcast knew that any customer was using Tor. This would mean that Comcast is spying on the online activities of its users.

There is some bad blood between Tor and Comcast. The Tor project has listed Comcast as a Bad ISP. The Tor project cited Comcast’s Acceptable Use Policy for its residential customers which claims to not allow servers or proxies.

A Comcast spokesperson insisted that the outfit did respect customer privacy and security and would only investigate the specifics of a customer’s account with a valid court order.

However, this did not happen in the case of Comcast’s treatment of Ross Ulbricht, alleged Dread Pirate Roberts.

Comcast previously collaborated with the FBI by providing information on alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht’s internet usage. Ulbricht was most certainly never given a warning by Comcast or given time to contact a lawyer before he was arrested in a San Francisco library last October.

 

Curved screens don’t yet make the grade

Posted on September 12, 2014 by - News

curvyA report said that even though products from Samsung and LG that use flexible OLED materials for displays, they’re not really curved screens yet.

Strategy Analytics (SA) said Samsung’s launch of the Note Edge last week and the LG G-Flex a few months back took curved screens one step closer to reality.

However, SA said that these smartphones are not really flexible screens but rather have curved rigid screens.

OLED screens offer a number of benefits over LCD screens because they are lighter, thinner and probably last longer.

But these devices are the precursors to truly flexible second generation screens which will offer new deisgn such as smartphones with tablet sized foldable screens.

“A number of challenges will need to be overcome,” said Stuart Robinson, director at Strategy Analytics. “More of the phone’s components need to be flexible to make a truly flexibile phone, not just the display. This includes the cover material, the batteries as well as the semiconductors and other components.”

Other challenges include tools and processes that will allow cost effective volume production, he said. The thinks it’s likely that flexible OLED displays will become the preferred display tech in products within the next 10 years.

Microsoft about to do a Windows 8 on Windows 9

Posted on September 12, 2014 by - News, Opinions

windows9.1 leak Microsoft normally follows a pattern with its operating systems – one successful version is followed by a total stuff up. 

Theoretically that should means that Windows 9 should be great, but leaked screen shots of the coming attraction shows that Microsoft could be headed for yet another disaster.

The update, codenamed Threshold and possibly called Windows 9 or just plain Windows, takes some features from Windows 8 and grafts them onto the classic Windows 7 desktop. This is a sop to most Windows users, like me, who hated having to dumb down their computers by running tablet software as the interface.

When running in windowed mode, Windows Store apps will get a button in the top-left corner. Clicking the button brings up a list of functions that previously appeared in the Charms bar, including Search, Share, Play, Project and Settings. This menu will let users switch the app to full screen mode as well.

There will be some new buttons to the desktop taskbar — a search button sits immediately to the right of the Start button, followed by a button for switching between multiple desktops. The latter feature, possibly called “virtual desktops,” will let users switch between several sets of desktop apps and layouts.

On the right side of the taskbar, users will find a new notifications button, with a pop-up menu that will presumably show messages from Windows Store apps.

The screenshots show that Microsoft is keeping the Charms bar, which many expected would be culled.

While all of this is subject to change as Microsoft has not even released a public beta yet, but it is clear that Windows 9 is not really going to be much different from Windows 8.

This is a major problem, particularly as Windows 7 will be starting to look a little elderly by the time Windows 9 hits the shops. Part of the problem is that Microsoft refuses to understand that people do not want their PCs running like a tablet. When you are sitting at a PC you are there for serious work and serious programs, you do not want to have to jump between screens looking for software you do not want.

How often PC users will want to visit the app store is anyone’s guess, yet Microsoft appears to be trying its hardest to make this easier.

What is annoying is that the software behind the interface is much better and more reliable than Windows 7, but the software is crippled by its interface.

This will create huge problems for Microsoft. When it put out Windows Vista people just stayed using Windows XP. Now, rather than use Windows 8, users are sticking to Windows 7.  If Windows 9 is just Windows 8 in drag then people are going to want to stay with Windows 7 even longer.  That is going to make it even more venerable and established that XP was.

Microsoft needs to get back to design basics and work out why people use a desktop.  Hint: it is not because they want a more powerful tablet.

 

Microsoft founder joins in Ebola fight

Posted on September 12, 2014 by - News

gates_and_allen_450pxSir William Gates III is not the only former Microsofty who wants to save Africa from killer illnesses – Paul Allen wants to get in on the act too.

Allen’s charitable foundation has said that it will donate $9 million to support USe efforts to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The money will go to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comes at a time when international groups, including Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization, have said resources to contain the epidemic and treat those affected are falling tragically short.

Allen said the donation from the Paul Allen Family Foundation will help CDC establish emergency operations centres in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In these regions, Ebola has killed about 2,300 people and shows no sign of slowing six months after it began.

Writing in his bog, Allen said that the tragedy of Ebola is that we know how to tackle the disease, but the governments in West Africa are in dire need of more resources and solutions. He said that the developed world needs to step up now with resources and solutions.

This is not the first time Allen has stepped up to the plate to fight Ebola. Last month, Allen’s foundation donated $2.8 million to the American Red Cross for its work on the outbreak.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have donated $50 million to United Nations agencies and other international groups to purchase supplies, such as protective gear for healthcare workers treating Ebola patients, and to expand the emergency response.

This needs to be compared with the efforts of the US government. US President Barack Obama asked Congress for $88 million in new Ebola funding, including $25 million for CDC, but this week congress said they would provide no more than $40 million. We presume this is because Africans do not pay them for campaign donations and there is not enough oil in the region to justify a US task force.

Allen said his foundation’s gift would help CDC establish and equip emergency operations centres in the three most-affected countries, focusing on public health, not patient care.

He said that the centres will use “data management and communication systems for disease and patient contact tracing, to detect and stop the disease from spreading,” Allen wrote. They will also expand lab testing to identify new outbreaks, and disseminate information about the epidemic to the public.

Since resigning from Microsoft in 1983, Allen has become a prominent philanthropist, supporting scientific research through the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.