SCO attempts ressurection of failed court case

Posted on April 1, 2016 by - News, Software

resurrectionWe thought it was dead, but it turns out that the anti-Linux badboy SCO is going to have another appeal.

For those who came in very very late SCO tried to claim that Linux used its Unix code and started issuing writs against those using the open saucy software in their systems. However it found itself involved in a long running battle against IBM. As a result, SCO’s Unix business collapsed, the outfit went bankrupt, but a court case continued for 13 years.

We thought it was over at the beginning of the year, but now it seems that SCO is having another crack at IBM and has appealed. Last we heard SCO’s arguments claiming intellectual property ownership over parts of Unix had been rejected by a US district court. That judgment noted that SCO had minimal resources to defend counter-claims filed by IBM due to SCO’s bankruptcy.

At the beginning of the month that filing was backed up by the judge’s full explanation, declaring IBM the emphatic victor in the long-running saga.

SCO has filed yet again to appeal that judgment, although the precise grounds it is claiming it are unknown.

How is managing to lurch along like a zombie who always manages to shot in the head?  The outfit is being represented by Boise, Schiller & Flexner, which successfully represented the US government against Microsoft in the antitrust case in the late 1990s. However SCO is bankrupt so how it can come up with the readies is impossible to say.

IBM has fought SCO tooth and claw every stretch of the way and pretty successfully. Our guess is that it will try to get the case thrown out quickly.

Huawei had a record year

Posted on April 1, 2016 by - Business, News

William Xu, HuaweiChina’s Huawei posted its biggest annual revenue growth since 2008, thanks mostly to China’s adoption of fourth-generation (4G) mobile technology.

Huawei, which is one of the world’s largest telecom equipment makers, said total revenues rose 37 percent to $61.10 billion in 2015, slightly above forecasts.

It said that it expects revenue to increase to $75 billion this year, which implies the growth rate will slow to 23 percent.

The company had in early 2014 targeted overall revenue of $70 billion by 2018, which translated to growth of roughly 10 percent.

Huawei forecast 2016 revenue of $30 billion for the consumer devices business, which was its fastest growing division and second-biggest revenue generator last year.

However this means that revenue growth in the business will slow down to about 51 percent in 2016 from about 73 percent in 2015.

Huawei was the first Chinese handset vendor to ship more than 100 million smartphones in a year in 2015 when a 44 percent jump in its shipments defied a market slowdown.

Revenue in Huawei’s carrier business, which competes with Sweden’s Ericsson for the top spot globally for telecommunication equipment, increased 21.4 percent in 2015 on strong demand for 4G telecommunication equipment.

The carrier business is Huawei’s biggest, accounting for about 59 percent of 2015 revenue. Revenue in its Enterprise business rose 43.8 percent last year.

Huawei said it spent 15 percent of its revenue last year on research and development, above its guidance of 10 percent. Operating margins dipped to 11.6 percent from 11.9 percent.

 

Microsoft not making adblocker for Edge

Posted on April 1, 2016 by - Internet, News, Security, Software

adblockSoftware giant Microsoft is not going to create an adblocker for its Edge browser.

Word leaked out that Vole was creating an adblocker when a slide tipped up and was duly posted on the world wide wibble. Such a move might anger Microsoft’s chums in the content industry who have been fighting in courts to get such software declared illegal.

Microsoft claims the slide is misleading, saying that it was simply referencing the fact the company is building extension support into Edge. In other words, ad blocking is still coming, but it will work exactly like in any other desktop browser – someone else will make an adblocker.

Edge has basically been crippled by the fact that the software cannot run extensions, which it was supposed to do by the end of 2015. Two weeks ago, Microsoft released a new Windows 10 preview build with Edge extension support, arguably the most important feature missing from the new browser. The company only released three extensions to testers – Mouse Gestures, Microsoft Translator, and Reddit Engagement Suite.

It is believed that the extensions will arrive in the next version of the software.

 

Intel releases a chip – shock

Posted on April 1, 2016 by - Chips, News

Intel bus - Wikimedia CommonsChipzilla has officially launched its new Xeon Processor E5 v4 today.

Xeon E5 v4, which will replace last year’s E5 v3 series will target a wide array of market segments, from high-performance professional workstations to multi-socket servers for big data. In fact the v4 is pretty similar and is even socket compatible.

The Broadwell-EP based Xeon E5 v4 uses Intel’s more advanced 14nm process node and the biggest of the chips can feature up to 22 processor cores (44 threads). The E5 v4 series still supports up to quad-channel DDR4 memory, but the maximum supported speed now tops out at 2400MT/s, up from 2133MT/s.

While this is significant, the rest of the platform remains mostly unchanged. Thanks to its additional cores, the E5-2600 v4 series now features up to 55MB of last-level cache. Support for 3D die stacked LRDIMMs has been added, along with DDR4 write CRC, and of course the higher speeds. Though, with three 3DS LRDIMMs per channel, the max supported frequency drops down to 1600MHz.

The changes to the Xeon E5 V4 family’s memory configuration bring in reduced latency and increased bandwidth. Intel’s numbers show up to a 15 per cent increase in bandwidth with latency reductions across the board.

In addition to these high-level updates, there are also new virtualization and security related features, along with more performance and efficiency enhancements as too.

German courts back Adblock plus against publishers

Posted on March 31, 2016 by - Internet, News, Software

history-of-print-16th-century-printing-companyCourts around Germany are starting to reject publishers’ demands and are finding in favour of Adblock.

A German regional court has ruled that it is perfectly legal to use AdBlock plus because there is no contract between the reader and the publisher.

This suit, brought by the company behind the leading German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, is the fifth such case to be decided in favour of the German software makers.

A Munich court also ruled that the “Acceptable Ads initiative,” a scheme that requires larger companies to pay for their ads to be whitelisted by Adblock Plus, is acceptable under German law.

Writing in his bog, Adblock Plus’s Ben Williams said that without a contract between publishers and visitors to view all the ads a publisher serves there users have the right to block those or any ads.

“Additionally, the judge ruled that by offering publishers a way to serve ads that ad-blocking users will accept, the Acceptable Ad initiative provides them an avenue to monetise their content, and therefore is favourable, not disadvantageous, to them.”

The court went a bit further and told off the company behind Süddeutsche Zeitung saying that “the law does not exist to save or uphold publishers’ business models. Rather, according to the ruling, it is up to them to innovate.

Last September German publishing giant Axel Springer told the court that it was “the constitutional right of the press to advertise,” and that the Adblock Plus software was infringing on that right.

The court in Cologne was not impressed and ruled that both the adblocking software and the Acceptable Ads whitelist were legal.

 

US not planning automatic killer robots

Posted on March 31, 2016 by - News, Science, Security

Robby the Robot - Wikimedia CommonsThe US has decided that automatic killer robots are not the droids it is looking for – yet.

A top Pentagon official was showing off all sorts of sci-fi type gear including missile-dodging satellites, self-flying F-16 fighters and robot naval fleets.

But Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said that the Pentagon is not planning to build devices that can kill without human input – unless its enemies start building them.

“We might be going up against a competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are, and as that competition unfolds we will have to make decisions on how we best can compete,” he said.

Work, who helps lead Pentagon efforts to ensure the US military keeps its technological edge, described several initiatives, including one dubbed “Loyal Wingman” that would see the Air Force convert an F-16 warplane into a semi-autonomous and unmanned fighter that flies alongside a manned F-35 jet.

“It is going to happen,” Work said of this and other unmanned systems.

“I would expect to see unmanned wingmen in the air first, I would expect to see unmanned systems undersea all over the place, I would expect to see unmanned systems on the surface of the sea,” Work told an audience at a discussion in the capital hosted by The Washington Post.

Work said it would take longer for the military to create autonomous trucks given the challenges of navigating off-road.

“When the roads become more dangerous we will go off road, and that type of navigation is extremely difficult,” Work said.

The US military wants to build driverless convoys to protect against roadside bombs, a low-tech weapon that has killed hundreds of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

UK prisoner got his paws on a Samsung prototype

Posted on March 31, 2016 by - Mobile, Mobiles, News

60a0a2ce63135a4a1906527f19b2de84fae6d23cA lag who is residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure managed to get his paws on an expensive Samsung prototype.

A Samsung Galaxy S7 was seized from a Category D male lag in August 2015, over eight months before the phone was released.

According to data obtained by Mobile provided no information on how the unreleased device made its way into one of the UK’s jails but a key trend amongst other phones seized was their slim profile.

This lets the phones to be hidden easily during prison searches. However it is not clear how the prisoner was one of the first people in the world to get their hands on the phone, and also one of the first to have it nicked.

While other previous flagships were also discovered as contraband, including two iPhone 5s, an iPhone 4 and a Samsung Galaxy S5, the Galaxy S7 is certainly the newest.

In fact the phone of choice for crims is the Samsung E1200 with the Samsung E range accounting for a third of all confiscated devices.

Samsung appears to have 57 percent of the market share amongst illicit prison phone users.

In one month alone, 30 phones in total were seized from Category D English male prisons, which is one seizure per 90 prisoners.

Other models seized were the Alcatel 1040x, a BMW style key fob phone, the Samsung Galaxy Young 2, the Nokia 105, the Vodafone 340 and the Yamayahoo BM50. Few choose an Apple of course – prisoners are already walled up, there is no way they want to repeat that in their phone experience.

Owning a mobile device is a criminal offence in prison and can lead to an additional two-year sentence for those caught, but Her Majesty’s prison service says it is often difficult to discover which prisoner handsets belong to.

Encryption battle brews

Posted on March 31, 2016 by - Business, News, Security

130731163619-lead-intv-senator-ron-wyden-nsa-leaks-00000330-horizontal-galleryA battle is brewing over the rights of US companies to sell products with encryption.

Legislation is expected shortly in Congress that would limit encryption protection in American technology products.  The idea is that it will make it easier for US spooks to spy on those using encryption.

While the US Congress tends to rubber stamp “security measures”, it looks like this deal will not go through without a fight.

US Senator Ron Wyden pledged on Wednesday to fight a bipartisan move from the Senate Intelligence Committee which would give federal judges authority to order technology companies to help law enforcement officials access encrypted data.

Wyden told the RightsCon digital rights conference in San Francisco that weakening strong encryption puts at risk millions of Americans, families and communities from one end of the country to another.

Wyden is on the Intelligence committee but is also a leading privacy advocate.  He said he would do anything within my power as a United States senator to block any plan that weakens strong encryption.

Government officials have insisted that criminal investigations could be crippled without access to phone data, and both sides are gearing up for a fight in Congress.

Wyden said he would revive a 2014 bill he introduced to block court attempts by U.S. law enforcement to undercut encryption. Of course there is nothing to stop them cracking the encryption themselves.

Russian boffins create two qubit quantum circuit

Posted on March 30, 2016 by - News, Science

schrodingers_catRussian researchers have emerged from their labs smelling of potentially dead or alive cats after successfully testing Russia’s first superconducting, two-qubit, feedback-controlled circuit.

The research group from MIPT’s Artificial Quantum System Lab and Collective Use Centre had so far manged to develop a single qubit along with a parameter measuring circuit. Alexey Dmitriyev, a postgraduate at AQS said that in the the last six months, MIPT’s lab has done substantial and laborious work to organise the measuring process of superconducting qubits.

“MIPT currently has the necessary infrastructure and human capacity to deliver on building advanced qubit systems,” he said.

Dmitry Negrov, Deputy Head at the Collective Use Centre, added: “We now are at the stage where system parameters are close to the designed conditions. The next step is to take vital measurements, such as coherence time, and refine the qubit bonding. We aim to continue our work on these parameters in the future.”

Of course they are still a long way from actually getting a quantum PC which will run Windows or even solitaire, but they are getting there.

According to Andrey Baturin, Head of Scientific Management at MIPT, quantum technology research is one of the long-term priorities on the institute’s research agenda. “The Artificial Quantum System Lab and Collective Use Centre succeeded in obtaining unique equipment—modern lithographic machines and evaporation units for full-cycle production of qubits and, later, qubit systems; measuring equipment and ultra-low temperature cryostats that allow us to work with qubits at the milli-Kelvin temperature range. Such low temperatures are essential due to the extreme fragility of quantum states that can easily fail from interaction with the outside environment,” says Baturin.

Vodafone connects the internet of seals

Posted on March 30, 2016 by - Internet of Things, News, Science

seal15Orkney’s harbour seals will be connected to Vodafone’s M2M network as researchers try to work out why populations are falling.

The move to connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) is part of a study will be conducted by the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) at the University of St Andrews.

Marine telemetry tags will be attached to a number of seals and will send data on their location, dive behaviour and oceanic environment back to researchers using Vodafone’s M2M network.  The scientists will be able to monitor the state of each SIM card in each tag from one PC.

Harbour seals are just one of two seal species in the UK, but numbers have fallen by up to 90 percent in some areas around the north and east coast of Scotland since 2000 and researchers are not sure why.  The theory is that by connecting them to the Internet it will be possible to assess the causes, management and mitigation options.

Of course the risk is that the seals will work out a way to get net access and will spend all their time posting pictures of amusing pictures of penguins on Facebook.

It is also chance for Vodafone to show of its Internet of Things (IoT) skills. After all it can connect seals then your fridge should be a doddle. It has been backing the power efficient Nb-IoT (Narrowband-IoT) standard and has a deal with Philips to power the latter’s smart lighting platform.