TechEye |  |
- Robot assisted doctors create legal questions
- Zuckerberg to announce political advocacy group
- Ex-Microsoft COO thinks Apple lost its vision
- Oracle sparks up its Sparc server chips
- North Korea kills mobile internet access for visitors
- Apple's security improvements eaten by bug
- Dell buyout turns into the Scottish play
- Spam wars erupt in Holland
- Intel Xeon Phis are out in May
- Steve Jobs immortalised in manga
| Robot assisted doctors create legal questions Posted: 27 Mar 2013 04:52 AM PDT The future of robot surgery is becoming mired because the US legal system cannot work out who can be sued if something goes wrong or if doctors are getting enough training on the gear. More than 2,500 da Vinci robots are at work in world hospitals and generally their work means less blood loss, smaller scars and quicker recovery time. But there have been a few accidents. In 2007, surgeons in Aalst, Belgium, had a surgical robot's arm broke off inside a patient with prostate cancer. The instrument was so badly bent it could not be removed through the original keyhole incision. The firm that makes da Vinci, Intuitive Surgical, has attracted the attention of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which is asking surgeons about the system. There are 10 product liability lawsuits have been filed against da Vinci's makers in the past 14 months. The FDA wants to find out if the rise in reports is a true reflection of problems, or simply an increase due to other factors. And this is the problem. If the robot is breaking, you sue Intuitive Surgical, if the problem is caused by a badly trained surgeon, you sue the hospital, if it is dodgy doctors playing with a patient like they are a computer game you sue them. This question appears to be overtaking the more important fact that the robot aims to offer minimally invasive, highly accurate surgery with a human in control at all times. The technology allows a surgeon to handle the instruments on the robot's four arms from a console with a stereoscopic 3D view of the operation, magnified up to ten times. But if the surgeon is not using the robot correctly, how does the insurance company prove that? If they sue the company, then that is hardly fair if the surgeon cocked up. James Breeden, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists told New Scientist that studies show there is a learning curve with new surgical technologies, during which there is an increased complication rate. Some surgeons only get two days' training on da Vinci. |
| Zuckerberg to announce political advocacy group Posted: 27 Mar 2013 04:44 AM PDT 28 year old Facebook boss mark Zuckerberg is rumoured to be heading into the murky world of political lobbying - co-organised with Harvard roommate Joe Green. It is expected the group will primarily be advocating immigration reform. The group will, according to the Wall Street Journal's sources, seek $50 million in capital before it lobbies for federal reform on topics including immigration and education. It has reportedly secured millions from LinkedIn top exec Reid Hoffman. Its first task is tipped to be focusing on making US citizenship easier for immigrants, and it is also expected to be pushing education reform and pursuing science funding. Bill Gates, the well regarded billionaire and philanthropist, has been busying himself with education reform too - in the guise of privatised services, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which in part lead to the Chicago Teacher's Strike, the biggest strike of its kind in years. Other figures rumoured to be involved in the group include some who have previously been close to Washington. Rob Jesmer was the former exec director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Joe Lockhart, Facebook's ex communications veep, was a press officer for Bill Clinton, and Jon Lerner, a Republican strategist, are reportedly involved in the unnamed group the WSJ reports. Zuckerberg has previously donated to Republican causes and has met with Barack Obama. It is not uncommon for capital-rich business figures to involve themselves in advocacy, politics, or philanthropy with a political bent, as they use their money to allow them louder voices than the general electorate. |
| Ex-Microsoft COO thinks Apple lost its vision Posted: 27 Mar 2013 03:30 AM PDT Former Microsoft chief operating officer Bob Herbold thinks Apple might be losing its vision. Now that Steve Jobs is gone, so is the magic, apparently. In a Forbes article, Herbold concluded that Apple's stock slide should be attributed to analysts, who merely looked at the numbers and did not want to take a look at the wider picture. Sadly though, Jobs' death has left a big pair of shoes to fill at Cupertino, and it doesn't appear as if Apple will get a new visionary leader any time soon. Herbold stressed that such a leader does not have to be a tech wizard. He does, however, need to be a visionary, not a mere administrator. The trouble with Apple is that such a demigod would have to live up to unrealistic expectations. He would also need to show an exceptional level of personal involvement and get personally involved with the details of upcoming products. Jobs was quite famous for this, and it worked. Lastly, a new Apple messiah must have the guts to lead. This is a lot to ask. Not only does the new leader have to live up to high expectations, but he also needs to take a lot of responsibility. Apple's market cap is still north of $400 billion, but the company lost quite a bit of value over the past two quarters. Taking any radical steps at this point would be bold to say the least and not everyone has the guts to make decisions that could cost the company tens of billions of dollars. However, bold decisions are exactly what Apple needs at this point. |
| Oracle sparks up its Sparc server chips Posted: 27 Mar 2013 03:25 AM PDT Database giant Oracle has upgraded its high end server systems, putting pressure on rivals such as IBM. |
| North Korea kills mobile internet access for visitors Posted: 27 Mar 2013 03:24 AM PDT Just a month ago, North Korea started offering 3G internet to the few adventurists who chose to visit the hermit kingdom. It did not take long for people to start posting Instagram images of the reclusive workers' paradise and now it seems the party is over. Visitors could buy a SIM card from Koryoling, the state run telco, and easily get internet access in a country that really isn't a fan of pluralism. Sadly though, it did not take long for authorities to change their mind, either, and the scheme is done for. It is still unclear why the Juche gang decided to pull the plug, but then again it was equally surprising to see mobile internet offered in the DPRK to begin with. Perhaps authorities were concerned by the content posted online, fearing that sooner or later someone might post a few Instagram pictures of North Korea's notorious concentration camps, which make Soviet era Gulags look like an all-inclusive hotel with a nice view of the Mediterranean. However, it seems long-term visitors can still find a way to access the network and SIM cards can still be purchased at Pyongyang airport and some retail stores for about $70, North Korea Tech reports. |
| Apple's security improvements eaten by bug Posted: 27 Mar 2013 02:55 AM PDT Apple's attempts to spruce up its flaccid security reputation appear to have backfired completely. Cupertino thought that it would be a wizard wheeze to improve security on its iCloud and iTunes accounts with a new password system. Realising that it was not much chop on security, Apple decided to copy something that Google did which sends a code to a user's mobile phone whenever they sign in from a new computer or make a purchase. This is called two-step authentication and is supposed to stop hackers accessing private information, even if they have the password. But the Apple flavour of the system had a flaw that at one point affected all customers who had not yet enabled the two-step feature. If you knew a user's email address and date of birth, Apple's own tools to reset the user's password and then their Coldplay collection was yours. All a hacker needed to do was paste in a modified URL while answering the date of birth security question on Apple's iforgot page. A red-faced Apple has since taken down its password reset tool, which is now back up with the problem fixed. However it did make a mess of all those who praised Apple's two-step security and claimed that it would force the likes of rivals, such as Amazon, to introduce similar technology. |
| Dell buyout turns into the Scottish play Posted: 27 Mar 2013 02:53 AM PDT It seems that the sale of Dell is becoming a bit like Shakespeare's Macbeth with Dave Johnson cast in the role of Thane of Cawdor conspiring to take the throne from King Michael "Duncan" Dell. Johnson was once Dell's confidante and former employee and is now leading Blackstone Group's 11th-hour bid for Dell. His plan is to take over the company without Dell and stop Dell's cunning plan to take the company private for $24.4 billion. IBM unsuccessfully sued Johnson when he departed in 2009, alleging he violated a non-compete agreement. Michael Dell told his executive team that Johnson would remain a close and personal adviser when he left to join Blackstone in January, but is now finding that he has been listening to witches who want his job. So far, Johnson has not mentioned a role for his former boss and this means that Dell could lose control of a company he nursed from a dorm-room operation into a global PC maker. Johnson oversaw Dell's 2009 purchase of Perot Systems which put Dell into the technology services market alongside IBM and HP. Other deals during his tenure included Quest Software, SecureWorks, SonicWall and Wyse Technology. But there was a little bad blood in his exit from Dell. Johnson left Dell alienated, and some members of top management were unhappy with his track record. Michael has to see off another competing offer from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, whose forces are dressing up as trees, because Icahn has branches everywhere. Meanwhile Blackstone has been having a quiet word to candidates who could run Dell should its bid succeed, replacing Michael Dell. But all is fair and all is foul in the IT business, and there are many within the business community who think Dell is a tale told by an idiot and as soon as someone says "out, out, damn spot" to him the better. According to Reuters, Dell said he feared that Blackstone's buyout offer would dismantle the PC maker's kingdom. Other people familiar with the situation have said Blackstone wants to flog Dell's financial services business as part of a strategy to turn things around. All he is looking for is a blasted heath, which is always going to be better than a bloody Cameron.
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| Posted: 27 Mar 2013 02:14 AM PDT A spam-a-lam-a-ding- dong has erupted between a group dedicated to fighting spam and a Dutch outfit which hosts a few spammy sites. According to the New York Times, it has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world. Apparently the attacks are becoming increasingly powerful, and computer security experts worry that if they get worse people may not be able to reach basic internet services. It all started when Spamhaus added the Dutch company Cyberbunker to its blacklist, which is used by email providers to weed out spam. Cyberbunker is based in a five-storey former NATO bunker and offers hosting services to any website ''except child porn and anything related to terrorism". Soon after, Spamhaus, which is based in Europe, said the attacks began. So far they had not stopped the group from distributing its blacklist. Patrick Gilmore, chief architect at Akamai Networks told the New York Times that Cyberbunker was just mad and that the organisations thinks it should just be allowed to spam. The attacks are generated by botnets, and they were noticed last week by Cloudflare, an internet security firm in Silicon Valley that was trying to defend against the attacks and as a result became a target. It appears to have become the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the internet. This is not the first time that Spamhaus, one of the most prominent groups tracking spammers on the internet has been hit by denial-of-service attacks from spammers. But in this attack it seems that Spamhaus was hit with a far more powerful strike that exploited the Domain Name System. This means that the only way to stop the attack is turn off the web. In the latest incident, attackers sent messages masquerading as ones coming from Spamhaus, to those machines, which were then amplified drastically by the servers, causing torrents of data to be aimed back at the Spamhaus computers. Spamhaus asked Cloudflare for help and the attackers began to focus them and the companies that provide data connections for both Spamhaus and Cloudflare. Someone claiming to be a spokesperson for the attackers, Sven Olaf Kamphuis, said the attacks were against Spamhaus for abusing its influence. He said that Spamhaus was not supposed to determine what happens on the internet. Cyberbunker brags on its website that it has been a frequent target of law enforcement because of its ''many controversial customers". The company claims that at one point it fended off a Dutch SWAT team which found it could not enter the bunker by force. |
| Intel Xeon Phis are out in May Posted: 27 Mar 2013 01:26 AM PDT A leaked Chipzilla roadmap has appeared on the world wide wibble which indicates that Intel is planning to release two new Xeon Phi co-processor cards in May. In addition to the already announced Xeon Phi 3100-series products due in the first half of the year, it seems that Chipzilla will also unveil new 5100- and 7100-series coprocessors starting this May. There will be the Xeon Phi 5120D, 3120A, 3120P, 7120P and 7120X. It is not clear what the exact specs of co-processors will be but all of them are based on Knights Corner. The Xeon Phi 3100-series was supposed to deliver over 1TFLOPS peak double precision performance, which is about as floppy as it gets at the moment. But the Xeon Phi 5120D, 7120P and 7120X coprocessors are even floppier. At present, Intel does not have exact shipment dates for the new products, but expects them to become generally available from May 1, 2013 to July 31, 2013. The Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor 3100 family is designed for a boffin on a budget as it can run compute-bound workloads such as life science applications and financial simulations. The Intel Xeon Phi 3100 family supports up to 6GB memory at 240GB/s bandwidth. It also has a series of reliability features including memory error correction codes (ECC). The whole family will run at less than 300W thermal design point (TDP) envelope. The Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor 3100 will cost about $2000. The Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor 5110P features 60 cores with 4-way simultaneous multi-threading technology and 512KB L2 cache per core, provides additional performance at a lower power envelope. It can manage 1.01TFLOPS double-precision performance with the wind behind it, and supports 8GB of GDDR5 memory at a higher 320 GB/sec memory bandwidth. It needs 225 watts TDP, and is a passively cooled Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor 5110P. It is designed for denser computing environments such as the movie industry and energy research. You will be able to pick one of those up for $2,649. |
| Steve Jobs immortalised in manga Posted: 27 Mar 2013 01:18 AM PDT The former messiah of Apple, Steve Jobs, has been resurrected as a manga hero in Japan. The first installment of the manga series known as "Steve Jobs" is now on Japanese newsstands in the April issue of a monthly publication called Kiss. Apparently Jobs is not going to be a badly drawn boy - the comic has been created by award-winning manga author Mari Yamazaki. Tragically we will not be seeing Jobs saving Tokyo from a marauding Chipzilla or Behemoth Ballmer. The comic appears to be based on the manga version of Walter Isaacson's authorised biography of Jobs. In other words it will be filled with the slightly less credible stories about how Jobs declared thermo-nuclear war on the evil Koreans and saved the world by inventing the rounded rectangle. The first chapter is available on the web thanks to Yahoo Japan's online bookstore and shows Jobs talking to Isaacson about writing the biography, so it starts on a cliff hanger. Although Jobs has been in a comic book before, it is the first time he has been seen in manga. According to CNET, the serialised comic book will appear each month in Kiss. Goodness knows what will happen if it is so popular that it has to extend beyond Isaacson's book. It could then be called "iJobs, beyond the reality distortion field". |
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