TechEye |  |
- Top web profs urge Cameron to scrap web snooping
- Photos of Boston bombers released to stop web vigilantism
- Intel pushing new all-in-one PC concept
- Japanese police want Tor switched off
- Facebook tipped to be mystery mega data centre buyer
- Apple returns millions of faulty iPhones to Foxconn
- SAP stumbles in Asia
- Unsinkable Apple starts to flounder
- Google defends UK tax antics
- Greatest show off Earth launches in Big Apple
| Top web profs urge Cameron to scrap web snooping Posted: 22 Apr 2013 07:04 AM PDT A group of professors and web experts have penned an open letter to British prime minister David Cameron, urging the Coalition to abandon its plans to legislate for monitoring internet activity through the Communications Data Bill. The letter claims the plans to monitor internet activity are as "naive and technically dangerous as when they were floated by the last Government". It goes on to argue that Parliament's track record with internet legislation has been questionable - pushing ahead with, for example, the Digital Economy Act and ignoring contrary evidence. "It seems that government has not learned the lessons of that ill fated legislation and is intent on trying to foist onto the internet a surveillance system designed for landline telephones," the letter reads. "Many of the technical experts consulted are people that will profit from the plans, whether they succeed or fail". Even if the Communications Data Bill goes ahead, the letter posits that consumers are increasingly leaning towards encrypted communications, and the legislation will not be able to do "anything effective about this shift". It says forcing ISPs into monitoring consumers will be expensive and will also threaten to undermine the privacy of people visiting websites about sensitive matters - like HIV or pregnancy advice. The proposed British model will actually serve as a benchmark for less democratic regimes worldwide, it is argued, effectively undermining British foreign policy. The Government was urged to scrap the bill, and to instead engage in active conversation with the technical community and legal authorities to figure out other ways forward. The signatories are: Professor Ross Anderson, Cambridge University, Dr Ian Brown, University of Oxford, Dr Richard Clayton, University of Cambridge, Professor Jonathan Crowcroft, Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, Professor David J Farber, Carnegie Mellon, Dr Brian Gladwell, director for Defence Acquisition, Professor Douwe Korff, professor of international law, London Met, Professor Peter Sommer, de Montford and Open Universities, Professor Angela Sasse, UCL professor of human-centred technology, UCL Department of Computer Science, and Judith Rauhofer, University of Edinburgh. The full letter is available here. |
| Photos of Boston bombers released to stop web vigilantism Posted: 22 Apr 2013 05:26 AM PDT Last week, thousands of people took to social media in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, hoping to help identify the perpetrators. It didn’t take long before the admirable effort degenerated into a racist Where’s Wally, with thousands of people trying to find brown people with backpacks in the huge crowd. Eventually these industrious CSI fans “identified” dozens of such individuals, including a couple of law enforcement officers and security staff in plain clothes. Of course, they were all dead wrong. The terror suspects were eventually identified thanks to CCTV footage, which wasn’t even made public following the attack. In other words there was absolutely no way the public could have identified them, but the cyber vigilantes did find quite a few dark skinned people with backpacks. It turned out the real suspects were not “brown,” they were from the Caucasus, which means they were, er, Caucasian. The Washington Post now reports that law enforcement was practically forced to release the suspects’ images due to the social media witch hunt. Investigators were concerned that the manhunt could become a chaotic free-for-all, with civilians, media and internet vigilantes in the mix. The FBI stressed that only its images should be considered by the public, to no avail. Even US president Barack Obama cautioned the FBI to make sure that their photos really showed the real suspects. What’s more, even after the Tsarnaev brothers were identified, the mob kept going, spurred on by conspiracy theorists. The fact that the vigilantism contributed to the decision to post the images may have far reaching implications. We will never know whether the suspects would have been apprehended quietly, with no casualties had the photos not been published. Once the photos were released, the Tsarnaevs panicked, shot an MIT police officer and carjacked an SUV. One of the suspects was eventually killed, while the other one suffered extensive injuries and may not be able to provide investigators with information even if he recovers. |
| Intel pushing new all-in-one PC concept Posted: 22 Apr 2013 03:56 AM PDT Intel is reportedly pushing a new all-in-one PC concept in an effort to boost sales and finally make AIOs mainstream. So what’s new about Intel’s adaptive all-in-ones? According to Digitimes they feature an integrated battery, so users will be able to carry them around from one room to another. They also sport touch panels, which are still pretty uncommon in the AIO world. Intel’s suggested screen size for adaptive AIOs is between 18.4 and 27 inches, which doesn’t tell us much since it covers practically every desktop size out there. One rather odd feature outlined by Intel is a flat industrial design, which should allow the new adaptive AIOs to lay completely flat on a desk. This feature probably explains the decision to integrate a battery and it could lead to new uses for the ancient desktop, which hasn’t evolved much in years. Intel also suggests the use of magnesium-aluminium alloy for the chassis, which points to robust designs that won’t come apart if users really choose to carry them around the office. However, it also means that the new crop of AIOs will probably end up quite pricey. PMMA touch panels and lithium polymer batteries are also on Intel’s wish list and they don’t come cheap either. By the end of the year the reference spec will be changed to include higher resolution displays. Under the bonnet, Intel is pushing thin Mini-ITX motherboards and some vendors such as ASRock, Gigabyte and ECS already have some designs ready to go. Using an off the shelf form factor should speed up development and cut costs. |
| Japanese police want Tor switched off Posted: 22 Apr 2013 03:18 AM PDT Japanese authorities are approaching ISPs in a bid to get them to switch off the Tor network. According to the local press, the National Police Agency (NPA) have been saying that Tor stops them identifying cyber criminals. Hackers are making Japanese coppers a laughing stock. Just last year a hacker, going by the name Demon Killer, took remote control of systems across the country and posted death threats on public message boards. The police thought that it would be easy to arrest people based on the IP addresses from which the messages were posted. One of the people arrested even confessed. However, after the arrests the death threats continued - and police had to apologise to the people they arrested. Eventually they did catch Yusuke Katayama but when his PCs were investigated they found he used Tor to anonymise his online activities. A panel formed by NPA has compiled a special report which claimed that Tor is being used by people for financial fraud, leaks of confidential police information and child abusers. It appears that the police have not quite worked out what to do about Tor. They don't seem to have a problem with the service, which can be used by those living in oppressive regimes to carry out activism online. The special panel's report notes "abuse" of Tor has to be blocked, but the meaning of 'abuse' is not clear. Parity News thinks that the only way for the police to stop abuse of the Tor network is to shut it down completely. However we would have thought that if it was that easy, some regimes would have done so a long time ago. Tor directs internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers to conceal a user's location. This makes it a nightmare to trace and we are not sure how getting an ISP to block it is possible. It could be that the naivety of the Japanese police regarding what they can do to tackle cyber crime has struck again. |
| Facebook tipped to be mystery mega data centre buyer Posted: 22 Apr 2013 03:01 AM PDT For a while there has been speculation as to who is building what looks to be a super data centre in Altoona. According to the Des Moines Register, Facebook is the company behind a billion dollar data centre and the word on the street is that the building will house "the most technologically advanced data centre in the world". The project, dubbed Catapult, is expected to be completed in two $500 million phases near Altoona and will cover 1.4 million square feet. It looks like it will be powered, at least partly, using wind energy. Iowa has been competing fiercely with Nebraska for the project and if it happens it will be based on what incentives the Iowa Economic Development Authority Board and Altoona's City Council offer Facebook. The local authorities in the region are trying to promote themselves as a "data warehouse corridor" and have been spending a fortune on fibre optic cable to support the industry. It also touts its wonderful power companies, although if Facebook wants to use windmills these are pretty redundant. |
| Apple returns millions of faulty iPhones to Foxconn Posted: 22 Apr 2013 02:45 AM PDT Foxconn could be about to spend a quarter of a billion dollars replacing millions of faulty iPhones, dumped back on its heels by Apple. According to Chinese media, Apple returned as many as five million iPhones to Foxconn due to various technical problems. The total number of returned phones may be as high as eight million. This mess will cost Foxconn dearly. It is estimated that it will have to compensate Apple to the tune of 1.6 billion yuan, or $256.8 million dollars. This is not the first time Foxconn faced such problems, but it might be the priciest incident to date. Reports of build quality difficulties emerged days after the iPhone 5 was launched and prompted Foxconn to step up its quality control protocols. Foxconn was apparently forced to halt production in three plants in mainland China for a week earlier this month. Apple promptly dispatched a team to investigate and it seems that iPhone production remains slow to this day, ZDnet reports. |
| Posted: 22 Apr 2013 02:41 AM PDT The maker of expensive management software, SAP, is having some trouble making sales in Asia. According to Reuters, SAP's Asian business stumbled at the start of 2013 partly because some of its top sales managers left. Things should have gone better for SAP. Its customers are switching from localised hardware to cloud computing which should be just up SAP's alley. Gartner predicts that the cloud services market forecast should grow 18.5 percent this year to $131 billion worldwide but it requires software outfits to adapt fast and there are signs that SAP isn't. The company saw its first-quarter earnings and revenue below analyst forecasts. SAP says this is because of some leadership changes in the region. SAP's co-Chief Executive Jim Hagemann Snabe said that the Asia Pacific region would be back on track in the second quarter as the sales pipeline looked good and important sales positions were now taken care of. However, disappointment in SAP's quarterly results in the Asia Pacific Japan region is being seen as one of the reasons why the company's share price slumped. SAP shares were down 2.8 percent at 57.95 euros by 0932 GMT, while a broader index of European technology companies was down 0.7 percent. Software and cloud subscription revenue in the East declined seven percent, lagging the Americas, where revenue jumped 49 percent, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where it grew 13 percent. SAP faces competition in internet-based software from IBM and Oracle and nimbler rivals like Salesforce.com and Workday. It is also having to deal with an industry wide slump Its main competitor, Oracle, reported a two percent drop in software sales in its fiscal third-quarter, which ended in February. SAP claimed at the time that it had taken market share from Oracle and others as customers turn to cloud services. Even with the Asian market down, SAP said it still expected operating profit this year to be $7.65-7.78 billion up 12-14 percent from 5.21 billion in 2012 which is better than a poke in the eye with a short stick. |
| Unsinkable Apple starts to flounder Posted: 22 Apr 2013 02:36 AM PDT Tomorrow Apple is going to announce its results and it is starting to look like there will be few who will be cheering. Ever since the shine came off Apple in September, the news from Cupertino has been becoming progressively worse. Not only has it lost far too much ground to rivals such as Samsung, it is also being accused of running out of ideas. Shares which were expected to be $1,000 by the end of 2012 are now selling for $400, stripping $280 billion from the value of the company. Apple's fall has also given its suppliers a good kicking. Some, which used to get a rise in their stock price just for the rumour that they were taking part in some Apple product, have had enough of the company. Some told Reuters that they were looking for more reliable customers. In Japan the industry often jokingly refer to the company as "Poison Apple" because of its hard-to-meet high standards and low price expectations, Reuters wrote. So what went wrong? While some corners of the press might tell you that it is all due to the death of Steve Jobs, this is based on the myth that it was the Apple co-founder who came up with ideas. Memos from Apple suggest that the company has been following a glorious five year plan set up by Jobs before his death. The iPhone 5 and its successor were all effectively signed off by Jobs before he croaked. New CEO Tim Cook has been stuck by the fact that he does not dare alter it, even if the plan is clearly going wrong. As far as Apple is concerned Jobs' prediction is much like those made by mathematician Hari Seldon in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. People attribute religious accuracy to them until they are proven unable to cope with a random element. In this case Apple's random element should have been incredibly predictable and it was one that Jobs was well aware of before his death. Apple's iPhone and tablet model assumed that it would repeat the success of its iPods. There people paid to be locked into a Walled Garden of Delights and never leave it. iPods were also fashionable at the time, and Apple managed to knock aside competition with some slick marketing. Once customers were locked into the iPod it was jolly difficult for them to get out, and besides, there were few products which were up to the iPod's standards. But the phone market was a different animal. Although smartphones were not as extensively used, the technology Apple used on the iPhones was not unknown to the rest of the world. There was a highly competitive industry with the potential to roll them out if it needed to. Apple rolled out its iPhone and it took off, thanks mostly to deals with the US telcos. It looked like Apple was about to repeat the success of its iPods and then something predictable happened. The telephone industry started to produce smartphones based around Apple's ideas and the cheap Android operating system. Suddenly Apple was on the back foot. Previously people believed that its phones were innovative and high tech because they looked that way. Actually, the technology was not new and was available to anyone in the telephone industry. The fact that others could produce such phones without being sued indicated that it was open season. To make matters worse, Google's Android was getting better and produced a much more flexible model for the telcos. At this point Jobs was sick, but still in the game. The company should have been going all out to come up with innovation. Apple was sitting on a cash mountain and that money should have been poured into the R&D so that the company would be ready for the day when it had some serious competition. It needed new products that could keep customers locked in to its Wall Garden, much in the same way as it did with the iPod. However, it didn't, it sat on its cash mountain and some of its innovations that it did create were disasters. Jobs had reasoned that to win the market, you only needed to have one headline stopping technology for each machine. Under pressure, Apple failed to deliver. Unlike Google, which had a huge range of tested products which it could stuff into Android, Apple had very little that it could get to work. Siri was a disaster and only worked in the US, and Apple Maps was simply a joke. Both these products were supposed to be reasons for new customers to buy the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5. In fact, the only reason to buy an iPhone 4S was because the iPhone 4 was broken and dropped calls. Meanwhile Samsung had all the advantages on its side. It had Google's software expertise and its own access to cheaper technology. It was always going to beat Apple at its own game - it was just going to be a matter of time. Meanwhile, the iPhone market had killed off the iPod cash-cow and Apple did have a crack at playing out its time and tested a business model with tablets. Apple did score a win with tablets. For a while many in the industry made the mistake of trying to copy the Apple model, not realising that the way to win was to cheaper and smaller tablets. Once they twigged on, the tablet market took a similar course to the iPhone. Tomorrow's results are expected to be explained away on the basis that Apple will have a new phone out in June, which its legions of fanboys will buy automatically. But there are rumours that the mass production of the next iPhone will slip beyond June, the sources said. The killer app is expected to be a fingerprint sensor to provide additional security. This technology is a bit of a yawn and might be the system's Achilles' heel. Sources in Asia say that Apple is trying to find a coating material that does not interfere with the fingerprint sensor. In other words the killer app might not work yet. Apple is hoping that it can come up with a cheaper model, which can appeal to lower-income buyers in growth markets such as China and India. The risk here is that it is a market that Apple knows nothing about. The new cheap and cheerful version of the iPhone is expected not to have the fingerprint technology and sport a cheaper plastic casing. Apple's next iPhone will already be on the back foot when Samsung begins selling the Galaxy S4 smartphone with a sharper screen and plethora of software-enhanced features. Tomorrow Apple is expected to report a mere eight percent increase in revenue in its fiscal second quarter, among the weakest showings in years. Net earnings are expected to inch up just two percent as the intensifying competition compresses its margins. All this is karma for those on Wall Street who ignored warnings that Apple was a bubble waiting to burst. As late as last year it was impossible to find an analyst who would talk sensibly about Apple. With the share price at $700 there were those who were convinced it would be $1,000 by Christmas. It is fairly unlikely that Cook can do much to turn the company around for a while. It is likely that Apple will go into the sort of slow decline it experienced before. This time Jobs can not come back and rescue the company either. But then again, this mess is all about Jobs, and it is unlikely, had he lived, that he would have come up with anything different. |
| Posted: 22 Apr 2013 02:28 AM PDT Google has defended itself against allegations that it has been playing a game of tax evasion in the UK, claiming the nation is lucky to have the search engine working in the country. Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that the outfit was playing a key role in the UK's high-tech growth and so the tiny £6 million in corporation tax the company paid in 2011 was pretty good considering. Just in case anyone disagreed with the statement that "Google is good for you really", Schmidt added that the arrangements "fully comply with the law" and it was acting in the same way as other firms. The UK Public Accounts Committee named and shamed Google, Starbucks and Amazon of "using the letter of tax laws both nationally and internationally to immorally minimise their tax obligations". When asked about the company's tax bill on BBC Radio 4's World at One, Schmidt pointed out that he hired 2,000 employees in the UK and invested heavily in Britain. Of course if that logic was played out it would mean that all big corporations would not pay any tax at all and only the poor would have to pay them. Schmidt went on to say Britain has been a very good market for Google, presumably because it did not have to pay much tax. He claimed that Google empowered billions of pounds of start-ups through its advertising network. "We're a key part of the electronic commerce expansion of Britain which is driving a lot of economic growth for the country," he said. Rather than seeing Google as an evil corporation which avoids taxes. Schmidt said that it was important to see it in totality. This is the way taxes are done globally. The same is true for British firms operating in the US. In other words, since companies avoid paying taxes everywhere in the world, people should not be upset if Google does the same in the UK. We are glad he cleared that up. It means that if the government changed tax laws, then it could probably use corporate cash to fund any debt servicing. Fortunately Schmidt knows that the current government is only interested in taxing ordinary people. |
| Greatest show off Earth launches in Big Apple Posted: 22 Apr 2013 02:21 AM PDT The search to find the first humans to set foot on another planet begins in earnest today April 22, when Mars One launches its much-vaunted astronaut selection programme in New York, Jason Thomas writes. |
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