Friday, August 16, 2013

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Intel starts preaching for HTML5 conversions

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 05:23 AM PDT

Intel has instructed its teams of monks, missionaries and evangelists to get to work and encourage a wider take up of HTML5.

Intel wants people to move to HMTL5 post haste as the code can do a lot more than just web development and has spin offs for future hardware kit.  It will start putting a foot in the door of developer's houses from the next Intel Developer Forum next week.

Intel's Michael Richmond, senior architect in the company's Open Source Technology Centre, told InfoWorld that HTML 5 will mean software which can do so much more for the web.

He particularly liked the fact that HTML5 software can automatically adapt to different screen sizes, offering more information to the user when a bigger screen is detected.

It was also better than native programming because developers do not have to redo all their code for each new platform.

Richmond said this means it will save companies a bob or two in developer costs.

So why is a hardware maker like Intel so keen on talking about software? Richmond pointed out Intel has been big in the software industry since the mid 1970s.

Intel has been writing code before many 20-something or 30-something developers were even born and it would thank you to get off its lawn.

Intel has been pushing its XDK tool for HTML5 to take advantage of everything that the HTML5 specification can manage. This includes things like cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, and webSocket for two way web communications. 

Taiwan's NMA outdoes itself with brilliant Obama NSA parody

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 04:58 AM PDT

Taiwan's Next Media Animation - the infamous YouTube news satirist - has outdone itself with a Jacko remix featuring a gigantic Obama chasing an Average Joe and snooping on his web history.

The video, a take on Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me, featuring Michael and Jermaine Jackson,  starts with secret service MIBs targeting a fat man with a mullet wearing a vest that says 'average' on it.

He becomes increasingly paranoid, noticing the agents hiding underneath lampshades and behind the TV in his house. Somewhere in an IRS corridor a poster urges the public to report their friends to the government. IRS agents stand with their briefcases like the twins from the Shining.

Eventually, a gigantic Obama gives chase. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden is ice fishing in Russia.

It's a must watch.

NSA spied on thousands of Americans

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 04:39 AM PDT

A report published in the Washington Post  released some top secret documents about how the National Security Agency (NSA) illegally collects surveillance on Americans, thousands of times per year.

Most of the May 2012 audit is a catalogue of cock-ups where the NSA collected data by accident due to analyst and programming errors.

But in one case the phone records of more than 3,000 US citizens were stored despite the fact that the NSA had been ordered to shred them by a surveillance court.

All up, the audit reported 2,776 cases where the NSA broke its own privacy rules.

In one situation, the spooks mistook the US area code (202) for Washington, DC and the international dialling code for Egypt. As a result, they snooped on a "large number" of domestic American phone calls.

In another case, the NSA mixed US and foreign emails that it collected from tapping into a fibre-optic cable that passes through the United States. It wanted to keep the emails and told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that it couldn't filter out which emails belonged to Americans.

The court said that the email collection effort must stop and it was "deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds".

The audit appears to have been provided to the paper a few months ago by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The report was only supposed to be seen by the NSA's top brass and no politicians ever saw it.

More information is expected to be released soon. Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who has published the most information based on Snowden's leaks, is still working on a pile of them and tweeted that he will be releasing them soon. 

China to conduct security audits on US tech companies

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 03:58 AM PDT

Xenophobic US senators are aching to ban Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE because they think their gear could be used to spy on US citizens. Now, China is auditing American goods for the same reasons.

US lawmakers believe that, since Huawei's CEO worked for the Chinese military 20 years ago, spying is a sure thing.

Critics think this is not so much about spying, but instead an attempt to protect American companies from Chinese goods, which are often more affordable, especially in crucial emerging markets.

According to Reuters, China's Ministry of Public Security is planning a tit-for-tat investigation against top US companies over "security issues".

The ministry names IBM, Oracle and EMC. While the list lacks names like Microsoft and Apple, it seems that China is using revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as the pretext.

Those three companies were involved in a National Security Agency hack into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and in Hong Kong, according to Snowden leaks.

Speaking to Reuters, a spokesperson from the ministry said that many of the country's core IT systems are dominated by foreign hardware and software firms, but the Prism scandal implies security problems.

If any trade war does erupt then both sides will feel the hurt. Most US manufacturing is carried out in China and China currently needs to buy a lot of western technology, although there are attempts to curb this.

IBM failing to meet cloud forecasts

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 03:34 AM PDT

Leaked documents from Biggish Blue shows that the company is getting its fingers burnt by trying to flog cloud packages.

While the entire IT industry has been foaming at the mouth for The Cloud, it seems that IBM is having difficulties actually making cash from it.

Information Week, which got its paws on the documents, said IBM's cloud computing revenues are smaller and less "cloud-intensive" than customers and Wall Street analysts might think.

The documents put IBM's 2012 cloud-related revenue is $2.26 billion. While most of us would be in cloud nine earning that sort of cash, in 2011, IBM issued a roadmap saying cloud revenues should be reaching $7 billion by 2015. It has a while to go before the deadline creeps along, but it should be earning much more than that.

In 2011 IBM hoped $3 billion would come from new business, so it was suggested a hefty $4 billion would be linked to cloud delivery of current products. To do that Biggish Blue would have to convert most of its products and customers - which clearly has not happened quite yet.

A significant amount of IBM's cloud revenues are tied to hardware, which are often used to run private or partner clouds.

This is stuff sitting in their data centre and not the sort of products like Amazon EC2, Salesforce.com and IBM SmartCloud, an ex employee told Information Week.

Now it seems that the Securities and Exchange Commission is also unhappy with Biggish Blue and is investigating the company's cloud revenue.

IBM said the company established the whole category of private cloud five years ago.

At the time everyone was told large companies have gigantic data centres and a lot of stuff they want to control from a privacy or security perspective. IBM said the first major opportunity from its client base was going to be the company helping them build cloud delivery, the employee said.

But there are some fears that, where cloud compute capacity is concerned, x86-based systems and standards are cannibalising IBM's higher-margin mainframe and Power server businesses, a Credit Suisse analyst told Information Week.

The new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are killing off IBM's traditional middleware gear. 

Microsoft stuffs up six patches

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 02:52 AM PDT

Red-faced Microsoft has admitted that there were problems with KB 2876063, KB 2859537, KB 2873872, KB 2843638, KB 2843639, and KB 2868846, all released on Tuesday.

The MS13-061/KB 2876063 patch was supposed to fix a remote code execution hole in Exchange Server. The problem only affects Exchange 2013 and the Vole said that after the installation of the security update, the content index for mailbox databases shows as failed and the Microsoft Exchange search host controller service is renamed.

Those who have already installed the MS13-061 security update for Exchange Server 2013 are advised to download KB 2879739, which provides the steps on how to resolve the problem. The MS13-061 security update has been pulled temporarily. Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2007 can breathe a sigh of relief as  this does not affect them.

In this case the problem might not have been Microsoft. According to the SANS Internet Storm Centre, Oracle disclosed the vulnerabilities in patch updates in April and July 2013 and Microsoft licensed the vulnerable libraries from Oracle.

Another patch which was botched was the catchy-titled MS13-063/KB 2859537. It is a Windows kernel patch that has not been entirely pulled.

Apparently some users may experience problems with certain games after they install security update 2859537. In some cases, users may not successfully start and sign in to the games. The Vole is still looking at how to fix that problem. Rift crashes immediately after authentication, as does Defiance.

Softpedia reports that the patch causes the dreaded blue screen of death on Windows 7 systems.

The MS13-066/KB 2873872/KB 2843638/KB 2843639/KB 2868846 patches for active directory federation services have all been pulled because they break the ADFS.

Microsoft has removed the updates for ADFS 2.0 from Windows update and the download centre and is looking into the problem.

Apparently users can also have problems with security update 2843639 if they do not have update 2790338 already applied. Microsoft said that users should try and install this one right away.

Last month, the Vole botched four of its patches so it has not been a good summer for Microsoft. At least there's a public confession. 

Intel plays the philanthropy card again

Posted: 16 Aug 2013 02:38 AM PDT

Chip giant Intel – the major purveyor of handbags for all – is now painting itself as a philanthropist and portraying itself as a major force for educating young women.

In a remarkable advertisement posted on the interweb, Chipzilla claims that it is at the forefront for change and education. But as the world+dog knows, the only thing that the failing semiconductor giant cares about is profit, and certainly not people.

Intel is running out of options. Senior executives at the firm over the last 20 years have made it entirely clear that it will do practically anything as long as it sells more chips.

But people have tired of the X86 phenomenon and are getting pretty bored with Microsoft, too. Intel had its chance to break into the tablet market years ago, but preferred to stay on the gravy train, while peddling – maybe a better pedalling fast to stay still.

Now it has run out of marketing options and doesn’t have a clue what to do except play the philanthropy card, yet again.  Everyone knows Intel is greedy but its shareholders must be wondering when the train on the bridge falls into the semiconductor equivalent of the Tay.

You can find the egregious video Intel is pushing by viewing below.

Despite growth, Cisco to lay off five percent of workforce

Posted: 15 Aug 2013 08:02 AM PDT

Cisco CEO John Chambers plans to axe five percent of the company's entire workforce, with the 4,000 layoffs beginning in 2014.

Although Cisco has grown, Chambers said it was "not growing as fast as we need," adding that the company had to dedicate its work to growth areas, quickly.

Cisco made $2.8 billion in sales from the $12.4 billion fourth quarter, meeting Wall Street's estimates and beating them just a smidge.  Cisco also reported sitting on cash assets of $50.6 billion, an increase of $3 billion from the previous quarter.

Profit was $2.27 billion, an increase from the same time last year at $1.92 billion. Revenue was up to $12.42 billion from $11.69 billion. Shares have shot up 34 percent over the year but fell after this quarter's results were posted.

As many of the big players in the tech industry are finding out, governments and businesses are hesitant to invest in new enterprise equipment or sign fat contracts because of the disastrous economic outlook worldwide.

"What we see is slow steady improvement, but not at the pace we want," Chambers said, speaking on an analyst call, the WSJ reports.

Chambers does not seem to have many qualms about mass layoffs - for example, in 2011, Cisco gutted almost 10 percent of its work force when it layed off 6,500 employees. But in that instance the company's profit had dropped two quarters in a row. Earlier this year, Cisco laid off 500 workers.

Chambers believes there is a bureaucratic culture of middle management at the company, and that more can be achieved with less staff.

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