Thursday, September 5, 2013

TechEye

TechEye

Link to TechEye - Latest technology headlines

Man arrested for tweeting name of Corrie star alleged sex victim

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 05:19 AM PDT

A 43 year old man was arrested on suspicion of tweeting the name of a girl who accused Coronation Street actor Michael Le Vell of rape.

Phil Davies, from the Greater Manchester Police, said public identification of sex abuse victims - in particular child victims during court proceedings - can "cause both immediate and long term distress and harm, especially in cases as serious as this".

Michael Le Vell, real name Michael Turner, denies 12 charges, including five of rape, the BBC reports. The actor played car mechanic Kevin Webster on Britain's longest running TV soap.

Davies said disclosing names on social media is effectively the same as through the mainstream media.

"People may not understand that when they use social media they are required by the law to keep victims anonymous in exactly the same way as people who work in mainstream media," Davies said.

The point about social media has surfaced again and again - Twitter is essentially a public domain, even if you have privacy restricted your account - and posting online can provide more unwanted exposure than shouting on the street. 

Universal credit plagued by bloated IT disaster

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 04:44 AM PDT

British Secretary for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, is blaming a "Titanic" IT failure of his own pet project - the universal credit system - on civil servants.

A National Audit Office (NAO) report declared the £2.4 billion scheme a bloated mess, plagued by serious IT problems which could raise the total project balance in the hundreds of millions.

Speaking with BBC Today on Radio 4, Duncan Smith said he could have "written this report myself", before saying the problem was with those who put together the IT details. He claimed those responsible "did not make the correct decisions".

Of the government's expected spend of £425 million up to April 2013, £303 million of this has been spent on contracts for designing and developing IT systems.

The NAO's progress review of Universal Credit has found that even the government's pathfinder pilot scheme, launched April 2013, is woefully underequipped - supporting just the simplest new claims and built around limited IT functionality. The report found that processes needed further input from staff, knocking the proposed scalability without yet more IT investment, not entirely useful considering the NAO's claims that over 90 percent of new claimants begin online.

Because of shortfalls in the programme, the department will not be able to roll out universal credit nationally by October 2013 as originally planned - instead being forced to launch just six pathfinder websites from the month instead. The department is also unsure of how much the IT systems it has built will even support national roll-out, as pathfinder systems are not comprehensive and don't let claimants change any details of their circumstances online as originally planned.

In fact, in May 2013, the department decided it needed to write off a sizeable £34 million - or 17 percent - of new IT assets.

Duncan Smith said the Universal Credit system will still be delivered on the "overall timetable" of 2017. "It is a very important reform and it is a reform that will save the government and taxpayers money and improve the lot of those most needing it," he claimed.

Last month, shadow work and pensions secretary for Labour, Liam Byrne, slammed the welfare overhaul as being in "serious trouble", and costing the tax payer "up to £1.5 billion".

"There seems to be something very wrong in the mind of the man at the helm of DWP," Byrne said of Duncan Smith. "He has a mandate to reform but the instruction to deliver appears to have got lost somewhere in his office."

Byrne has now said the scheme is a "Titanic-sized IT disaster" and claimed Duncan Smith has both lost control of the department and alleged a cover up. 

At the very least, the project looks like it will serve as a boon for IT contractors.

EMC finds a flashy use for Intel's multi-cores in VNX

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 04:31 AM PDT

EMC, which is currently leading the mid-range data centre market, has released a product that will now take years for its rivals to match, it is claimed.

The outfit's R&D team has emerged from its smoke filled labs with a product range which actually takes Intel's multi-core chip design and makes them less of a chocolate teapot and more what Chipzilla has been telling us they are supposed to be.

The new EMC VNX Series is being touted by David Goulden, President & COO, EMC with lots of words like "revolutionary" and according to a few of the analysts we talked to he is probably right.

EMC's VNX range is based on the idea that while big data machines have been around for a while, they are not properly optimised.

For example, while firms need to have much bigger data centres to cope with the influx of data being delivered to them by mobile devices, they only use about five percent of the data that often.

So if you want to speed up a data centre box, all you need to do is stick that five percent of data onto a flash drive.

Goulden said that this is all very well, and there are hybrid drives out there, but the software which is running them is configured for the old steam powered hard drives.

EMC tinkered with the code to make the SSD software start behaving like it.

Another area which has not been properly developed is the use of multi-cores. Intel has been churning out multi-core chips for ages and has more on the drawing board.

However, no one has really developed systems which optimised the chips properly. Some cores will be flat out, and others will be taking a break in the sun with something cool. With better control of the cores, the EMC server can be much more efficient and faster.

Finally the EMC gear is optimised for better virtualisation.

The specs shown to us have the boxes managing 2X more virtual machines at the same price.

Goulden was talking about boxes that can manage price/performance figures that were one-third the price for the same performance of the previous generation.

What all this means is that the VNX can manage speed and performance figures, so customers who would have bought one level box can buy a cheaper box and still have a data centre which goes faster.

EMC's president of Unified Storage, Rich Napolitano was enthused, claiming that "everything in the midrange market changed today" and the developments are "a huge leap forward".

In an industry used to hyperbole this seemed a bit like spin, until you could see that he clearly was not joking.

"This platform could not have been built two years ago because no-one had solved the latency problems," Napolitano said.

Most of the changes appear to have been at the software level. Napolitano talked about how his software teams rewrote about 10 percent of the code from the previous generation models. This made for millions of lines that had to be adapted.

Practically it means that companies can set up smaller cheaper and faster data centres that use far less power. These will get even more powerful as Chipzilla releases its many core chips in the future.

The top of the range version of the machine runs a fully optimised flash drive array which, while more expensive than its hybrid cousins, is there to break a few records.

According to the pride of analysts we found encircling the bar at the launch event, there is nothing like this on the market at the moment.

Ashish Nadkarni, Research Director, Storage at IDC said that it was a fundamental change to how midrange storage customers can make the most out of flash within their arrays- compounded with a totally new level of price and performance that the midrange storage market has not witnessed before.

EMC's previous incarnation VNX range had been in the lead and was due for a refresh.

Many expected the new machines to be faster, and perhaps more energy efferent, but few actually expected them to have figures like this.

What must also be putting the fear of god into others in the mid-range market is that EMC sees all this as simply stage one. Chipzilla is planning on adding more cores to its chips, and EMC is rubbing its paws with glee because the system it has established is only likely to be much better.

EMC wheeled out customers of its beta programmes to show how much better life was using the technology.

Paul Stenler, Managing Director, Citi Infrastructure Group, CitiBank said that he could not really see any point trying to run other databoxes. He installed 20 petabytes of the new machine and had seen performance improvements of between 74 and 124 percent. In the case of filesharing texts he was looking at 293 percent improvements. 

Intel CFO says PC is a zombie

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 03:38 AM PDT

Intel CFO Stacy Smith has ruled out the death of the PC - saying that he has been hearing stories about its demise since he started working with the company 25 years ago.

Talking to the Wall Street Journal, Smith said that it had died and come back as something else.

First, the PC was a tower, then a pizza box, and this time, the process of reincarnation is a little more complex.

This time, the PC is reincarnating a little like the lama in Little Buddha. Rather than being one distinct thing it is coming back as several at once.

Smith said the company's edge in manufacturing processes will help it negotiate the current "volatility".

For observers who wonder what the company will make next, Smith kindly provided us with a few clues.

There are three things which are driving the market: more mobile, personalisation, and a lot of it consumer driven, according to Smith.

He thinks that the market will be highly segmented among PCs, tablets, phones and other gear.

For example, he likes the Lenovo "two in one" laptop that features a detachable screen that doubles as a tablet.

Intel's new Haswell chip architecture, announced in June, will lead to smaller and thinner versions of such "two in one" hybrid machines, according to Smith.

It could help extend the use of the tablet and the phone, which still lack the productive capacity of the laptop in many areas, forcing people to carry a multitude of completely separate devices, he said

Intel will continue to try and mage its dosh from embedded computing and the so called Internet of Things.

Smith said that there is infinite demand for taking things that aren't smart and making them smarter, and that can add a lot of value.

Judge orders re-opening of Cisco murder case

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 02:50 AM PDT

A North Carolina appeals court has ordered a new trial for ex-Cisco employee Bradley Cooper - who was convicted two years ago for murdering his wife Nancy.

According to ABC, the court decided that a judge erred in blocking two experts from testifying that an incriminating Google Maps search record found on the defendant's laptop was planted.

The court which convicted Cooper heard how temporary internet files recovered from the laptop indicated someone conducted a Google Map search on the laptop at approximately 1:15 p.m. on 11 July, 2008, the day before Nancy Cooper was murdered.

Agents thought that the search was done by someone using the laptop while it was at Cisco.

State tech experts testified that the Google Maps search was initiated by someone who entered the zip code associated with the Defendant's house, and then moved the map and zoomed in on the spot on Fielding Drive where Nancy Cooper's body was found.

The couple's marriage was on the rocks, and they had argued at a party the evening before Nancy Cooper disappeared. Bradley Cooper reported her missing and told police his wife had gone jogging and never returned.

However, he was seen on a store security camera early that morning buying items that included laundry detergent.

Cooper's defence attorney, Howard Kurtz, had planned to rely upon a longtime computer network security expert, Jay Ward, who was prepared to testify in his judgment the Google Maps evidence had been manufactured and placed on Cooper's computer after the murder.

But the prosecution objected to Ward offering such testimony, because he lacked specific computer forensics expertise which meant that he was unqualified.

Kurtz tried to use computer forensics expert Giovanni Masucci to testify that the evidence was planted.

The prosecution again objected, this time contending that the last-minute switch from Ward to Masucci violated rules of evidence.

So, thanks to all that maneuvering, the jury only heard about the Google Maps evidence and not anything that suggested that it had been planted.

The appeals court ruled the judge was mistaken both the first time when he ruled Ward was insufficiently qualified and the second when he failed to accept the defense attorney's good-faith attempt to provide an alternative expert witness.

In fact, the only physical evidence linking the Defendant to Ms. Cooper's murder was the alleged Google Maps search.

All the rest of the evidence was based on potential motive, opportunity, and testimony of suspicious behaviour, which was probably not enough to get a conviction. 

Al-Qaeda engineers try to jam, hijack drones

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 02:39 AM PDT

Leaked documents show that Al-Qaeda's leadership has teams of engineers finding ways to shoot down, jam or remotely hijack US drones.

The engineers are looking for holes in the weapons which have done considerable damage to the terrorist network.

So far there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has forced a drone to crash or interfered with its flight operations.

The US has tracked the group's efforts to develop a counterdrone strategy since 2010. Drone airstrikes have forced al-Qaeda to take measures to limit their movements in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

So far the only thing about drone attacks al-Qaeda is happy about is that they tend to kill a lot of civilians too - and that has created something of a backlash against the USA.

Details of al-Qaeda's attempts to fight back against the drone were found by the Washington Post in a cache of documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Titled "Threats to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles", the report is based on intelligence assessments posted since 2006.

Worried intelligence analysts noted that information about drone operational systems is available in the public domain.

The Post said it is withholding some detailed portions of the classified material that could spill the beans on the specific weaknesses of certain aircraft.

It doesn't look like al-Qaeda is close to finding these weaknesses, and US spy agencies have concluded that al-Qaeda faces "substantial" problems finding a way to attack drones.

Unmanned aircraft do have a weak spot, namely the satellite links and remote controls that enable pilots to fly them.

In July 2010, a US spy agency intercepted electronic communications indicating that senior al-Qaeda figures wanted to develop jammers to interfere with GPS signals and infrared tags that drone operators rely on to pinpoint missile targets.

Other weirder plans included using balloons and small radio-controlled aircraft, or hobby planes, which insurgents apparently saw as having the potential to monitor drone flight patterns. 

Samsung shows off its smart watch

Posted: 05 Sep 2013 02:29 AM PDT

Samsung can pat itself on the back after it released its wearable smart watch before its rival Apple did the very same.

According to Bloomberg, the watch can snap photos, track workouts and use an array of apps but basically means that users can keep their smartphones in their pocket and not have to fish it out when they need it.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear will join Google Glass as the latest example of wearable technology.

The watch is synced to a mobile phone, allowing users to answer calls and receive text messages from their wrists.  Apple is rumoured to be working on something similar.  The fact that Samsung did it first, to an underwhelming reaction, should be a warning that this sort of toy is not really going to be the starter some tech companies will be hoping for.

Samsung showed it off at a ceremony ahead of Berlin’s Internationale Funkausstellung, one of the world’s largest trade shows for consumer electronics.

Samsung’s head of mobile spinning  J.K. Shin, introduced the new device by pretending to receive a text message on stage.

“Don’t forget to mention Android,” Mr. Shin’s message read.  Gear runs on Google’s Android operating system.

The Gear has a 1.63 inch screen which can receive e-mails, share pictures and use some apps.

Galaxy Gear has 512mb of RAM and an internal memory of four gigabytes. It has an 800-megahertz, single-core central processing unit and weighs 73.8 grams. Colours include lime green, oatmeal beige, wild orange, mocha gray, jet black and rose gold.

Pranav Mistry, the head of research at Samsung Research America, said the watch was “packed with technologies from the next decade” although somehow we think it is more likely to be packed with apps from the previous decade.

The watch has a rubber wristband which has a fairly pointless 1.9-megapixel camera embedded.

The device is activated by pressing a button on the outer right side of the display or aiming the wristband lens at an object.

If you swipe downward quickly the camera is turned on.

Swiping upwards brings up a number pad where a user can make a call. A user can answer incoming calls by lifting the wrist to an ear. 

The speakers and microphone have been positioned so you can talk as if you were on a regular phone.  It just means that the people on the train will be shouting into their wrists instead of mobiles.

The Gear is set to be released worldwide next month, expected to sell at $199 in the United States.

Broadcom buys Renesas' 4G chip division

Posted: 04 Sep 2013 08:50 AM PDT

Broadcom has announced it will buy the LTE chip segment of Japanese chip maker Renesas.

Although Broadcom has been competing in 4G, rivals such as Qualcomm have been speeding ahead, at least in the consumer space. Renesas, then, seems like a reasonable buy - as it announced it would give up in the 4G space earlier this year, focusing on other segments.

Broadcom shares rose on the news, while the company adjusted its quarterly earning expectations upwards from $2.075 billion to $2.175 billion.

Bob Rango, Broadcom GM in mobile and wireless, announced Renesas chip designers working in Finland, the UK, and India will become Broadcom employees with the buy, but other than that, details are a little sketchy, according to AllThingsD.

Rango pointed out that the team will be made up of ex Nokia folk who had a hand in the earlier 4G wireless standards - and said their experience will be useful.

Broadcom reckons the deal will take a decent chunk out of its fiscal 2014 earnings but ultimately the buy will be useful.

Broadcom boasted earlier this year that it expected the LTE group to generate revenue in 2014. CEO Scott McGregor said at the time that it is working on a "very strong" LTE product.

Right now, Qualcomm is shipping most LTE chips, grabbing 86 percent share over 2012. 

Ministry of Justice loses 164 Blackberrys in a year

Posted: 04 Sep 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Over the past year, the Ministry of Justice has had 164 Blackberry devices lost or stolen.

Harrow West Labour MP Gareth Thomas asked the Secretary of State for Justice how many computers, mobiles, Blackberrys, and other pieces of IT equipment were lost and stolen from the department between the 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13 periods - and if he will make a statement.

Helen Grant, Conservative, of Maidstone and The Weald, replied by saying all laptops and Blackberrys are encrypted and protected with a complex password, and any that are registered as lost or stolen are blocked remotely, "making it impossible for them to be used".

13 PCs or laptops were lost or stolen between 2012 and now, while 57 mobile phones also went missing.

164 pieces of of IT equipment - such as RSA/RAS secure ID tokens, Becrypt encryption tokens and removable media - were lost between 2012 and now.

Grant defended the losses by saying the Ministry adopts government security policy framework requirements to protect its assets, securely.

"Clear processes are in place for notification of any loss, including reporting it to the police," Grant said. "The compliance of staff with policy and guidance is a line management responsibility, and in the event of any breach, disciplinary action may be taken".

Specific sanction, Grant said, is applied to the removal of unencrypted laptops or other official IT equipment. 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)