TechEye |  |
- Spam protects people from NSA spooks
- Amazon shacks up with HTC
- Oracle becomes open source's Dr Evil
- Apple and Google about to get a kick in the loopholes
- Alcatel-Lucent is stuffed unless it can restructure
- Intel attempts to bluff it out as sales fall
| Spam protects people from NSA spooks Posted: 16 Oct 2013 02:20 AM PDT It turns out that one of the best weapons that ordinary people have against NSA spying is spam. According to the Washington Post, NSA's data-collection activities spend most of their time unable to find the good stuff because they are clogged with spam. The NSA collects hundreds of thousands of address books and contact lists from e-mail services and instant messaging clients per day and is capable of building a map of a target's online relationships. However, the spooks are fast discovering that the bulk of those relationships are with firms wanting investment or to increase the size of people's penises. That is because often email inboxes are packed with spam, or, as in the case of one Iranian address, hijacked by spam malware. According to the post, the Iranian account began sending out bogus messages to its entire address book and connected to thousands of Yahoo e-mail users. The NSA dutifully started spying on the inboxes of all the thousands of people who were receiving the spam. The spam that was not deleted by those recipients kept being scooped up every time the NSA's looked at it. From September 11, 2011 to September 24, 2011, the NSA daily collected somewhere between 2GB and 117GB of data concerning this one Iranian address. If this pattern were repeated a million or so people, the entire NSA database would be packed full of meaningless spam that would tell the spooks nothing about terrorism or crime. |
| Posted: 16 Oct 2013 02:18 AM PDT Online bookseller Amazon is developing three smartphones with HTC to compete with Apple and Google. According to the Financial Times, one device is already in an advanced stage of development. However word on the street is that Amazon may not release it until 2014, if it can be bothered doing so at all. Amazon and HTC could not be immediately reached for comment, but there has been rumour and speculation that the pair would release a phone ever since the bookseller started selling tablets. In 2011, Citigroup said that Amazon would launch a smartphone in 2012 through a partnership with Foxconn. This never came about presumably, as Amazon could not see much of a connection with the other parts of its business. There is also the problem that it had with finding telcos to support its products in Europe. It is not clear what might have changed the bookseller's mind, as it is doing rather well flogging tablets. The FT thinks that selling smartphones could help Amazon foster greater consumer loyalty as people will read content on phones as well as tablets. |
| Oracle becomes open source's Dr Evil Posted: 16 Oct 2013 02:16 AM PDT Oracle has practically declared war on the open source movement and become public enemy number one amongst the weirdie beardy penguin fans. When Larry Ellison wrote a cheque for Sun Microsystems, he became one of the significant Open Source players, something that he was not exactly happy with. His outfit's handling of core Open Source projects such as OpenOffice and MySQL failed to earn any respect from the Free Software community. Then, after Oracle attacked Android with its Java and failed miserably, it lost any remaining mojo it might have had. Now it seems to want to make matters worse by releasing a report attacking Open Sauce. It has published a paper in which it repeats everything that proprietary outfits have been saying about Open Sauce for years. In the paper, Oracle claims that total cost of ownership goes up with the use of open source technologies. It claims that the total cost of ownership for open source software often exceeds that of commercial software. "While minimising capital expenses by acquiring "free" open source software is appealing, the up front cost of any software endeavour represents only a small fraction of the total outlay over the lifecycle of ownership and usage. And while cost effectiveness is important, it must be carefully weighed against mission – effectiveness," the report said. If this sounds familiar it is exactly the sort of stuff which Microsoft was releasing with its research papers until it worked out that it was better to have open source on its side. Oracle said that community developed code is inferior and less secure than company developed products. Apparently, only proprietary code is low on defects and well documented code. "For the intensive, mission critical capabilities required by most DoD projects, Oracle recommends its flagship commercial software products," the report said. Writing in his bog Open Saucer Swapnil Bhartiya pointed out that Oracle needed a reality check on the effectiveness of proprietary software. It needed to deal with its own Java insecurity, it needs to be told how Adobe Flash is a cracker's heaven and how Internet Explorer and Windows are used as 'tools' by crackers to hijack computers, Bhartiya said. |
| Apple and Google about to get a kick in the loopholes Posted: 16 Oct 2013 02:14 AM PDT The long love affair that Apple has with Irish tax loopholes is about to end. According to the Independent, Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan is committed to a crackdown on big business tax avoidance and Jobs’ Mob and Google are going to be targets. The Irish government is under pressure to do something about the low corporation tax rate and its popularity with global brands such as Apple, Facebook and Google. While he has said that the 12.5 percent tax rate will not be touched, Noonan has revealed new plan which will stop multinational corporations being "stateless" for tax purposes. In his Budget 2014 there is a statement on international tax strategy which sets out Ireland's objectives and commitments on global tax and avoidance matters. He has promised to include a reform to ensure that no Irish registered company can be stateless for tax purposes. Ireland is under a fair bit of pressure. The Germans have been pointing out that it seems wacko that it is a bad Irish joke, that they have to bail out the Irish economy when the country is ignoring pots of gold from the likes of Google and Apple. Voters also are cross that they are expected to be austere and lose government services while Apple and Google are laughing all the way to the bank. The new rules to stop stateless companies will apply from January 2015 so Apple and Google will have plenty of time to find a new tax haven. |
| Alcatel-Lucent is stuffed unless it can restructure Posted: 16 Oct 2013 02:12 AM PDT As French Alcatel-Lucent staff march on the company Bastille to complain about job cuts, the company boss has warned that the telecoms company could go under. Alcatel-Lucent has been in the red since 2006 and missed some key technological shifts, its chief executive Michel Combes said. He wants to slash 10,000 jobs worldwide, including 900 in France, and said that the cuts were Alcatel-Lucent's last chance to stem years of losses and turn the company around. Otherwise, he warned, the company could disappear. Reuters reported how Combes told French lawmakers his plan differed from previous attempts to overhaul Alcatel since 2006 and he pledged to find new jobs for all 900 workers facing layoffs in France. He said that the company did have a coherent and complete plan which will fix all the problems the company is facing and get it back on its feet. More than 1,500 Alcatel-Lucent workers marched in Paris on Tuesday to protest against the plan, which involves closing several sites including the Orvault plant in northern France. The Socialist government has pressed Alcatel-Lucent to limit job cuts and CFDT union leader Herve Lassale said workers would try to extract concessions from Combes. The government which wants to end years of de-industrialisation and high unemployment, has warned it could use new labour rules to block the plan. But Combes told lawmakers the firm had little choice but to cut operating costs and consolidate resources around fewer sites after losing $1.08 billion per year since its merger with US firm Lucent Technologies in 2006. He said that his plan sets targets that are key to the survival of the company. Combes took over Alcatel-Lucent in April after being CEO of Vodafone Europe from 2008 to 2012. He abandoned a plan by predecessor Ben Verwaayen that aimed to shut down Alcatel-Lucent's activities in France. |
| Intel attempts to bluff it out as sales fall Posted: 15 Oct 2013 05:08 PM PDT Chip giant Intel (tick: CHIPZILLA) said tonight that its profits had only fallen by less than a percantage point for its Q3 earnings, flying in the face of facts. Intel has lost many able executives over the last several years - those include Kicking Pat Gelsinger, Mike Splinter, Sean Maloney. If Gordon Moore was dead, which he isn't, he'd be turning in his grave, which he isn't. Intel seems reluctant to answer straight questions these days, and has gone back to the model it used to have years back - only talk to journalists you can trust or threaten. As always, Intel was unavailable for comment. |
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