Wednesday, October 2, 2013

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Intel under attack on server front

Posted: 02 Oct 2013 03:50 AM PDT

Mighty X86 firm Intel looks as if it might have a new vulnerable point – and this time it’s on the server front.

According to Silicon Valley News, Applied Micro Circuits is on the verge of releasing a low power semiconductor aimed at the server market. Analysts believe, according to the report, that it will lose market share to the Sunnyvale minnow.

Intel, most believe, has already lost the plot against ARM and the army of low cost tablets and smartphones with sales of notebooks and PCs under threat.

Its position has been protected in the server market where it currently dominates the market although servers based on ARM architecture are expected to nibble at Chipzilla’s server gravy chain.

The Applied Micro processor – dubbed the X Gene – will be adopted by Hewlett Packard, according to the report.

Aussie studio tries to silence YouTube lecture

Posted: 02 Oct 2013 03:46 AM PDT

An Aussie music label appears to have bitten off more than it can chew after it tried to censor a copyright lawyer’s YouTube Lecture.

For some reason, Liberation Music thought it would be a wizard wheeze to force a Harvard law professor, Lawrence Lessig, to take down his South Korean lecture which contained snippets of a song.

It is clear that the studio did not think very hard before it issued the take-down notice, in fact it had software patrolling YouTube looking for offences and its stupidity was apparently automatic.

According to OPD, the studio’s software, ContentID, automatically issues take down notices whenever computers detect its songs, without taking fair use allowances into consideration.

Unfortunately for Liberation Music, Lessig wants to make an example of it to stop this sort of thing happening again.

Liberation is yet to file a defence to Lessig's complaint, which has been filed in the US District Court in Masschusetts.

Lessig told the court that Liberation Music "enforces its purported rights robotically" and made no effort to examine whether his alleged breach fell within the "fair use" limits of copyright law.

The 49-minute lecture on content collaboration, Lessig demonstrates "call and response" communication through five examples of home-made videos of people dancing along to the hit song Lisztomania by French band Phoenix. Each clip lasts between 10 and 47 seconds and Professor Lessig spoke throughout the songs.

When Lessig questioned the YouTube takedown order he received another automatic response from Liberation Music  threatening legal action against him.  It warned him that he could be facing a $150,000 fine if he didn’t do what he was told.

Liberation Music has implemented and enforced a policy of issuing take-down notices automatically whenever its content is used on YouTube, Lessig said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation backs Lessig.  It wants a federal judge to rule that the video is lawful fair use, to stop Liberation Music from making such legal threats, and to award damages.

This will mean an end to the use of automated detection processes stifling legitimate fair uses of copyrighted material, particularly in the United States.

Bring us the head of Bill Gates

Posted: 02 Oct 2013 03:30 AM PDT

Microsoft shareholders are in a feeding frenzy after CEO Steve Ballmer announced he was quitting and they now want the head of Bill Gates.

It appears that getting rid of Ballmer was not enough and they want to purge Microsoft of its past leadership.

Reuters said that three of the top 20 investors in Microsoft are lobbying the board to press for Gates to step down as chairman of the software company he co-founded 38 years ago.

This is the first time that major shareholders are taking aim at Gates, who has never been questioned until now.

There is probably not a bat’s chance in hell of them succeeding. The three investors collectively hold about five percent of the company's stock. This is slightly more than Gates himself holds so this would be a problem if only he and they were the only people voting.

Apparently the three think that Gates blocks the adoption of new strategies and would limit the ability of a new chief executive to make substantial changes. They are worried about Gates' role on the special committee searching for Ballmer's successor.

They are also worried that Gates has too much power over the company.

Gates once owned 49 percent of Microsoft before it went public in 1986.  He is selling 80 million Microsoft shares a year under a pre-set plan, which if continued would leave him with no financial stake in the company by 2018.

But the head-hunting shareholders clearly smell blood after Ballmer said he would retire within 12 months, amid pressure from activist fund manager ValueAct Capital Management.

There is also some support from other shareholders for the move, although there are probably more that want Gates to stay.

When Gates was in charge, Microsoft had a visionary and now it doesn’t, one shareholder told Reuters. Shares of Microsoft have been static for a decade.

The feeling is that Gates was more effective as chief executive than as chairman. 

Edward Snowden shortlisted for Sakharov prize

Posted: 02 Oct 2013 03:16 AM PDT

While the US government is attempting to cast Edward Snowden in the role of a traitor for exposing its abysmal treatment of its own citizens, in the EU he has been shortlisted for a top human rights award.

Snowden, the fugitive American former intelligence worker, has made the shortlist of three for Europe's top human rights award - the Sakharov prize.

According to RT, Snowden was nominated by Green politicians in the European Parliament for leaking details of US surveillance.

Other nominees also include Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head for demanding education for girls. The third nominee is a group of Belarusian political dissidents jailed in 2010 for protesting against the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko. So, some tough competition from people who suffered for their stands for human rights.

Former recipients of the prize, awarded by the European Parliament, include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Snowden's nomination recognised that his whistleblowing was an "enormous service" to human rights and European citizens, the parliament's Green group said.

The Sakharov prize for freedom of thought is awarded annually in memory ofAndrei Sakharov, a Soviet scientist and dissident.  The winner of this year's prize will be announced on 10 October. 

Samsung fudges Note 3 benchmark

Posted: 02 Oct 2013 03:08 AM PDT

Samsung has been caught out fudging the benchmarks of its Galaxy Note 3.

Ars Technica was testing the the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and noticed that it was scoring rather well on the official benchmark tests.

The reviewers smelt a rat when they noticed that Samsung's 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 did really well against LG's 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800.

What appeared to be happening was that Samsung was boosting the US Note 3's benchmark scores with a special, high-power CPU mode that kicks in when the device runs popular benchmarking apps.

This is not the first time that Samsung has been caught out. In fact the same trick was tried with the international Galaxy S 4's GPU.

Now it seems that Samsung is playing the same game in the US.

After a bit of research, Ars worked out how to disable this special CPU mode, so for the first time we can see just how much Samsung's benchmark optimisations affect benchmark scores.

Normally while the Note 3 is idling, three of the four cores shut off to conserve power and the last core drops down to a low-power 300MHz mode.

When a CPU benchmarking app is open, the Note 3 CPU locks into 2.3GHz mode and the cores never shut off.

Using Geekbench's multicore test, the Note 3's benchmark mode gives the device a 20 percent boost over its "natural" score. With the benchmark stripped away, the Note 3 drops down to LG G2 levels.

Looking that the java code on the phone they found an app which tweaks Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack, GFXBench, and even some of Samsung's own benchmarks.

Ironcially with the benchmark booster disabled, the Note 3 still comes out faster than the G2 in this test, so it was entirely an unnecessary fudge. Samsung could still say that would have won the benchmark races, just not by as much as it did.

Having been caught out, no one will actually believe that the Samsung phone was ever faster. Own goal or what? 

Does you have access to web analytics on your stories?

Posted: 01 Oct 2013 12:02 PM PDT

A well respected PR company based in London has released a survey that indicates journalists are being shafted by their publishers.

No surprises there then.

Kaizo invited British national and trade hacks to comment on whether publishers put pressure on their workers – data gatherers as some of these buggers call their journalists – based on web analytics.

Some of the results are most surprising. Kaizo asked: “Does you have access to, are given, web analytics data on your stories.” Despite the interesting “does you have” phrase, 33 percent of hacks weren’t given access to web analytics on their stories.

According to Kaizo, half – well 48 percent – said that analytics did play a role.

A majority of the hacks thought web analytics provided an insight into the readership.

Now, here’s a bit of my opinion – ‘cos I’m allowed to. Journalists should ignore focus groups and publishers putting pressure on them because – let’s face it, PR companies, vendors and publishing companies are triplets joined at the hip. Journalists never should be influenced by such considerations.

The interesting thing is that Kaizo didn’t dare to break out the journalists by publisher. So we suspect the worst.

Kaizo did say web analytics “pose a risk to journalistic independance (sic)” – indicating to this particular hack that Kaizo should hire some good sub editors, like what I am, init? There's more of this controversial stuff - here.

India freezes Nokia assets over alleged unpaid tax

Posted: 01 Oct 2013 08:22 AM PDT

Indian tax authorities have jumped on Nokia, freezing some of the company's assets over an allegedly unpaid tax bill.

The Indian Income Tax Department, the Wall Street Journal reports, wants to make sure Nokia has enough cash in the bank to pay roughly 39.97 billion rupees - a hefty, but not unmanageable, $365 million.

If the tax bill isn't sorted out, the whole palaver could impact Nokia's sale of its handset business to Microsoft. It has a manufacturing plant in the southern state of India Nadu, which happens to be one of its biggest. Some of the frozen assets were included in Microsoft's $7 billion Nokia buyout.

The company still sells in the country at a high volume, and it is just behind China in market value for Nokia.

But Nokia spokesperson Brett Young told the WSJ he was quietly confident. "Nokia has sufficient assets in India to meet its tax obligations, details of which will be shared with the tax authorities to allay any concerns they may have". 

"We went to court, and got a ruling in our favour on Thursday, the bank accounts were unfrozen," Young sort-of explained.

It's unlikely the assets will heavily impact on the deal but they could complicate it, and potentially put off other top investors from India, analysts warn. But the Indian state is steadfast in going after perceived tax evasions from foreign companies, including Vodafone, Cadbury, Royal Dutch Shell, General Electric, and BMW AG.
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