Friday, February 28, 2014

TechEye

TechEye

Link to TechEye - Latest technology headlines

Apple betrays its Snow Leopard users

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 02:11 AM PST

The Fruity Cargo Cult known as Apple is putting pressure on those who still use its Snow Leopard operating system to carry out an expensive upgrade, by cutting support.

Apple on Tuesday made it clear that it will no longer patch OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, when it again declined to offer a security update for the four-and-a-half-year-old operating system.

Yesterday Apple issued an update for OS X 10.9, as well as for its two predecessors, Mountain Lion (10.8) and Lion (10.7) but nothing for Snow Leopard.

The tame Apple press points out that Apple provided Snow Leopard security updates for slightly more than four years and so users have no real excuse not to upgrade. But it is not as if Apple has actually told users that it wants them to upgrade.

Snow Leopard was also ignored in December, when Apple patched Safari 6 and 7 for newer editions of OS X, but did not update Safari 5.1.10, the most-current Apple browser for the OS.

It looks like Apple delivered the final security update for Snow Leopard in September 2013.

But according to Computerworld   the move leaves one in five Macs open to attack.

Apparently this move is due to Apple's accelerated development and release schedule for OS X, which now promises annual upgrades. The shorter span between editions meant that unless Apple extended its support lifecycle.

None of this would be a problem if Apple actually cared for its customers enough to tell them what was going on. Microsoft and a host of other major software vendors, clearly spell out software support policies so that users know when they have to carry out upgrades.

Apple does not because it assumes that users will upgrade every year and everyone who does not is a heretic and needs to be treated badly. To make matters worse Snow Leopard is Apple’s Windows XP. It is still running fine and users do not see a reason to change it. In fact, some users want to keep running the OS because they hate what Apple has become over recent years, and think the new OS X's user interface is pants.

At the end of January, 19 percent of all Macs were running Snow Leopard, slightly more, in fact, than ran its successor, Lion, which accounted for 16 percent.

Snow Leopard users have given many reasons for hanging on, including some identical to those expressed by Windows XP customers: The OS still works fine for them; their Macs, while old, show no sign of quitting; and they dislike the path that Apple's taken with (UI).

Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X able to run applications designed for the PowerPC processor, the Apple/IBM/Motorola-crafted CPU used by Apple before it switched to Intel in 2006. Snow Leopard, while requiring a Mac with an Intel processor, was the latest edition able to run the Rosetta translation utility, and thus launch PowerPC software.

Additionally, Snow Leopard was the final version able to run on Macs equipped with 32-bit Intel processors, making it impossible for owners of some older machines to upgrade beyond OS X 10.6.

Blackberry still King of Nigeria

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 02:09 AM PST

While Blackberry sales all of the world are tanking, it seems that the Canadian outfit has won the hearts and minds of the people of Nigeria.

According to CNBC Nigeria is one place in the world where Blackberry has not cocked up and it still has nearly half the market.

In fact BlackBerry remains the most popular smartphone on the African continent. A recent survey by South African research firm World Wide Worx showed that BlackBerry now owns 23 percent of the cell phone market in South Africa, up from 18 percent last year. The company also owns 40 percent of the smartphone market in Nigeria, where the company recently announced its first "official" branded retail store on the African continent. More than a third of Africans saying they plan to buy a BlackBerry next year.

The young want them. According to another study of the South African market by World Wide Worx, 57 percent of college students own BlackBerrys. This is probably because of the company's low-cost data packages and free messaging service, which make the smartphone an affordable status symbol for that age group and potentially a transition market for BlackBerry device growth as their spending power grows and BlackBerry continues to expand its upgraded devices.

Analysts are also expecting the smartphone market in Africa will grow driven by improved international connectivity, rollout of mobile broadband networks and greater availability of smartphones.

The average smartphone user in Nigeria today spends 2.5 hours a week browsing the Internet on their smartphone and a similar amount of time using social media. That same consumer will carry out three e-commerce transactions a week on their smartphone.

But much of it depends how much Blackberry can do to hold down its prices. BlackBerry sales in Africa have dropped about 50 percent from 18 months ago and that was due to price. Blackberry has had to deals with Foxconn and take a margin cut to make sure that the situation does not get worse.

The company's strategy in Africa has been to collaborate with regional carriers, offering flat-rate unlimited data plans through BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) that include push email and messaging. This, coupled with BlackBerry's position as the platform of choice for enterprise mobile devices in Africa, means the company will continue to enjoy top position in the region in the short-to-medium term, at least according to IDC. 

British spooks nicked Yahoo webcam pictures

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 02:08 AM PST

British spooks GCHQ nicked and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases.

According to the Guardian, webcam pictures, including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications, from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts were taken globally.

The information came from documents made public by the whistleblower Edward Snowden and Yahoo is incandescent with rage.

The company denied any prior knowledge of the programme, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".

GCHQ wanted to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff, probably to avoid it all being played doing the office Christmas party.

Optic Nerve was still active in 2012, according to an internal GCHQ wiki page accessed that year.

GCHQ wanted to use the pictures for experiments in automated facial recognition and to monitor GCHQ's existing targets, and to discover new targets of interest. Such searches could be used to try to find terror suspects or criminals making use of multiple, anonymous user IDs.

The program saved one image every five minutes from the users' feeds, partly to comply with human rights legislation, and to avoid overloading GCHQ's servers.

One document even likened the program's "bulk access to Yahoo webcam images/events" to a massive digital police mugbook of previously arrested individuals.

Bulk surveillance on Yahoo users was begun, the documents said, because "Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets".

Brit arrested for breaking into Federal Reserve

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 02:07 AM PST

A British bloke with the unfortunate name of Lauri Love has been charged with hacking into computer servers belonging to the US Federal Reserve, and then widely disclosing personal information of people who use them.

Love was cuffed in Blighty four months ago and accused by US and British authorities of hacking into various U.S. government computer systems, including those run by the military.

The Suffolk resident, who is in his late-20s, worked with other hackers from October 2012 to February 2013 to infiltrate the Federal Reserve's system.

Love used a SQL injection to access names, email addresses and phone numbers, and then post the stolen information to a website he controlled after a prior hacking.

Love boasted about his activity in a chatroom under names such as "peace" and "Smedley Butler," once saying he planned to "drop another little federal reserve bomb," meaning he would disclose confidential information.

US Attorney Preet Bharara philosophically defined Love as a sophisticated hacker, however it is not clear how much data was actually nicked.

Love is charged with one count each of computer hacking and aggravated identity theft. If he is extradited to the US he could face a decade in prison on the hacking charge and another two years on the identity theft charge.

Love has entered no plea, which sounds like it should be an internet meme on Facebook. 

IBM conducts secretive job cull

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 02:05 AM PST

The price of taking all those sweeteners from the US government to bolster your business appears to be taking its toll on the ever shrinking Biggish Blue.

IBM needs to make a few job cuts as part of its restructuring, the only problem, according to ComputerWorld  that it has taken cash from various US states to provide them with guaranteed jobs.

IBM is not saying how many people it is letting go, in fact it is not even calling them layoffs. Apparently IBM claims that the clams the cuts are part of a "rebalancing" of its workforce as it invest in new technologies.

The website at the Alliance@IBM, part of the Communications Workers of America union, estimates that between 4,000 to 6,000 IBM US jobs may be at risk in the latest move, a figure based on previous job actions and IBM's restructuring goal of $1 billion.

But this week New York Governer Andrew Cuomo announced that IBM had agreed to create new jobs, as well as maintain minimum staffing levels in the state.

Cuomo claimed New York had reached "a major agreement" with IBM to "maintain 3,100 high-tech jobs in the Hudson Valley and surrounding areas. The company has committed to increase its minimum job commitment to the state by 750 jobs, and maintain the 3,100 jobs through the end of 2016.

IBM spokesman Douglas Shelton said "IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients, and to pioneer new, high value segments of the IT industry".

Shelton said that IBM was moving to cloud computing, analytics and cognitive computing. He pointed to a $1 billion investment in its new Watson unit and the decision to spend $1.2 billion to expand its global cloud footprint.

So, in other words, IBM is laying off huge numbers, but will hire more. At least that is what it is telling New York. New York, which gave IBM tax breaks to set up shop does not see it that way.

But Alliance has noted that IBM is suddenly being very cagey about hiding the numbers of people being laid off, IBM employees used to receive documents listing the age, title and number of employees selected for a job cut. These resource action documents, as they are called, no longer include this information, which makes it difficult for anyone to know the actual details of the lay-offs. It seems that IBM wants to keep details of the cuts secret from everyone including New York. 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

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

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)