TechEye |  |
- Qualcomm releases two mid-range SoCs
- Google will not make cars
- Imagination flounders
- Wireless exec jailed for Blackberry leak
- Apple’s cunning plan is coming unstuck
- Homeland Security computers insecure
- Italian army runs away from Microsoft
- Computers do not help kids study
- HP will lose 30,000 more jobs
| Qualcomm releases two mid-range SoCs Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:58 AM PDT
The Snapdragon 430 is an octa-core Cortex-A53 chipset, with a clock speed of 1.2GHz. It comes with Quick Charge 3.0 technology, claimed to charge your smartphone up to 80 per cent in half an hour. It also has the X6 integrated LTE modem, supporting Cat.4 LTE download speeds up to 150 Mbps, and 2x10MHz Carrier Aggregation (CA). Upload speeds go up to 75 Mbps (Cat.5). The Snapdragon 617 is a higher end version based around the same octa-core Cortex-A53 setup. It has a higher 1.5GHz clock speed and supports all the features of the Snapdragon 430. It also adds an X8 LTE modem capable of supporting Cat.7 download speeds up to 300 Mbps, and upload speeds up to 100Mbps. The latter is technologically interesting but a long way from being used in the wild. Phones powered by the Snapdragon 617 are expected to arrive before Christmas, while Snapdragon 430 powered devices will be in the shops by the second half of next year. |
| Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:56 AM PDT
The company's managing director for central and eastern Europe Philipp Justus told the Frankfurt auto show that the company was working on cars in partnership with the auto industry, but was not planning to become a car manufacturer. Google has named auto industry veteran John Krafcik, a former CEO of Hyundai Motors America, as chief executive of its self-driving car project. The hiring of Krafcik is seen as a sign the tech giant is starting to look at the project as a potential and relevant business in the future. Google’s pet project of driverless cars started in 2009 with an intention to revolutionise the car industry. However Justus said that it was not something Google could do alone. Google’s partners included automotive suppliers Bosch and zf friedrichshafen. BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are snapping up software experts as tech firms such as Google threaten to outflank them in the race to develop a self-driving car. Software expertise has become a new battleground for automakers and tech firms as cars need lines of code to connect electric car motors to batteries, talk to smartphones or activate brakes when a radar system detects an obstacle ahead. |
| Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:55 AM PDT
Imagination supplies graphics technology to Apple which if that company was doing well should mean that the UK outfit was flush with cash. However, the company forecast a surprise loss for its first half after the semiconductor market turned weaker in the June quarter. The company said overall unit shipments and royalty revenue for the quarter ended 30 June were slightly lower than its expectations, which was likely to lead to a loss for the first six months of its financial year. The announcement has analysts bemused. It means that either the rest of Imagination's business has dropped, or Apple must also being seeing a slump in its business |
| Wireless exec jailed for Blackberry leak Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:52 AM PDT
James Dunham, 60, was also ordered by US District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston to serve five months of home confinement following his prison term and to pay $76,000, after pleading guilty in June to wire fraud. It is being seen as the first case spilling out of its investigations into the black market for secret corporate information that exists outside of insider trading. Dunham, a resident of Glastonbury, Connecticut, was the former chief operating officer of Wireless Zone, which operates over 400 franchise Verizon Wireless outlets. The court claimed that Dunham entered a secret consulting relationship with an analyst at Boston-based financial firm Detwiler Fenton in 2010 to provide wireless industry information in exchange for $2,000 per month. Prosecutors said the information gave the analyst “real time” insight into what happened at the franchiser’s stores and was used for research reports sent to investors. The scheme came to light in April 2013 after Dunham provided information about a company’s new smartphone, prosecutors said. Dunham told the analyst, Jeff Johnston that returns of the Blackberry X exceeded sales at some of the franchiser’s stores, Detwiler Fenton issued a report based on that information. BlackBerry’s stock price subsequently fell 7 percent. The company disputed the report as “false” and urged regulators to investigate. Prosecutors said the information was accurate as far as the franchiser’s stores went, though may not have been with respect to overall sales and returns. |
| Apple’s cunning plan is coming unstuck Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:50 AM PDT
This week it released a Microsoft's Surface clone in a bid to convince businesses that it was a serious company. However, analysts say that Apple's business plans are failing because, unlike the consumer market where brain dead fanboys will buy a dog turd if it had an Apple label, companies have more common sense. They are reluctant to switch software vendors and use an expensive device that lacks specialized business apps, analysts said. Daniel Ives, a senior analyst at FBR Capital Markets said that Apple had tried to focus on the enterprise but over the last two years, it has not been successful. The enterprise market, which is how Apple refers to its business customers, represents 10 percent of its $183 billion annual revenue, he said. It's one big client has been General Electric who gave 305,000 employees the option to use Apple devices at work, with 20,000 iPads and 60,000 iPhones now available in their offices. Just 10,000 of its 170,000 office workers using computers on a regular basis use a Mac. Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said the iPad Pro was faster than 80 percent of portable PCs, signalling that Apple may think the device could replace workplace laptops from companies like Dell and HP. Schiller called the iPad Pro “ideal for professional productivity.” But it is hard to find an analyst, who does not have Apple shares, who thinks that the company will pull it off. The price of its products is one obstacle Apple faces as it tries to move deeper into the enterprise market. The iPad Pro starts at $799 but costs more than $1,000 if buyers also want a keyboard and an optional stylus. That’s more than Apple’s existing tablets as well as devices made by Microsoft and other PC makers like Lenovo. It’s about the same price as Apple’s own MacBook Air, a laptop. The iPad Pro’s biggest competitor is likely Microsoft’s 12-inch Surface Pro 3, also geared towards the business market. It is cheaper and its software plays very nice with office networks. In July, Microsoft said its Surface line of tablets brought in $888 million in the most recent quarter, up 117 percent from the same time last year, boosted in largest part by the Surface Pro 3 and the launch of Surface 3. Keith Bachman, a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets said that while the iPad Pro has a lot of utility and technology that Apple brought to bear but unfortunately the price never goes away as a challenge. In the meantime, Apple has entered into partnerships with IBM and Cisco, aimed at creating more enterprise-friendly software to run on iOS, the Apple operating system, but little is known about these partnerships. |
| Homeland Security computers insecure Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:47 AM PDT
An audit has found lapses in internal systems used by the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security also needs to establish a cyber training program for analysts and investigators, the audit said, with officials from several agencies blaming short-term budget allocations from Congress for their training cuts. “We identified vulnerabilities on internal websites at ICE and USSS that may allow unauthorized individuals to gain access to sensitive data,” according to the report by the Office of the Inspector General for DHS. The websites are used by ICE and Secret Service agents to report investigation statistics, case tracking and information sharing, it said. The audit said the 240,000-employee department has made progress in strengthening cyber coordination between agencies and made nine recommendations, which DHS accepted and said it was working to address. The recommendations come as federal government’s cyber security practices are under intense public scrutiny following recent breaches at the Office of Personnel Management, White House, State Department and other agencies. Officials from ICE, NPPD and the Secret Service told investigators the agencies’ ability to conduct proper training programs has been hampered by the stop-gap funding bills Congress has been passing because of its inability to approve yearlong spending in a timely way. The department needs to come up with a plan to coordinate cyber activities. It would benefit from automated capability for real-time incident information sharing, the report said. |
| Italian army runs away from Microsoft Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:44 AM PDT
The Italian Ministry of Defence will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations – making it Europe's second largest LibreOffice implementation. The migration project will begin in October should be finished by the end of 2016. The deployment of LibreOffice will be jointly managed by the two organisations, announces LibreItalia. The NGO will help the ministry to ready trainers in different parts of the military, and the Ministry is to develop a series of online courses to help with the switch to LibreOffice. The material is to be made public using a Creative Commons licence. An agreement between the Ministry and LibreItalia was signed on 15 September in Rome, by Ruggiero Di Biase, Rear Admiral and General Manager of the Italian Ministry of Defence Information Systems and Sonia Montegiove, President of Associazione LibreItalia. Italy's Agency for the Digitalization of the Public Sector (AGID) congratulates the Ministry of Defence, writes the LibreItalia statement. "It hopes that other organisations may follow." The NGO writes that the switch to LibreOffice is a consequence of a June 2012 law, which says that free and open source should be the default option for the country's public administrations. The Ministry of Defence is the first central government organisation to switch to an open source office productivity suite. However, there are many regions, provinces and city administrations in Italy that use LibreOffice, including the Regione Emilia Romagna, the provinces of Perugia, Cremona, Macerata, Bolzano and Trento, and the cities of Bologna, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia. The project is also one of Europe's largest. The largest European public administration using free software office suites is the French Interior Ministry, with some 240,000 desktops. In France, many ministries use open source office suites such as LibreOffice, including the Tax Agency, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture. LibreOffice is used on some 72,000 PC workstation at the French Gendarmerie. |
| Computers do not help kids study Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:34 AM PDT
A global study from the OECD, penned by Andreas Schleicher says the frequent use of computers in schools is more likely to be associated with lower results. The report looked at the impact of school technology on international test results, such as the Pisa tests taken in more than 70 countries and tests measuring digital skills. It says education systems which have invested heavily in information and communications technology have seen “no noticeable improvement” in Pisa test results for reading, mathematics or science. “If you look at the best-performing education systems, such as those in East Asia, they’ve been very cautious about using technology in their classrooms,” said Schleicher. “Those students who use tablets and computers very often tend to do worse than those who use them moderately.” The British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) says schools have £619m in budgets for ICT, with £95m spent on software and digital content. But Schleicher says the “impact on student performance is mixed at best”. •Students who use computers very frequently at school get worse results “One of the most disappointing findings of the report is that the socio-economic divide between students is not narrowed by technology, perhaps even amplified,” said Schleicher. Classroom technology can be a distraction and result in pupils cutting and pasting “prefabricated” homework answers from the internet. The study shows “there is no single country in which the internet is used frequently at school by a majority of students and where students’ performance improved”. Among the seven countries with the highest level of internet use in school, it found three experienced “significant declines” in reading performance – Australia, New Zealand and Sweden – and three more had results that had “stagnated” – Spain, Norway and Denmark. The countries and cities with the lowest use of the internet in school – South Korea, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Japan – are among the top performers in international tests. |
| Posted: 16 Sep 2015 12:33 AM PDT
The purge will occur within the newly formed Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a bundle of technology divisions focused on software, consulting and data analysis that is splitting off from the company’s personal computer and printing operations. The spinoff will be completed by the end of next month, dooming 25,000 to 30,000 jobs within HP Enterprise. The target means 10 to 12 percent of the 252,000 workers joining HP Enterprise will lose their jobs as part of the company’s effort to reduce its expenses by $2 billion annually. About 50,000 workers will remain at HP, which become the new name for the company retaining the PC and printer operations. This means that since CEO Meg Whitman took control of the company more than 88,000 people have collected their layoff notices. Mostly the problems have been caused by acquisitions that have not panned out and a slump in PC sales. HP’s layoffs have been demoralizing blow to a company that provided a template for future Silicon Valley entrepreneurs when William Hewlett and David Packard founded it 76 years ago. Hewlett and Packard later embraced an employee-friendly philosophy that became known as the “HP Way.” The HP Way was more or less killed off by the winsome CEO Carly Fiorina who is now a candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 2016 race for president. Fiorina engineered a $25 billion acquisition of PC maker Compaq that angered many shareholders, including heirs of the company’s founders. She cut more than 30,000 jobs before she was fired. Still HP remains one of the world’s biggest technology companies. HP Enterprise expects to have more than $50 billion in annual revenue. “Hewlett Packard Enterprise will be smaller and more focused than HP is today,” Whitman promised in a Tuesday statement. |
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