TechEye |  |
- Boeing groeing tough battery tests for Dreamliners
- ARM waves goodbye to CEO Warren East
- Gates rules out presidential run
- In the US, hackers are the new witches
- Windows 8 tablets to find their home in enterprise
- Jobs flick delayed for marketing reasons
- Next Windows OS rumoured to arrive next year
- AstraZeneca to slash jobs
- EA Games CEO falls on his sword
- Blackberry claims Apple's rotten in fruity punch
| Boeing groeing tough battery tests for Dreamliners Posted: 19 Mar 2013 05:05 AM PDT Boeing is desperately trying to get its 787 Dreamliner fleet back into the air and it is now testing the plane's volatile Li-Ion battery system to a rigorous standard that it helped develop itself. The strict new standard was never employed on the Dreamliner and in retrospect it might have been a good idea to run the tests before it was pressed into service. The Dreamliner was the first commercial jet to use lithium ion batteries, which are a great way to save a bit of weight, but in some cases they can be more dangerous than exploding footwear and underwear. Following a couple of highly publicised battery incidents, the Dremliner fleet was grounded in January. Since the battery tech was all new, the FAA had to approve a set of special conditions for fire safety on the Dreamliner in 2007. A Boeing committee issued a set of guidelines in March 2008 to minimise the risk of Li-Ion batteries. However, Boeing never had to meet the more stringent guidelines. The FAA never required it and Boeing chose to ignore them. Boeing is now scrambling to get the Dreamiliner battery system up to spec and apply the tougher RTCA standard, published in 2008. However, it seems like it is too little too late. Former NTSB board member John Goglia told Reuters that Boeing's decision to use the tandard is basically an admission that the company didn't do a good job to begin with. Last month, the NTSB questioned the assumptions made by Boeing and the FAA during the battery certification process in 2007. A Boeing spokesperson said the RTCA standard was not used because the it came too late, after Boeing had completed certification. Boeing is about one-third through testing under the stricter RTCA standard and it is likely to get the job done in a couple of weeks. It is still unclear when the Dreamliner fleet will start flying again.        |
| ARM waves goodbye to CEO Warren East Posted: 19 Mar 2013 04:03 AM PDT ARM has announced that it will be saying goodbye to its chief executive officer, Warren East. While ARM has its CEO replacement all sewn up, arch rival Intel is still on the hunt since Paul Otellini said he would be retiring in May. After announcing his retirement in November, Intel named three executive vice presidents, Krzanich, Smith and James, and hinted that one of these could end up taking Otellini's role. Since then it has thrown a curve ball. In February it was reported that the company had hired Spencer Stuart and Associates to aid it in it quest to find its next CEO, which sources said showed the company was now seeking an external candidate.     |
| Gates rules out presidential run Posted: 19 Mar 2013 02:31 AM PDT Software King of the World Sir William Gates III has ruled out ever running for political office. There had been a few rumours that with his cash, Gates might make a run for president. After all he is a name and a known successful businessman and the US likes that sort of thing. Gates has also made it clear that he wants to change the world, and what better way to do that if you are sitting on the throne of the world's largest empire? However, Gates thinks that the office of president is over rated and he can have more of an impact on the world with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation than he would as a politician. Gates told the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that his current role doesn't require him to "try to get elected," nor does it "have term limits of eight years," as do some elected American offices. He also does not have to waste time having to invade other countries looking for weapons of mass destruction. Drones are overkill for mosquitos. According to the Mesh Report, Gates said that he will work full time for the rest of his life in philanthropy. That job does not rule out offering the US president advice from time to time. In a wide-ranging talk, Gates discussed his foundation's work fighting polio, and encouraged entrepreneurs to develop technology that helps both rich and poor.     |
| In the US, hackers are the new witches Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:48 AM PDT Over the pond, the US Justice Department has become so paranoid about hackers that it is bringing about a prosecution campaign which seems to take the Salem Witch trials for inspiration. This week Andrew Auernheimer was jailed for 41 months because he dared to obtain the personal data of more than 100,000 iPad owners from AT&T's publicly accessible website. Let's be clear about this, he did not hack anyone - he just visited the non-public bit of AT&T's server and downloaded the details. In what was later described as a witch trial, Auernheimer, 26, was found guilty of one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorisation after he and a colleague created a program to collect information on iPad owners that had been exposed by a security hole in AT&T's web site. Basically the pair wrote a program to send Get requests to the website. It is fairly clear that neither the prosecutors knew or cared about technology and the jury was following their lead. What was important was that they managed to get a conviction based around the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This law cannot make clear distinctions between criminal hacking and simple unauthorised access and to protect researchers whose activities are not criminal in intent. It basically means that security experts now are allowed to operate in the US only if a prosecutor does not decide to arrest them. This means that any sensible security expert will probably want to work for North Korea, where they are not likely to be arrested for helping the IT industry. One researcher, Charlie Miller, tweeted that any security researcher could be facing the same fate as Auernheimer. The two made no money from their hack and contacted Gawker to report the hole. Gawker reported at the time that the vulnerability was discovered by a group calling itself Goatse Security. Auernheimer told the court that what he had done was essentially walking down the street and writing down the physical addresses of buildings, only to be charged with identity theft. He later sent an e-mail to the US attorney's office in New Jersey, blaming AT&T for exposing customer data, authorities say. "AT&T needs to be held accountable for their insecure infrastructure as a public utility and we must defend the rights of consumers, over the rights of shareholders," he wrote, according to prosecutors. "I advise you to discuss this matter with your family, your friends, victims of crimes you have prosecuted, and your teachers for they are the people who would have been harmed had AT&T been allowed to silently bury their negligent endangerment of United States infrastructure." Prosecutors say that is all well and good, but they showed the court 150 pages of chat logs from an IRC channel where Spitler and Auernheimer admitted conducting the breach to tarnish AT&T's reputation and promote themselves and Goatse Security. So this means they were doing it for some form of gain. The prosecutor's attitude is odd. Surely any company promoting itself by showing a need for its services should be banged up. All this puts the US in a difficult position. On one hand the Empire is suffering from hacking attacks on companies with huge security holes. At the same time it is locking up anyone who exposes those security holes. The end result will be all the security experts will shut up about the US and give the nation over to hackers elsewhere. They will move offshore where their skills are appreciated.     |
| Windows 8 tablets to find their home in enterprise Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:45 AM PDT While the rest of the world is not saying much about Windows 8 on tablets, it seems that it has found a loyal supporter in the analyst community. So far Microsoft's Surface tablets have missed sales expectations among average consumers, and Samsung pulled the plug on some of its Windows RT tablets. But according to a white paper by Patrick Moorhead, former AMD executive and current analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, Volish tablets will find their footing in the enterprise. Moorhead wrote that tablets first penetrated the enterprise even though iPads were not ideal for the workplace. iPads were too expensive and only had limited enterprise features. According to HotHardware this made them the rounded rectangle in a round hole. Now there are shedloads of lower-power tablets that run full versions of Windows 8 instead of a mobile OS hitting the market, and so options for companies are better. He said that there were lots of advantages of Windows 8-based tablets over iPads. Firstly the batteries can be configured to last up to twice as long, and HP in particular lets enterprise customers replace the battery and PCB quickly. Windows 8 tablets are compatible with Windows 7 and all of the applications and features that go along with it, and they offer "the same comprehensive PC enterprise features deployed and already in use by enterprises". iPads and Windows tablets cost the same although some of the Windows devices cost more up front. But companies save big bucks on the software management tools they need to buy versus iPads. Moorhead wrote that Apple was in a precarious position of needing to add more robust enterprise features. He recommends that enterprises "re-evaluate" their iPad pilots and deployments. Moorhead said that Windows 8 tablets from the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo appear to be clearly better options in the enterprise. One thing that is missing from the report is a recommendation for Microsoft's own Surface machine, but Redmond, it seems, can't have everything.     |
| Jobs flick delayed for marketing reasons Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:42 AM PDT The Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher has had its release delayed indefinitely for "marketing reasons". While many would find this deeply ironic given that Jobs lived and died by the marketing sword, word on the strasse is that no one wants to release it because the flick is total toilet. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the first Steve Jobs biopic, Jobs, has had its release date pushed back from 19 April in North America to an indefinite date. The reason given by the distributors is that the film is being delayed for marketing reasons, they want to get a bit of a buzz about the flick, so that people talk about it. However, Jobs was still in the public eye after the film was made and he is fading from view as his empire starts to collapse after his passing. Many believe that the film has been delayed because it is being re-cut, with perhaps a few scenes re-shot. But that covers for the fact that the film has been damned by almost everyone who has seen either it or the script. Firstly there was a problem with the name. It was once called iJobs, but was mysteriously changed to just Jobs at the beginning of the year. Jobs, which also starred Dermot Mulroney and Matthew Modine, showed Steve Jobs' life from college drop-out to Apple visionary from 1971 to 2001. It would be an amazing, super, cool, paradigm shifting game-changer. The reality was that Jobs the film was only marginally more interesting than Jobs the person at that age. When the film was shown at Sundance, it was greeted by a collective yawn and these are from the same people who stayed awake during those really long Bergman films. More damning was the response from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to the first clip from the film, in which he is portrayed, by Josh Gad, talking to Kutcher's Jobs. Wozniak described the scene as "totally wrong". He then participated in some damning interviews saying that his relationship with Jobs was totally different. Wozniak told The Verge that he had been approached to work on the film but turned the offer down after he "read a script as far as I could stomach it and felt it was crap". He thought it over-emphasised Jobs' drug use. True, Woz has signed up to work the Aaron Sorkin-penned, rival Steve Jobs biopic, being produced by Sony, so he might be a little biased. That flick is based on the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, and sounds suitably weird. Apparently it will comprise only three scenes, shot in real time. No badgers will be injured in the filming. Sorkin told Mashable "you should think of it as a painting, not a photograph" all of which sounds totally pretentious so it is exactly the sort of memorial that Jobs would have wanted.     |
| Next Windows OS rumoured to arrive next year Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:09 AM PDT The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured another hell on earth yarn which suggests that Microsoft plans to release another version of Windows next year. The word on the street is that the Voles are beavering away on Windows 9 which will hit the streets a year from November next. It is not clear why anyone will feel the need to upgrade to Windows 9 before Windows 8 takes off. Many users are in the same boat as us deciding that Windows 7 is good enough. Others even think that a line should be drawn at Windows XP. The source of the rumours is Win8China, which has provided several good Windows leaks in the past. It said that Redmond is working on Windows 9 for a tentative November 2014 product launch, and it would be as early as next January where we will be able to check out a beta. This is around the time of year that we would be expecting a Windows yearly operating system update. All up, this does make it possible that Windows 9 could have a November 2014 release. It is also possible that Steve "there is a kind of hush" Ballmer has worked out that making people pay for regular short term upgrades, like Apple, is a better business model than making them pay for a bigger one every three or four years.     |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:07 AM PDT AstraZeneca has become the latest company to issue P45s.     |
| EA Games CEO falls on his sword Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:00 AM PDT EA's DRM has finished off the somewhat chequered career of Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. Riccitiello's obsession with DRM appears to have killed off the launch of the flagship SimCity game which was supposed to make a huge killing for the outfit. Despite the realisation that the DRM was not working, Riccitiello insisted that EA stick to its guns and in the process managed to stuff up the launch completely. It was not the first time that Riccitiello had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He has been in the driving seat of the company during a fairly hairy six year period and EA's results have been suffering. According to Mercury, he will be replaced in the interim by former CEO Larry Probst, whom EA named as its executive chairman. In his letter to staff Riccitiello said he was "accountable" for the company missing operational targets. He warned that EA's results are likely also to fall short of the company's internal plan. Riccitiello is quitting as a member of EA's board. Probst, formerly EA's nonexecutive chairman, will oversee daily operations of the company. Probst was EA's CEO from 1991 to 2007, when he was replaced by Riccitiello. His rule was not a total cock-up. When he took over, EA was in trouble for underestimating the popularity of Nintendo's Wii console and overestimating the initial popularity of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. He did manage to turn that situation around. However, after archrival Activision merged with Vivendi Games, EA was no longer the world's largest video game company and it had to compete with free and low-cost games from Facebook and on mobile devices. Riccitiello changed strategy repeatedly to adapt, first shifting to the Wii and then back to the Xbox. EA also embraced social gaming buy buying PlayFish and mobile game developer PopCap. But the plans did not always work. It took Riccitiello five years to get the company into the black and the numbers started to talk against it as it posted more losses this year. EA needed a big money spinner and the high-profile launch of a new SimCity game should have helped. Unfortunately EA loaded the game with some DRM which overloaded servers that prevented owners from authenticating and playing the game. Rather than pulling the plug on the DRM, EA said that it would be expensive and take a lot of developer time. This angered staff who apparently had not wanted the DRM either and leaked their displeasure online. Another one of Riccitiello's stuff ups was "Star Wars: The Old Republic" which initially looked promising. It was an attempt to create a multiplayer online game that would rival Activision-Blizzard's World of Warcraft. But it didn't. Investors seemed happy at the news of Riccitiello's exit and EA's stock was up 47 cents to $19.18.     |
| Blackberry claims Apple's rotten in fruity punch Posted: 18 Mar 2013 08:51 AM PDT The Australian Financial Review bagged a scoop this week when Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins declared the iPhone is pretty much dated technology. Heins said that there is an increasing excitement towards non-Apple smartphones and the enthusiasm for Samsung's S4 signified this. Heins said that, for him, Apple's role was to bring touch devices to market - not neccessarily true, but at least in a popular sense. "They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon," Heins said. "There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that". However, he went on to say that the rate of innovation in mobile is so high that if you're not constantly improving then you can "be replaced pretty quickly". Heins can be credited with giving the Blackberry a revamp, but this is somewhat ironic considering the lineage of the devices. "The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old," Heins said. The exec claimed the new Blackberry phones are better than the iPhone i multitasking apps, of course, the same could be said for Android. Meanwhile, instead of presenting a united front against Apple, HTC executives have been slamming the latest Samsung product, the S4. President Jason MacKenzie told CNET Samsung focused on marketing rather than genuine innovation. Heins went on to say that he imagines there will be 100,000 apps ready for the company's Z10 launch this week. We will see: for now, he said the firm is "working constantly on getting these important apps on board".     |
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