Archive for February, 2010
Microsoft has withdrawn a copyright complaint against the Cryptome site over its publication of internal Microsoft guidelines for how the software giant can provide user data to law enforcement.
Cryptome, a watchdog site that publishes sensitive corporate and government documents, was taken offline after Microsoft complained Wednesday about its publishing the document “Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook,” also referred to as Microsoft’s Surveillance Guide, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Microsoft on Thursday morning notified Network Solutions that it was withdrawing its complaint and the domain registrar put the Cryptome site back online, said Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade.
Links to the Microsoft guide were in the Cryptome site late on Thursday. The site also includes what it calls “lawful spy guides” from PayPal, MySpace, Facebook, Cox and Yahoo, among other companies.
A Microsoft spokesperson did not say why the company has reversed its stance.
“Like all service providers, Microsoft must respond to lawful requests from law enforcement agencies to provide information related to criminal investigations,” a Microsoft spokesperson had said in earlier a statement. “We take our responsibility to protect our customers privacy very seriously, so have specific guidelines that we use when responding to law enforcement requests. In this case, we did not ask that this site be taken down, only that Microsoft copyrighted content be removed. We are requesting to have the site restored and are no longer seeking the document’s removal.”
Here’s an idea for Google’s next TV ad: how the search engine can help find a corporate lawyer in Brussels.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that in the tit-for-tat corporate battle between Google and Microsoft, the latest tactic is a complaint to the European Commission. Microsoft, which is behind at least one of the complaints about Google now being reviewed, knows full well the impact of a European inquiry.
After all, for the better part of two decades, Microsoft has been subject to inquiries by European antitrust regulators concerned about its bundling of products like Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. The outcome has been heavy fines and Microsoft’s agreement to change certain business practices. Microsoft agreed, for instance, to ship its Windows 7 operating system in Europe with at least 10 Internet browsers.
That settlement occurred even as Microsoft’s share of the browser market is declining. Then there is the toll on management’s time that these inquiries take. It doesn’t help that Google already is facing U.S. regulatory scrutiny over its book-digitization project and its proposed purchase of a mobile-ad firm.
Still, investors needn’t be too rattled just yet. Yes, Google clearly has a dominant share of the European search market, with 78.9% in January, according to comScore, more than a dozen percentage points above its U.S. share. But simply having a dominant share isn’t illegal, even in Europe. And the inquiry at this point is preliminary.
What is more, it may help Google that Microsoft is responsible for one of the complaints.
Knowing Microsoft’s history, regulators may be a little skeptical.
The two companies are going head to head on everything from search, office applications software like email and word processing, mobile and even computer operating systems.
Of course, in the 1990s Microsoft blamed its competitors for the antitrust inquiries it endured, an excuse that clearly didn’t wash then. While inquiries in themselves won’t derail Google, investors shouldn’t ignore their ability to crimp a company’s room for maneuver.
That sound you heard coming from the general direction of Italy earlier this week was the sound the Internet makes when it becomes just a little bit less free.
When an Italian court convicted three senior Google executives for breach of privacy, sentencing them yesterday to a six-month suspended sentence, it set a dangerous precedent. Unless the case is turned over on appeal, such a precedent could force every Web services provider on the planet — including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft — to be completely accountable for every piece of text, audio, and video that any Average Joe decides to upload to his servers.
Four bullies, many victims
The case revolves revolved around footage uploaded to Google Video in September 2006 that depicted a group of four teenagers beating up a Down Syndrome child. It was the site’s most-viewed video before Google received complaints and removed it two months later. Prosecutors said the video violated the victim’s privacy and that Google should have moved more quickly to remove it from its servers. They originally charged four executives with violating Italy’s privacy laws and with defamation. They convicted three of them — chief legal officer David Carl Drummond, ex-CFO George De Los Reyes, and privacy director Peter Fleischer — on the privacy counts and acquitted them of defamation. The fourth defendant, Arvind Desikan, was cleared of all charges. (The four bullies were convicted in youth court.)
The executives are expected to appeal — not to avoid jail, because the judge imposed suspended sentences on all of them, but to ensure the outcome doesn’t force monumentally impossible data and content management rules onto every Web services operator on the planet. Such legislative-imposed oversight, unthinkable at first and every blush, would be akin to asking AT&T to vet every phone call made by every landline and mobile subscriber. “Ridiculous” only begins to describe the prospect.
It’s all in the definition
Which would be lovely and workable if, like the average newspaper, Google exclusively published its own material. But it doesn’t. It facilitates the publishing of material submitted by millions of subscribers. It’s one thing to be the gatekeeper of material submitted by a hundred or so reporters and editors, and quite another to run infrastructure that manages an endless torrent of material submitted by countless, usually anonymous, end users. It’s massively shocking and more than a little disappointing that the judge in this case allowed such a definition to stand, and serves as yet another reminder that the court system, in Italy and elsewhere, continues to lag the rapid evolution of technology and its impact on common behaviors in society.
When a ruling can’t stand
I believe this case will be turned over on appeal because the standard of care for publishers of their own content is necessarily different — by virtue of the much lower, controllable level of content — than the standard of care of providers who host sites that publish user-provided content.
If, however, my worst nightmare comes true and the ruling stands, then the climate within which services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and YouTube (which Google bought soon after the offending Italian video was posted to Google Video) will become very chilly, very quickly. Believers in the Apocalypse could easily conclude that these services would all cease to exist after being shuttered by owners freaked out by the daunting prospect of actively monitoring so much content in real-time.
The rest of us know, of course, that this won’t ever happen, but that doesn’t mean the Italian judiciary’s message hasn’t resonated deeply in communities around the world. We’ve gotten the message, Italy, that services like Google need to do a better job policing what goes on in their own backyard. We’ve also learned, again thanks to the Italian court, that it’s time to get back to reality and figure out workable frameworks within which that can actually happen. Convicting their senior leaders using legislation designed for the dinosaur media age isn’t the answer. Instead, nations interested in protecting their Internet-using citizens need to leverage appropriate government or quasi-government bodies to put partner with them to enhance end user privacy and balance individual protections against the risk of heavy-handed censorship.
In assessing the merits of the case against Google, the court chose to define Google as an Internet content provider and not an Internet service provider. We all know that the average ISP simply doesn’t have the cycles to actively monitor and respond to everything its users do online. The Italian justice system gets that, too. And in defining Google as a content provider, instead, it chose to lump the company into the same boat as newspapers, magazines, television broadcasters and other conventional media outfits.
Apple has been sanitizing its app store with the zeal of a ’50s-era television-commercial housewife. Sexually provocative, sexually suggestive and sexually reminiscent apps have been purged from the store, reassuring consumers that they’ll never have to see a bikini again, provided they stare intently at the app store for the rest of their lives and don’t turn on a TV or anything.
Also, as long as they don’t download the Sports Illustrated app — it hasn’t been scrubbed from Apple’s store, presumably because the models are professional bikini athletes competing in the National Bikini League.
“Look,” the high-ranking Apple representative said, “We give away a free porn hose with every iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s called ‘Safari.’ Did you knew there’s a search engine in there? Try typing ‘porn’ into it. Or ‘bikini.’ Or ‘all-girl MILF dildo gangbang.’ Seriously, there’s everything you want to see and lots of stuff you don’t ever want to see.”
The concern over bikini apps apparently goes straight to the top of Apple.
“We showed the sales reports to Steve [Jobs] and he was shocked and alarmed by the number of people downloading apps with ‘boobs’ in the title,” said my anonymous and completely made-up contact. “He said, ‘Don’t people know they can get this stuff for free?’ You know Steve, he’s all about user interface. We considered changing the App Store so that when you enter ‘boobs’ it says, ‘The web is that way, stupid!’ We also thought maybe we should change the browser’s name from ‘Safari’ to ‘SexSurf’ or ‘NudeWeb’ or possibly ‘More Naked Pictures Than Any One Human Being Could View in a Hundred Lifetimes.’ In the end, we decided that you can only hold someone’s hand so far, especially when you don’t know where that hand’s been.
“I swear,” my contact continued, downing another shot of cheap Scotch. “We even made it so you can turn web pages into apps. Little rounded rectangles of titillation, right there on your screen!”
Think different, OK?
“You think we did this for ourselves?” my totally invented anonymous source said. “You think Apple doesn’t want to collect money from people who are willing to pay a buck to see something you could see for free by typing ‘Baywatch intro’ into YouTube? Let me tell you, it’s a ton of money, but we feel a responsibility to empower adults to act like adults and find tiny pictures of large breasts without having us lead them the entire way.
“That’s why they call it ‘adult entertainment,’ right?”
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)Yes, things really happen that way. Only this time, somebody is going like it very much.
Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Ga., just won Apple’s iTunes Countdown to 10 Billion Songs contest with the purchase of Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen That Way.” This also means the song is the 10 billionth song downloaded from Apple’s Store using iTunes.
With his purchase, Salcer got the best deal ever for an online music purchase, a gift certificate for music worth $10,000.
Apple announced the contest and started the countdown earlier this month as the number of songs downloaded from its store got closer to the 10 billion milestone. The company started selling music in 2003, ever since, on average, about 1.4 billion songs are downloaded each year. By far, it’s become the biggest online music retailer.
What’s most interesting is the fact that during the time of the contest, Johnny Cash’s songs were never among those topping the popular purchased list. As a huge Johnny Cash fan, I find the winning song to be appropriate.
He’s a great artist to mark a great milestone with.
Microsoft moved the battle against spam-distributing botnets from cyberspace to the court room, winning a temporary restraining order shutting down nearly 300 domains thought to make up the command and control structure for the vast Waledac botnet.
The restraining order was granted by a US federal judge in secret–a critical element of Microsoft’s plan, dubbed ‘Operation b49′. By shutting down the command and control domains for Waledac without alerting the bad guys first, Microsoft was able to essentially decapitate the botnet–severing the compromised bots from the brains of the operation.
Botnets have grown to be one of the biggest online threats currently. Estimates suggest that tens of millions of PC’s around the world are compromised by some bot malware, and are lying dormant awaiting instructions from the botherder–the person behind the botnet.
Stopping Spam
There are some who question whether the legal system is an effective tool against botnets, or whether Operation b49 has any hope of long term success.
Randy Abrams, director of technical education for ESET, is not one of those people. “This is wonderful! This causes more work for the gang which means it costs them more to commit their crimes.”
“Any action against botnets is a good thing,” agrees Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek.
I agree that any action against a botnet is a good thing, but the primary goal behind Microsoft’s innovative two-pronged attack to shut down Waledac was to cut off a major source of spam. Qualys’ Kandek says that Operation b49 will have some impact on spam, but that “Waledac is not one of the major spam sources.”
“The real measurement is not how much spam this reduces, but rather if this type of action becomes another tool to combat the problem,” suggests Abrams. “The more approaches that can effectively be used, the better the war can be fought. This may well be a step toward an effective blended attack against botnets.”
Order in the Court
Generally speaking, laws themselves are not a deterrent for cyber-attacks or malware. Those who execute attacks and develop malware already know they’re breaking the law, and obviously don’t care. If they had a moral compass and ethical framework to comply with the laws, they wouldn’t be creating botnets to begin with.
This is a different sort of approach though. Microsoft didn’t seek to criminally charge the botnet developer, or sue for damages in civil court. It sought an ex parte restraining order to shut down the operation from within.
Randy Abrams explains “Court orders are one attack vector. I think this is an important development and may be used more frequently, it isn’t a panacea, but it is a weapon that causes disruption and helps in the battle.”
Court orders are a viable method of combating botnets according to Kandek as well. “Yes, but we are still in the early stages to see what legal methods apply and how legislation will have to be adapted to the new realities of the international operations of botnet operators.”
Have to Start Somewhere
There are pros and cons to Microsoft’s approach with Operation b49, but doing something is better than doing nothing, and you have to start somewhere.
Abrams notes “The pro is that it exposes a flank of the enemy. The con is that going through courts can be time consuming. There may be ways to streamline the process going forward and Microsoft has the legal resources to do this well.”
“There are no botnet nukes. Fundamentally such a weapon would have unacceptable collateral damage. This is a battle that will require an extensive arsenal of conventional weapons and innovative strategies. Trial and error will be part of the process. Court orders and domain take downs are essential weapons to have in the arsenal,” concludes Abrams.
Kandek sums up “I only see positive effects, we need better publicity on botnet penetration and the damages associated with it.”
Palm is now predicting revenues from its re-launched smartphone business will fall far short of earlier projections, and hopes. Instead of a fiscal year total of $1.6 billion-$1.8 billion, revenues will be “well below” that forecast.
Some are already predicting this is the beginning of the end for the device maker.
In a statement today, the company said carrier orders were cutting or deferring orders for Palm webOS-based smartphones, such as the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, in the face of “slower than expected consumer adoption” of the new products. Revenues will be lower for the current third quarter and for the entire fiscal year, the company said. The original Palm Pre, the first using Palm’s well-regarded, innovative webOS, went on sale with Sprint last June.
Palm’s webOS lives up to hype, early developers say
The stock Thursday plunged in response, losing $1.39, or more than 17%, to $6.70. It had already taken a hit earlier in the week, in response to critical evaluations from stock analysts. Vivek Arya, analyst with Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, changed his stock rating from “buy” to “underperform”, and cut his price target for the company’s stock from $20 to $10. The stock had reached a high of $17.39 last September. At end of day this past Monday, the stock price was $9.12; by end of day Wednesday, it had dropped still further to $8.07 on heavy trading.
In the company’s statement, Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s chairman and CEO is quoted as saying “Our carrier partners remain committed, and we are working closely with them to increase awareness and drive sales of our differentiated Palm products.”
But in his analysis, Arya wrote that the “window of opportunity may be closing” in the face of continued, growing success for Google’s Android, Research in Motion, the Apple iPhone, and even Microsoft’s retooled Windows Phone 7. Palm has only $130 million in net cash to meet extensive, increasing operating expenses, such as new advertising program for the webOS product line. “Palm’s options may be limited in our view,” he wrote.
For others, the window has long since been nailed shut. “If Palm ever had a real window of opportunity–and that is certainly debatable–it is closing rapidly,” writes PC World’s David Coursey, in a blogpost titled “Why Palm can’t be saved.”
“Let me make this really clear: There is no reason for anyone to purchase a Palm smartphone that makes sense, save a few people who hate Apple, Android, and BlackBerry with equal passion. All three competitors are better choices than a Palm Pre Plus or Pixi Plus,” Coursey writes.
For a service focused on brevity, Twitter sure is generating an awful lot of in-depth discussion these days.
The latest chatter, aside from the always-present business plan buzz, is all about numbers: Twitter has now grown to a whopping 50 million tweets a day, according to the company’s analytics team. That means every second, 600 updates are being sent in less time than it takes to say “fanciful fail whale.”
But there’s something about that number Twitter isn’t telling you.
Twitter’s 50 Million Tweets: Some Perspective
To gain some perspective on the present, we need to take a quick trip to the past. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist born in the mid-1800s, back when uttering the word “tweet” was probably enough to get a guy’s arse kicked. Pareto famously noticed that a small portion of Italy’s population — about 20 percent — owned nearly 80 percent of the country’s land.
This concept went on to become known as the “Pareto principle“: the idea that roughly 80 percent of any effect comes from 20 percent of the participants. That same principle seems to be very present in Twitter’s traffic, perhaps in an even more extreme ratio.
Some analysts from Nielsen looked at Twitter’s UK-based activity during the month of January. They discovered that a very small subset of people — about 7 percent of the total userbase — accounted for 80 percent of all tweeting action.
In other words, get rid of Guy Kawasaki and Ashton Kutcher, and Twitter’s EKG would practically be flatlining.
Twitter Traffic Trends
There may be more to the story yet: Recent metrics compiled by marketing agency HubSpot suggest that despite the growth in overall tweets, the number of new users signing up on Twitter has dropped dramatically over the past months.
HubSpot says Twitter’s growth slowed from 13 percent last March to 3.5 percent in October. The number of so-called “influential tweeters,” meanwhile, doesn’t appear to have fallen; if anything, it’s likely only grown as more users have worked toward amassing large followings. I’m no “social media expert” (heavy emphasis on the quotation marks there), but that sure seems to support the 80/20 theory as it relates to Twitter’s 50-million milestone.
Interesting stuff, eh? I’d go tweet about it, but I’m too busy trying to catch up on the last 10,000 updates I got from Guy and Ashton.
Computer-based network attacks are slowly bleeding U.S. businesses of revenue and market advantage, while the government faces the prospect of losing in an all-out cyberwar, experts told Senators in a hearing on Tuesday.
“If the nation went to war today in a cyberwar, we would lose,” said Michael McConnell, executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton’s national security business and a former director of national security and national intelligence. “We’re the most vulnerable. We’re the most connected. We have the most to lose.”
The U.S. will not be able to mitigate the risk from cyberattack until the government gets more actively involved in protecting the nation’s network, which may not occur until after a “catastrophic event” happens, McConnell said in testimony during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
“The government’s role will change to become more active,” he said. “We’re going to morph the Internet from ‘.com’ to ‘.secure.’”
The subject of the hearing was the Cyber Security Act of 2009, which would regulate organizations and companies that provide critical infrastructure for the U.S., require licensing and certification for cybersecurity professionals, and provide funding for grant and scholarship programs. The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Cyber Security Act earlier this month.
The bill is necessary and overdue, said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The U.S. is “under attack every day, losing every day vital secrets. We can not wait,” he said. “We need a new framework for cybersecurity and this bill helps provide that.”
“A cyberattack would be like being bled to death and not noticing it and that’s kind of what’s happening now,” Lewis said when asked to define what a cyber attack is. “The cyberattack is mainly espionage, some crime,” he added, noting as an example an attack in which $9.8 million was extracted from ATMs over a three-day weekend.
“I don’t worry about terrorists (because)…terrorists are nuts. If they had the ability to attack us they would have used it,” he said. “There are people who could attack us now: Russia, China, some others, our potential military opponents. And we know they’ve done reconnaissance on the electrical grid.
“Could they turn off the electrical grid in a conflict over Taiwan or Georgia? Sure. That’s what it would look like,” Lewis said.
Cyberattackers are stealing “massive” amounts of business information that is compromising U.S. companies and markets, according to Scott Borg, chief economist at the nonprofit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. “Cyberattacks are already damaging the American economy much more than is generally recognized,” he said. “The loss is greater than losses due to identity theft and credit card fraud.”
Mary Ann Davidson, chief security officer at Oracle, warned of the dangers of linking SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems for monitoring and controlling critical infrastructure with the Internet.
“We know the SCADA protocols used in control systems were not designed to be attack resistant. They were originally used in electro-mechanical systems where you had to physically access the system, turn the knob, and so on,” he said. “Now we are increasingly moving to the IP-based control systems and connecting them to corporate networks that are in turn connected to the Internet.
“We know some smart grid devices are hackable,” she said. “We know there are PDAs, digital assistants, that talk SCADA because it’s just so expensive to send a technician to the plant. Dare I say move the control rods in and out of the reactor? There’s an app for that.”
China has rejected a news report that U.S. investigators traced hacking attacks against Google Inc. to two Chinese schools and said suggestions the government might be involved were irresponsible.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, said Chinese law prohibits hacking and the government will take steps to stop it.
At a regular news briefing Tuesday, Ma rejected a report by The New York Times last week that investigators traced hacking attacks on Google to Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School in China.
“Reports that these attacks came from Chinese schools are groundless, and accusations of Chinese government involvement are irresponsible and out of ulterior motives,” Ma said.
Google cited the hacking attacks in a Jan. 12 announcement that said it would no longer cooperate with Chinese government censorship of the Internet and might close its China operation. The search company said attackers stole some of its computer code and tried to break into the e-mail accounts of human rights activists who focus on China.
A U.S. State Department spokesman in Washington said he had no immediate reaction to Ma’s comments but said American officials were talking to Chinese authorities about the matter.
“It is our perspective that individuals in China played a role in this,” spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “That continues to be our perspective and we’ll continue to have these conversations with China on this subject.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appealed in January for China to investigate Google’s complaints but Beijing has given no indication it is doing so.
The government’s Xinhua News Agency earlier quoted spokespeople for the university and vocational school as denying the attacks originated at their schools.
With all the attention on fuel cell startup Bloom Energy this week, you might think Bloom invented the fuel cell. Many industries, particularly phone companies, have been developing and using the technology for some time as backup power for cellular base stations. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation on Tuesday, for example, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse explained how Sprint has been using 250 hydrogen fuel cells at cell sites “in an effort to produce green backup power during commercial power outages” and said the company plans to install more.
Sprint owns 15 hydrogen fuel cell patents, the company tells us, and started installing fuel cells back in 2005. Last April the phone company received a $7.3 million grant in stimulus funds from the Energy Dept. to expand its fuel cell project and boost the time that fuel cells could provide backup power from 15 hours to 72.
The backup power fuel cells start up if service from the utility stops because of weather problems or other natural disasters. As we saw during Hurricane Katrina, it’s crucial for communications systems to remain powered during such extreme events—literally a matter of life and death—for both first responders and the community.
Phone companies are turning to fuel cells because they can be used as a greener, quieter, and potentially cheaper replacement for backup diesel generators—the standard backup power for cellular networks. Sprint’s network accounts for about 80% of its total energy use, so it has been the company’s “biggest priority” in terms of finding energy improvement, Hesse said during his testimony.
Vodaphone spinoff P21 active, too
Sprint has been working with hydrogen fuel cell providers and tank manufacturers for the fuel cell backup power project, specifically with fuel cell makers ReliOn and Altergy and hydrogen provider Air Products, the company tells us.ReliOn is a Spokane (Wash.)-based startup that was spun out of utility Avista; it makes proton exchange membrane-based fuel cells in the 300-watt to 12-kilowatt range for commercial and industrial backup power.ReliOn is backed by PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, Robeco, Oak Investment Partners, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, and Wall Street Technology Partners.(See 10 Fuel Cell Startups Hot on Bloom Energy’s Trail).
Munich-based hydrogen-powered fuel cell maker P21 has also been developing fuel cells specifically for the backup cellular power market.P21, which was spun out of Vodafone in 2001, raised €10 million ($13.6 million) in May 2009 from Yellow & Blue Investment Management, Target Partners, and Conduit Ventures.It says it has been testing its fuel cells in the field since 2004.(For more research on fuel cells and other tech to make telecom networks greener, check out GigaOM Pro—subscription required).
Sprint is also looking to create an efficient ecosystem for refilling fuel cell hydrogen tanks. Sprint’s Senior Vice-President of Network Bob Azzi wrote in Energy Biz recently that Sprint is looking to work with business partners to “create a new commercially viable hydrogen refueling model that is built around on-site refueling, or ‘bumping,’ instead of the current practice of swapping out the tanks.” Such a system can reduce the cost of extending the backup power if need be.
Google would not comment on whether Intel was one of the roughly 20 unnamed companies that the world’s No. 1 Internet search engine said had been similarly targeted in attacks that originated in China.
The attack was just one of what the world’s largest chipmakers said were regular attempts on its computer systems, Intel said in a filing under a heading about potential theft or misuse of the company’s intellectual property.
“The only connection is timing,” Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, declining to elaborate. The company first publicized the attack and pointed out the similarity in timing to the move on Google in an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Now that Google has publicly admitted to being successfully attacked without much damage to their reputation, analysts said other companies are rethinking their typically tight-lipped approach to security breaches.
Recent changes to disclosure laws and increased awareness of cyber-security may also have prompted Intel to come clean, analysts say.
But Intel did not say who was behind the attacks, from where in the world they originated, or what information, if any, had been taken.
Asked whether Intel had spoken or worked with Google on this issue, Mulloy said: “Our security folks work very closely and collaboratively throughout the industry.”
“Companies are facing these threats and attacks all the time,” Fred Pinkett, vice president of product management for Core Security Technologies, said.
In targeting companies like Intel, which have one of the largest intellectual property portfolios in the world, hackers may have been looking for bragging rights.
“Very rarely are they really trying to commit industrial espionage, because it’s really hard to do that without getting caught,” said Todd Feinman, chief executive of Identity Finder.
The reason Intel probably publicized the hack attempts was to minimize the company’s legal risks, he added. “The advantage is that you’re protecting yourself for when it finally does happen and something really bad occurs, because you can say ‘we disclosed this information on our 10-K.’”
Intel shares closed down 48 cents, or 2.31 percent, at $20.38 on Nasdaq. They edged up to $20.40 after hours.
ntel CEO Paul Otellini Tuesday announced an ambitious $3.5 billion plan that, ideally, will lead to more technical jobs and start-ups in the U.S.
The Invest in America Alliance can essentially be split into two parts. The first part consists of an alliance between the chip maker and 24 venture firms like Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurveston to invest $3.5 billion into start-ups over the next two years. The investments will be made in a variety of fields, but green and clean tech are at the top of the list. As part of the push, Intel Capital will create a $200 million fund-within-a-fund to bolster the effort.
Second, a group of 17 companies — Accenture, Google, Dell, eBay, Marvell Semiconductor — will try to increase the hiring of college graduates (or NCGs, or “new college graduates” in Intel speak). Ideally, these companies will double the number of graduates. In 2010 alone, that could mean 10,500 more jobs.
“It would be a long-term mistake to let our future scientists and engineers sit idle after graduation. Today’s announcements are both an investment in the country’s innovators and a signal to the global marketplace about America’s commitment to innovation and future competitiveness,” Otellini said in a prepared statement.
It’s a great idea, particularly the part about hiring new college graduates. The question now is to see how it plays out in reality and what impact it might have.
First, the VC part. Intel has created specialty funds in the past. It had a fund that invested in companies to support its push into communications, another one to build an ecosystem around its Itanium chip (there’s a name you probably haven’t heard of since the middle 90s.) and others for fostering investment in Russia and the Middle East. Some work, some don’t.
The Invest in America Alliance draws in other VC firms so it has a better chance of success. VCs and Intel Capital, however, are already investing somewhat heavily into start-ups. Thus, this represents probably an incremental, but not revolutionary, boost.
Hiring? It is always controlled by budgets, but an effort like this helps remind companies about their greater obligations to grow the economies where their executives live. There is a strong possibility that they will lobby state and federal officials for tax credits (Governor Conan in California has already outlined tax credits for manufacturers who train and hire new employees) but who isn’t getting tax credits these days? Another factor that could aid this push is the fact that a lot of these companies are run by people who still vividly remember being struggling students. Marvell was founded by grad students at UC Berkeley from Asia. They now contribute heavily to the school.
Elsewhere, Luminus Devices, which makes a large format LED, has raised $19 million more. The company right now sells LEDs to display makers like Acer and Samsung. How much has the MIT-spin out raised to date? $172 million. That’s about as much as any LED company ever. Our guess: Luminus will get bought in a few years. Philips, General Electric, Osram and others want to increase their share in the LED market.
Meanwhile, General Compression, which makes equipment for compressed air energy storage, raised $17 from, among others, Duke Energy. It is currently building a 2 megawatt facility.
Apple’s ban on sexy apps — more than 5000 apps were removed from the app store over the weekend because they contained “overtly se
xual content” — has been making headlines, mostly because of the selectivity of the removal.
While Apple removed such risqué apps as Strip Simon and Video Strip Poker, apps from big-name companies such as Sports Illustrated and Playboy remain in the App Store — the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit App is even featured on the front page.
Apple attempted to explain its app double-standard in an interview with the New York Times. Apple’s head of worldwide product marketing, Phillip Schiller, told the Times on Monday that the source and intent of apps were taken into consideration when the ban was applied. Well-established companies with “previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format” (e.g. magazines like Playboy, FHM, and Sports Illustrated) are not held to the same rigorous constraints as unknown apps like Tight Body Perky Boobs and SlideHer Nautica.
It would appear that Apple’s restriction on sexy (and subsequent lenience on well-
established companies) extends to shopping apps — the Simply Beach App, which is a bikini-shopping app that features pictures of women in bikinis (or modeling “products”), was taken down on Friday as part of the ban. The Simply Beach App was reinstated, without any official communication from Apple, today. Meanwhile the Victoria’s Secret All Access App remained in the App Store all weekend, untouched.
Apple maintains that it’s really doing all of this for the kids — trying to keep the App Store a family-friendly place that won’t scare off potential customers.
If Apple’s doing this for the kids, it’s failing — the App Store isn’t 100 percent “family friendly” as long as publications like Playboy remain in the mix (still waiting for the argument on how a soft-core porn mag is not “overtly sexual”), and all the new policy really does is give the shaft to independent developers.
Developers already have a hard time getting their apps approved for the App Store with Apple’s rigorous rules and regulations, and now they have to put up with corporate schmoozing and puritanical sex bans as well? It might be time to look into developing Android apps . .
Consumers will be able to buy the iPad at a variety of locations besides Apple’s retail store, Apple’s chief operating officer said Tuesday.
(Credit: Apple)The comments came during Tim Cook’s speech at the Goldman Sachs annual tech conference in San Francisco. In addition to the obvious Apple retail stores, consumers will be able to purchase the iPad from Apple directly and from “partners like Best Buy,” according to AppleInsider.
Cook didn’t mention whether AT&T would be selling the device in its retail locations, even though it did sell the iPhone models. One reason for the AT&T omission could be that the first iPads will only have Wi-Fi. The 3G, Wi-Fi combo models will come 30 days after the initial release.
After using the iPad for the past few months, Cook said consumers will have a hard time buying a Netbook after experiencing what the iPad can do.
Yahoo has something new to yodel about: tweets.
In its latest attempt to make its Web site more compelling, Yahoo Inc. is plugging its services into the rapidly growing craze of posting short messages, or “tweets,” on Twitter.
Although Yahoo planned to announce the Twitter partnership Wednesday, most of the new features won’t be available until later this year. Among other things, anyone with a Twitter account will be able to tweet and see the updates of people they’re tracking while logged into Yahoo’s Web site.
One change occurred Tuesday, when Yahoo started to show a wider range of Twitter updates in its search results – something that Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. began doing late last year.
Like its rivals, Yahoo is paying privately held Twitter an undisclosed amount of money for better access to its data.
Yahoo previously had been using Twitter’s free tools to find tweets that pointed to the latest news about hot topics.
Unlike Google and Microsoft, Yahoo plans to turn its Web site into a tweeting perch. This follows Yahoo’s recent commitment to tether its Web site to Facebook, which is even more widely used than Twitter.
Yahoo is hoping that these moves to build a network of social networks will make it easier for people to share information and images on Facebook and Twitter without leaving its Web site. And by giving people more reasons to stick around, Yahoo reasons it will have more chances to show the Internet ads that generate most of its revenue.
By some estimates, Facebook now attracts a bigger and more engaged audience than Yahoo. And Twitter has turned into a major communications channel that distributes an average of 50 million tweets per day, up from 2.5 million per day at the beginning of last year, according to the company’s statistics.
The new Facebook connection on Yahoo is supposed to be available before July. Yahoo hasn’t specified when people will be able to tweet from its site.
FBI investigates, federal prosecutors subpoena documents in MacBook spying case, say reports
The parents of a Pennsylvania high school student have asked a federal judge to bar school district personnel from switching on cameras in school-issued MacBook laptops, calling the security feature “peeping tom technology.”
Federal officials have also stepped up their investigation of Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa., according to reports published Saturday. The Associated Press said that the FBI was exploring whether district officials broke federal wiretapping and electronic surveillance laws, while the Philadelphia Inquirer cited sources who said federal prosecutors have subpoenaed documents from school officials.
In their motion Friday, Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., asked U.S. District Court Judge Jan DuBois to issue a restraining order preventing the district from remotely activating the webcams on student notebooks. They also requested that the judge block the district from recalling the laptops from students, saying that they believe school officials will then wipe the MacBooks’ hard drives to delete evidence of any camera activation.
Last week, the Robbins family sued the district, accusing it of spying on students and students’ families using the MacBooks’ cameras.
Two days after the lawsuit was filed, district officials said they had disabled the camera functionality of a feature designed to locate lost, missing or stolen laptops. However, that wasn’t enough for the Robbins, who submitted their Friday motion on behalf of their 16-year-old son, Harriton High School student Blake Robbins.
“There can be no assurances that the School District will disable the use of the remote webcam or, once deactivated, make an internal decision to reactive the webcam,” the motion argued.
Elsewhere in the motion, the Robbins labeled the camera functionality “peeping tom technology,” and disputed the district’s account that cameras had been activated only when a notebook was reported lost or stolen. “[Blake Robbins] was at home using a school issued laptop that was neither reported lost nor stolen when his image was captured by Defendants without his or his parents’ permission and while he was at home,” the motion said.
According to the original complaint, Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of “improper behavior in his home” and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence. In an appearance on CBS’ “Early Show Saturday Edition,” Robbins said he was accused by the assistant principal of selling drugs and taking pills, but he claimed the pictures taken by his MacBook’s camera showed him eating candy.
Microsoft and Yahoo’s search deal will give Microsoft’s Bing search engine much needed scale versus market giant Google, but integration challenges are a certainty as the companies rationalize assets and partners, say analysts from FBR Capital Markets. Assuming all goes smoothly, Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal said it may take up to three quarters for Microsoft to absorb part of Yahoo’s search related operational expenditure and for Yahoo to realize 90 percent or more of the $650 million it expects to save from running its own search engine and search ad platform.
A successful implementation of Microsoft and Yahoo’s search deal will give Microsoft’s Bing search engine much needed scale versus market giant Google, but integration challenges are a certainty as the companies consolidate technology, advertisers and publishers, analysts say.
Microsoft and Yahoo Feb. 18 received clearance from the U.S. Justice Department and European Commission to commence their 10-year search and search advertising agreement.
The deal calls for Microsoft’s Bing search engine and AdCenter platform to power search results
and search advertising on Yahoo’s search engine, with Yahoo retaining its aesthetics.
Yahoo said it would begin shuttling its algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft. Microsoft will provide Yahoo with the same search result listings it makes available to Bing users. Yahoo will integrate its content and enhanced listings with info about key topics and tools around the Bing listings.
Shashi Sheth, senior vice president of Yahoo search products, described how this would look in a blog post Feb. 18, illustrating how Yahoo’s Search Pad, Search Assist and SearchScan search features and relevant content would couch Bing results.
Yet there are a lot of moving pieces between Bing and Yahoo’s search engine that must be rationalized, as analysts for FBR Capital Markets wrote in a Feb. 18 research note:
“We believe the challenge now lies in implementing the partnership so that the transition is smooth for customers and partners. Microsoft and Yahoo need the implementation process to proceed smoothly in order to prevent business disruption of their customers and partners… Any glitches could result in customers and partners diverting more of their business to Google.”
Microsoft and Yahoo said they expect to complete the transition of algorithmic search in the U.S. by the end of 2010, with Microsoft migrating Yahoo’s U.S. advertisers and publishers to its AdCenter platform prior to the 2010 holiday season.
Microsoft expects to move all Yahoo customers and partners to Bing by 2012, which is also going to be a tremendous challenge.
Assuming all goes smoothly, Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal said it may take up to three quarters for Microsoft to absorb part of Yahoo’s search related operational expenditure and for Yahoo to realize 90 percent or more of the $650 million it expects to save from running its own search engine and search ad platform.
Moreover, while Microsoft agreed to pay Yahoo 88 percent of traffic acquisition costs generated on Yahoo’s sites during the first five years of the agreement, Aggarwal said Yahoo may not recognize revenues per search from Bing until the first half of 2011.
Still, FBR said the deal was better than Microsoft’s alternative of organically growing search market share:
“We believe the deal provides Microsoft with much needed scale, which we believe is better than going it alone and will allow Microsoft to focus on its core strength of developing technology.”
Bing’s market share has grown from 8 percent to 11.3 percent since its first full month in June 2009. But it would take several years for Bing to challenge Google, whose share is a lofty 65.4 percent in the U.S. and as much as 90 percent in Europe.
Combined with Yahoo’s 17 percent market share, Bing would have 28 percent of the search market, making it very respectable if not a certain threat to Google.
Microsoft announced Windows Phone Series 7 this week (still haven’t lost your signature touch, Microsoft!) and the Macalope’s reaction may shock Macworld’s more sensitive readers! Viewer discretion is advised! And did you know that Steve Jobs doesn’t like Flash?! Oh, the Macalope’s stars and garters!
Who are you and what have you done with the Macalope?
Microsoft finally answered the “SHUTDOWN OR REBOOT?” question on its phone strategy and the Macalope was really fairly impressed by the interface for Windows Phone Series 7 (let’s just call it “Larry”). It’s great that someone is thinking outside the box that Apple put everyone into three years ago, so kudos to Microsoft. Whether or not it works out remains to be seen. If Larry-based devices ship by the end of the year and the OS isn’t so buggy that it kills several hundred customers in a murderous rampage, they could be strong competitors to the iPhone.
Of course, Apple—unless precedent is shattered beyond all recognition—will ship an iPhone update this summer, one that we don’t even know the details of yet. If it brings multitasking for third-party applications, it’ll already be ahead of Larry.
Despite the outside-the-box thinking in interface design, Larry is not all jet packs and hovercars. He reportedly won’t have copy/paste (tip o’ the antlers to Daring Fireball) but will have some awesome technology from 1969.
There’s a strict set of minimum hardware requirements: a capacitive, multitouchable screen with at least four points of touch; accelerometer; 5-megapixel camera; FM radio…
What—no AM, Microsoft? Have you no love for the Greatest Generation?
How, exactly, did Microsoft, Stella-like, get its groove back? (BAD INFOWORLD COLUMNIST! BAD!) Turns out it’s simple:
“It’s all about the phone and how consumers react to the device,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer…
No. Way.
What was it, exactly, you thought it was about before, genius?
Let’s have another one just like the other one
Microsoft is all about kickin’ ass and takin’ names now, beeotch. And it’s got no love for that little Apple doohickey everyone’s been talking about.
“You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen, and a real keyboard—in other words, a Netbook—will be the mainstream on that,” Gates said, according to Schlender’s Wednesday account.
So, we’re going to put you down as a “no” for a pre-order, then?
But wait, did the richest man in the Alpha Quadrant just recommend a netbook for digital reading? C’mon, Bill. Now you’re just being bitter. And laughable.
Seriously, no joke, Microsoft, consider this: Windows Pad Series 7 Tablet Device for Mobile… Systems… Well, the Macalope will leave the clumsy and overly-long name up to you—that’s your core competency, not his. But that’s a way better solution than just slapping Windows 7 on some HP hardware and calling it a day.
The truth hurts
The tech community was waving its hankie in its flushed face again this week when that awful Steve Jobs (reportedly!) said some simply dreadful things about that lovely technology we’ve known for so long.
Jobs was brazen in his dismissal of Flash, people familiar with the meeting tell us. He repeated what he said at an Apple Town Hall recently, that Flash crashes Macs and is buggy.
But he also called Flash a “CPU hog,” a source of “security holes” and, in perhaps the most grievous insult a famous innovator can utter, a dying technology.
In other words, he accurately described Flash. So what’s the fuss all about? CrunchGear’s Devin Coldewey comes to the defense of the lazy developer’s best friend.
And why, we might reasonably ask, is Flash such a dog on OS X? Well, decoding 720p YouTube video can be either GPU-intensive or CPU-intensive. On Windows, Flash has tunnels to your video card to let its hugely parallel processors burst-decode a ton of information at a time. It can’t do that on OS X, from what I understand — mainly because Apple doesn’t want them to.
Gosh, can’t imagine why that would be! You know, Apple, it’s really hard for Flash to eat your chips with you sitting in front of them. So inconsiderate!
Coldewey says repeatedly that it’s all because Apple “doesn’t like Flash” but never says why that might be. It’s because Adobe wants to be the middleman for content Apple already provides the technology to deliver. The Web is there to provide cross-platform content and the advent of HTML 5 means there’s less and less reason to code in Flash. Apple’s just trying to accelerate the process. That’s a good thing. Not to hear Coldewey talk about it, though.
It’s not good for users, but really, that’s not always Apple’s first priority.
The link is to another CrunchGear piece that links to a piece on Cracked that trots out a tired laundry list of complaints, including the Jason O’Grady saga (eye roll) and another piece on CNN that lists Steve Jobs’s “six sneakiest statements” (yawn).
To say that’s weak tea is an overstatement. That water’s not even hot. It may not even be water at all. Which is why the Macalope’s not drinking it. He’s not falling for that one again.
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