IT Certification Forum

Huawei seeks EU help on InterDigital patent fee...

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:05:29 +0000

Telecoms equipment maker Huawei accuses InterDigital of "abusing" its position and demanding "exploitative" fees to use its patented technology, said to be essential to 3G in mobile devices.
It added that such moves were against the EU rules which require holders to licence their patents fairly.
InterDigital said it was "committed" to those rules.
Huawei said in a statement: "InterDigital is seeking to leverage its declared 3G standard essential patents to force Huawei to conclude a discriminatory, unfair and exploitative license.
"InterDigital's demand manifestly breaches the policies of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute calling for fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing practices by technology patent holders."
'Mutually agreeable terms'
InterDigital, which is based in Philadelphia, owns more than 19,500 mobile communications patents and patent applications.
The Chinese firm said that InterDigital had been trying to take advantage of the dominant position it enjoys in the sector and despite negotiations the two firms had not been able to reach an agreement.
However, InterDigital said that it had been following the rules set by regulators while dealing with various companies across the globe.
"Our long and successful track record of licensing more than 50 companies throughout the mobile industry is proof of that commitment, and of our ability to reach mutually agreeable terms for such licenses," Lawrence Shay, President of InterDigital's patent holding subsidiariessaid in a statement.
This is not the first time that the two firms have been involved in a patent-related dispute.
Last year, InterDigital lodged a complaint against Huawei, along with another Chinese phone maker ZTE and Finland's Nokia, accusing them of infringing seven of its patents.

Facebook's new Camera app mirrors Instagram

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:03:19 +0000

The software allows users to take multiple pictures and share them at once rather than having to upload them one at a time.
The app also features a feed of friends' photos.
The launch is unexpected as the program offers users similar tools to Instagram which the social network is in the process of taking over.
Both apps allow users to add filters and make other tweaks to photographs.
Facebook has agreed to pay $1bn (£638m) for Instagram, but the acquisition has not been completed.
Brian Blau, research director at the technology analysts Gartner, said the move may surprise some, but thought it made sense.
"Facebook has to move its business forward," he told the BBC.
"It said earlier that it would keep Instagram as a separate business, but you need to bear in mind that it is buying a unique social network with a specific demographic.
"By doing this Facebook allows Instagram to remain intact while adopting some of its features to ensure its core service maintains its lead as the internet's most used photo sharing site."
At present Camera only works on Apple's smartphones and tablets.
A news release from Facebook did not mention when it might be released for Android or other systems.

Cookie law: websites must seek consent from thi...

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:00:31 +0000

From Sunday, sites must obtain "informed consent" from visitors before saving cookies on a machine.
Cookies are pieces of personal data stored when users browse the web, sometimes to power advertising.
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is to launch a tool for the public to report non-compliant sites.
It is expected that the vast majority of websites will not be ready in time.
However, the ICO has said it would not take immediate action over non-compliant sites, and would instead offer guidance.
Tracking data
The rules are designed to tackle privacy issues resulting from the growing use of cookies which track users' browsing habits.
The guidelines, set by the EU, mean visitors must be told what cookies are being placed on their machine.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Some organisations may be made an example of in order to set the parameters of compliancy moving forward”

Vinod BangeData privacy lawyer
Typically, this will mean a pop-up window seeking consent.
The BBC, which brought its site in line with the guidelines on Thursday, allows users to opt out of cookies the first time they visit the website.
An Ipsos MORI poll, commissioned by privacy solutions provider Truste, suggested that while 84% of online consumers aged 16-64 were aware of internet cookies, just 24% knew about the new guidelines.
The owners of non-compliant websites face fines of up to £500,000, but the ICO has played down the threat of such serious action, telling the BBC it would take a soft approach to enforcement.
"Up until now, if we received a complaint about your website we would point you in the direction of our guidance," said Dave Evans, group manager for the ICO.
"Given that everyone has had a year [to comply], we're going to shift from that kind of approach to one which will be very much more focused on those people who don't appear to have done anything and asking them 'why not?''"
Last week the government admitted that most of its sites would not comply with the new rules in time. It said it was "working to achieve compliance at the earliest possible date".
The ICO insisted this weekend was not a deadline, but an attempt to help companies focus on their general cookie use.
"We never said was that if you're not compliant by 27 May we will come and get you," Mr Evans told the BBC.
"What we want is good compliance, not rushed compliance. If it's focused people's minds, that's a good thing."
Changed stance
The ICO has come under criticism from businesses for not being entirely clear about what constitutes compliance.
Vinod Bange, a data privacy specialist from law firm Taylor Wessing, said many businesses were nervous about implementing solutions.
"A lack of education and clear guidelines from the ICO on what constitutes compliance has left many businesses unsure of how to meet the directive with only one working day to go," he said.
"Few businesses want to be the first to adopt a specific approach. This is a risky game, as some organisations may be made an example of in order to set the parameters of compliancy moving forward."
This concern was shared by Tim Gurney, managing director of Wolf Software, a firm which helps websites become compliant.
He said the lack of clear guidance had led to some firms adopting systems which damaged the way visitors interacted with sites.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

What we want to do is look at where our resources can best be put”

Dave EvansICO
"Some of the implementations are very poor. For me, they're making a mistake because users will stop using their sites.
"Those kind of solutions I can see being changed as the user starts to say 'I don't like that'."
Industry help
Mr Evans defended the ICO's approach, saying the ambiguity was to enable websites to interpret the rules to best suit their own audience and website design.
He also told the BBC that he believed that in the long term issues over cookie use should be regulated by the industry rather than government.
"What we want to do is look at where our resources can best be put," he said.
"If we were putting all our resources into investigating cookies, well, the people would quite rightly be asking where our priorities lie.
"Regulators have got resources that are not infinite. The best solutions are where industry sits down and develops it themselves. The more they can do, the easier it is for us to regulate."

Cookie flavours

Cookies are small files that allow a website to recognise and track users. The ICO groups them into three overlapping groups:
Session cookies
Files that allow a site to link the actions of a visitor during a single browser session. These might be used by an internet bank or webmail service. They are not stored long term and are considered "less privacy intrusive" than persistent cookies.
Persistent cookies
These remain on the user's device between sessions and allow one or several sites to remember details about the visitor. They may be used by marketers to target advertising or to avoid the user having to provide a password each visit.
First and third-party cookies
A cookie is classed as being first-party if it is set by the site being visited. It might be used to study how people navigate a site.
It is classed as third-party if it is issued by a different server to that of the domain being visited. It could be used to trigger a banner advert based on the visitor's viewing habits.

Apple's Sir Jonathan Ive reaffirms desire t...

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:56:59 +0000

Sir Jonathan spoke after being knighted for services to design and enterprise.
He said he wanted to stay with "the same team I've been fortunate enough to work with for the past 15 years."
Last year there was speculation that Sir Jonathan, who was born in Chingford, London, might leave the California-based company to allow his children to be schooled in the UK.
But in an interview with BBC Radio Four's Today programme, Sir Jonathan said he would stay at Apple to "work on trying to solve the same sort of problems we've been trying to solve over the last fifteen years."
Sir Jonathan has been behind some of Apple's most successful products including the iPod and iPhone.
It is a process he describes as being "part fine art, part engineering".
Innovation struggle
He told the BBC that the job of a product designer was now more complex than ever.
"I think the challenges are more significant now than they have been in the past," he said.
"I think the consequences of getting it wrong are also more significant."
Since the death of Apple co-founder and figurehead Steve Jobs, many have speculated that the company might struggle to maintain its reputation for innovative products.
In Walter Isaacson's revealing biography of Mr Jobs, Sir Jonathan was described by his former boss as his "spiritual partner".
Sir Jonathan said that Apple's goals remain as clear as ever:
"It's to try and design the very best products that we possible can.
"We're very disciplined, very focused, and very clear, across the company - that is our goal.
"If we manage to do that then there are a number of consequences. People will like the product, hopefully they'll buy the product, and then we will make some money.
"The goal isn't to make money, the goal is to try and develop the very best products that we can."

Russian spam mastermind jailed for creating botnet

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:54:48 +0000

Russian hi-tech criminal Georgiy Avanesov was found guilty of computer sabotage by an Armenian court.
Mr Avanesov was tried and sentenced in Armenia, as he was arrested at the country's Yerevan airport in 2010.
The authorities closed in on Mr Avanesov after they took and dismantled the network of computers he controlled.
Bredolab began operating in 2009 and Mr Avanesov used a variety of techniques, including automated attacks and phishing messages, to expand it. A network of hijacked machines run in this way is known as a botnet and they have become the staple of many hi-tech criminals.
At its height, the Bredolab botnet - as it was called by security investigators - was sending out more than three billion junk mail messages a day. The network was also hired out to other cyber criminals who used it to carry out attacks on websites, advertise fake anti-virus programs and send out their own spam and viruses.
By sending out spam and doing work for hire, Bredolab reportedly produced a revenue of about 100,000 euros (£80,000) a month for its 27-year-old creator.
In October 2010, Dutch police gained control of the Bredolab botnet and began taking it apart to reveal who was controlling it. Mr Avanesov tried to hamper this investigation using a web-based attack on the police but the attempt to regain control of Bredolab failed. His arrest followed soon after.
The trial is a milestone for Armenia as it is reportedly the first time the country has convicted a computer criminal.

Yahoo's Axis offers visual results to searc...

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:52:48 +0000

Called Axis, the service is being released as an app for Apple's iPads and iPhones, and as a plug-in for web browsers.
It may help Yahoo combat the declining popularity of its search tools.
However, it will not be a money-spinner at launch since adverts are not included in the results.
Other innovations include:

A list of trending search topics when the service is activated
The ability to deduce which page previews are wanted and display them before the full query has been typed in
Different devices can share bookmarks, partly-completed searches and a customised home page
Social sharing options via Twitter, Pinterest and email

"By supercharging the browser with a visually rich search experience and seamlessly connecting that experience across all of your devices, we are delivering an experience that will change the game," blogged Yahoo's special products management director Ethan Batraski.
"We decided to remove all the noise so you can focus on what you really want."
The app is initially only available in the US, but will become available to France, the UK and some other markets by the end of the year.
Catching up
Recent data from digital analytics firm comScore suggested that in April, Yahoo sites accounted for just 13.5% of search queries in the US. Two years earlier the figure was 20.4%.
The web portal is also engaged in a tie-up with Microsoft's Bing search service, sharing its AdCenter technology.
But last month Yahoo's former chief executive admitted that the alliance was "not yet delivering" what had been expected.
Early reviews have praised Axis's design and the convenience of the service.
However, other attempts to introduce visual search results have failed to win much traction.
Oolone, Redz and Simploos already offer webpage previews as an alternative to links.
In some cases users can obtain all the information they need from the preview results
Bing also used to offer a "visual search" feature using its Searchlight technology offering tease image results, rather than webpage previews. However, it ditched the option because it was hardly used.
But one internet analyst told the BBC that Yahoo may have more success thanks to its focus on mobile devices.
"What is neat about this is that their user interface helps reinvent search by allowing people to swipe and flick through results," said Ian Maude from Enders Analysis.
"That takes advantage of the way they typically interact with their tablet and smartphone touch screens.
"I particularly like the visual aspect to it - for instance allowing you to preview the weather forecast without having to click through to the page selected."
Yahoo says it aims to add more features and release the app for other devices "in the coming future".

Hewlett-Packard to cut 27,000 jobs by the end o...

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:48:18 +0000

The company said the cuts - about 8% of its workforce - will reduce costs by up to $3.5bn (£2.2bn) a year.
HP said in a statement that the money would be reinvested into the company.
The move was part of a "productivity initiative designed to simplify business processes" and comes as rival products such as the iPad tablet computer eat into HP's sales.
As part of the changes, the head of HP's Autonomy division, Mike Lynch, is being replaced by Bill Veghte, HP's chief strategy officer. Mr Lynch will leave after what HP called a "transition period".
Mr Lynch founded software company Autonomy as a small start-up and turned into one of the UK's largest technology companies.
It was bought by HP last year for more than $10bn.
HP employs about 350,000 people worldwide and about 20,000 in the UK. A spokesman said it was too early to say exactly where the job cuts would hit, but no part of the business would escape some losses.
"We have not yet announced specific plans with regards to specific locations. We do expect the workforce reduction to impact just about every business and region," the spokesman said.
'Exceeded outlook'
News of the job losses overshadowed the release on Wednesday of HP's latest quarterly results. The company's profits and revenues were both better than analysts had estimated.
California-based HP reported a 31% fall in profits in the second quarter to $1.6bn. Revenue in the period fell 3% on a year ago to $30.7bn.
Meg Whitman, HP's chief executive, said: "This quarter we exceeded our previously provided outlook and are executing against our strategy, but we still have a lot of work to do."
The former chief executive of eBay joined HP in September, vowing to turn around the company after a series of problems including a failed tablet computer and an announcement that it was considering an exit from the PC business.
Her predecessor, Leo Apotheker, was ousted after just 11 months on the job.
HP's shares, which fell as much as 5% on Wednesday and closed 3% down, were up 6.6% in after-hours trading on Wall Street.

Analysis

Richard BondBusiness correspondent, BBC Look East
It's difficult to imagine Autonomy without Mike Lynch. The student who left Cambridge University without a penny to his name dominated the culture of the firm. He built Autonomy after getting a £2,000 loan from a man in a pub. His drive and entrepreneurial flair was fundamental to the growth of the firm. Although many people found him difficult and demanding to work for, he was held in awe by rank-and-file staff.
That's why Autonomy's 300 Cambridge staff are worried about the future. One man, who declined to be identified, said: "Without Mike, we have a grim outlook. He was the reason many people work here. A brain drain of senior people is already under way."
Autonomy's new leader, Bill Veghte, is due to speak to staff in Cambridge on Friday. Many are sceptical that he will be able to rekindle Autonomy's entrepreneurial culture.

China arrests suspects as ID theft crackdown co...

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:46:43 +0000

Police have also shut down 13 online platforms that were alleged to have traded in stolen personal information.
It follows the arrest of 1,700 suspects in China on similar charges last month.
The raids are part of an ongoing crackdown on online identity theft in the country.
In a co-ordinated raid, 400 police honed in on 10 districts including Dongcheng, Xicheng and Chaoyang to make the arrests.
The suspects are believed to have registered fake commercial consultancies and legal affairs research firms.
They are also accused of illegally using professional spying equipment to obtain large volumes of personal and company information.
It is claimed the details were then sold for a profit.
Chatroom
A Beijing-based lawyer is among those detained.
Sina reports that he had the subject of a police investigation since October 2009.
It said the suspect had been identified while using an online chat program. He is alleged to have told a lawyers' group that it could be "profitable" to pass on company information.
Sina reported that he had subsequently searched for clients online and had obtained documents from Beijing's Industry and Commerce Department, with the help of a fake introduction letter from the law firm he worked at.
The news site said it was believed that he went on to recruit other lawyers to obtain further information from local businesses, and raised more than 40,000 yuan ($6,310; £4,020) from selling it on.

Google did not breach Oracle patents, a court h...

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:45:02 +0000

The Silicon Valley giants had fought over whether Google used Oracle's Java programming language in its Android mobile operating system.
Two weeks ago the same jury ruled that Google infringed Oracle's copyright, but could not agree whether Google's actions constituted "fair use".
The internet search giant maintains Android was built "from scratch".
Oracle sued Google in August 2010, saying Android infringed its intellectual property rights.
Google said it does not violate Oracle's patents and that Oracle cannot copyright certain parts of Java, which is an "open-source", or publicly available, software language.
Without a finding against Google on the "fair use" issue, Oracle cannot recover the up to $1bn (£637m) in damages it was seeking.
The case focused not on using the Java programming language itself, but rather the use of 37 application programming interfaces (APIs) which help developers create software on the platform.
With internet innovation moving fast, it is common for software writers to adapt APIs that mini-programs use to "talk" to one another.
The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it also agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not need a license for using Java.

Dell looks to future tablets as consumer sales...

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:42:40 +0000

Sales of the US firm's notebook computers and other mobile devices were down by 10% over the three months to 4 May, compared with the same period the previous year.
It blamed competition from cheap entry-level products in emerging markets, a category it does not participate in.
Its shares fell 13% in extended trade.
Net income for the first quarter was $635m (£404m), a fall of 33%.
Revenue dropped 4% to $14.4bn, with its consumer unit reporting a steeper 12% decline.
The company predicted only a small increase in sales over the current period.
Although it expected to benefit from falling hard disk prices as suppliers recovered from last year's Thai floods, it warned that the savings would be offset by higher memory and display costs.
Touchscreens
However, the firm's founder and chief executive, Michael Dell, told analysts he expected a pick-up in demand when Microsoft released its new system software later in the year.
The upgrade features a new Metro user interface - designed for touch gesture controls - which Mr Dell said should prompt users to change their computer.
"Unlike other Windows transitions, this is a transition where you generally are going to need a new PC, whether it's a tablet or ultrabook with touch or a notebook with touch or a PC with touch or some derivative hybrid on all the above type of products," Mr Dell was quoted as saying in a conference call transcript provided by financial news site Seeking Alpha.
"The product refresh cycle associated with this release of Windows is likely to be very different from other releases, but it's hard to know exactly what that looks like. We're preparing a full complement of products, and we'll be ready with those."
Mr Dell added that the new touchscreen products would cost more to produce than their non-touch equivalents, suggesting they should fall within the price bracket Dell targets, rather than the super-low end of the market that it had opted out of.
However, he added that it would take longer for the new system to drive business sales.
"Corporations are still adopting Windows 7, so we don't think there'll be a massive adoption of Windows 8 by corporations early on," he said.
Competition
Dell has already tried to crack the mobile tablet market with its Latitude and Inspiron tablets that run on existing versions of Windows and its Streak tablets that run on Google's Android.
However, the market has been dominated by Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle Fire.
"We see Windows 8 as opportunity for all the PC manufacturers to reclaim the huge ground that they have lost to Apple and some of the other Android tablet makers," Chris Green, technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe, told the BBC.
"You can't underestimate how much the sector has hit PC sales. The challenge for Dell is that it will be competing against Acer, Lenovo and others - but the sheer size of the company should act as an advantage."

(ISC)²® now Offers Computer Based Testing for C...

Sat, 19 May 2012 20:52:57 +0000

Computer Based Testing (CBT)

(ISC)² is pleased to provide the opportunity for candidates to take computerized examinations via Computer-Based Testing (CBT) at local testing centers worldwide. This new testing method provides candidates with top-of-the-line security measures and a comfortable testing environment. Further, candidates are able to take their examination closer to home, saving both time and money.

Advantages to the Candidate

Conveniently located testing centers closer to home

Less travel to testing site means less time and money spent
Top-of-the line security measures:
- Extensive encryption
- No outside materials allowed inside testing rooms
- Strict candidate identification standards
A comfortable and consistent testing environment in all examination centers
Images on the computer screen provide maximum readability

Answers are recorded directly into the computer, therefore eliminating possible transcription errors from scanning format answer sheets.
Programs available via CBT:

Facebook Stock Finishes Flat In Debut

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:58:04 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) — In the hours before Facebook's stock began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reminded the company's 3,500 employees not to get caught up in the hoopla surrounding its long-awaited initial public offering.
"Right now this all seems like a big deal," Zuckerberg said before he pushed a button that rang Nasdaq's opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California. "Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here's the thing, our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected."
Facebook's IPO, it turns out, wasn't as big a deal as expected.
One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note Friday, with Facebook's stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night's pricing.
That means the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald's and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.
It also gave 28-year-old Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.
But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook's share price, the increase of six-tenths of one percent was a letdown.
"This is like kissing your sister," said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. "With all the drumbeats and hype, I don't think there'll be barroom bragging tonight."
Added Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital: "It wasn't quite as exciting as it could have been. But I don't think we should view it as a failure."
Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the IPO priced the stock in an appropriate range.
It was also good for ordinary investors, who are mostly shut out from the IPO price and have to buy the stock in the open market on day one. They got a chance to buy all day at a price not much above $38.
And it was good for early investors in the company, who owned more than half the 421 million shares made available in the IPO. Had the stock shot to $60 Friday morning, those early investors would have felt they hadn't gotten enough money for their stakes.
The 421 million shares that were sold fetched $16 billion and represented 15 percent of the company's stock. Facebook got $7 billion, and the early investors $9 billion. The other 85 percent of Facebook's stock is owned by Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, employees and early investors. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004. Its stock rose 18 percent on day one.
Here was Facebook's "timeline" Friday, trading under the symbol "FB" on the Nasdaq Stock Market:
The stock opened at 11:30 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. It briefly traded as high as $45 and by noon was at $40.40. It fluttered throughout the afternoon and hugged the $38 mark for much of the final hour, before closing at $38.23.
By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.
TD Ameritrade reported that in the first 45 minutes of trading, Facebook accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.
By comparison, on its first day back on the stock market, in November 2010, General Motors represented 7 percent of trades on the online brokerage.
Steve Quirk, who oversees trading strategy at TD Ameritrade, said that about 60,000 orders were lined up before Facebook opened.
Technical glitches delayed the start of Facebook's trading by a half-hour. The Securities and Exchange Commission also is investigating problems traders encountered in changing and canceling their orders.
Other social media companies, most of which have gone public in the last year, saw their shares plummet when it became clear what kind of reception Facebook was getting in the public market. Shares of game-maker Zynga Inc. and reviews site Yelp Inc. both hit all-time lows.
The stock market will now begin assigning a dollar value to Facebook based primarily on its financial performance. If Facebook can continue to increase its revenue and profit at the rate it has the past few years, the stock should rise. Google reported strong earnings after it became a public company, and its stock price more than tripled the first year, from $85 to $280.
Facebook's stock price will also depend somewhat on broad economic forces, as well as the whims of investors.
Facebook is one of those rare companies whose IPO transcends Wall Street's money lust. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting its 900 million users around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.
Most tech companies going public want a big rise in their debut to show they're "strong, dynamic companies standing out in the crowd," said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop, but Facebook already has that image, and so may not care.
Few of the Internet companies to go public recently have been profitable. But Facebook had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In 2011, it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, up from earnings of $606 million and revenue of $2 billion a year earlier.
That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and had revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as "FarmVille."
Facebook's public debut marked a milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications' IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a "new economy."
It took Google Inc.'s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a revolutionary idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.
Facebook's IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company's cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to bring in other talented engineers and promising technology. That's what Google has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don't include Google's pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.
Zuckerberg's biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion in April. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on Facebook's current share price, Instagram is in line to receive about $1.2 billion.
Friday's debut, though, resulted in deals worth much less.
Alper Aydinoglu, a DePaul University student who got 50 shares via Etrade at $38, said he was "disappointed with the first day of trading."
His gain on paper: $11.50, but that was before Etrade's standard commission of $9.99.
Aydinoglu still called it an excellent learning opportunity.
"On top of everything, I now have the bragging rights that I participated in one of the most popular IPOs of all time."

Met Police to extract suspects' mobile phon...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:56:20 +0000

By Dave Lee Technology Reporter, BBC News

The Metropolitan Police has implemented a system to extract mobile phone data from suspects held in custody.
The data includes call history, texts and contacts, and the BBC has learned that it will be retained regardless of whether any charges are brought.
The technology is being used in 16 London boroughs, and could potentially be used by police across the UK.
Campaign group Privacy International described the move as a "possible breach of human rights law".
Until now, officers had to send mobiles off for forensic examination in order to gather and store data, a process which took several weeks.
Under the new system, content will be extracted using purpose built terminals in police stations.
It will allow officers to connect a suspect's mobile and produce a print out of data from the device, as well as saving digital records of the content.
'Retained and handled'
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity”

Stephen KavanaghDeputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service
A Met Police spokesman told the BBC that when a suspect was released, "data received from the handsets is retained and handled in accordance with other data held by the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service]" - regardless of whether charges had been brought.
Guidelines given to officers state that data extraction can happen only if there is sufficient suspicion the mobile phone was used for criminal activity.
"Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity," said Stephen Kavanagh, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.
"When a suspect is arrested and found with a mobile phone that we suspect may have been used in crime, traditionally we submit it to our digital forensic laboratory for analysis.
"Therefore, a solution located within the boroughs that enables trained officers to examine devices and gives immediate access to the data in that handset is welcomed."
'Illegal'
Over 300 London officers will be trained in using the "intuitive, fully-guided touchscreen desktop data acquisition tool", created by mobile forensic firm Radio Tactics.
The cost of leasing the 16 terminals for 12 months and training the officers will be £50,000, the Met said.
Privacy International has warned against the possibility of such tech eventually be used on the streets
Privacy International has expressed serious concern over the system.
"We are looking at a possible breach of human rights law," spokeswoman Emma Draper told the BBC.
"It is illegal to indefinitely retain the DNA profiles of individuals after they are acquitted or released without charge, and the communications, photos and location data contained in most people's smartphones is at least as valuable and as personal as DNA."
Ms Draper added that while the Met's current plans were limited to fixed extraction terminals in stations, portable technology was readily available.
"Examining suspects' mobile phones after they are arrested is one thing, but if this technology was to be taken out onto the streets and used in stop-and-searches, that would be a significant and disturbing expansion of police powers."

Memristors in silicon promising for dense, fast...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:54:52 +0000

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip.
The device is a "memristor", a long-hypothesised but only recently demonstrated electronic component.
A memristor's electronic properties make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory.
Researchers at the European Materials Research Society meeting now say it can be made much more cheaply, using current semiconductor techniques.
There has been significant interest in memristors since the first prototype was unveiled in 2008, not least because it took 37 years for the device to make it from theoretical proposition to reality.
The name is a portmanteau of memory and resistor, because its resistance changes depending on how much current has passed through it; it "remembers" that value even after power is turned off.
In a flash
The history-dependent nature of their electrical properties would make them able to carry out calculations, but most interest has focused on developing them for memory applications, to replace the widespread "flash" solid-state memory of USB sticks and memory cards.
"We're reaching the limits of what we can do with flash memory in terms of increasing the storage density, and it's also relatively high power and not as fast as we would like," said Anthony Kenyon of University College London, UK.
However, researchers are still working to get memristor devices out of the laboratory and into consumer electronics. Hewlett-Packard, whose engineers demonstrated the first working memristor, already have plans to bring early memristor designs to market.
Current designs employ expensive or exotic materials, but a real memristor revolution could hinge on making them compatible with existing semiconductor technology, based overwhelmingly on silicon.
Memristors employing more "exotic" materials will probably make it into devices first
That would make them easy and cheap to integrate into existing manufacturing techniques.
Such attempts have been made before, butprevious devices reported in a 2010 paper in Nano Letters were fairly delicate and worked only under vacuum.
Now, Dr Kenyon, his student Adnan Mehonic, and his colleagues from UCL, France and Spain have stumbled across a better way to make silicon memristors.
The team was working on silicon devices for LEDs when they accidentally discovered that a film of silicon oxide on their devices - which forms naturally when silicon is left out in air - behaved as memristors.
Mr Mehonic went on to study just what was going on inside the films, and the team recently published details of their findings in the Journal of Applied Physics.
What they have found is that their devices appear to significantly outperform existing solid-state "flash" memory.
As they described at this week's conference, the energy required to switch the state of their devices - the energy it would take to store or retrieve a bit of information - is just a hundredth of that in existing flash memory, and significantly faster.
"Flash memory devices switch at 10,000 nanoseconds (billionths of a second) or so, and in our device we can't measure how fast it is," Dr Kenyon said.
"Our equipment only goes down to 90 nanoseconds. It's at least as fast as that and probably faster."
Though the team's idea is a bit behind other more well developed memristor recipes, Dr Kenyon is hopeful the cheap and simple nature of their devices will make them industrially attractive.
"Discussions are at a early stage but we are talking to some fairly major names in the industry about taking this and commercialising it," he said.

Twitter backs browser privacy project

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:53:23 +0000

Micro-blogging service Twitter has declared its support for an initiative that lets people browse the web without being monitored.
The "Do Not Track" initiative stops firms tracking people as they visit several different websites.
The monitoring is done to help advertisers craft ads to a user's preferences and lifestyle.
Blocking the tracking depends on websites honouring requests from users to browse anonymously.
Do Not Track (DNT) has been brokered by the US Federal Trade Commission which wants people to be able to tell websites to stop gathering and sharing data when they visit.
Sites that decide to ignore users' requests to stop tracking them could be subject to FTC action.
A DNT option is available in the recent versions of the Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari browsers. Turning on Do Not Track in Google's Chrome involves installing an add-on.

For DNT to work, websites have to agree to discard any data they would otherwise collect and share about what people do when they visit a site.
In a help document, Twitter said it would now respect the Do Not Track option in all the browsers that supported it.
However, it said that those that turn on DNT would notice a change in the information Twitter presented to them.
"We stop collecting the information that allows us to tailor Twitter based on your recent visits to websites that have integrated our buttons or widgets," it said in its help document.
A survey carried out by Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser, found that 8.6% of the users of its desktop browser and 19% of mobile browser users were opted in to Do Not Track.

Browsers backing Do Not Track

Firefox 5+
IE 9+
Safari 5.1+
Chrome 17 (with add-on)

Anonymous attacks Indian government websites

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:50:50 +0000

The hacker group Anonymous has carried out a series of attacks against websites in India.
Websites for government departments, India's Supreme Court and two political parties all came under attack.
Anonymous said the attacks were carried out in retaliation against blocks imposed on well-known video and file-sharing sites.
The Indian anti-piracy firm behind the blocking of Vimeo, DailyMotion and The Pirate Bay was also attacked.
In late March, Chennai-based Copyrightlabs won a restraining orderthat made Indian ISPs and phone firms stop their customers reaching sites that were illegally sharing copies of Bollywood films called 3 and Dhammu.
As the the blocks started to come into force in mid-May, Anonymous launched attacks against 14 separate government and political sites. Hit hardest were the Indian telecoms department, electronics and IT ministry, supreme court and sites used by the BJP and INC political parties which were all knocked offline.
The website of Copyrightlabs was also "down for maintenance" during the attacks.
In tweets documenting its ongoing hack attacks, Anonymous said they were being carried out in retaliation for "internet censorship" in India.
To knock out the sites, Anonymous bombarded them with data, a tactic known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The tactic had only partial success as most of the sites targeted soon recovered and were only offline intermittently.
The disabling of the websites was the first tangible result actions of the OpIndia campaign announced by Anonymous on 9 May in a message posted to YouTube.

Computer game helps rehabilitate stroke victims

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:48:52 +0000

Scientists at Newcastle University have developed a computer game designed to help stroke victims recuperate.
The Circus Challenge game, created with a computer game studio, aims to help patients recover motor functions.
Players use wireless controllers to perform virtual circus acts such as lion taming and plate spinning.
It is hoped the PC-based game will serve as a cheaper and more effective alternative to existing treatments, with patients able to play at home.
The project received a £1.5m grant from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund, a partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health, to allow further development.
'Trapeze artist'
One patient, who suffered a stroke in February, said the game was "something different which encourages me to keep going with my therapy".
Danny Mann, 68, from Dudley, Northumberland, said the game compared favourably with the "dull" exercises he had previously been instructed to complete.
"This is the first time I've ever played a video game - I mean, I don't even own a computer.

The BBC's Sharon Barbour reports on the computer game for stroke patients
"When I got the controllers I tried being a trapeze artist - something I never expected to try at my time of life," he said.
Mr Mann said he was looking forward to furthering his recovery by playing the game with his grandchildren.
Janet Eyre, Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience at Newcastle University, said the game would help meet the shortfall of trained therapists who stroke victims must normally work with on a frequent basis as part of their rehabilitation.
"With our video game, people get engrossed in the competition and action of the circus characters and forget that the purpose of the game is for therapy."
Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer and chief medical adviser at the the Department of Health, said the newly-developed technology was a "remarkable innovation in the NHS".
"The government is committed to supporting such work and bringing breakthroughs from every area - even video gaming - to the front line of patient care," she said.
Circus Challenge becomes more difficult as players gain more strength as their recovery progresses. The tasks require both gross and fine motor skills and can be performed by people in wheelchairs.
About 80% of stroke patients do not fully regain their arm and hand functions, however it is hoped there will be some improvement on this figure as patients are able to continue their rehabilitation at home.
In the UK, 150,000 people suffer a stroke every year, costing the economy an estimated £4bn in care and loss of income.

China Mobile 'in talks' with Apple to o...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:46:53 +0000

The world's biggest mobile phone network, China Mobile, could soon offer its customers Apple's iPhone.
The Chinese carrier's chairman has confirmed the two firms are in talks.
Compatibility issues between the iPhone and China Mobile's 3G network mean that currently Apple's handsets only work on the much slower 2G service.
The problem could be resolved with the launch of the next iPhone, rumoured to happen this summer, and when China adopts the 4G standard, analysts say.
China Mobile is the country's biggest mobile phone network, and in terms of users the world's largest, with more than 660 million customers.
Even though the iPhone is not yet in China Mobile's official product line-up, about 15 million of the company's customers are thought to be iPhone users already, having bought the phone through different channels.
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We've been actively talking to Apple on how we can cooperate”

Xi GuohuaChina Mobile chairman
Despite being the biggest telecoms provider, China Mobile is the country's only operator that does not support the iPhone.
China Mobile's market share is about 67% - a lot more than its two rivals China Unicom and China Telecom - but it has been slipping steadily in the past few years.
Officially offering the iPhone to its subscribers could help China Mobile to get back the consumers it has lost to other carriers.
China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua mentioned the ongoing discussions between the two firms at a shareholders meeting in Beijing.
"We've been actively talking to Apple on how we can cooperate," he said.
"I can't give you too many details, but I'd like to repeat that both sides do hope to boost our cooperation."
Apple did not respond to BBC requests for comment.
Different network
Both of China Mobile's rivals offer the iPhone to their subscribers
The operator has been in talks with the US giant for years.
"The reason China Mobile hasn't been able to offer iPhones is that it was 'anointed' by the government with the dubious prize of having to deploy China's own attempt at a 3G standard," Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consultancy firm in Beijing, told BBC News.
This standard, called TD-SCDMA, is unique to China and different from what many international operators use.
It is also different from China Mobile's smaller rivals, China Unicom and China Telecom.
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China Mobile's own path has been a nightmare for the company”

Duncan ClarkBDA
"China Mobile's own path has been a nightmare for the company," said Mr Clark.
"It has had to rely on 2.5 or 2.75G connections and subsidise heavily phones with TD-SCDMA chipsets which are rarely used in fact," said Mr Clark.
"China Mobile has invested heavily in wi-fi hotspots too as a defensive measure - to access faster speeds.
"So they have lost many high-end customers who want the iPhone or some other smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy II to China Unicom and to a lesser extent China Telecom."
Move to 4G
But once the Chinese authorities approve the new LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard, a flavour of 4G, the incompatibility issue could be resolved, said Mr Clark.
"The only catch is when the government here will approve LTE; right now we see trial deployments but don't expect LTE to be deployed here until 2014 at the earliest," he said.

Google makes search 'more human' with K...

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:45:48 +0000

Google has revamped its search engine in an attempt to offer instant answers to search questions.
A new function, the Knowledge Graph, will make the site's algorithms act "more human", the sitesaid in a blog post.
The feature will at first be available to US-based users, but will be rolled out globally in due course.
It follows similar efforts by rival Bing to provide added search content beyond the typical list of links.
Microsoft's search engine launched its "snapshot" column last week as part of a wider site redesign.
Google's senior vice-president of engineering, Amit Singhal, explained that, until now, the search engine had been able only to match keywords, rather than understand context.
Mr Singhal said the words "Taj Mahal" could mean different things to different people.
"You might think of one of the world's most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant," he said.
Key information
Google said the Knowledge Graph has been programmed to use around 3.5 billion different attributes to organise results, meaning it could now group results according to those various alternative interpretations.
For some searches, such as on prominent people, Google will automatically pull up a summary box with key information on that topic.
The next step, Mr Singhal said, is to look at how the site can answer more complex questions, such as "What are the 10 deepest lakes in Africa?"
In doing so the search engine would need to draw on multiple sources and factor in many different criteria.
This kind of computational, intelligent search is currently pioneered by the likes of Wolfram Alpha - a site that gathers verified data, such as from the World Health Organization, to provide statistical results.
It has long been a technological goal to produce search engines that could react entirely naturally to human-like queries.
One such effort includes the search engine Ask Jeeves, where users can ask a stereotypically English butler for help.

The Pirate Bay hit by DDoS attack

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:44:39 +0000

File-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) has been hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The site has been largely inaccessible for the last 24 hours, and the service is intermittent in the UK.
The Pirate Bay has confirmed the attack on its Facebook page, saying that it did not know who was behind it, although it "had its suspicions".
A provider of DDoS defence systems said that it was unlikely that the attack came from hacking group Anonymous.
"There will be further attacks, but what's significant about this whole story is that people think that it is the Anonymous attacking a site which is typically a type of site that they defend," said Andre Stewart of Corero Network Security.
"It could be the record labels, or a government somewhere that has had enough of not being able to catch The Pirate Bay, it could be just one person who had rented some cloud power from Amazon and is sitting in a cafe, and is able to launch an attack."
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Don't freak out. You'll get your TPB fix tomorrow”

The Pirate Bay
Although some users may have attempted to access the site using proxies, TPB itself warned them against doing so.
Illegal file sharing
"Use proxies at own risk. Don't login unless you trust the proxy supplier. Don't freak out. You'll get your TPB fix tomorrow," said the site.
TPB allows users to illegally obtain copyrighted songs, films and other content for free.
Copyright holders argue this causes a significant loss in revenue.
However, others say that it is very difficult to assess the impact of downloading on sales.
Virgin Media users trying to access The Pirate Bay are shown a message explaining why it is blocked
"If they're losing money and seeing that the government is not being able to stop it, there's a real monetary value reason for them to try and bring it down," said Mr Stewart.
"And if they can do it in the name of Anonymous then it's great for them.
"Equally the governments that protect these industries are frustrated as well because they haven't been able to see it close down, unlike a number of other torrent sites."
Open and free
Virgin Media began preventing access to the file-sharing site following a High Court order last week.
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Governments could be frustrated because they haven't been able to see TPB close down”

André StewartCorero Network Security
Some time later the Virgin Media website suffered a hack attack that many thought was organised to protest against efforts to block access to TPB.
Twitter feeds associated with the Anonymous collective wrote: "Virgin Media - Tango Down #OpTPB".
But TPB criticised Anonymous for the attack, writing on its Facebook page that it did not "encourage these actions".
"We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views," wrote TPB.
"Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us. So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDoS and blocks are both forms of censorship."