Technology Wonders, Interesting Matters

HP Open Sources Web OS

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:40:00 +0000

HP Web OS based tablet

Well, at least finaly we heard something not disappointing from HP.

HP decided to open source its Web OS platform. Wise decision. They aren't going to fully abbandon it; HP will continue to develop and make contributions to it. This assures it is not going to be a dead product after spending about three billions on it.

Probably HP will continue its contributions till it is fully driven by community. Goal is to make a rival for iOS and Android platforms.

For sure this will gain some populariy for Web OS and more developers will start working on this platform and applications for it.

Mobile and tablet markets still have lot of potentials and another open source platform would be very attractive for many developers.

Help to stop SOPA/PIPA Bills

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:02:00 +0000

Seriously these congressmen and senators have nothing else to be worry about? What they are trying to achieve? Why government has to have the right to censor Internet? Entertainment industry already has all the tools to control copyright infringements within the US. Lean more about these bills and help to stop them before its too late.

Father of C and UNIX, dies at 70

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 06:28:00 +0000

What a month for computer world. Another true legend of computer world, Dennis Ritchie inventor of C programming language and co-developer of UNIX operating system died at 70 after a long illness. His body was found in his New Jersey home.

Dennis Ritchie receiving the National Medal of Technology in 1999

Pretty much every fundamental computer program is being developed using C language. C language is a vital part of technology world and the importance of UNIX and its derivatives is clear for every computer scientist.

UNIX is written in C and Internet was - and still is - built on UNIX. Today, UNIX and its derivatives - which are the most dependable operating systems - are running the most important components of Internet.

Yes, we lost another legend, but his heritage: C and UNIX will live forever and he will always be remembered and honored.

Read more about him here.

Drone fleet has infected by a computer virus

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 23:34:00 +0000

Great! Drone fleet is now infected by an unknown computer virus.

The infection was first discovered two weeks ago and apparently all the efforts to clean the virus has failed so far.

Photo from Wired

They keep cleaning it and, it keeps coming back. Probably it is exploiting a security issue somewhere and then re-injects itself into the system again.

Military security specialists believe that this is a key-logger type virus, logging every key stroke while pilots are flying drones.

According to them, there is no evidence of transmitting data to any external sources or damaging the flight system functionality.

This is very suspicious. Who knows what this virus is programmed to do? Maybe it is designed to take over the fleet and, do terrorist attacks? Maybe it is waiting for a command from home to start doing whatever it is designed to do. All of us still remember Stuxnet.

I believe military should shut down all of its drone missions till the virus is fully cleaned up.

For more details, read this article.

Former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs dies at 56

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:22:00 +0000

the Man who had one of the biggest influences on technology world, died at 56.

He was the mastermind behind Apple's innovative and revolutionary products and technologies including Mac OS X, iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Steve Jobs holding an iPhone

Steve Jobs was battling a rare form of pancreatic cancer for several years.

Steve Jobs revitalized Apple after rejoining the company in 1997 and made - at the time suffering - Apple, one of the world's most valuable companies.

Nobody can deny the cultural effects of his designed products on society.

Read the ABC news article about him here.

Privacy concerns surrounding Amazon's Silk web browser

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:03:00 +0000

Last Wednesday Amazon announced its new member of the Kindle family called Kindle Fire. Kindle fire is an Android based 7" full color tablet customized by Amazon.

Jeff Bezos holds a Kindle Fire tablet

This device should be considered as a start point to seek competition with Nook color and, more important than that Apple's iPad.

This new Kindle has a new radical web browser called Silk.

This WebKit based web browser is designed to provide an accelerated web browsing experience utilizing Amazon's EC2 cloud based processing power.

Basically what happens is, Amazon stands between your browser traffic and destination websites, just the way your ISP does. So, every time users point to a website, Silk would connect to Amazon servers and downloads a pre-rendered and pre-fetched version of the website.

But this functionality gets more concerning as Silk also handles SSL encrypted connections. Using a kind of SSL proxy, Amazon becomes a man-in-the middle provider to handle SSL connections.

Technically, as the tablet is running Android OS, users should be able to install Firefox and use it instead of their fishy Silk browser.

For more information regarding privacy concerns about Amazon's Silk browser, see here.

UARS crashes into the Pacific Ocean

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:09:00 +0000

Finally after all the calculations and estimation, UARS - Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite - hit the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. It didn't crash over California as was initially predicted.

There are unsubstantiated reports about falling debris over Okotoks a town in Canada. Apparently locals fond wreckage including a large piece.

NASA is currently working to substantiate reports of falling debris.

This was an end to the life of this bus-sized satellite. UARS was 35 feet long and 15 feet wide, weighting 6 tons.

For more details, see here.

Is Faster than Light Speed Possible?

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:37:00 +0000

Two days ago - while driving back from work - turned on the radio and they were interviewing a scientist regarding what happened at CERN labs.

The scientist was mentioning, this fact that now we know something that was previously considered impossible and now seems to be possible, goes back to Arthur C. Clarke's first law.

Scientists at CERN labs in Switzerland discovered that tiny particles called neutrinos are traveling a 454 mile underground trip, faster than expected speed which was speed of light.

Although the difference is very small, shows that speed of the light is not the cosmic speed limit as described by Albert Einstein.

If this is confirmed, will be a revolutionary change for the modern physics laws.

For more details, read this interesting article.

Apple booted app that shows ugly side of electronics

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:19:00 +0000

Apple bans an app that shows the ugly side of electronics consumption. From very first stages of getting raw materials, all the way down to become e-waste.

The app called "Phone Story" is a game showing the impact of electronics consumption on different aspects of human life. It is designed for Android and iPhone.

Apple banned the app and removed it from the AppStore claiming it was violating its developer guidelines. Oh, yes Apple, you are right. This is not the first time Apple bans apps for ridiculous reasons.

Find out more about this story here and also check the game website.

This app is still available on Android Market for a buck.

AMD Breaks 8GHz World Record

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 02:40:00 +0000

AMD breaks 8GHz Guinness world processor frequency record using an overclocked Bulldozer-core powered 32nm FX desktop processor code named 'Zambezi'.

They started cooling down the processor using liquid nitrogen and then switched to liquid helium which brings the core temperature down to -438F (-220C). This was done to also test the processor for so called "cold bugs": problems occurring at extremely low temperatures.

What was the record? 8.429GHz!!! A 100MHz improvement since the last record.

Watch this video and see this link for more information.

Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:31:00 +0000

Last weekend I was browsing HULU's movie collection to find something interesting to watch.

I love history and love historical documentaries as well. When I saw this title "Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup", I couldn't resist watching it.

This is one of the documentaries discussing questions and moot points behind the 9/11 series of events. I'm sure you already know that there is a lot of controversy behind 9/11.

Like to know more? I highly recommend watching this movie.

Fed Blocks AT&T and T-Mobile Merger

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:12:00 +0000

You may have heard that US Government filed a law suit against AT&T and T-Mobile merger based on anti-trust laws.

Fed believes this merger will remove a low cost, highly competitive member of US wireless service companies from the market, leading to a less competitive situation and higher prices for consumers.

I believe this is true. AT&T have already started pushing T-Mobile toward raising prices. Example is their text messaging price hike last month.

Wireless services are already over priced and creating a market with less and less competition is the last thing you wanna do.

If Fed can't do anything about high gas prices and big oil companies, at least they can block greedy AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile and expanding its kingdom.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs Resigns

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:03:00 +0000

Steve Jobs & Bono - Picture from Washington Post

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, the man who turned Apple from an almost bankrupt company into the world's most valuable company, resigned today.

He wrote this letter which was posted on Apple website:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Tim Cook Apple's COO is now the new CEO and Steve Jobs will serve as Chairman of the Board. You can see the official press release here.

It is still not clear if his personal health issues had a role in making this decision. Steve Jobs has suffered from pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant in 2009.

Here is an interesting video of Steve Jobs introducing the first Macintosh:

Smart Storage Method Saved MP3tunes

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:52:00 +0000

Mp3tunes is a cloud based music service that allows users to upload their music collection to their cloud based storage and then play back them from any connected device.

EMI sued MP3tunes claiming copyright infringement. In reality what happens on MP3tunes servers is, to save bandwidth, storage and to provide a better user experience, MP3tunes is checking MD5 hash of each file that is being uploaded to their storage space. If the hash already exists in their database, instead of re-uploading and creating another copy of the file - which EMI claims will violate copyright laws - they instantly add the file to user's locker and avoid creating a duplicated copy. So, if 50 users have the same song, MP3tunes only keeps one copy.

Federal court judge finds MP3tunes cloud music service didn't violate copyright laws.

Apparently all the other big guys including Apple, Amazon and Google are using sort of the same method to store user data and this court order clears the way for them. You can read more about this case here.

$99 HP TouchPad: Gone for Good!

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:35:00 +0000

$99 Magic!

Whatever it was - a smart business strategy or a way to get rid of an unwanted product, it worked pretty well. The cursed pad, became super popular overnight.

This WebOS based tablet was a business disaster, HP announced that they are going to discontinue all of their WebOS based devices.

It was just few days ago that nobody wanted it. Big guys such as Best Buy were talking about sending their whole inventory back to HP and, all of the sudden, you can't find it anywhere. I want one if you could.

Apparently you can't find the tablet anywhere on the web and even HP's website is out of stock. I was reading this article of PCWorld about how difficult it is to find a $99 HP tablet and they are absolutely right. See how a price tag can change everything.

By the way, don't let them fool you. They are still making a profit out of this $99.

Facebook's Like buttons give away personal information

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:09:00 +0000

A government official in Germany has ordered websites to stop using Facebook's "like" button, saying they give away personal information.
Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, issued a statement Friday saying analysis by his office showed that using the popular buttons transfers data to Facebook's servers in the United States.

That would violate German and European Union data-protection laws, he said.
Weichert, of the Independent Center for Privacy Protection, ordered website owners in his north German state to remove "like" buttons or possibly face a fine.

"Whoever visits facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years," Weichert said in the statement. "Facebook builds a broad individual -- and for members even a personalized -- profile."

Facebook strongly denied Weichert's claims.

"We firmly reject any assertion that Facebook is not compliant with EU data-protection standards," said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. "The Facebook 'like' button is such a popular feature because people have complete control over how their information is shared through it.
"For more than a year, the plug-in has brought value to many businesses and individuals every day."

He said Facebook will review materials produced by the agency "both on our own behalf and on the behalf of web users throughout Germany."
The "like" button was unveiled last spring at Facebook's F8 developers conference. Appearing on many websites (including CNN.com), the button allows users to quickly share links on Facebook without ever leaving the original site.

The Associated Press on Friday quoted an unnamed Facebook spokesman saying the company can see "information such as the IP address" of users who click a "like" button, but that such information is deleted within 90 days. The spokesman called that standard for the web industry.

In his statement, Weichert urged people not to create Facebook accounts and to "keep their fingers from clicking on social plug-ins" like the "like" button.

Germany, with its strict online privacy policies, has found itself in repeated spats with Facebook and other Web giants in recent years.

The country demanded that Facebook users get more control over their e-mail address books in the site's "Friend Finder" tool. Germany also required Google to let people who want to opt out of its "Street View" tool to blur images of their homes.

Source

Watching too much TV will kill you!

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 02:24:00 +0000

In case you needed more proof that watching excessive amounts of TV is bad for your health: new research shows that there is a correlation between the amount of time you spend in front of the TV and how long you live.

A study by researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia has concluded that, for every hour of television watched after age 25, the average human lifespan drops by 22 minutes. A person who watch six hours of TV per day will, on average, live five years less than people who spent less time on the couch and in front of the television screen. Those are some scary numbers.

The study tracked data from 11,000 Australian participants over the age of 25. It was published earlier this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This study doesn’t prove that TV is quietly killing us. It’s more likely that lack of exercise and bad eating habits are shortening the lifespans of TV couch potatoes. A person who spends six hours a day staying active is almost certainly going to live longer than a person who likes to lean back in a recliner watching countless episodes of Judge Judy or Law and Order: SVU.

It’s not just TV watching that’s bad for you, either. We recently learned that sitting in front of the computer for six hours a day increases your risk of death by 40%. And with Americans watching more video than ever, the health problem is growing. That’s why we’re fans of the stand-up desk.

Source

Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5B

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:55:00 +0000

Motorola Mobility Xoom Tablet

In a monster deal harkening back to the days of buyout Mondays, Google (GOOG) announced this morning that they will acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings (MMI) for $12.5 billion. The move gives Google a hardware platform, but more importantly patent protection for key aspects of the Android operating system. This gives the search juggernaut a more dependable pathway for monetizing Android's enormous success. Android is widely considered the only practical threat to Apple's (AAPL) wildly popular iPhone.

Now that Google has seemingly cemented its claim to Android revenues, the mobile phone operating system game is afoot. Apple hasn't lost a market-share war since the 2001 release of the iPod, and much of Android's success was predicated on its open source keeping it cheap for Google partners, while allowing them to give Android their own special sauce.

As should be obvious by now, the Google/Motorola deal has a lot of moving parts. Helping us sort out the implications Breakout was joined by Apple Shareholder Jon Fisher of Fifth Third Asset Management. Is Fisher nervous? "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," he says.

In other words, he's not exactly looking to dump his Apple shares on the Motorola news. The Minnesotan says pairing a handset business with the Android software will strain the relationship between Google and its hardware partners. "From a competitive standpoint, if you've been a Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T), Samsung or someone licensing the Android platform, now you're kind of feeding your competitor."

If those don't sound like a list of companies likely to make a meaningful dent in either Google or Apple it's because they aren't. Fisher says the death of the Nokias (NOK) of the world is fait accompli. Google is picking a fight with Apple and it's much more about patents than it is hardware.

Android is only part of the transaction. Motorola Mobility also has a set-top box division, one that has been competing with Cisco's (CSCO) Scientific Atlanta, among others. Set-top boxes are destined to join DVD's in the dustbin of history, but the patents Google is acquiring may give them a fighting chance in the long-envisioned marriage between the televisions and the Internet. Taking the net from the computer to the TV is something of the Holy Grail of profiting from the way consumers interact with content. Inroads have been made over the last few years ascent business, and Apple TV is at the head of the pack, but the winners are hardly clear yet.

Fisher says a battle for the living room between Google and Apple is a few years down the road, if it becomes a battle at all. Ultimately the hypothetical nature of any direct competitive advantage this deal gives Google is the problem for Google shareholders. Fisher says investors "don't know what and where (Google) is going to invest," giving them a lack of coherent or reliable plan for the search monster's next growth path. In Fisher's view the Motorola acquisition is going to amount to "just another overhang for Google stock."
Can Google morph from search king into a patent-squatting, phone-making, TV-integrated corporation with multiple, or at least two, viable businesses? These questions remain but, at least for now, Fisher says Google's MMI deal "doesn't enhance their position."

Source

Hulu Set to Fetch Upwards of $1.5 Billion in Auction

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:55:00 +0000

Initial bids for video-streaming website Hulu are expected by the end of next week, and Hulu’s owners, including Walt Disney , News Corp. , and Comcast’s NBCUniversal , will be looking for a price tag upwards of $1.5 billion for the site and its licenses. Wall Street analysts are predicting the site will fetch around $2 billion in a sale.

Of course, that price tag depends on whether buyers want to fully acquire the site, or whether its current owners will keep a stake. Whoever acquires the site could also pay extra in order to extend the length of Hulu’s exclusive content licenses, giving it a leg up on the competition, which includes Amazon and Netflix.

Hoping to get in on the video-streaming action, possible bidders include Yahoo , Google , Apple , DirecTV , and even Amazon, which could simply extend its Amazon on Demand library with Hulu’s licenses, or merge its existing streaming service with the Hulu site. Whoever acquires Hulu could emerge as Netflix’s biggest competition.

Source

Aug. 12, 1981: IBM Gets Personal With 5150 PC

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 02:57:00 +0000

1981: IBM introduces the 5150 personal computer. It will sweep away the competition and effectively have the field to itself, for a while.

For an operating system, IBM first went to Digital Research, which had developed CP/M. When Digital declined, IBM went to a small firm known for microcomputer adaptations of Basic: Microsoft.

Microsoft bought the rights to Seattle Computer Products’ QDOS (supposedly, “Quick and Dirty Operating System,” itself a possible hack of CP/M). In Microsoft’s hands, QDOS became PC-DOS and later MS-DOS. (The 5150 could also run the more-expensive CP/M-86 and UCSD D-Pascal operating systems, but the $40 price tag — $99 in today’s money — on PC-DOS 1.0 made it irresistible to most users.)

Before 1980, IBM made only mini and mainframe computers. The old-line firm just wasn’t sure that the fledgling microcomputer market would be at all profitable.

But once the company decided to act, it developed the 5150 in less than a year at its Boca Raton, Florida, facility — using existing off-the-shelf components. IBM selected Intel’s 8-to-16-bit 8088 processor, because it thought both the Intel 8086 and Motorola MC68000 16-bit processors were too powerful.

IBM unveiled its new baby in Boca Raton and at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria hotel. It weighed a then-svelte 25 pounds with a 4.77-MHz Intel 8088 CPU that contained 29,000 transistors. Stripped, it had just 16 kB of RAM; standard 64 kB, expandable to 256 kB. It also featured a 40-kB ROM, a choice of zero, one or two 5.25-inch floppy drives, a monochromatic display and optional cassette drive.

The 16-kb base model, with no data-storage drives included, cost $1,565 ($3,900 today). If you loaded a 64-kB box with all the standard features, that jumped to $2,880 ($7,150 today), and souped up with color graphics and 256 kB, it’d cost you about $6,000 ($14,900 today). Available software included the VisiCalc spreadsheet, Easywriter 1.0 and Adventure, Microsoft’s first game.

IBM retailed the 5150 through ComputerLand and Sears, Roebuck. It sold 65,000 PCs in four months, with 100,000 orders taken by Christmas.

The 5150 was trouncing all the other microcomputers targeted for homes and small businesses. It established the dominance of the Microsoft operating system, pushing CP/M and proprietary operating systems out of the market. On the hardware side, its boxy design became the model for PC compatibles, and the ISA bus supplanted the old S-100 bus as standard.

It would be two-and-a-half years before the first real challenge appeared, when the original Apple Macintosh went on sale.

Source

DNA Discovered in Meteorites

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:10:00 +0000

NASA researchers have found the building blocks of DNA, the genetic molecule that is essential to all life forms, in meteorites, pieces of space rock that have fallen to Earth. The discovery suggests that similar meteorites and comets may have impacted Earth and assisted in life formation here.

With minimal chance for contamination of the meteorite samples, scientists are confident that these meteorite specimens were formed in space. “People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960's, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life,” Michael Callahan, lead author of the study on the discovery, said in a statement.

The research team analyzed twelve carbon rich meteorites, nine of which were from Antarctica, to positively identify the basic elements of the chemical compounds they extracted from the samples. Testing revealed adenine and guanine, two fundamental components of DNA called nucleobases.

DNA is shaped like a double helix, or twisted ladder, and the rungs of that ladder are each comprised of two nucleobases, either a pairing of adenine and thymine or of guanine and cytosine. The ladder is essentially a long string of genetic code that tells cells in an organism which proteins to make. Those proteins then play critical roles in organism growth and function, making everything from hair to enzymes.

Scientists also found hypoxanthine and xanthine, two other chemicals used in biological processes and found in muscle tissue.

The meteorites also contained trace amounts of three molecules associated with nucleobases, called nucleobase analogs, but two of those are almost never seen in biology, providing the necessary proof that these DNA components were actually created in outer space.

In fact the only record of any of these nucleobases in biologic processes is within a virus. Callahan said in the NASA press release that “if asteroids are behaving like chemical 'factories' cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, due to the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid,” and that is exactly what these researchers found. He says the nucleobases found, biological or not, can also be created in a lab setting, using the basic compounds hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water.

This finding contributes further to the growing collection of evidence that asteroids and comets are comprised of the proper chemicals to generate the building blocks of life. Some seem to have the ideal internal chemistry for the job.

“In fact, there seems to be a ‘goldilocks’ class of meteorites,” Callahan said in a statement, “the so called CM2 meteorites, where conditions are just right to make more of these molecules.”

Source

Apple blocks Samsung's Galaxy tablet in EU

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 01:33:00 +0000

A German court has temporarily barred Samsung Electronics from selling its flagship Galaxy tablet in most of the European Union in a significant victory for market leader Apple Inc.

(Photo: REUTERS / Jo Yong-Hak)
A Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet (R) and an Apple iPad tablet in Seoul, August 10, 2011.

In a global intellectual property battle, Apple has said the Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad, and it has sued the Korean firm in the United States, Australia and elsewhere.

Samsung, whose tablets are based on Google Inc's Android software, has countersued Apple.

The German court order comes a week after Samsung was forced to delay the Australian launch of its latest tablet because of a separate lawsuit alleging Samsung infringed a number of Apple's patents.

Samsung products already distributed prior to the injunction on August 9 may still be sold and the company said it does not expect an immediate impact on sales.

UK retailer Dixon's said the company has so far received no legal instructions to remove the Galaxy tablet from stores, while Telefonica Germany can sell devices it still has in stores.

"It's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging," said Apple's London-based spokesman Adam Howorth. "This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."

Intellectual property rights are granted by an agency of the European Union and can therefore be enforced on an EU-wide basis, patent-expert Florian Mueller said.

Apple did well to choose the Duesseldorf based court because it is known to be well disposed toward rights holders, said Jorma Hein, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights.

Separate hearings are scheduled in The Hague in the Netherlands for Wednesday and Thursday. Experts said it was likely that Apple was seeking an import stop in the Netherlands because it is home to Rotterdam, Europe's biggest port.

Samsung's mobile unit, which includes handsets and tablet PCs, generated 30 percent of the technology giant's revenue in the second quarter.

RIGOROUS Defense

Samsung, the world's biggest technology company by revenues, said it would challenge the court decision. "We will rigorously defend our position," Younghee Lee, senior vice president of global marketing at Samsung's mobile business, told Reuters.

Lee said Samsung would launch a slightly altered version of the tablet in Australia next month. Samsung Germany said it would file an objection immediately with the court.

Once Samsung takes the measure, a court hearing will be scheduled, shortly followed by a ruling, a judge at the Duesseldorf court said.

Samsung has been locked in a battle with Apple over smartphone and tablet patents since April. The Galaxy gadgets are seen as among the biggest challengers to Apple's mobile devices, which have achieved runaway success.

Apple sold 14 million iPads in the first half of this year worldwide, compared with analysts' sales estimates of about 7.5 million units for the Galaxy Tab over 2011.

Android backers may look for products from other companies. "Many potential Galaxy Tab purchasers are committed Android fans," said Tim Renowden, analyst for research firm Ovum.

The likes of ASUS, Toshiba, Acer, HTC among others, could benefit, he said in part as purchasers are likely to look for alternatives that run on the same operating system.

Industry executives said Samsung could launch a new variation of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to get it on sale in Europe or settle the dispute by paying royalties to Apple.

"This will be an issue that will get settled between the two companies. Some deal will likely get made and then they will move on," said Peter Elston, Asia strategist at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia, which owns Samsung shares.

Source

England riots: Hackers hit Blackberry over police help

noreply@blogger.com (Alan) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:27:00 +0000

A hacker group has attacked Blackberry's website after the company said it would assist police investigating riots in the UK.

Team Poison defaced the official Blackberry blog, posting a message that threatened the firm with retaliation if it handed user data to authorities.
Blackberry's instant messaging service is believed to have been used by some looters to plan their movements.

The firm has promised to co-operate with police and the Home Office.
In its statement, Team Poison said that it did not condone innocent people or small businesses being attacked in the riots.

However, it added: "We are all for the rioters that are engaging in attacks on the police and government."

The group argued that if Blackberry gave subscriber information to police, it could lead to the wrong people being targeted.

"Innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a Blackberry will get charged for no reason at all," said Team Poison's statement.

It threatened to release employee information, including names, addresses and phone numbers of Blackberry staff.

UK laws mean police can request data from individuals' mobile phones when that information relates to criminal activity.

The procedure is governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.