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Apple Admits To Security Issues
Apple has finally acknowledge and has promised an update for Mac OS X that will find and remove the MacDefender fake security software, and warn uninfected users when they download the infectious program.
The announcement — part of a new support document that the company posted late Tuesday — was the company’s first public recognition of the threat posed by what security experts call “scareware” or “rogueware.”
Apple has taken criticism for not publicly responding to the MacDefender threat.
“In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants,” Apple said in the document. “The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware.”
Apple also outlined steps that users with infected Macs can take to remove the scareware.
Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Security, was surprised that Apple said it would embed a malware cleaning tool in Mac OS X.
Intel Is Still The Market Leader
Reports now show that Intel shipped 44 percent more Microprocessors than Samsung and Intel’s overall shipments grew 25 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile Samsung’s first quarter microprocessor grew by 15 percent. The report also noted that Toshiba and TSMC came in a respectful 3rd and 4t with 10 and 18 percent of year over year growth respectively. Texas Instruments came in 5th barely edging out Renesas which appears to be closing the gap on TI.
Super mobile chipmaker Qualcomm was 10th and showed a 22 percent growth year-over-year; while AMD ranked 12th, with 2 percent growth. One would have thought that AMD would have been one of the top five manufacturers.
Unfortunately Nvidia and Sony ended up at the bottom with ended up at the bottom with six and 14 percent drop in sales, respectively.
Is Intel Facing The Heat?
Analysts at Goldman Sachs are saying that chip maker Intel may be in a pickle as microprocessor shipments slow and it faces stiff competition. That said, analysts have advised stockholders to sell Intel as they downgraded the stock.
James Covello and Simon Schafer of GS said that there will be a surplus in chips due to plant expansion. Meanwhile the rest of the gang on Wall Street is forecasting a six percent year-over-year rise in Intel’s sales, amid expanding gross margins, Goldman says otherwise and that sales will be flat due to excess capacity.
Furthermore, Intel is expected to face problems dealing with better chips from their main rival AMD: while tablets are cannibalising notebooks with ARM kicking its tail in the mobile space.
HTC To Have Many Tablets
May 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Smartphone maker HTC plans to introduce a range of different tablet computers to gain a its share in the fast-growing market, a company executive said on Tuesday.
The global market for tablets, started only last year with Apple’s iPad, will likely grow to 108 million devices next year, compared with just 17.6 million in 2010, according to research firm Gartner.
“I really believe that the tablet market is really going to be a big market in the future and this is just the start,” HTC Europe head Florian Seiche told the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
“In five years’ time, schools will have tablets probably instead of physical notebooks. I think that’s going to be such a massive wave of additional penetration in society… I think we can’t even guess the potential.”
Bill Had A Hand In Microsoft Buying Skype
One of the world’s richest people, Bill Gates had given his blessing for Microsoft to buy Skype for $8.5 billion dollars. Actually, Bill Gates pressed other executives on the board of directors to support or back the idea of gobbling Sky which has yet to turn a profit.
Word on the street is that Bill told the Gates BBC in an interview which will be televised this weekend that he played an instrumental role in getting this deal approved by the board of directors. So this really squashes any rumors that Steve Ballmer was the force behind the deal getting approved by the executive team.
Microsoft To Discontinue Vista SP1 Support By July
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Microsoft reminded users on Monday that it intends to stop supporting Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on July 12.
“From that date onward, Microsoft will no longer provide support or free security updates for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1),” the company stated in a blog entry on its TechNet website.
The company recommended users upgrade to Vista Service Pack 2 or Windows 7 to receive continued support and patches. Vista SP2 also includes operating system updates such as a new version of Windows Search, and drivers to support new hardware.
Users can install Vista SP2 using Windows Update, or by manually downloading the 32-bit edition or 64-bit edition of the service pack.
Users must have Windows Vista SP1 installed prior to applying SP2. Further instructions on installing SP2 are available on Microsoft’s website.
Can Intel Tablets Take Business Away From iPads?
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Tablets based on Intel’s first dedicated tablet processor may not be a smash hit among consumers like Apple’s iPad, but they could find much better acceptance within enterprises, analysts said this week.
Apple’s iPad is the ‘Golden Child’, but Intel’s Oak Trail processor could bring a fresh crop of tablets that are more closely aligned to security, software and hardware needs of businesses, analysts said. By supporting the Windows 7 OS, Oak Trail tablets will integrate better than the iPad into IT environments relying on Windows.
Tablets with Intel’s 1.5GHz Atom Z670 processor from Fujitsu and Motion Computing went on sale this month and will start shipping in June. Fujitsu is taking orders for the Stylistic Q550 Slate PC tablet, which is priced starting at US$729. Motion Computing is taking orders for the CL900 Tablet PC, which is priced starting at $899. The business tablets come with Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS and include solid-state drive storage. Intel has said 35 devices based on the Oak Trail chip will become available starting in May.
Apple may be spurring consumer tablet innovation, but computing needs are very different in the corporate world, said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. Outside the Apple ecosystem, there is a whole world of corporate applications and computing needs driven by Windows, Baker said.
New Atom Architecture In The Making
Word on the street is that Intel is in the process of developing an entirely new Atom architecture based on its 3D transistor technology they announced last week. This new architecture should enable more power efficiency on the chip.
The new processor is being called Silvermont and the Atom will encompass a system-on-chip design, similar to Intel’s Z760 Atom or ARM’s processors. Silvermont is being designed on Intel’s 22nm process and harness the power of Intel’s 3D transistor technology that has yet to be tested.
Visa Digital Wallet Coming
May 15, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Visa Inc, the world’s largest credit and debit card processing network, is designing a digital wallet that people can use to pay for things on the Internet or with their phones instead of with traditional plastic cards.
The network said on Wednesday it is collaborating with several large U.S. and international banks to create the wallet. Its partners include US Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, Regions Financial, BB&T Corp, Toronto Dominion’s TD Bank and the U.S. arm of Barclays PLC.
The “digital wallet” will store the banks’ customers’ credit and debit card account information, both for Visa cards as well as other cards. People can use the wallet to pay for things online or in stores, Visa said.
The network will also have to convince merchants to put a new “one-click” button on their websites, so that potential customers can use their Visa digital wallets to buy things by clicking the button instead of by manually entering all of their account information every time they want to make an online purchase.
Banks, mobile phone operators and networks like Visa are all trying to gain territory in the small, but high-potential market for U.S. mobile payments. Last week Isis, a separate mobile payments venture run by three of the top four U.S. carriers, said it had modified its initial goals and was now open to working with Visa and MasterCard as it introduces its own mobile wallet.
Jim McCarthy, Visa’s head of global products, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that mobile payments in the United States “will more easily take off” from people using their smartphones’ browsers to buy things online.
Facebook’s Users Info Was Leaked
May 12, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Facebook users’ personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past several years, Symantec Corp said in one of its blog postings.
Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, the security software company stated.
“We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage,” the blog post said.
” … Over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties,” posing a security threat, the blog post said.
The third-parties may not have realized their ability to access the information, it said.
Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website, was notified of this issue and confirmed the leakage, the blog post said.
It said Facebook has taken steps to resolve the issue.
“Unfortunately, their (Symantec’s) resulting report has a few inaccuracies. Specifically, we have conducted a thorough investigation which revealed no evidence of this issue resulting in a user’s private information being shared with unauthorized third parties,” Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said in a statement.