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Hitachi Bringing New Xeon Servers To Market
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Hitachi Data Systems announced that it will expand its family of blade and rack server products for the enterprise market. The forthcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will be based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 family.
Roberto Basilio, vice president, Infrastructure Platforms Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems said that by leveraging the new Intel Xeon processor E5 family, upcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will feature faster performance, higher density and greater energy efficiency. The servers are being designed for converged data centres. They come pre-configured and optimised for leading applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010, SAP HANA and solutions with VMware.
He said that the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family provides exceptional energy efficiency, increased security, flexible performance and the opportunity for streamlining customer’s data centres. The current range of Hitachi Compute Systems consists of two blade server product lines, Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 and Hitachi Compute Blade 320, both of which are intended for high performance, high availability applications. The portfolio also includes a family of rack-optimised servers, Hitachi Compute Rack, that are the foundation for dedicated, packaged solutions such as the company’s award-winning object store, Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).
Remote Access Tools Threatens Smartphones
March 7, 2012 by admin
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Malware tools that allow attackers to gain complete remote control of smartphones have become a major threat to owners around the world, security researchers say.
In a demonstration at the RSA Conference 2012 here Wednesday, former McAfee executives George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, who recently founded security firm CrowdStrike, installed a remote access tool on an Android 2.2-powered smartphone by taking advantage of an unpatched flaw in WebKit, the default browser in the OS.
The researchers showed an overflow audience how the malware can be delivered on a smartphone via an innocuous looking SMS message and then be used to intercept and record phone conversations, capture video, steal text messages, track dialed numbers and pinpoint a user’s physical location.
The tools used in the attack were obtained from easily available underground sources, Kurtz said. The WebKit bug, for instance, was one of 20 tools purchased from hackers for a collective $1,400.
The remote access Trojan used in the attack was a modified version of Nickispy a well-known Chinese malware tool.
Learning how to exploit the WebKit vulnerability and to modify the Trojan for the attack, was harder than expected, said Kurtz. He estimated that CrowdStrike spent about $14,000 in all to develop the attack.
But the key issue is that similar attacks are possible against any smartphone, not just those running Android, he said.
WebKit for instance, is widely used as a default browser in other mobile operating systems including Apple’s iOS and the BlackBerry Tablet OS. WebKit is also is used in Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers.
Several mobile remote access Trojans are already openly available from companies pitching them as tools that can be used to surreptitiously keep tabs on others.
Google Had Developed Own Currency
March 5, 2012 by admin
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Google once contemplated the idea of issuing its own currency, to be called Google Bucks, company Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said on stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona,Spain on Tuesday.
At the end of his keynote speech, Schmidt hit on a wide array of topics in response to audience questions. “We’ve had various proposals to have our own currency we were going to call Google Bucks,” Schmidt said.
The idea was to implement a “peer-to-peer money” system. However, Google discovered that the concept is illegal in most areas, he said. Governments are typically wary of the potential for money laundering with such proposals.
“Ultimately we decided we didn’t want to get into that because of these issues,” Schmidt said.
He also hinted that Google might be preparing for a battle in China once its acquisition of Motorola is complete.
“Google’s been willing to take on China pretty well,” he said in response to a question about whether Google expected to continue to ignore theft of Motorola intellectual property in China, as Motorola has been doing. The acquisition hasn’t closed yet, Schmidt noted. “We’ve taken a pretty strong position on IP. We are well aware of the issues and we are considering your question,” he said.
Google is still waiting for some government approvals of its proposed acquisition of Motorola.
Nokia To Unveil Cheaper Windows Phone
February 27, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Nokia debuted a new, cheaper and more budget-friendly smartphone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, targeting a wider market for its new range of smartphones.
Cheaper phones are the key for Nokia and Microsoft in their battle to win a larger share of the market, analysts say.
In addition to the new Lumia 610 Nokia will also unveil at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona a global version of its high-end Lumia 900 phone, which AT&T is scheduled to roll out in the United States, the sources said.
Nokia is set to unveil the phones at a news conference next Monday, on February 27.
Nokia last year dumped its own smartphone software platforms in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, which has so far had a limited impact due to the high prices of phones using it.
New Chip To Cut Cost Of LTE Smartphones
February 22, 2012 by admin
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Chip manufacturer Renesas Mobile has unveiled the MP5232, a processor that will allow vendors to build LTE (Long Term Evolution)smartphones with a price tag between $150 and $300, the company said Wednesday.
The big advantage of the 1.5GHz dual-core processor is that it is a single-chip product that can do both 3G and LTE, eliminating the need to use separate chipsets for the two technologies. A more integrated device results in a cheaper product that takes up less space and uses less power, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media.
The cost is important, because for LTE to take off, there is a need for smartphones that cost less than current products, according to Renesas.
In addition to smartphones, the MP5232 can also be used to power tablets, said Renesas.
One of the challenges of developing chipsets for LTE is the plethora of frequencies used. Renesas hasn’t specified which bands the MP5232 can handle, but says it is designed to support all major operators and their respective requirements.
Intel Wants To Deliver Cheap Smartphones
February 21, 2012 by admin
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Intel has revealed some additional information on the 2012 mobile strategy to its partners and it even shared some pricing guidelines for mobile products.
According to a slide entitled Mobile Landscape in 2012, Intel wants to sell mobile phones powered by its CPUs for as little as $199 to $299. This is where Intel sees a market opportunity for its phones and the prices are surprisingly low.
It also places netbooks in the same price range $199 to $299 while Intel based tablets should float between $399 and $499. Naturally more expensive options are always a reality. Tablets can go up to 12.1 inches and the starting price for these bigger machines should be $299, and in the high end the sky is the limit.
Hybrid notebooks should stay at less than $699 and this is a category where you can twist the display, slide the keyboard or even take the keyboard off from the netbook, or tablet. Think Asus’ Eee Pad Slider, Transformer, this will give you an idea of what to expect, but with x86 support. Phones, netbooks, hybrids and tablets are all based on Atom architecture.
Intel plans to sell laptops starting at $3xx and up. Probably slightly more than $300, but less than $400 is what they have in mind. Top notch notebooks based on Core i7 chips will start at less than $799 and Ultrabooks with 11-inch or larger screens might be coming down to $599 to $699. Of course, high end models will end up a lot pricier.
Experts Think iPad 3 Coming in March
February 18, 2012 by admin
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Apple will debut a new iPad some time in early March, and will start selling it the following week, according to reports and industry analyst expectations.
The March debut of the iPad 3, as some have called it, was first reported today by AllThingsD, the blog owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the blog said Apple will host a launch event the first week of March, likely at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a regular venue for the company’s press announcements.
Last year, then-CEO Steve Jobs returned from medical leave to lead the launch event of the iPad 2 on March 2. Apple started selling the new tablet on March 11, 2011 via its online store.
If Apple follows the same timeline, it will probably conduct the event the week of March 5-9, and begin selling the new model the following week.
It’s possible that Apple will trot out a new iPad on one of the first two days of March — Thursday, March 1 or Friday, March 2 — but Apple usually hosts events earlier in the week.
Next month’s iPad introduction, if it does take place, will be the first without Jobs, who died last October at the age of 56 of complications from his long-running battle with pancreatic cancer.
Adobe Says No To Android’s Chrome
Chrome for Android will not run Flash Player, the popular software that Apple has famously banned, Adobe confirmed Wednesday.
The acknowledgment was no surprise: Last November, Adobe announced it was abandoning development of Flash for mobile browsers. In other words, Google missed the Flash boat by several months.
“Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content,” said Bill Howard, a group product manager on the Flash team, in an Adobe blog Tuesday.
The stock Android browser included with the operating system does support Flash, noted Howard.
Adobe explained its decision to halt work on Flash Player for mobile browsers as necessary to shift resources, notably to its efforts on HTML5, the still-developing standard that will ultimately replace many of the functions Flash has offered.
“We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible,” Danny Winokur, the Adobe executive in charge of interactive development, said last year. He was referring to the World Wide Web Consortium standards body and WebKit, the open-source browser engine that powers Chrome and Apple’s Safari. “And we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve.”
Analysts read the move as a tacit surrender to the trend, first seen at Apple, to skip support for Flash on smartphones and tablets. In 2010, former Apple Steve Jobs had famously dismissed Flash as unsuitable for mobile devices because it was slow, drained batteries and posed security problems.
The U.S. Is Falling Behind
February 16, 2012 by admin
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The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday.
Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol social-networking sites and dispute negative talk about all levels of government or any aspect of Chinese life, and companies such as Dell and Best Buy are training workers to respond to complaints on Facebook and other social-networking services, Waltzman said at the Suits and Spooks security conference in Arlington, Virginia.
U.S. regulations prevent the government from undertaking similar campaigns, he said. “Any time you want to go to the bathroom, you need presidential approval,” he said.
The U.S. will not be able to protect its residents if it cannot engage in its own covert social-media operations, Waltzman said.
Waltzman told about a U.S. special forces unit in Iraq in 2009 that attacked an insurgent paramilitary group, killed 16 of the members of the group and seized a “huge” weapons cache. As soon as the U.S. unit left the scene, the Iraqi group returned, put the bodies on prayer mats, and uploaded a photograph from a cheap mobile phone, he said. The group put out a press release in English and Arabic.
iPhone Adds To Sprint’s Losses
February 14, 2012 by admin
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Sprint Nextel posted a bigger loss, reflecting the higher costs of offering Apple Inc’s iPhone. But the loss was smaller than expected because its signed up fewer new customers than expected.
Since Sprint subsidizes the cost of some of its phone sales, its costs rise and profit dwindles the more customers it wins. But since subscriptions fell short of expectations, its loss was smaller than expected.
Sprint’s loss was 35 cents per share excluding unusual items compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 37 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.
Its profit margin based on operating earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) fell to 9.5 percent from 16 percent a year earlier but beat expectations for 8.6 percent, according to eight analyst estimates Reuters compiled.
“It’s still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations,” said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint’s targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.
The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.