Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that he was encouraged to hustle his transformation plan into motion, but ended up being pushed out the door. that the board “didn’t push Steve to step down,” he said. “but we were pushing him damn hard to go faster.” within the next twelve months, as the board set out to find a replacement. website.
A fresh round of quarterly results and market research this week show some shadows over the networking and component markets while smartphones, as usual, were the stars of the tech arena. The biggest disappointment of the week came from Cisco Systems, which Wednesday reported a year-over-year decline in profit and sales and offered a . For the three-month period ending in October, Cisco reported net income of $2 billion, down 4.6 percent from a year earlier, while sales edged up by 1.8 percent to $12.1 billion. Company executives said they expect revenue this quarter to decline between 8 percent and 10 percent from a year earlier. Several problems hit Cisco during the quarter, executives said. In emerging markets, sales declined. Concerns about surveillance in the wake of revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency may have had some impact on sales, particularly in China, company officials said. Economic uncertainty as Europe still struggles with recession also played a part in the weak results, officials said. Part of the disappointing quarter, however, was due to Cisco’s transition to a new line of carrier network equipment, which has put a damper on orders, company executives acknowledged.
The technology team working on the troubled HealthCare.gov has made significant progress in recent days, with error rates on the U.S. government’s health insurance shopping site down to less than 1 percent from 6 percent just after its launch, officials said Friday. The tech team has fixed more than 200 bugs at the website in the past month, but it still has 50 high-priority bugs to work on in the next week, said Jeffrey Zients, a former acting director at the White House Office of Management and Budget overseeing fixes to the site. The tech team completed more than 60 priority improvements and bug fixes during the past week, including new visual guides to help users compare insurance plans, he said. “The changes and improvements we’ve made over the past few weeks are having a positive impact on system performance and user experience,” Zients said during a press briefing. “For most users, speed and response times were generally good, and error rates were low.”
A member of the hacker group Anonymous was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a geopolitical analysis firm. Jeremy Hammond, 28, in May pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska during a hearing at the federal district court for the Southern District of New York in New York. Hammond, of Chicago, was arrested in March 2012 and charged with hacking into the computer system of analyst company Strategic Forecasting, also called Stratfor, and obtaining subscriber and credit-card information and emails, among other data. Ultimately, credit-card details, emails and cryptographic representation of passwords were leaked. The credit cards were used to make US$700,000 in purchases. The sentencing was attended by supporters who view Hammond as a whistleblower revealing government secrets for the public good, much in the vein of WikiLeaks and former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden. Hammond’s lawyers argued that his acts were a form of civil disobedience against a government subcontractor, an argument Preska rejected.
For anyone who has participated on a well-attended conference call, it’s a familiar problem: the tap-Tap-TAP of some anonymous participant, typing notes. Fortunately, a future version of Skype may silence the offending fingers. that Microsoft held a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, this week, where Microsoft executives suggested that they might adapt a similar typing-quashing technology from the company’s Lync software. The technology apparently “listens” for the sound of typing, then filters it out automatically, at least within Lync. As The Next Web notes, Google has implemented a similar, but heavy-handed solution: its Hangouts automatically detect the typing sound, mute the offender, then quietly send a private note to him or her asking them to mute their microphone. We asked Microsoft to clarify further; the company received our reply, but hasn’t provided an update at press time. (That’s possibly because Scandinavia is well into the weekend at this point.)
all suggest they like it so much that they're willing to behave in very dangerous ways to use it. The 451 survey tells us that CIOs worry about security. The Forrester one suggests that despite these worries, more and more of these companies are taking part in risky cloud behavior. And the SIM one reveals that executives controlling the IT purse strings just don't care. The problem with the cloud, or at least the problem with the public version of the cloud, is that it's not secure. Hackers, be they criminals or government agents in the NSA, would have to physically steal a hard drive to get locally stored data. They have no such problems accessing cloud services. , "Put simply, the increased agility of cloud computing trumps its many drawbacks, including security."
being bug fixes and plugged security holes.Gone are some improperly initialized memory and overflows in select Javascript functions, other sundry memory issues, and the same spoofing of an address bar that affected Firefox. Also fixed were too-light signatures and problems with CC'ing a message reply if the CC was the same as the sending address.
On Friday, Microsoft released its 3D Builder app, which allows Windows 8.1 users to print 3D objects, but not much else. The simple, simplistic, free app from Microsoft provides a basic way to print common 3D objects, as well as to import other files from SkyDrive or elsewhere. But the degree of customization that the app allows is small, so 3D Builder basically serves as an introduction to the world of 3D printing. In fact, that’s Microsoft’s intention, with demonstrations of the , both online as well as in the brick-and-mortar stores themselves. One of the selling points of Windows 8.1 , and MakerBot latched onto an endorsement of the technology from President Obama during his State of the Union address, recently encouraging U.S. citizens to crowd-fund an effort to 3D printers in every high school in America. (MakerBot also announced a Windows 8.1 software driver on Thursday.)
and been played 151 billion times. It’s a combination of intelligent strategy, clever design, pretty colors, and the necessity for 500 million people to be regularly distracted from their lives that has led to the booming success of the game. The explosion of Android and Windows phones and tablets as well as the introduction of steadily more affordable mobile devices have all most likely aided the growth of those numbers. But why does Candy Crush Saga achieve so much, when it seems so similar to any other time-consuming, commute-numbing, brain-dulling game? on why Candy Crush Saga has become such a phenomenon. Among other things, he cites our unanimous affinity for candy, color, and interesting shapes. Yes, even tablet-toting adults appreciate the simpler things. keep our gadgets in our hands longer and later than ever, fanning the flames of our gaming addictions.
It doesn't get more newsy here than a full-point release of a Web browser—in this case, Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. Already available for Windows 8, the W7 release is still big news, as many users have yet to move to the Redmond giant's latest operating system. Of course there are a ton of bug fixes and upgraded compatibility, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it here. The new version promises faster rendering. It also offers improved support for existing standards as well as relatively new ones, such as WebGL (for online gaming). It should be in your Windows automatic updates. If not, .
AT&T has a good deal on Nokia’s Lumia 2520 tablet (shown above), but only if you’re willing and able to buy a Nokia Windows Phone at the same time. The Lumia 2520, a 10.1-inch tablet running . Without the Nokia phone bundle, the price gets a lot worse. AT&T is charging $400 for the Lumia 2520 with a two-year agreement, and $500 without a contract. It might be worth just using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot instead of tacking on a tablet data plan, as you’d save $140 over two years that way. Nokia’s Power Keyboard accessory, which turns the tablet into a small laptop and provides another five hours of battery, is sold separately. AT&T doesn’t mention a price, but Nokia previously said it will cost $150.
Google Play Music, a rival option to streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, is now available for iOS, six months after launching on the web and Android-based devices.
With its new AppStream offering, Amazon is offering intensive graphics processing as a service, with the promise of freeing developers from worrying about the rendering capabilities of each user’s device. “The developer can build for the high-end computational load but still be able to distribute to lots of customers,” said Mike Frazzini, general manager of the Amazon games unit. “It frees them up to be more creative.” The new cloud service, now in beta, can render graphics or video in high definition or even in three dimensions (3D) on behalf of an application, streaming the results to the application in 720p resolution. The service can take interactive input from the local client’s mouse, keyboard or touchscreen interfaces.
Coin's 'one card to rule them all' dream certainly seems alluring, but this plastic needs to stay close to your smartphone.
Microsoft is continuing to fill in the gaps in its Windows Store catalog with the arrival of Flipboard for Windows 8.1. offers digital “magazines” culled from websites large and small. After setting up an account, users can pick from a list of categories, or create magazines based on links from Facebook and Twitter friends. Users can also follow specific publications, or combine favorite articles into homemade magazines to share with other Flipboard users. Although Flipboard for Windows 8.1 doesn't stray too far from its iOS and Android versions, it does offer a few goodies for Microsoft's platform. Adding the app to the Start screen creates a Live Tile that cycles through featured stories, and the Windows Share charm works nicely for e-mailing articles or posting to social networks. Flipboard's Windows 8.1 app also has a helpful “Discover” tab for finding more magazines.
. Sweet, eh? There's just one problem: That's not exactly accurate. . AMD provided the publications with the following statement:
The proposed European Union-wide net neutrality law would not protect citizens’ rights to privacy, the European data protection supervisor said Friday. The proposal from the European Commission in September leaves the door open for certain types of Internet traffic management to scan and discriminate between various types of content, Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor (EDPS), said in a . The Commission’s proposal aims to allow providers to offer electronic-communication services across the E.U. based on a single authorization rather than the current 28 different national provisions. It is also supposed to further harmonize the conditions of radio spectrum assignment for Wi-Fi services and safeguard net neutrality.
in October. Now, after nearly half a year of build-up, the latest addition to Dell's Windows 8 line-up is available for sale, alongside a refreshed XPS 13 Ultrabook. Pricing for both laptops starts at $1,000, and Dell is offering something for every PC enthusiast with these devices—including Windows 8 haters. , being a laptop-style hybrid whose screen can fold all the way back, transforming it into an impromptu tablet for those lean-back-friendly occasions. The base model XPS 11 comes with an 11.6-inch display with 2560-by-1440 resolution, a dual-core 1.5GHz “Haswell” Core i3-4020Y, 4GB RAM, an 80GB SSD, Intel integrated graphics, a cutting-edge 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter, and Bluetooth 4.0. The XPS 11 comes pre-loaded with 64-bit Windows 8.1.
Google released emergency security updates for Chrome in order to patch critical vulnerabilities demonstrated Thursday by a security researcher at the Mobile Pwn2Own hacking competition. The vulnerabilities to achieve arbitrary code execution on a Nexus 4 and a Samsung Galaxy S4 device, earning him a prize of $50,000 in the contest. Following Pinkie Pie’s demonstration, the vulnerabilities were reported to Google, which took less than a day to fix them and push out new patches. Even though the researcher demonstrated his exploit on Chrome for Android, Google also fixed the vulnerabilities in Chrome for Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as in Chrome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer.
The Federal Communications Commission has released a smartphone app that will allow users to measure the speed of their mobile broadband connection, while providing aggregate data to the agency for measuring nationwide mobile broadband network performance. In turn, starting early next year, the FCC will provide consumers with maps and other information on mobile broadband performance, which will help consumers compare the performance of their service providers. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler expects such information will boost service quality. A 2011 report on home broadband performance created an incentive for lower-ranked Internet service providers to boost network performance, he said in a statement. The FCC also expects the app to be an important tool for the agency as the feedback is expected to provide the “facts” the FCC needs for its decisions. Released as open-source software on Thursday, the free is available for Android smartphones, with a version for the iPhone also planned. It will test network performance for parameters such as upload and download speed, latency and packet loss.
The newly seated chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has told mobile operators to voluntarily ease up on cellphone unlocking or risk being forced to do so. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler sent a on Thursday to Steve Largent, president and CEO of the mobile industry group CTIA, that called on the group to agree to several reforms around cellphone unlocking. The letter follows eight months of talks between the FCC and CTIA over a proposed amendment to the CTIA’s Consumer Code, Wheeler wrote. The FCC wants carriers to make it easier for mobile subscribers to get their phones unlocked once they’ve fulfilled their carrier contracts. Unlocking can allow a user to switch carriers without buying a new phone and committing to another long-term contract. The only sticking point in the talks is over whether carriers should tell their subscribers when their devices are eligible for unlocking, Wheeler wrote.
How much do you pay for iPhone and iPad features covered by patents? That's what expert witnesses discussed in the ongoing Apple-Samsung patent infringement hearing.
Acer is trying to push down the prices of Chromebooks, announcing a new laptop with Chrome OS priced at $200. The Acer Chromebook C720-2848 has an 11.6-inch screen, and is targeted at those who do most of their computing on the Web. The lightweight laptop offers 8.5 hours of battery life and runs on an Intel Celeron processor based on the Haswell microarchitecture. A new wave of Chromebooks, running the latest version of Chrome OS, have hit the market starting in October. The latest Chromebooks are priced above $200, and the new Acer laptop and could spark a price war. The low price will hopefully make Chromebooks attractive to more buyers, an Acer spokeswoman said in an email. Most laptops today have Windows.
Hyperactive skulking games are all the rage these days.
