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SAP hit with $1.3 billion verdict in Oracle trial (AP) : Technet |
- SAP hit with $1.3 billion verdict in Oracle trial (AP)
- Apple sells 450K Beatles albums, 2M songs so far (AP)
- TSA App tries to ease air travel pain (AP)
- Acer’s dazzling, dual-screen Iconia laptop (Ben Patterson)
- Nearly 1 in 3 kids want an iPad for the holidays (Ben Patterson)
- LCD HDTV Motion Features: How Do They Work? (PC World)
- Remains of the Day: It's not a doll, it's an action figure (Macworld)
- Survey Finds Mobile Users Love Unlimited Data Plans (NewsFactor)
- Open Source social network, Diaspora, begins private alpha (Digital Trends)
- TiVo sales continue to slump (Digital Trends)
- iOS 4.3 and Murdoch's "The Daily" to Launch in December [REPORT] (Mashable)
- Apple Store gets in on Black Friday action (Appolicious)
- Jury orders SAP to pay Oracle 1.3 billion dollars (AFP)
- AP Enterprise: Rig victims' kin feel left out (AP)
- Is SAP Afraid of a Stuxnet-style Attack? (PC World)
- Open-source Social Network Diaspora Goes Live (PC World)
- Online holiday sales growth seen up again: comScore (Reuters)
| SAP hit with $1.3 billion verdict in Oracle trial (AP) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 07:23 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO – A federal jury on Tuesday ordered SAP AG to pay $1.3 billion to its archenemy, Oracle Corp., for stealing customer-support documents and software in a scheme to siphon off customers. The verdict amounts to more than half of SAP's total profit last year and stunned the German software maker. It had only set aside $160 million for anticipated damages, and already paid $120 million of that to Oracle's lawyers. The penalty is one of the largest on record for software piracy, and has the potential to reshape the business software landscape because of the extent of the damage to the pocketbook and reputation of one of its biggest players. The verdict came after less than a full day of jury deliberations, and followed a three-week trial that turned into a Silicon Valley sideshow. Stoking the drama were colorful public provocations by Oracle's outspoken CEO Larry Ellison, the looming possibility of a crushing verdict against a company that makes ubiquitous business software, and the specter of Silicon Valley's most elusive new celebrity, Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Leo Apotheker. In the end, Oracle turned the trial into a double feature: a grinding attack on SAP, whose dominance in business applications is under assault from Oracle, and HP, another technology industry heavyweight with which Oracle shares a decades-long partnership that is now coursing with bad blood. "For more than three years, SAP stole thousands of copies of Oracle software and then resold that software and related services to Oracle's own customers," Oracle co-president Safra Catz said after the verdict. "Right before the trial began, SAP admitted its guilt and liability. Then the trial made it clear that SAP's most senior executives were aware of the illegal activity from the very beginning." Representatives of SAP, which is based in Walldorf, Germany, expressed disappointment and said the company will "pursue all available options, including post-trial motions and appeal if necessary." If the size of the punishment is ultimately allowed to stand, SAP's takeover in 2005 of a small software-support firm called TomorrowNow, which dragged the company into this mess, will end up costing SAP significantly more than the $10 million it paid for the acquisition. "This will unfortunately be a prolonged process and we continue to hope that the matter can be resolved appropriately without more years of litigation," SAP said in a statement. "The mark of a leading company is the way it handles its mistakes. As stated in court, we regret the actions of TomorrowNow, we have accepted liability, and have been willing to fairly compensate Oracle. ... Our focus now is looking forward." SAP faces another potential problem as well. It previously disclosed that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the matter. It's difficult to think of a more thorough legal victory for a software maker pursuing a copyright infringement claim, said Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman. Besides collecting the damages, Oracle was able to publicly humiliate one of its biggest rivals while making another competitor, HP, squirm as it skirted questions concerning the whereabouts of its new CEO, Leo Apotheker. Oracle repeatedly tried to serve a subpoena on Apotheker, a former CEO and top sales executive at SAP, but couldn't find him within the jurisdiction of the Oakland federal court. "Oracle has always dreamed big in this case and all their dreams came true," Goldman said. "It just turned out to be a real windfall for them." SAP boxed itself into a corner by admitting it had trampled on Oracle's copyrights before the trial began. That left SAP with little to do but plead for leniency and "it turned out to be a tough sales pitch," Goldman said. "This was just a bad case for SAP, up and down the board." Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, is the leading maker of database software, which helps companies organize their information. Its aggressive expansion into business applications has forced Oracle into a faceoff with SAP, the leader in that space. HP was a late addition to the dustup: After HP's former CEO, Mark Hurd, was ousted in August in the wake of a sexual harassment investigation, Oracle hired Hurd, HP hired Apotheker, and Ellison used both of HP's decisions as reasons to blast the company. At the heart of Oracle's claim against SAP was a series of golden gotcha moments, in which Oracle noticed unusual behavior on secured websites it maintained to help customers solve problems, and uncovered a scheme in which an extraordinary amount of software and documents were being plundered and shipped back to TomorrowNow servers. Oracle technicians spotted the scam by investigating accounts that were registered with clearly bad information (such as phone numbers like "777-7777") and user names seemingly connected to the SAP subsidiary (names such as "Tom Now"). SAP admitted that the now-shuttered subsidiary was secretly siphoning off instruction manuals and technical specifications for Oracle's software. But its lawyers argued that Oracle's claims of injury were exaggerated. Oracle demanded billions based on its estimate of the value of its intellectual property and business it lost. SAP posited that TomorrowNow actually wasn't that good at stealing customers from Oracle, and that SAP should only pay for money it made from the 358 customers it gained with the stolen data. The jury sided with Oracle's argument that the value of its intellectual property is vast, and that aggressively enforcing copyrights is critical to nourishing a healthy technology industry and funding innovation. SAP conceivably could ask the judge to lower the damages determined by the jury, but that is usually a difficult argument to win, Goldman said. "The size of this verdict further reduces SAP's flexibility," he said. SAP shares fell 67 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $48.02 in extended U.S. trading, after the verdict was announced. The stock had fallen 71 cents, or 1.4 percent, to finish the regular trading session at $48.69. Oracle shares rose 37 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $27.56 in extended trading, after falling 86 cents, or 3.1 percent, to finish the regular session at $27.19. ___ AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke contributed reporting from San Francisco. |
| Apple sells 450K Beatles albums, 2M songs so far (AP) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:38 PM PST CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple says people snapped up more than 450,000 copies of Beatles albums plus two million individual songs during the Fab Four's first week on sale through iTunes. Apple Inc. says the best-selling Beatles album in the U.S. is "Abbey Road," and the best-selling individual track is "Here Comes the Sun." The Beatles Box Set, which costs $149, is No. 10 on Apple's weekly iTunes top-10 list. The Beatles' music went on sale on iTunes on Nov. 16. Until then, the biggest-selling, most influential group in rock history has been glaringly absent from iTunes and other legal online music services. Apple struck an agreement after on-and-off negotiations with the Beatles' recording label, EMI Group, and their management company, Apple Corps. |
| TSA App tries to ease air travel pain (AP) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 01:29 PM PST NEW YORK – It won't save you from "enhanced patdowns," but an iPhone app from the TSA tries to ease the pain of air travel by offering guidance on prohibited items, security wait times and packing tips. Called My TSA, short for Transportation Security Administration, the free app lets users fill in the blank to ask if they can bring various objects through the airport security checkpoint. The app also lists wait times for security lines for U.S. airports, as submitted by users, shown either as a map or a list. Users can also search for specific airports. A recent check for "pie" yielded five results, showing that under the TSA's rules solid pies can be either checked or carried on, though they may be subject to additional screening. "Turkey" was not found. |
| Acer’s dazzling, dual-screen Iconia laptop (Ben Patterson) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:49 PM PST There's nothing all that special about a 14-inch Windows-based notebook PC these days — that is, unless we're talking about a laptop boasting two 14-inch displays, with the second screen taking the place of your standard keyboard and doing double-duty as a virtual QWERTY keypad. Meet the Iconia, which Acer unveiled at a press event in New York on Tuesday. Armed with an Intel Core i5 processor and powered by Windows 7, the Iconia offers the aforementioned dual displays (14 inches, 1366-by-768), not to mention an HD webcam and integrated 3G. Engadget has a hands-on photo gallery of the six-pound laptop, and no question: The Iconia makes for an eye-catching piece of hardware, all right. But how practical is it? Well, Engadget notes that the Iconia might be the first Windows laptop with a keyboard that's susceptible to glare, adding that the "hard-to-use" virtual keypad hampers the otherwise "clever" touch interface. PCWorld serves up more details on the Iconia and the Acer "Ring," a wheel-shaped touch UI that lets you flick and swipe between various on-screen elements, including the QWERTY keyboard, a "gesture editor," image capture and Web-clip apps, a "TouchMusic" player, and other touch-friendly applications. The Iconia will also let you super-size your Web-browsing experience by extending pages across both of its 14-inch displays, although you'll have to put up with the gap where the laptop's hinge sits. Other features on the Iconia include VGA and HDMI outputs, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and three USB ports (two with USB 2.0, the other using the new USB 3.0 standard). How much will the Iconia cost, you ask? No hard details on that yet, nor any specific word on when it'll arrive in the States. Meanwhile, Acer also took the wraps off a pair of Android-based tablets — a 7-incher and a 10-inch model, both with 1280-by-800 displays and Flash Player 10.1 support, as well as a 10-inch Windows-based tablet. Also on tap from Acer: an aircraft-carrier-sized Android smartphone with a whopping 4.8-inch, 1024-by-480 display, not to mention an 8MP camera, DLNA media sharing, and "immersive" sound courtesy of Dolby Mobile. Again, pricing and release dates for the upcoming tablets and smartphone remain sketchy, with Acer saying all three of its new Android devices should arrive around April 2011, while the Windows tablet is slated for February. Back to the dual-screen Iconia, though. While there's little question that a laptop with a pair of 14-inch displays makes for a fabulous demo, would the thing actually be useful? Personally, I love the idea of a secondary touchscreen for accessing media and switching between apps (indeed, I can't wait to try it in person), but would a virtual QWERTY do the trick when it's time to start typing — especially considering that the six-pound Iconia is more of a full-on laptop than a tablet? Let me know what you think. Related: — Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News. |
| Nearly 1 in 3 kids want an iPad for the holidays (Ben Patterson) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:08 PM PST Not quite sure what your little ones want from Santa this year? Well, industry researchers drew up a list, checked it twice, and guess what red-hot, 9.7-inch gadget came out on top? That's right: the iPad. In a recent survey of tykes aged 6 to 12, a good 31 percent of them went for broke, telling researchers for the Nielsen Company that they wanted to buy an iPad in the next six months — or rather, that they were hoping someone else (like, say, their parents) would get them an iPad. After the iPad, kids expressed the most interest in getting a garden-variety computer, with an equal percentage -- 29 percent, to be exact -- crossing their fingers for an iPod Touch (starting price: $229 for the 8GB version). About one in four 6- to 12-year-olds hope to get their hands on a Nintendo DS in the next six months, while a new PlayStation 3 caught the eyes of 21 percent of kids in the Nielsen survey — or nearly twice as many as those pining for an Xbox 360 (with just 12 percent).
Other high-profile gadgets for which kids are crossing their fingers include an iPhone (20 percent), the upcoming Nintendo 3DS (also 20 percent, although children in the U.S. will have to wait until March to get one), the Wii (18 percent), and an e-reader like the Kindle or Nook (11 percent). As far as the holiday battle of game-console motion controllers goes, the PlayStation Move seems to be winning out, with 17 percent of youngsters in the Nielsen survey saying they wanted the Move versus just 12 percent for Xbox Kinect. Looking at broader tech categories, about 21 percent of kids said they wanted a smartphone (yup, these are still just little kids we're talking about), with another 21 percent saying they'd settle for a standard cell phone. About one in five kids would like a new TV set — in their bedrooms, I'm guessing — while 16 percent think a Blu-ray player would be pretty cool. Interestingly enough, priorities change a bit when it comes to kids 13 and up, with a computer topping the gotta-have tech list for teens at 20 percent, with a TV set and a non-iPhone smartphone coming in at 19 percent each. Only then did the iPad come into play, with 18 percent of teens saying they'd like to get Apple's $500-and-up tablet within the next six months, according to Nielsen. Not making the list was the gadget I most wanted for Christmas when I was a kid: a Star Trek communicator, which was really just a walkie-talkie with a flimsy metal antenna that (of course) didn't survive Christmas morning. Oh well. (Chart: Nielsen) Related: — Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News. |
| LCD HDTV Motion Features: How Do They Work? (PC World) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:15 PM PST If you've been paying attention to LCD TV marketing pitches over the last few years, you may have noticed vendors touting faster refresh rates (120Hz, 240Hz, and even 480Hz) and various proprietary technologies that promise smooth motion. But what exactly is the problem here, and do any of the purported remedies help? Several issues are involved. The first has to do with response time. LCDs depend on pixels that change their state to let varying amounts of light to pass through (or to go dark), depending on the image. If you're looking at images involving fast motion--sports and video games, for example--"the LCD can't turn off pixels fast enough," explains Ken Lowe, cofounder of flat-panel TV manufacturer Vizio. The result is what looks like a smear or a comet-like tail as the LCD tries to catch up. To combat the problem, manufacturers began producing (and touting) displays capable of faster response times, typically measured in milliseconds. Most LCD TVs today claim response times of 2 to 8 milliseconds. But there are different ways of measuring response time--and no industry standard for doing so. Consequently, manufacturers generally choose whatever methodology makes their panel look faster, which has made response time specs pretty useless in comparing sets from different vendors. This, by the way, is a long-standing issue that we've reported on in the past in stories such as 2005's "LCD Specs: Not So Swift." However, today's panels are so fast that response time is no longer the sticking point. This is where refresh rates come into play. When LCDs first began replacing CRTs as computer monitors, they typically had a refresh rate of 60Hz, meaning that they redrew the screen image 60 times a second. That rate is fine for most content, but with some videos showing fast motion, the eye may perceive a blurry effect in moving objects. LCDs with 120Hz refresh rates display twice as many images per second, but the content remains unchanged--and showing the same 60 images twice doesn't address the underlying problem with fast motion. That's why most LCD-TV vendors have introduced technologies that generate new frames of content based on interpolation of the source material. The programs use mathematical algorithms to analyze adjacent frames (or a group of adjacent frames) and figure out where moving objects might logically be in the fraction of a second that the source video doesn't contain. Every vendor has its own way of making these calculations, and they appear under different names in marketing materials. Vizio, for example, calls its motion-smoothing technology MEMC (short for Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation)--but the ads simply refer to it as Smooth Motion. LG calls its motion interpolation technology TruMotion, Samsung has Auto Motion Plus, and so on. How effective are these technologies? "Nobody's got it perfectly right yet," says Vizio's Lowe. That's because it's difficult to develop a mathematical algorithm that will work for all types of scenes and content. Movies Muddle the Picture Another cause of video artifacts is specific to movies--a problem that has been around since the days of analog CRT sets--and that is the mismatch between movie frame rates and television frame rates. The NTSC sets used in the United States before the digital conversion had 525 lines of horizontal data and a refresh rate of 60Hz, but they were interlaced displays, meaning that each field consisted of every other line in the image: Odd numbered lines were drawn in one pass, and even number lines in the next. As a result, these sets effectively showed a complete frame 30 times a second. Movies, however, are shot at 24 frames per second. So in order to transfer film to video for TV (a process called telecine), Hollywood had to come up with a way to add 6 frames a second. The movie industry settled on a technology known as 3-2 pulldown, which adds one frame to every four by painting half of every other frame twice. It works like this: If you have four frames of film (A, B, C, D), your television would normally draw each in two passes, starting with the odd numbered lines of A followed by the even numbered lines of A and so on. With telecine, the two A frames (odd and even) are followed by the two B frames, after which the odd-numbered B frame lines are repeated followed by the even-numbered C frame lines. After that, the odd-numbered C frame lines are followed by the even numbered D-frame lines, and then the odd and even (again) D frame lines. The result? 10 fields or 5 frames, two of which are hybrids generated from two of the original four frames. Telecine generally works well, but it can introduce artifacts called judder, a sort of jumpy look when the artificially generated frames don't make visual sense. Telecine judder is usually most apparent in slow panning shots. The good news is that a 120Hz set doesn't need the artificially generated frames: It can simply show each of the 24 frames of filmed content five times. But in order for this to happen, you must have a 24-frame video source, such as a Blu-ray player with 1080p/24 support. Some DVD players and digital video recorders also have technology to detect and reverse telecine. Even without telecine, you may detect jerkiness in film content. Some HDTVs come with technology designed to make 24p movies look smoother. Vizio has a Real Cinema control, which is separate from the Smooth Motion control. When turned on, the Real Cinema feature generates new frames of extrapolated content instead of simply repeating the original movie frame. Interpolation Introduces Artifacts Do smoothing technologies and higher refresh rates work? At PCWorld, we leave motion smoothing technologies on their default settings when we test, and we've noticed a general improvement in images involving motion. But occasionally we run into strange artifacts that these technologies have introduced. 40-inch Samsung LCD TV that looked terrific on most counts. But in a slow panning shot in the Blu-ray Disc version of The Dark Knight, we noticed that a window in an office building in the background appeared to switch floors--most probably because of an interpolation error in Samsung's motion-smoothing technology. (Samsung declined to make a representative available for interviewing for this story.) Some display experts question whether any of these adjustment technologies help significantly. Ray Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, says that consumers should take claims about refresh rates with a grain of salt. Soneira points out that for an LCD to refresh at 120Hz, pixels must respond in 8 milliseconds; and to refresh at 240Hz, pixels must respond in 4 milliseconds. He is deeply skeptical about manufacturer claims regarding response times. "It's all marketing nonsense," he says. Bill Schindler, a consulting engineer with Panasonic, is less critical of technologies for addressing motion artifacts, but he warns that consumers should be careful when fiddling with the controls for these technologies. "They're not going to have any idea of whether they're helping or hurting," he says. "I generally would tell consumers to buy from a respected manufacturer and hope that they've set it [the TV] up with their default to be correct." Ultimately, your appreciation of motion-smoothing technologies will depend on personal taste, especially where movies are concerned. Some people don't like the ultrasmooth look that these technologies can introduce (sometimes referred to as the soap-opera effect), preferring instead a slightly flickery look. If that's how you feel, your best bet might be to turn off any motion-smoothing controls. |
| Remains of the Day: It's not a doll, it's an action figure (Macworld) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:30 PM PST We knew Steve Jobs was a man of action—but an action figure? Also, apparently somebody still cares about the Beatles, and a grassroots movement attempts to convince Apple to do things their way. Yeah, that'll go well. The remainders for Tuesday, November 23, 2010 are in mint condition. Steve Jobs action figure looks real (CNN) Unfortunately, this is the closest you'll ever get to the Steve Jobs action figure, as Apple has asked the company behind it to cease and desist. Still, CNN, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say the figure looks real…then again, I guess it looks as real as Larry King does. Beatles albums sales top 450,000 on iTunes (The Guardian) Looks like all that fuss Apple made about The Beatles wasn't unjustified. Within the first week of sales, EMI moved 450,000 albums and 2 million tracks. Thank heavens: Paul and Ringo will be able to put some food on the table now. Hey Apple, let's get the screen lock back to the iPad switch (Gizmodo) Tech blog Gizmodo is lobbying Apple to restore the iPad's hardware orientation lock, which disappeared in iOS 4.2. And they've chosen to do it in the ever-effective form of an online petition. On Twitter and Facebook. Because if there's one way to reach Steve Jobs, it's social networking. News Corp's upcoming iPad App 'The Daily' to pioneer new recurring subscription billing (Daring Fireball) This I guarantee: even if this new iPad newspaper by Rupert Murdoch gets an event with a Steve Jobs keynote, more people will remember the day The Beatles showed up on iTunes. If only because they complained about it. A lot. Wozniak says he was wrong about Nuance/Apple deal (Reuters) Let this be a lesson to you, mortals! Even when Steve Wozniak makes things up, like Apple supposedly acquiring speech recognition makers Nuance, the ramifications can be enormous. Nuance's stock shot up 3.5 percent in one day on the news. I would suggest it's high time we stop listening to Woz, but then where am I going to find a sucker to unload all this Segway paraphernalia onto? |
| Survey Finds Mobile Users Love Unlimited Data Plans (NewsFactor) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:32 PM PST A survey of more than 800 smartphone users has found that unlimited data plans are their most important preference when making decisions about carriers and devices. The report by the financial research firm Sanford Bernstein found that customers are willing to pay more for the peace of mind of knowing they won't get hit with a huge overage bill. The survey also found that one-third of the respondents are dissatisfied with AT&T for removing unlimited plans for new customers (earlier users can keep their plans.) Verizon Wireless still offers a $30 unlimited plan for mobile data as well as a $15 plan for 150 megabytes of usage, which is slightly less bang for the buck than AT&T's 200 megabytes for the same price. AT&T also has a $25 plan for two gigabytes of data. Verizon executives have indicated that unlimited plans won't be available for users on its 4G Long Term Evolution network when compatible devices roll out next year. 'Too Much Demand' With an increasing array of mobile devices -- from laptops and tablet computers to smartphones and smart TVs -- accessing the mobile Internet, carriers may be left with no choice but to discourage strain on their networks, said analyst Gerry Purdy of MobilTrax. "The trend is for wireless operators to migrate from unlimited to metered plans over time," said Purdy. "There is going to be too much demand to continue to allow for unlimited [plans]." "Unlimited data plans could become a major source of differentiation, attracting customers and giving still-unlimited carriers a subscribership boost," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett in a report quoted by Information Week. "At the same time, however, carriers who maintain unlimited pricing in the face of AT&T's move to usage-based pricing could self-select to the heaviest users, impairing future profitability." In an interview with Fortune magazine in August, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said it was data hogs who consume more bandwidth than casual mobile web surfers that led to the price change. Buffet Is Closed "We've been in an environment where we price data on a flat-rate basis -- you pay $30 a month, and it's all the data you can eat," he told Fortune. "Everybody's paying this, but the top two percent are consuming the lion's share of this bandwidth. That's an illogical pricing equation. It's not conducive to earning decent returns on the investment you're putting in the ground." According to Moffett's analysis, despite the increasing love affair of consumers with devices like the iPhone, BlackBerrys and Android phones, many will choose their love of casual web surfing over their choice of surfboard. "The new conventional wisdom is that carrier loyalty has been replaced with loyalty to the device," wrote Moffett. "But high inclination to switch carriers and phones to maintain an unlimited plan suggest that perhaps the plan itself is more important than either one." |
| Open Source social network, Diaspora, begins private alpha (Digital Trends) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:50 PM PST
Diaspora is an open-source project that is using Ruby on Rails to build a social network that focuses on user privacy. As announced today on its blog, Diaspora will begin sending out invites for users to test their private alpha, starting with Kickstarter backers and then those on its email list. “We are proud of where Diaspora is right now. In less than five months, we've gone from nothing to a great starting point from which the community can keep working. We've spent a lot of time thinking about how people can share in a private way, and still do all the things people love to do on social networks. We hope you'll find it fun to use and a great way to keep in touch with all the people in your life.” Diaspora is designed to help you decide which information to share with whom and has created the notion of “aspects” to help users separate out friend lists and corresponding levels of profile openness or privacy. The group explains: “Diaspora lets you create "aspects," which are personal lists that let you group people according to the roles they play in your life. We think that aspects are a simple, straightforward, lightweight way to make it really clear who is receiving your posts and who you are receiving posts from. It isn't perfect, but the best way to improve is to get it into your hands and listen closely to your response.” The team has a long way to go and several more features to implement before making Diaspora publicly available. If you would like to help Diaspora get off the ground, you can find more information on their website. |
| TiVo sales continue to slump (Digital Trends) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 05:40 PM PST
TiVo has been cutting costs lately, marking its DVR box down $200 from its former price. Combined with an increase in monthly fees (from $12.99 to $19.99), the company expects the financial move to pan out in the long run. But many are asking if there even is a long run for the former TV-accessory frontrunner. Internet TV (though experiencing setbacks of its own) is expected to eventually become a consumer staple. While TiVo has agreements with cable companies allowing it to work with users' cable boxes, more and more consumers are opting out and finding less expensive or free ways to record programming. So what's the company's strategy to get back in the game? Rogers mysteriously alludes to some projects abroad that should bring in some revenue, specifically mentioning deals with UK-based Virgin Media and Spain's Ono cable company. An iPad app is also in the works. The future of TV is seriously in flux, and it seems like TiVo is reeling from this awkward growth spurt as well. Whether or not the company's experimental pricing and international development can change its direction remains to be seen. |
| iOS 4.3 and Murdoch's "The Daily" to Launch in December [REPORT] (Mashable) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 01:20 PM PST With the release of iOS 4.2.1 now complete, Apple is reportedly focusing on launching iOS 4.3 by mid-December. It will bring not only bug fixes, but could be the update that brings app subscriptions and Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only publication to millions of iOS devices. Apple is set to reveal iOS 4.3 next month, according to Macstories. According to its sources, Apple has been planning a mid-December release of the new version of iOS for a while now, but because iOS 4.2 came out late (due to various bugs), iOS 4.3 could be late as well. Still, the release of iOS 4.3 is pegged for December 13. Not only that, but according to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Apple will be holding a December 9 press event to announce the update. Apple doesn't hold press events for simple iOS updates though, so if the rumors are true, then Apple is cooking up something big for iOS 4.3. It almost certainly looks like that will be app subscriptions. That would give app developers and especially publishers the ability to charge for daily, weekly, monthly or yearly updates or editions for their apps. That leaves us with the rumors surrounding The Daily, News Corp's "newspaper" built for (and only for) tablets. As we reported previously, Apple and News Corp are working on an iPad-only publication that will cost $0.99 per new edition. It reportedly already has 100 journalists on the project, led by former New York Post managing editor Jesse Angelo. Since that report, Murdoch has confirmed the existence of The Daily in an interview with Fox Business, but didn't reveal any other details. That's okay though, because it looks like Murdoch is saving the real story for the December 9 event, where he will most likely reveal The Daily on stage with Steve Jobs. Because iOS 4.2 was released several weeks late, it's possible that iOS 4.3 and The Daily will launch a little later than expected. Still, given the high profile nature of the partnership, Apple may be working overtime to make sure it hits its December 9 mark. Are you interested in app subscriptions or Murdoch's new tablet publication? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. |
| Apple Store gets in on Black Friday action (Appolicious) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:18 AM PST |
| Jury orders SAP to pay Oracle 1.3 billion dollars (AFP) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:26 PM PST OAKLAND, California (AFP) – A US jury has ordered German business software giant SAP to pay US rival Oracle 1.3 billion dollars in damages in a record-setting copyright infringement award. "We're ecstatic," said Geoffrey Howard, a partner with the Bingham McCutchen law firm, a member of the Oracle trial team. "The jury recognized the value of the intellectual property stolen by SAP." Oracle attorneys called the copyright damages award the highest ever and hailed the verdict as a resounding warning that stealing intellectual property from technology companies will not be tolerated. SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow recovered and copied massive amounts of Oracle software and confidential data by posing as clients, according to court documents. A customized software tool dubbed "Titan" was allegedly used to plunder Oracle's website of patches, updates, fixes and other programs crafted for Oracle's paying customers. SAP admitted to the copyright infringement in legal "stipulations" that cleared the way for a jury trial regarding how much should be paid to Oracle in damages. "SAP wanted to take responsibility," Oracle attorney David Boies said after the jury revealed its decision. "They now have the opportunity to do that and move on." During closing arguments in the case being held in a federal court here, SAP attorney Robert Mittelstaedt conceded the copyright infringement by SAP and focused on minimizing any damage award. "I'm not proud of this and SAP is not proud of this," Mittelstaedt said. SAP will study its legal options before deciding whether to appeal the verdict or petition the judge to reduce the amount, a company spokesman told AFP in the courtroom. SAP was interested in putting the unflattering case behind it, he added. "We are, of course, disappointed by this verdict and will pursue all available options, including post-trial motions and appeal if necessary," head of SAP Americas media relations Jim Dever said in an emailed statement. "This will unfortunately be a prolonged process and we continue to hope that the matter can be resolved appropriately without more years of litigation." SAP could negotiate with Oracle to agree on a reduced settlement payout in exchange for not appealing the verdict. Jurors interviewed after the verdict said that deliberations focused on how much SAP might have had to pay if it began licensing Oracle's copyrighted technology in 2005 instead of swiping it. Award amounts discussed by the jury ranged from 519 million dollars to three billion dollars, according to the jury foreman, who declined to give his name. "You have something and someone takes it and uses it, they've got to pay," said juror Joe Bangay, a 57-year-old auto body worker. Jurors were convinced that top SAP executives were aware of what was taking place "every step of the way," according to the foreman. He doubted that testimony by former SAP chief executive Leo Apotheker would have changed the outcome of deliberations. Apotheker avoided efforts by Oracle's trial team to serve him a subpoena that would have compelled him to testify at trial. Apotheker was recently hired by US computer giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) to replace Mark Hurd as chief executive, but HP refused to help track the former SAP boss down for the trial. Apotheker was on the SAP board that unanimously approved a deal to buy US technology firm TomorrowNow, which copied massive amounts of Oracle software and confidential data by posing as clients. No matter what amount SAP winds up paying Oracle, the case threatens to cost the German firm its reputation as a trusted vendor of business software. "This will cost SAP moving forward," said analyst Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research. "Oracle is going to be asking whether you want to buy from an innovator or someone who is stealing others' innovations." |
| AP Enterprise: Rig victims' kin feel left out (AP) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 11:18 AM PST JONESVILLE, La. – Roy Wyatt Kemp's family is waiting for his headstone, black marble engraved with the deer and ducks he loved to hunt. The grave, however, lacks a body. Seven months after the fateful Gulf of Mexico explosion that triggered one of history's worst environmental disasters, the 27-year-old rig worker's family knows very little beyond the fact that he never came home. Did he survive the initial blast? Did he suffer? Could he have been saved? "I wonder every day what happened to my son. I don't think it will ever leave me," said his mother, Peggy. Without a body, without answers and with only limited financial and emotional support, Kemp's family and relatives of the 10 other workers who died on the BP-leased rig are left to wonder whether the oil giant's promise to "make things right" applies to everyone but them. From the small towns of central Mississippi to the cotton fields of central Louisiana to the cattle farms of southern Texas, relatives of the men, in interviews with The Associated Press, bemoaned that so much of the public focus has been on the oil spilled rather than the lives lost. "There hasn't been anybody associated with BP, Transocean or any of them that has sat down and really tried to give you their condolence and tell you what took place," Peggy Kemp said. As criminal investigations, congressional hearings and finger-pointing mount, the families of the dead want detailed explanations from BP and its partners of exactly how their loved ones perished in the April 20 disaster that ultimately spewed 170 million gallons of crude into the Gulf. They want accountability for negligence. And they want the world to know that their loss cost them much more than a paycheck. Thanksgiving will be tough for these families. The holiday was drilling supervisor Jason Anderson's favorite. He would have turned 36 on Monday. His wife wants to know why the companies cut corners. "I don't expect anybody to love my husband as much as I love him, and I don't expect anybody to feel the same loss, but I expect them not to let money and dollar signs be above someone's life and someone's family," Shelley Anderson said. Jason Anderson began preparing a will in February and kept it in a spiral notebook. It sunk with the rig. BP and its partners on the doomed Deepwater Horizon say they are not indifferent to the families' suffering. When asked to respond to the relatives' claims, the oil giant provided a one-sentence statement saying it extends its "deepest sympathies to the families and friends who have suffered such a terrible loss." Transocean, the company that owned the rig, has been paying out money to dependents. It also reached long-term settlements with three families and set up a charitable fund that distributed $130,000 to all the families in July. It said it wants to reach "amicable resolutions" with the remaining relatives. Perhaps the companies' most poignant tribute to the dead was the decision to imprint 11 stars on the well's final cap. None of the men worked directly for BP — nine worked for Transocean and two for M-I Swaco, a unit of the oil field services firm Schlumberger. However, BP was leasing the rig and it was the majority owner of the well that blew. The families report receiving no compensation from BP and say they have had little contact with the company beyond condolences offered at a May memorial service. Most of the families said the money they received falls well short of compensating them for their losses. Seven weeks ago, M-I Swaco ended support payments and health insurance for Michelle Jones, wife of mud engineer Gordon Jones, she said. A day after learning about The Associated Press' planned story, the company told the Jones family it would resume payments but did not say anything about health insurance, said Gordon Jones' brother, Chris. The mother of Blair Manuel, the other M-I Swaco employee killed in the explosion, also said the company cut off payments. In a statement, Schlumberger said it has provided financial support to the families and is "continuing to do so." Both families say that, as of last week, they had received no further support payments from M-I Swaco. Because the deaths happened on the high sea, a 1920s law could limit the companies' liability to their workers' lost earnings rather than their families' pain and suffering. Transocean filed a federal court petition May 13 seeking to limit its liability, arguing it didn't cause the disaster and shouldn't be responsible for injuries or losses. The petition listed relatives of the dead as potential claimants. Shelley Anderson learned of the petition the day after Transocean CEO Steve Newman came to her house a few weeks after the explosion to offer condolences. After the petition, she said, "I knew he wasn't being sincere." Transocean said it filed the petition at the instruction of its insurers to preserve coverage. Hardest of all for the families is the lifetime loss of love and support. Courtney Kemp and daughter Kaylee, who turned 3 a few days before the explosion, would count the days until her husband returned home from the rig. "That was probably the hardest thing, telling her that daddy wasn't coming home. It's a lot for a little girl to handle," the widow said. Michelle Jones' 6-month-old son Max, born three weeks after the explosion, never saw his father, Gordon. The Baton Rouge, La. man had arrived for his 21-day stint on the rig the day before the blast. Six of the 11 dead had been scheduled to get off the rig the day after the explosion, after spending three weeks aboard. They were Kemp of Jonesville, La., Adam Weise of Yorktown, Texas, Karl Kleppinger of Natchez, Miss., Shane Roshto of Liberty, Miss., Donald Clark of Newellton, La., and Dewey Revette of State Line, Miss. Also killed were Anderson of Midfield, Texas, Manuel of Gonzales, La., Aaron Burkeen of Philadelphia, Miss., and Stephen Curtis of Georgetown, La. At 22, Roshto was the youngest of those who died. His wife filed a lawsuit after the explosion that said she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Kleppinger's grandmother, Barbara Thornhill, said of Thanksgiving without her grandson, a veteran of the first Gulf War, "We'll just miss him and know that he's in a good place." Weise's mother, Arleen, now looks after her son's Texas home, where the heads of deer and snake skins the avid hunter collected adorn the living room wall. Outside sits her son's souped-up Ford F250 truck with its supersized tires below an elevated frame. The mother reached an undisclosed settlement with Transocean, but has received nothing from BP. "They're so much more than 11 men. These were husbands, fathers, sons," she said as she flipped through pictures of her 24-year-old son. Several of the families are suing for money. But what many want most are answers to their questions, chief among them: What happened to their men? Michelle Jones wants to know if her husband, who got off the phone with her minutes before the explosion, was scared. "Was he thinking about me?" she said as Max snuggled with a stuffed tiger a few feet away. Not all the families are angry. Revette's wife, Sherri, said she has a lot to be thankful for, like the 26 years she was married. "We can't control and change anything, so my philosophy is to stay positive. Things happen for a reason." Manuel's mother, Geneva, said that while her family has received nothing from BP and M-I Swaco cut off payments after her son's death certificate was issued, money and support have come in from all over. The family received some 300 sympathy cards, and the LSU baseball team sent an autographed baseball to be placed in Blair Manuel's bodiless casket. Transocean gave bronze hard hats to the families, engraved with the men's names and the inscription, "We will never forget." Without a body, the Burkeens remembered their son by placing a letter from his mother, a Superman shirt and other mementos in his casket. His mother knows her son is gone, but still wonders if he floated to an island somewhere and is all right. Burkeen's sister, Janet Woodson, feels robbed. Her brother died on his wedding anniversary, and four days before his birthday. That whole week will never be the same for the family, Woodson said on a recent day at the cemetery, sobbing uncontrollably while picking dead branches from her brother's bodiless grave. "Eventually, the environment will take care of itself, the business will return, but those lives will never be back again," she said. |
| Is SAP Afraid of a Stuxnet-style Attack? (PC World) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:10 AM PST Enterprise software provider SAP is stepping up its security stance as its once-isolated systems become increasingly connected to the Internet, posing new risks as hackers diversify their targets. SAP's ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software are often the core management tools for large enterprises, used for functions such as managing payroll, creating purchases orders, invoicing, and paying suppliers, among others. A trove of very sensitive data is held within those systems that, if hacked and the information obtained, could be used to cause great harm to a business. SAP systems have typically been buried within an organization and not been connected to the Internet. The greatest threat still today to SAP is insiders who already have access to the systems and seek to make modifications. SAP security consultants often spend time on "segregation of duties," or ensuring that no one person has access or privileges for a wide range of financially sensitive tasks. However, that is changing. Companies can set up Web-based customer portals that lead into their SAP software, which would give attackers a new vector for which to get inside the systems. "You can now have all your business information directly connected to the Internet," said Mariano Nuñez Di Croce, director of research and development for Onapsis, which does SAP security evaluations for companies. Cyberattackers also appear to be diversifying their targets. The most alarming example is Stuxnet, a piece of malware designed to manipulate Siemens WinCC systems, a type of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) product used for manufacturing. The latest data shows that Stuxnet was designed to tamper with frequency converter drives, which change electrical output from a power grid to a much higher frequency. The process is used for uranium refinement, which has led to speculation that Stuxnet was developed by a country to interfere with nuclear weapons development. Nonetheless, Stuxnet showed that computer systems thought to be protected somewhat by their obscurity may be increasingly targeted, whether for sabotage or industrial espionage. With SAP, "I think we may see something like that in the near future, but mostly now the concern is a direct attack, such as taking a system offline or modifying business information," Nuñez Di Croce said. Stuxnet "was the shot across the bow of the industry," said Alex Ayers, director of operations for Turnkey Consulting, a U.K.-based company that also specializes in SAP security. "If you've got people who have the ability to do this, why should we assume that any ERP can't be targeted in the same way?" SAP spokesman Hilmar Schepp said the company is not aware of any Stuxnet-like malware targeting its software. Because "Stuxnet was designed to attack mainly Microsoft and Siemens software, please understand that we don't want to comment further on this," Schepp said. The core of SAP is its Netweaver platform, which is framework on which other SAP applications sit. If an attacker can get inside Netweaver, any of the other applications on top of it can be compromised, Nuñez Di Croce said. Vulnerabilities in SAP products numbered around 20 in 2007, but that figure has risen to nearly 300 this year, Nuñez Di Croce said. The reason for the rise, Nuñez Di Croce and Ayers said, is increased attention from security researchers into SAP systems and more scrutiny from the company. SAP has also been evangelizing the importance of better security practices to its customers. In September it published a white paper, "Secure Configuration SAP Netweaver Application Server ABAP," that consolidated a set of its existing security recommendations into a succinct document. The recommendations cover SAP systems that are used on internal networks and are not Internet facing. "While some organizations already have made these configurations, we realized that other customers still underestimate the increased level of threat from inside a company," Schepp said. SAP also said in September that it would release patches on a regular schedule on the second Tuesday of the month, the same day as Microsoft. Adobe Systems also adheres to the same schedule for the convenience of system administrators. Many companies simply don't patch SAP for fear of disrupting part of its functionality, Nuñez Di Croce said. Ayers said the situation is somewhat similar to how some companies deal with Windows, with some administrators more on the ball than others. SAP is "really just taking it [security] a lot more seriously," Ayers said. "I think it's industry's time to catch on to that and make sure we don't get into a situation where someone's system has been trashed." SAP also offers a variety of security tools for customers, including its Security Optimization Service and the EarlyWatch Alert, which alerts administrators on system performance issues. Nuñez Di Croce's company, Onapsis, has upgraded its X1 ERP vulnerability testing product to test for compliance against all of the recommendations in SAP's white paper. Onapsis is holding a webinar on Dec. 1 to explain how the product is used. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Open-source Social Network Diaspora Goes Live (PC World) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:00 PM PST Diaspora, a widely anticipated social network site built on open-source code, has cracked open its doors for business today, at least for a handful of invited participants. "Every week, we'll invite more people," stated the developers behind the project, in a blog item posted Tuesday announcing the alpha release of the service. "By taking these baby steps, we'll be able to quickly identify performance problems and iterate on features as quickly as possible." Such a cautious rollout may be necessary, given how fresh the code is. In September, when the first version of the working code behind the service was posted, it was promptly criticized for being riddled with security errors. While Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg may not be worried about Diaspora quite yet, the service is one of a growing number of efforts to build out open-source-based social-networking software and services. Others include Identica, a Twitter-like messaging service built on open-source software, and the Free Software Foundation's GNU Social. Four New York University students came up with the idea of Diaspora earlier this year, and quickly raised US$200,000 from investors in the project. In interviews, they have stated their collective goal was to develop open-source software for social networking as an alternative to commercial alternatives such as Facebook and LinkedIn. "When you give up that data, you're giving it up forever," said co-developer Max Salzberg, in an interview with The New York Times. "The value [sites such as Facebook] give us is negligible in the scale of what they are doing, and what we are giving up is all of our privacy." The students' plan with Diaspora is to allow participants to retain ownership of all the material they use on the site, and retain full control over how that information is shared. It will also allow users to divide their social connections into individual groups, called Aspects, and control which groups see which material, according to the website. Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com |
| Online holiday sales growth seen up again: comScore (Reuters) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:55 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Online spending this holiday is now expected to rise by 11 percent over last year, comScore said on Tuesday, marking the second time the analytics firm has raised its closely watched view. The increased bullishness over e-commerce sales comes as retailers both on and offline ready for the key Thanksgiving weekend when holiday shoppers head to stores or to their computers in search of deals. The new spending outlook should bring total holiday e-commerce spending to $32.4 billion, comScore said. Cyber Monday, the day when consumers head back to work after the Thanksgiving weekend, is considered the kick-off to the online shopping season. But brick-and-mortar retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc to Staples Inc are focused on early deals at their online units, while Internet giant Amazon.com has already gained market share this season, analysts say. One week ago, comScore told Reuters in an exclusive interview that it was raising its forecast from an earlier projected gain of 7 percent to a new projection of 9 percent. [ID:nN16148115] It noted then that the outlook might be raised further. The new outlook announced Tuesday is based on the first 21 days of the November and December season, in which $9.01 billion has already been spent, marking a 13 percent increase over the year-ago period, comScore said. ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said the holiday e-commerce season had "gotten off to an extremely positive start." "Despite continued high unemployment rates and other economic concerns, consumers seem to be more willing to open up their wallets this holiday season than last," Fulgoni said in a statement. He attributed the surge of purchases to deep discounts that started earlier than in 2009, when U.S. e-commerce sales rose 4 percent during the two-month holiday period. Online sales make up approximately 7 percent of the overall retail pie, according to comScore, and brick-and-mortar retailers are expecting a far less rosy sales outlook this year. The National Retail Federation expects 2010 holiday retail sales -- which exclude online as well as food, vehicle and gasoline sales -- to rise a mere 2.3 percent this year to $447.1 billion. (Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) |
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