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Apple posts video of Jobs memorial on Apple.com (AP) : Technet |
- Apple posts video of Jobs memorial on Apple.com (AP)
- Scientist: Satellite must have crashed into Asia (AP)
- Science fiction-style sabotage a fear in new hacks (AP)
- Spend the night in the world’s deepest underground hotel in Sweden (Yahoo! News)
- Tecca TV: TechLife on Android 4.0, the new RAZR, America’s first civilian spaceport, and more! (Yahoo! News)
- 3 Neat iPhone Apps Designed to Entertain (Mashable)
- John Mayer recovering from throat surgery (Reuters)
- Apple stock to jump 25 percent over next year: Barron's (Reuters)
- Fox ad ratchets up dispute with DirecTV (Reuters)
- 20 percent of women would give up sex for Facebook (Digital Trends)
- 150 years ago, a primitive Internet united the USA (AP)
- iPad Sales Have Reached The Plateau (The Atlantic Wire)
- Skip Howdy iPhone app for saying ‘hey’ with e-cards (Appolicious)
- Why developers are beginning to embrace HTML5 (Appolicious)
- Do Yourself a Favor and Just Like This Person's Status [VIDEO] (Mashable)
- Jobs abrasive style drove some people away: biographer (Reuters)
- Exclusive: Nasdaq hackers spied on company boards (Reuters)
- Over 30 percent of BlackBerry users in large companies plan to switch phones (Digital Trends)
| Apple posts video of Jobs memorial on Apple.com (AP) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 09:02 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – Apple is allowing the general public to get a look at a heartfelt and star-studded memorial service it held for employees to celebrate the life of Steve Jobs at its Cupertino headquarters last week. Apple Inc. posted a link on its website late Sunday to a video of the service, which was held on Wednesday morning in an outdoor amphitheater in the center of the company's campus. The ceremony was intensely private. It was closed to the public and media handlers shooed reporters away from Apple's buildings at the time. Apple Inc. has not held any public services for Jobs, the company's visionary co-founder who died at age 56 on Oct. 5 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. In a way, the video may serve that purpose. It runs 81 minutes and gives a rare glimpse of a company in mourning, showing several executives and board members reminiscing about their time with Jobs and speaking about the indelible mark he left on the technology world. Jobs was a tech visionary who started Apple in his parents' Silicon Valley garage with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976. Both men left the company in 1985, Jobs after a clash with then-CEO John Sculley. Jobs returned as interim CEO in 1997 after Apple, then in financial dire straits, purchased a computer company he created called Next. He led the company through a remarkable upswing that included the launch of such popular products as the iPhone, iPad and iPod. He battled pancreatic cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January — his third since his health problems began — and resigned in August, handing the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Cook. His death came a day after Apple Inc. announced its latest iPhone, the 4S. In the service honoring his life, CEO Tim Cook kicks things off, addressing an overflowing crowd of hundreds of Apple employees both on the ground and peering off balconies of surrounding buildings. Also in the audience was Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, wearing a black shirt and dark sunglasses. Apple closed all of its retail stores for the service so its many employees at those locations could view the memorial live via a webcast as well. Banners flanking buildings surrounding the amphitheater show images of Jobs, including one with a famous shot of the then young tech executive cradling the first Macintosh computer. In his remarks, Cook said the past two weeks had been the saddest of his life. "But I know Steve. Steve would have wanted this cloud to lift for Apple and our focus to return to the work that he loved so much," he said. Cook also divulged some of the last advice Jobs gave him, which he said was "to never ask what he would do, just do what's right." Jobs saw how The Walt Disney Co. became "paralyzed" after founder Walt Disney's death, with so many people spending time thinking about what Disney would want. "And he did not want this to occur at Apple," Cook said. Following Cook was former Apple executive and current board member Bill Campbell. "He loved Apple so much, probably only a shade less than he loved his family," he said. Former Vice President and current Apple board member Al Gore took the stage as well. And Apple's senior vice president of design, Jonathan Ive, who worked closely with Jobs on products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, spoke too. Ive, who called Jobs his closest and most loyal friend, talked about Jobs' habit of bouncing ideas off him — some of which were "really dopey," but others which "took the air from the room and left us both completely silent." Ive remembered Jobs as an intense listener who revered the creative process. "You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished," he said. He also related a tale of how Jobs' desire for excellence went far beyond designing Apple's products, saying that when the two of them would travel Ive would go up to his room leave his bags packed by the door, and sit on his bed. "I would wait for the inevitable phone call, `Hey Jony, this hotel sucks, let's go,'" he said. The service also included performances by singer Norah Jones and the British band Coldplay. The service followed a memorial at Stanford University on Oct. 16 for Jobs' friends and family. That service at Memorial Church reportedly brought out tech titans including Oracle chief Larry Ellison and Microsoft's Bill Gates, as well as politicians including Bill Clinton. U2 frontman Bono and Joan Baez reportedly performed. ___ Online: http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/ |
| Scientist: Satellite must have crashed into Asia (AP) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 12:15 PM PDT BERLIN – A defunct German research satellite crashed into the Earth somewhere in Southeast Asia on Sunday, a U.S. scientist said — but no one is still quite sure where. Most parts of the minivan-sized ROSAT research satellite were expected to burn up as they hit the atmosphere at speeds up to 280 mph (450 kph), but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could have crashed, the German Aerospace Center said. Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the satellite appears to have gone down over Southeast Asia. He said two Chinese cities with millions of inhabitants each, Chongqing and Chengdu, had been in the satellite's projected path during its re-entry time. "But if it had come down over a populated area there probably would be reports by now," the astrophysicist, who tracks man-made space objects, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Calculations based on U.S. military data indicate that satellite debris must have crashed somewhere east of Sri Lanka over the Indian Ocean, or over the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar, or further inland in Myanmar or as far inland as China, he said. The satellite entered the atmosphere between 0145 GMT to 0215 GMT Sunday (9:45 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Saturday EDT) and would have taken 15 minutes or less to hit the ground, the German Aerospace Center said. Hours before the re-entry, the center said the satellite was not expected to land in Europe, Africa or Australia. There were no immediate reports from Asian governments or space agencies about the fallen satellite. The satellite used to circle the planet in about 90 minutes, and it may have traveled several thousand kilometers (miles) during its re-entry, rendering exact predictions of where it crashed difficult. German space agency spokesman Andreas Schuetz said a falling satellite also can change its flight pattern or even its direction once it sinks to within 90 miles (150 kilometers) above the Earth. Schuetz said the agency was waiting for data from scientific partners around the globe. He noted it took the U.S. space agency NASA several days to establish where one of its satellites had hit last month. The 2.69-ton (2.4 metric ton) scientific ROSAT satellite was launched in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1990 and retired in 1999 after being used for research on black holes and neutron stars and performing the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope. ROSAT's largest single fragment that could have hit is the telescope's heavy heat-resistant mirror. "The impact would be similar to, say, an airliner having dropped an engine," said McDowell. "It would damage whatever it fell on, but it wouldn't have widespread consequences." A dead NASA satellite fell into the southern Pacific Ocean last month, causing no damage but spreading debris over a 500-mile (800-kilometer) area. Since 1991, space agencies have adopted new procedures to lessen space junk and having satellites falling back to Earth. NASA says it has no more large satellites that will fall back to Earth uncontrolled in the next 25 years. ___ Online: The German space agency on ROSAT: http://bit.ly/papMAA |
| Science fiction-style sabotage a fear in new hacks (AP) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 05:23 AM PDT SAN JOSE, Calif. – When a computer attack hobbled Iran's unfinished nuclear power plant last year, it was assumed to be a military-grade strike, the handiwork of elite hacking professionals with nation-state backing. Yet for all its science fiction sophistication, key elements have now been replicated in laboratory settings by security experts with little time, money or specialized skill. It is an alarming development that shows how technical advances are eroding the barrier that has long prevented computer assaults from leaping from the digital to the physical world. The techniques demonstrated in recent months highlight the danger to operators of power plants, water systems and other critical infrastructure around the world. "Things that sounded extremely unlikely a few years ago are now coming along," said Scott Borg, director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit group that helps the U.S. government prepare for future attacks. While the experiments have been performed in laboratory settings, and the findings presented at security conferences or in technical papers, the danger of another real-world attack such as the one on Iran is profound. The team behind the so-called Stuxnet worm that was used to attack the Iranian nuclear facility may still be active. New malicious software with some of Stuxnet's original code and behavior has surfaced, suggesting ongoing reconnaissance against industrial control systems. And attacks on critical infrastructure are increasing. The Idaho National Laboratory, home to secretive defense labs intended to protect the nation's power grids, water systems and other critical infrastructure, has responded to triple the number of computer attacks from clients this year over last, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has revealed. For years, ill-intentioned hackers have dreamed of plaguing the world's infrastructure with a brand of sabotage reserved for Hollywood. They've mused about wreaking havoc in industrial settings by burning out power plants, bursting oil and gas pipelines, or stalling manufacturing plants. But a key roadblock has prevented them from causing widespread destruction: they've lacked a way to take remote control of the electronic "controller" boxes that serve as the nerve centers for heavy machinery. The attack on Iran changed all that. Now, security experts — and presumably, malicious hackers — are racing to find weaknesses. They've found a slew of vulnerabilities. Think of the new findings as the hacking equivalent of Moore's Law, the famous rule about computing power that it roughly doubles every couple of years. Just as better computer chips have accelerated the spread of PCs and consumer electronics over the past 40 years, new hacking techniques are making all kinds of critical infrastructure — even prisons — more vulnerable to attacks. One thing all of the findings have in common is that mitigating the threat requires organizations to bridge a cultural divide that exists in many facilities. Among other things, separate teams responsible for computer and physical security need to start talking to each other and coordinate efforts. Many of the threats at these facilities involve electronic equipment known as controllers. These devices take computer commands and send instructions to physical machinery, such as regulating how fast a conveyor belt moves. They function as bridges between the computer and physical worlds. Computer hackers can exploit them to take over physical infrastructure. Stuxnet, for example, was designed to damage centrifuges in the nuclear plant being built in Iran by affecting how fast the controllers instructed the centrifuges to spin. Iran has blamed the U.S. and Israel for trying to sabotage what it says is a peaceful program. Security researcher Dillon Beresford said it took him just two months and $20,000 in equipment to find more than a dozen vulnerabilities in the same type of electronic controllers used in Iran. The vulnerabilities, which included weak password protections, allowed him to take remote control of the devices and reprogram them. "What all this is saying is you don't have to be a nation-state to do this stuff. That's very scary," said Joe Weiss, an industrial control system expert. "There's a perception barrier, and I think Dillon crashed that barrier." One of the biggest makers of industrial controllers is Siemens AG, which made the controllers in question. The company said it has alerted customers, fixed some of the problems and is working closely with CERT, the cybersecurity arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Siemens said the issue largely affects older models of controllers. Even with those, the company said, a hacker would have to bypass passwords and other security measures that operators should have in place. Siemens said it knows of no actual break-ins using the techniques identified by Beresford, who works in Austin, Texas, for NSS Labs Inc., Yet because the devices are designed to last for decades, replacing or updating them isn't always easy. And the more research that comes out, the more likely attacks become. One of the foremost Stuxnet experts, Ralph Langner, a security consultant in Hamburg, Germany, has come up with what he calls a "time bomb" of just four lines of programming code. He called it the most basic copycat attack that a Stuxnet-inspired prankster, criminal or terrorist could come up with. "As low-level as these results may be, they will spread through the hacker community and will attract others who continue digging," Langer said in an email. The threat isn't limited to power plants. Even prisons and jails are vulnerable. Another research team, based in Virginia, was allowed to inspect a correctional facility — it won't say which one — and found vulnerabilities that would allow it to open and close the facility's doors, suppress alarms and tamper with video surveillance feeds. During a tour of the facility, the researchers noticed controllers like the ones in Iran. They used knowledge of the facility's network and that controller to demonstrate weaknesses. They said it was crucial to isolate critical control systems from the Internet to prevent such attacks. "People need to deem what's critical infrastructure in their facilities and who might come in contact with those," Teague Newman, one of the three behind the research. Another example involves a Southern California power company that wanted to test the controllers used throughout its substations. It hired Mocana Corp., a San Francisco-based security firm, to do the evaluation. Kurt Stammberger, a vice president at Mocana, told The Associated Press that his firm found multiple vulnerabilities that would allow a hacker to control any piece of equipment connected to the controllers. "We've never looked at a device like this before, and we were able to find this in the first day," Stammberger said. "These were big, major problems, and problems frankly that have been known about for at least a year and a half, but the utility had no clue." He wouldn't name the utility or the device maker. But he said it wasn't a Siemens device, which points to an industrywide problem, not one limited to a single manufacturer. Mocana is working with the device maker on a fix, Stammberger said. His firm presented its findings at the ICS Cyber Security Conference in September. Even if a manufacturer fixes the problem in new devices, there's no easy way to fix it in older units, short of installing new equipment. Industrial facilities are loath to do that because of the costs of even temporarily shutting its operations. "The situation is not at all as bad as it was five to six years ago, but there's much that remains to be done," said Ulf Lindqvist, an expert on industrial control systems with SRI International. "We need to be as innovative and organized on the good-guy side as the bad guys can be." ___ Jordan Robertson can be reached at jrobertson(at)ap.org |
| Spend the night in the world’s deepest underground hotel in Sweden (Yahoo! News) Posted: 21 Oct 2011 07:29 PM PDT |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2011 07:19 PM PDT |
| 3 Neat iPhone Apps Designed to Entertain (Mashable) Posted: 22 Oct 2011 09:57 AM PDT The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Each weekend, Mashable handpicks a few startups that we think are building interesting, unique or niche products. [More from Mashable: Startup Pulls Social Media Chatter Onto Publisher Comments] Here we've selected three iPhone applications for your weekend enjoyment and entertainment. Roamz is a location-based application that will guide you to nearby happening places and activities, based around your interests and the social media activities of your friends. Mynd, meanwhile, will be your personal entertainment curator and point you in the direction of the best gaming, reading and television apps based on your tastes. And DimSong will delight you with music that moves as you do. [More from Mashable: Lemon Makes Lemonade Out of Your Electronic & Paper Receipts]
Roamz: An iPhone Tour Guide
Quick Pitch: Roamz is a location-based app that helps you find out what is happening around you. Genius Idea: Interest-based place and event recommendations surfaced via social media. Mashable's Take: What's happening around you? It seems like a fairly simple enough question to answer, especially considering the bevy of location-based applications and services on the market. And yet, more often than not, the answer is harder to come by then it should be. Enter Roamz, an iPhone application that culls information from your Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter accounts, and takes into account your expressed interests, to surface hot tips and pictures on nearby (or afar) local events and attractions you might like. Of course, you're also encouraged to use the app to share local happenings -- the startup calls these "Roamz moments" -- with other users as you discover them. Roamz, which launched earlier this week, is not the perfect anecdote for the what-to-do conundrum (yet), but it's a step in the right direction.
Mynd: Your Personal Entertainment iPhone App Assistant
Quick Pitch: Mynd wants to be your personal entertainment curator. Genius Idea: Find, rate and share the best entertainment apps on your iPhone. Mashable's Take: You've got more than 500,000 iOS applications to choose from on the App Store. Clearly, finding games, books, or television and movie apps best suited to your tastes can be a daunting, if not impossible, task. Mynd to the rescue. Mynd, from Seattle-based mobile development studio Liquify Digital, is an iPhone application that curates and recommends games, books, music and film applications just for you. The app uses a combination of machine learning techniques to make its picks and gets more sophisticated every time you interact with it.
DimSong: Interact With Music
Quick Pitch: DimSong is a reactive and adaptive app that creates customized remixes of music based on your input, movement and surroundings. Genius Idea: Music remixed by your movement. Mashable's Take: If you've ever wished for a dynamic music listening experience that matches your mood or tempo, consider taking DimSong for a musical spin on your iPhone. The iPhone application, built by VenLabs, provides an always in-flux and funky listening experience that oscillates with movement, touch or light. In shake mode, tracks automatically pick up intensity as you dance or flail about. Switch to light mode and your iPhone's camera will adjust audio based on the amount of light in the room. Or go in to touch mode to manually mix music with the on-screen slider. Right now, DimSong is limited in track selection, but the application will eventually work with songs from your favorite artists. Image courtesy of Flickr, Kristopher Wilson
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| John Mayer recovering from throat surgery (Reuters) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 01:51 PM PDT |
| Apple stock to jump 25 percent over next year: Barron's (Reuters) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 10:36 AM PDT (Reuters) – Shares of a handful of large tech companies including Apple Inc, Oracle Corp and eBay Inc are likely to increase by more than 20 percent over the next year, according to Barron's. The financial publication listed 10 tech stocks as its top picks in its weekly edition on Sunday. The No. 1 pick for 2012 is data-storage company Fusion-io Inc, which Barron's highlighted as a possible takeover target. The paper placed a $52 price target on Fusion-io over the next year, indicating the stock will more than double. Barron's also said some larger technology names are primed for sharp increases. Although Apple's earnings disappointed investors last week, Barron's said the stock could rise 25 percent over the next year. Apple shares on Friday closed at $392.87. Barron's cited a likelihood for market-share gains and increased sales of Apple's latest iPhone model, as well as the potential for share buybacks or a dividend under new Chief Executive Tim Cook. Apple rounded out the Barron's list at No. 10. The paper also predicted that Oracle shares would rise 25 percent to $40 over the next year on steady revenue gains, and that eBay shares will rise 24 percent, to $40, because investors are underestimating revenue growth from its non-auction businesses. Oracle came in at No. 2 on its top 10 list and eBay was No. 8. Hewlett Packard also received a bullish prediction from Barron's, which estimates that its stock will rise 21 percent, to $30, over the next six months, purely on valuation. "Whatever your opinion of new CEO Meg Whitman, the price looks too extreme," said Barron's, which put H-P as its No. 7 pick. Rounding out the paper's list were Tibco Software, with a 12-month price target of $35; Electronic Arts Inc, with a two-year target of $40; Nuance Communications, with a 12-month price target of $30; Ancestry.com, with an 18-month price target of $44; and Fortinet Inc, with a three-year price target of $25.65. (Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler) |
| Fox ad ratchets up dispute with DirecTV (Reuters) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 02:35 PM PDT LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Hey Trojans, Bruins and Kings fans: "Game over." That was the banner headline of a full-page ad purchased by News Corp. in the Los Angeles Times sports section on Sunday, warning L.A.-area fans that TV broadcasts of upcoming games could be compromised by subsidiary Fox Networks' ongoing carriage war with former subsidiary DirecTV. Similar ads in other markets warned fans that they could soon be without televised pro football. The ad, which urges fans to "Get direct with DirecTV by logging onto KeepMyNets.com or by calling 866-KEEP-MY-NETS," says that Fox broadcast channels could soon go dark, too. On Thursday, Fox went public with details of an ongoing carriage dispute with DirecTV, announcing that the satellite service has threatened to pull its channels on November 1 if a new contract can't be worked out. The Fox Networks deal covers not only regional sports cable networks like Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West, but also FX and National Geographic. A separate deal covering 27 Fox owned-and-operated stations is set to expire on December 31 -- a fact that Fox alluded to Sunday when it said it that Los Angeles viewers could also "soon" lose access to local stations Fox 11 and Fox 13. Down the road, another affiliate deal covering Fox News Channel is set to expire on January 31. DirecTV officials -- who are charging subscribers in excess of $80 a month for programing packages -- say News Corp. is seeking carriage-fee increases in excess of 40 percent. |
| 20 percent of women would give up sex for Facebook (Digital Trends) Posted: 22 Oct 2011 01:14 PM PDT
In a survey of over 2,000 women conducted by Cosmopolitan magazine, one in five women would rather give up sex for a week than giving up all the time spent on Facebook checking up on the lives of friends. Adding to that figure, about 57 percent of the female respondents would rather hang onto their computer than give it up for a week just to have sex and 50 percent would do the same with their mobile smartphone. However, 80 percent of the group would easily give up their favorite television shows for a week and 70 percent would stop texting over a mobile phone for a week to continue having sex. Even more extreme, a Kelton Research study conducted during June 2011 found that 25 percent of college students would give up dating and sex for an entire year if they could ditch purchasing and lugging around heavy textbooks. The alternative would be in the form of digital textbooks through devices like the Kindle. Seventy percent of the group preferred the idea of digital textbooks over the paper alternative and over half of the group claimed that it would make studying more efficient. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends
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| 150 years ago, a primitive Internet united the USA (AP) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 09:09 AM PDT |
| iPad Sales Have Reached The Plateau (The Atlantic Wire) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 09:44 AM PDT The gadget is a hit, but its share of the market for tablet computers fell sharply last quarter, as Android devices surged. Related: Android's Browser Leaves the iPhone's in the Dust The numbers are deceptive. Related: Survey: iPhone Could Gain on Android, BlackBerry Very Quickly Related: All the Ways Apple Keeps Secrets (That We Know Of) So if Apple wants to compete in that mainstream market, Mainelli maintained, it's going to need to augment its media tablet lineup with lower-priced products. That doesn't necessarily mean introducing something like a seven-inch iPad, as has been suggested by some observers. Apple can simply adopt the strategy it has used for its iPhone lineup, Mainelli noted. |
| Skip Howdy iPhone app for saying ‘hey’ with e-cards (Appolicious) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 07:22 PM PDT |
| Why developers are beginning to embrace HTML5 (Appolicious) Posted: 22 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT |
| Do Yourself a Favor and Just Like This Person's Status [VIDEO] (Mashable) Posted: 21 Oct 2011 12:00 PM PDT Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks. [More from Mashable: NATO Commander Announces End to Libyan War — On Facebook] Warning this video contains mature language. Ray William Johnson, of YouTube fame, visited the Mashable offices this afternoon and guest curated our YouTube Video of the Day selection. Lucky us -- and you -- because what better curator of YouTube videos is out there than the biweekly reviewer of hilarious clips for the video sharing platform's most popular channel. [More from Mashable: YouTube Gets a Mini Makeover] His choice? "LIKE MAH STATUS." "It's just good," Ray told us Friday at our New York headquarters. "Rarely does someone try to create a viral video that's actually good." We love the video because of how it makes light of everyone's insecurities when they post to the world's largest social network, Facebook, and anxiously wait to see how many "Likes" they receive from their friends. What do you think of the Like-craving phenomenon? Sound off in the comments. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Jobs abrasive style drove some people away: biographer (Reuters) Posted: 23 Oct 2011 08:17 PM PDT (Reuters) – Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs revolutionized multiple industries with his cutting-edge products but he was not the world's best manager, biographer Walter Isaacson said. Jobs changed the course of personal computing during two stints at Apple and then brought a revolution to the mobile market but the inspiring genius is known for his hard edges that have often times alienated colleagues and early investors with his my-way-or-the-highway dictums. "He's not warm and fuzzy," Isaacson said in an interview with "60 Minutes" on CBS on Sunday. "He was not the world's greatest manager. In fact, he could have been one of the world's worst managers." "He could be very, very mean to people at times," he added. Jobs loved to argue but not everyone around him shared that passion, which drove some of his top people away. While his style had yielded breakthrough products, it didn't make for "great management style," Isaacson said. In one of the more than 40 interviews that Jobs gave the biographer, the technology icon said he felt totally comfortable being brutally honest. "That's the ante for being in the room. So we're brutally honest with each other and all of them can tell me they think I'm full of s**t, and I can tell anyone I think they're full of s**t," Jobs said. "And we've had some rip-roaring arguments where we're yelling at each other." Isaacson's biography "Steve Jobs," which hits bookstores on Monday, reveals that Jobs refused potentially life-saving cancer surgery for nine months, was bullied in school, tried various quirky diets as a teenager, and exhibited early strange behavior such as staring at others without blinking. The book is expected to paint an unprecedented, no-holds-barred portrait of a man who famously guarded his privacy fiercely but whose death ignited a global outpouring of grief and tribute. Isaacson said in the interview that the reality distortion theory that had always been associated with Jobs stemmed from the Apple co-founder's belief that he was special and that the rules didn't apply to him. 'MAGICAL THINKING' "He could drive himself by magical thinking," Isaacson said. "By believing something that the rest of us couldn't possibly believe, and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't." Jobs, who has revolutionized the world of personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet, digital publishing and retail stores, would have liked to conquer television as well, Isaacson said. "He had a few other visions. He would love to make an easy-to-use television set," said Isaacson, speaking of Job's last two-and-a-half years of life. "But he started focusing on his family again as well. And it was a painful brutal struggle. And he would talk, often to me about the pain." Jobs, in his final meeting with Isaacson in mid-August, still held out hope that there might be one new drug that could save him. He also wanted to believe in God and an afterlife. "Ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about (God) more. And I find myself believing a bit more. Maybe it's because I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear," Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying. "Then he paused for a second and he said 'yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone," Isaacson said of Jobs. "He paused again, and he said: And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices." (Editing by Anshuman Daga) |
| Exclusive: Nasdaq hackers spied on company boards (Reuters) Posted: 20 Oct 2011 04:31 PM PDT (Reuters) – Hackers who infiltrated the Nasdaq's computer systems last year installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on the directors of publicly held companies, according to two people familiar with an investigation into the matter. The new details showed the cyber attack was more serious than previously thought, as Nasdaq OMX Group had said in February that there was no evidence the hackers accessed customer information. It was not known what information the hackers might have stolen. The investigation into the attack, involving the FBI and National Security Agency, is ongoing. "God knows exactly what they have done. The long term impact of such attack is still unknown," said Tom Kellermann, a well-known cyber security expert with years of experience protecting central banks and other high-profile financial institutions from attack. The case is an example of a "blended attack," where elite hackers infiltrate one target to facilitate access to another. In March hackers stole digital security keys from EMC Corp's RSA Security division that they later used to breach the networks of defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. Nasdaq had previously said that its trading platforms were not compromised by the hackers, but they attacked a Web-based software program called Directors Desk, used by corporate boards to share documents and communicate with executives, among other things. By infecting Directors Desk, the hackers were able to access confidential documents and the communications of board directors, said Kellermann, chief technology officer at security technology firm AirPatrol Corp. Investigators have learned that hackers were able to spy on "scores" of directors who logged onto directorsdesk.com before the malicious software was removed, said Kellermann and another person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. It was still unclear how long Nasdaq's system was breached before the attack was discovered last October. A Nasdaq spokesman confirmed the investigation into the attack continues, but declined to give further details. NSA HELPS NASDAQ Executive Assistant FBI Director Shawn Henry said the financial services sector was losing hundreds of millions of dollars to hackers every year, and the attacks were increasingly "destructive" in nature. "We know adversaries have full unfettered access to certain networks. Once there they have the ability to destroy data," he told Reuters in a phone interview. "We see that as a credible threat to all sectors, but specifically the financial services sector." Henry declined to comment on the Nasdaq attack. U.S. Army General Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, said the NSA was working with Nasdaq to help protect its network against further attacks. Alexander told security experts at a Baltimore conference that the United States was shoring up its defenses, but still had "tremendous vulnerabilities" to a growing number of increasingly destructive electronic attacks. "Nation states, non-nation state actors and hacker groups are creating tools that are increasingly more persistent and threatening, and we have to be ready for that," he said. Amid a spate of high-profile cyber crimes, the Obama administration wants Congress to pass comprehensive cyber-security legislation that would increase the government's ability to thwart the growing threat. Alexander and other top officials held a classified meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the issue, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld said in July that the exchange is under constant attack, requiring it to spend nearly a billion dollars a year on information security. "As we sit here, there are people trying to slam into our system every day," Greifeld said in the interview. "So we have to be ever vigilant against an ever-changing foe." (Reporting by Jim Finkle. Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer in New York, Andrea Shalal-Esa in Baltimore and Diane Bartz in Washington. Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Tiffany Wu, and Bob Burgdorfer |
| Over 30 percent of BlackBerry users in large companies plan to switch phones (Digital Trends) Posted: 20 Oct 2011 10:54 PM PDT
According to a new study from analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates, more the 30 percent of BlackBerry users at companies that employ more than 10,000 employees are planning to switch mobile platforms within the next twelve months. In the past, this segment of the business population has chosen the BlackBerry over other mobile platforms by 52 percent and the loss of this core segment will likely put a huge dent in BlackBerry sales. When asked if they were "completely satisfied" with their choice of mobile phone, only 16 percent of the business users in the survey were happy with the BlackBerry. Adversely, approximately 44 percent of iPhone owners choose the "completely satisfied" option. After the major service outage, price comparison website Kelkoo conducted a study that found nearly 20 percent of all BlackBerry owners were planning on switching platforms very soon due to the service interruption. Another 42 percent were considering changing phones when their contract expired. According to a former employee of RIM, the service outage was caused by a faulty router which RIM identified as a "core switch failure". The outage lasted three days and over 70 million BlackBerry users suffered from outage problems. RIM suffered a similar outage in 2005, but only lasted for approximately three hours based on an official report from RIM. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends
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