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Defense Dept. IT Is ‘Stone Age’
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a stinging critique of the Defense Department’s IT systems and said he sees much room for improvement.
Cartwright, who was speaking at the FOSE information technology conference in Washington,DC, said the DOD is sending increasing amounts of data, such as video, to soldiers on the battlefield, and it’s beginning to build an architecture “that starts to take us where we need to be.” But Cartwright quickly tempered that.
“Quite frankly, my feeling is — at least being a never-satisfied person — the department is pretty much in the Stone Age as far as IT is concerned,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright cited problems with proprietary systems that aren’t connected to anything else and are unable to quickly adapt to changing needs. “We have huge numbers of data links that move data between proprietary platforms — one point to another point,” he said.
The most striking example of an IT failure came during the second Gulf War, where the Marines and the Army were dispatched in southern Iraq.
T-Mobile Will Offer Unlimited Data Plans
July 24, 2011 by admin
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Wireless telecom firm T-Mobile USA said it will begin offering unlimited data service plans, in a move aimed at snagging customers of bigger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc which have discontinued offering such plans.
T-mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, said the new plans will become available from July 24. The unlimited plans will be available with a two-year agreement for new and existing customers.
Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile provider, said earlier in July it will stop offering unlimited data service plans, meaning higher prices for heavy users of services such as mobile Web surfing.
AT&T had stopped offering unlimited data services last year.
Mobile Networks Near Capacity
July 23, 2011 by admin
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Mobile networks in North America are using 80 percent of capacity, with 36 percent of base stations facing capacity constraints, according to a survey by investment firm Credit Suisse.
Networks in other regions also are more than 50 percent utilized, with the global average at 65 percent, Credit Suisse said after surveying carriers around the world. That level of use matches the average “threshold” rate that would trigger the service providers to start buying more network equipment, the report said. Looking ahead, on average the carriers expected their utilization rate to grow to 70 percent within 12 months.
Credit Suisse used the results to predict new sales by makers of cellular equipment, such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies. But at a certain level, heavy use of a base station can also affect the mobile experience of individual subscribers. The survey found that 23 percent of base stations worldwide had capacity constraints (defined as a utilization rate over 80 percent during busy hours), while 36 percent in North America were under that kind of pressure.
The North American networks were 72 percent utilized two years ago. The region’s carriers expect the rate to ease back down to that point within two years. North American service providers are likely to buy more equipment soon, because having their networks 74 percent filled is the threshold rate in that region, the survey said.
HP Announces TouchPad 4G Deal
Hewlett-Packard announced it would release a 4G TouchPad tablet with upgraded hardware that will be available on AT&T’s wireless network.
The tablet will have a 1.5GHz processor, which is a change from the dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor available with older Wi-Fi-only TouchPad models that went on sale just two weeks ago.
Last August Qualcomm said that by the start of this year it would ship the dual-core Snapdragon QSD8672 chip that could run at clock speeds of up to 1.5GHz.
The TouchPad will have 32GB of internal storage, GPS and built-in AT&T wireless mobile broadband capabilities, HP said in a statement. Specific pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.
Wireless connectivity will be available through AT&T’s DataConnect mobile data plans for tablets or Wi-Fi hotspots around the country, HP said.
TouchPad users have expressed concerns about the device’s performance, especially the long load times for some applications. HP attributes the performance issue to software problems and said it will deliver an over-the-air software update that should resolve some performance problems.
Some buyers also were concerned about the TouchPad’s weight of about 1.6 pounds (740 grams), which is heavier than Apple’s iPad at 1.32 pounds. The TouchPad includes a 9.7-inch screen and comes with WebOS 3.0, which is also used in smartphones.
States Subpoena Sprint
July 16, 2011 by admin
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Sprint Nextel has been subpoenaed by nine states in connection with antitrust reviews of AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA, according to information Sprint posted on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website.
In a letter dated June 28 to FCC, Sprint said it had received subpoenas and civil investigation demands from attorneys general in the states of Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, as well as from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Sprint, the No.3 U.S. mobile service, is opposing AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of No.4 U.S. mobile service T-Mobile USA, a Deutsche Telekom AG unit, on the grounds it will give too much competitive power to one company.
Sprint said in its letter that the states have asked the company to provide all the materials it had submitted to FCC regarding AT&T’s deal.
Meanwhile, an AT&T spokesman told Bloomberg that his company had also received subpoenas from the same nine states regarding its proposed T-Mobile transaction.
New MacBook Includes Faster NAND Chip
The soon to be released new version of Apple’s MacBook Air, will feature NAND flash memory with up to 400Mbps performance, about one and a half times faster than its current technology, according to a recent report.
Unlike many notebooks, the MacBook Air has no hard drive or optical drive and instead uses a slim flash board for its internal mass storage device.
Citing an “Asian electronics component company person,” the blog site Macotakara stated that Apple will use flash memory chips that includes the new Double Data Rate (DDR) 2.0 interface. While the rumors could not be confirmed, the upgrade would come as no surprise, since Apple’s next MacBook Air, which originally used Toshiba’s Blade X-gale NAND flash board, has moved to using Samsung’s flash memory. The MacBook Air’s current Samsung flash sports read rates of 261Mbps and write rates of up to 209Mbps and is based on DDR 1.0 technology.
DDR 2.0 provides a tenfold increase over the 40Mbps Single Data Rate (SDR) NAND flash in widespread use today.
In May, Samsung announced that it was producing DDR 2.0 multilevel cell flash chips. Samsung’s flash chips are made using its smallest circuitry, only 20 nanometers wide. The chips boast a performance improvement of three times over its previous technology.
DDR NAND flash comes in two forms: Toggle Mode from Samsung and Toshiba; and ONFI NAND, from the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) working group. The ONFI protocol is used by flash manufacturers, including Intel, Micron, SanDisk, Hynix and Spansion. In March, the ONFI working group announced its 3.0 specification for the DDR 2.0 interface, which also has up to 400Mbps throughput but with only half the number of pins, for a significant reduction in size.
TI Chip Goes 1080p On Android Devices
Texas Instruments on Tuesday said its OMAP chip had been certified to unlock full 1080p movies from Netflix for Google’s Android 2.3 based devices, which includes smartphones and tablets.
TI’s on-chip security feature, called M-Shield, will be able to decode 1080p high-definition movie streaming from Netflix, stated Fred Cohen, director of the OMAP user experience team at TI. A security layer unlocks the encoded video, which can then be viewed on smartphones and tablets or TV sets connected through an HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port.
The purpose of having this technology is to provide end-to-end security for protected video content, Cohen said. Movie studios are making more high-definition 1080p content available and are adamant about protecting their product, which are considered premium content.
The on-chip feature minimizes the ability to copy content, as it is easy to take control of a rooted Android device, Cohen said. It’s easy for users to access memory where the stream is temporarily stored, and then write the movie to another device.
“You have to protect those devices,” Cohen said. “We have implemented a firewall.”
TI’s security technology is to provide a security layer so devices get access to high-definition movies, Cohen said.
Netflix provides different levels of security certification depending on features such as the video quality and resolution, Cohen said. Netflix did not return a request for comment on whether it was streaming 1080p video content to mobile devices, or whether chip makers required certification to unlock secure 1080p content.
Nokia Slashes Smartphone Prices
July 9, 2011 by admin
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Nokia has lowered the price of smartphones across its entire portfolio in an attempt to slow the decline of its share in the higher-end of the cellphone market, two industry sources said on Tuesday.
One of the sources with direct knowledge of Nokia’s pricing said the company’s flagship model, the N8, the multimedia phone C7, as well as the business user-targeted E6, saw the steepest cuts of around 15 percent.
Other price cuts were smaller, both sources said. “There are no very big cuts per model, but the scale — across the portfolio — is unseen for a very, very long time,” said one of the sources, who works at a European telecom operator.
A Nokia spokesman declined to comment on specific prices and said changes were part of its normal business. “It’s business as usual,” he said.
“TDL-4″ Botnet Is Practically Indestructible
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A new and improved botnet that has infected more than four million computers is “practically indestructible,” software security experts say.
“TDL-4,” the name for both the bot Trojan that infects PCs and the ensuing collection of compromised computers, is “the most sophisticated threat today,” said Kaspersky Labs researcher Sergey Golovanov in a detailed analysis Monday.
“[TDL-4] is practically indestructible,” Golovanov said and others agree.
“I wouldn’t say it’s perfectly indestructible, but it is pretty much indestructible,” said Joe Stewart, director of malware research at Dell SecureWorks and an internationally-known botnet expert, in an interview today. “It does a very good job of maintaining itself.”
Golovanov and Stewart based their assessments on a variety of TDL-4′s traits, all which make it an extremely tough character to detect, delete, suppress or eradicate.
Because TDL-4 installs its rootkit on the Master Boot Record (MBR), it is invisible to both the operating system and more, importantly, security software designed to sniff out malicious code.
Further,what makes the botnet indestructible is the combination of its advanced encryption and the use of a public peer-to-peer (P2P) network for the instructions issued to the malware by command-and-control (C&C) servers.
“The way peer-to-peer is used for TDL-4 will make it extremely hard to take down this botnet,” said Roel Schouwenberg, senior malware researcher at Kaspersky, ”The TDL guys are doing their utmost not to become the next gang to lose their botnet.”
Samsung Asks ITC To Ban Apple Products
July 6, 2011 by admin
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Samsung requested that the U.S. International Trade Commission ban the importation of Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods, ratcheting up its fight with Apple.
The filing, dated Tuesday, states Apple’s iPhone, iPod digital music player and iPad tablet infringe on five of Samsung’s patents involving telecommunications standards and user interface inventions.
Samsung also filed a fresh patent lawsuit against Apple in a Delaware federal court on Wednesday.
The complaints are the latest salvo in a growing legal battle between the two electronics giants.
In April, Apple sued Samsung in a California federal court, claiming the South Korean firm’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets “slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad.
Samsung then countersued in California, and Apple last week filed another lawsuit in South Korea. An Apple spokesman could not be immediately reached on Wednesday.
As well as its own phones and tablets, Samsung manufactures microchips for Apple’s gadgets, a business that brought in about $5.7 billion in revenue for the South Korean company last year.
Before banning the importation of Apple’s popular devices, the ITC would first have to agree to look into Samsung’s allegations, a process that could be quite lengthy.