Bill Gates still helping known patent trolls obtain more patents
by jon brodkin

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is one of 10 inventors named on a newly public patent application for a technology that uses mobile phones to turn text into video. Filed in January 2012, the application was made public on July 25 this year after the customary 18-month confidentiality period.Gates has been prolific in filing patent applications over the past few years, mostly through a partnership with friends at Intellectual Ventures (IV). That's one of the world's largest patent holding companies, typically described as a patent troll because of its practice of acquiring patents and using them to file lawsuits (notably against Motorola), despite not using the patents to make technology of its own.Gates's patent filings show that (at least as of 2012) he hasn't slowed down his involvement with IV even as patent trolls are viewed in an increasingly negative light throughout the technology industry. Gates famously criticized technology patents and their impact on the industry in 1991, but he's displayed a much more favorable view of patents since. continued…

first published week of:   08/19/2013

Bill Introduced to Re-Legalize Cellphone Unlocking
by ina fried

Democrats and Republicans may not agree on much these days. But the notion of allowing consumers to unlock their cellphones appears to have some bipartisan support. A bill was introduced Thursday that would make it once again legal for consumers to unlock their cellphones in order to switch carriers.

Democratic senators Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal, along with Utah Republican Mike Lee, put forth the Wireless Consumer Choice Act, which would direct the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that the right to unlock phones is preserved. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, is making a similar move in the House.

“Consumers shouldn’t have to fear criminal charges if they want to unlock their cell phones and switch carriers,” Lee said in a statement. “Enhanced competition among wireless services is the surest way to increase consumer welfare.”

The move follows the White House decision this week to weigh in on the side of consumers’ right to unlock their cellphones, following a petition effort.

Details Here

first published week of:   03/11/2013

bitcoin’s roller-coaster ride gets wilder as Wall Street, China climb on
by dan goodin

Bitcoin has been on a rollercoaster ride for most of its four-year history, with a series of dizzying price spikes and stomach-turning plummets, often in close succession. Thursday was no exception, as the digital currency picked up an unprecedented endorsement on Wall Street and a dose of cold water from the Chinese government.

For the first time, a major US investment bank has initiated coverage of bitcoins, and its overall assessment is relatively bullish. Or, at least not as bearish as some people have been saying.

"We believe Bitcoin can become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers," analysts at Bank of America's Merrill Lynch wrote in a 14-page research note to investment clients Thursday morning. "As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin has clear potential for growth in our view."

Even more significant, the analysts said that current valuations of the digital coin, which over the past six months have soared from about $100 to as high as $1,200, weren't overly optimistic. They put the fair-value worth of a single bitcoin at $1,300. To be sure, Bitcoin will have to pass several significant milestones before that price will be justified. Requirements include Bitcoin (1) accounting for at least 10 percent of all global business-to-consumer e-commerce transactions, (2) becoming one of the top three players in the money transfer industry, and (3) achieving a confidence or value reputation on par with silver commodities. continued…

first published week of:   12/09/2013

Boston police chief: facial recognition tech didn’t help find bombing suspects
by cyrus farivar

While the whole country is relieved that this past week’s Boston Marathon bombing ordeal and subsequent lockdown of the city is finally over, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told the Washington Post that the department’s facial recognition system “did not identify” the two bombing suspects.

“The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs’ images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver’s license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation,” the Post reported on Saturday.

Facial recognition systems can have limited utility when a grainy, low-resolution image captured at a distance from a cellphone camera or surveillance video is compared with a known, high-quality image. Meanwhile, the FBI is expected to release a large-scale facial recognition apparatus “next year for members of the Western Identification Network, a consortium of police agencies in California and eight other Western states,” according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Still, video surveillance did prove extremely useful in pinpointing the suspects. continued…

first published week of:   04/29/2013

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first published week of:   05/27/2013

Cable modems prep for 10-Gbit connections with new specs
by mark hachman

Your 16-Mbit cable connection is going to look awfully puny when a new generation of 10-Gbit cable modems enter the scene—whenever that turns out to be.

On the other hand, there’s good reason to believe that eventually you and your family will be able to simultaneously download multiple 4K streams. CableLabs, the testing and interoperability arm of the cable industry, released the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications this week, implying that its member companies will eventually support it.

Technically, the new specification allows for 10 Gbps downstream and 1 Gbps upstream, back to the provider. Additional features include Active Queue Management, a sort of quality-of-service protocol that CableLabs promises will minimize delays inside the home and help out with tasks such as online gaming.

“Based on the significant contributions from our members and technology suppliers, CableLabs has developed the technology foundation for the delivery of next generation broadband services over HFC networks,” said Dan Rice, senior vice president of access network technologies at CableLabs, in a statement. continued…

first published week of:   11/11/2013

Cable modems prep for 10-Gbit connections with new specs
by  mark hachman

Your 16-Mbit cable connection is going to look awfully puny when a new generation of 10-Gbit cable modems enter the scene—whenever that turns out to be.

On the other hand, there’s good reason to believe that eventually you and your family will be able to simultaneously download multiple 4K streams. CableLabs, the testing and interoperability arm of the cable industry, released the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications this week, implying that its member companies will eventually support it.

Technically, the new specification allows for 10 Gbps downstream and 1 Gbps upstream, back to the provider. Additional features include Active Queue Management, a sort of quality-of-service protocol that CableLabs promises will minimize delays inside the home and help out with tasks such as online gaming.

“Based on the significant contributions from our members and technology suppliers, CableLabs has developed the technology foundation for the delivery of next generation broadband services over HFC networks,” said Dan Rice, senior vice president of access network technologies at CableLabs, in a statement. continued…

first published week of:   11/04/2013

California’s New Cloud Service Will Change IT Service Delivery
by melanie glover

A recent study by mobile solutions company Citrix found that more than 50 percent of Americans believe weather can affect cloud computing. Meanwhile, California Technology Agency (CTA) officials say this service

Americans find so foggy will fundamentally change the way the state operates — in a good way. And, no, rain does not affect “the cloud.” The cloud is simply an approach to the way service providers — in this case, the California Office of Technology Services (OTech) — provide computing services and resources to their constituents.

Details Here

first published week of:   02/25/2013

Can Apple read your iMessages? Ars deciphers “end-to-end” crypto claims
by dan goodin

Ever since the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program came to light three weeks ago, implicated companies have issued carefully worded statements denying that government snoops have direct or wholesale access to e-mail and other sensitive customer data. The most strenuous denial came 10 days ago, when Apple said it took pains to protect personal information stored on its servers, in many cases by not collecting it in the first place.

"For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them," company officials wrote. "Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form."

Some cryptographers and civil liberties advocates have chafed at the claim that even Apple is unable to bypass the end-to-end encryption protecting them. After all, Apple controls the password-based authentication system that locks and unlocks customer data. More subtly, but no less important, cryptographic protections are highly nuanced things that involve huge numbers of moving parts. Choices about the types of keys that are used, the ways they're distributed, and the specific data that is and isn't encrypted have a huge effect on precisely what data is and isn't protected and under what circumstances.

Even when everything is done right, there are frequently limitations—and more often than not, huge trade-offs—on how easy the service will be to navigate by average users. And yet, none of this complexity is reflected in Apple's blanket statement. No wonder some security experts are skeptical.

I spent the past week weighing the evidence and believe it's an overstatement for Apple to say that only the sender and receiver of iMessage and FaceTime conversations can see and read their contents. There are several scenarios in which Apple employees, either at the direction of an NSA order or otherwise, could read customers' iMessage or FaceTime conversations, and I'll get to those in a moment. But first, I want to make it clear that my conclusion is based on so-called black-box testing, which examines the functionality of an application or service with no knowledge of their internal workings. No doubt, Apple engineers have a vastly more complete understanding, but company representatives declined my request for more information. continued…

first published week of:   07/01/2013

Common Risks of Using Business Apps in the Cloud
by chris harlow, editor, the harlow report-gis

The "cloud" is all the rage in tech services. Reading some of today's literature you would think only a novice would have a server on location. Cloud hype tends to simply discuss the benefits of moving to the cloud and never the downside. Don't get me wrong, there are quite a few benefits that should be considered.

But what about the downside? We rarely hear a thing about that. After all, what could go wrong with anything backed by the likes of Amazon and Google? Well, just asked the folks who tried to watch a movie via Netflix last Christmas. Its cloud provider, Amazon, had a major outage on the East Coast that knocked Netflix on its rear end.

By nature, I am wary of the very latest. In particular I am suspect of anything that says it can replace established concepts right out of the box. It usually takes years to make technology stable, yet we keep thinking the next thing will be even better. This is often not the case.

Cloud computing solves a lot of problems for a lot of users, but it brings its own set of challenges with it. After all, it is outsourcing and by definition that means you have lost control of certain aspects of your information processing capabilities.

Recently, I came across a great explanation of the risks of cloud computing by Sandy Shrum and Paul Murray of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team or US-CERT. In four pages, it tells you what you need to consider to complete your evaluation of going to the cloud. For you over-achievers, there are two more pages of "further reading" citations.

I urge you to go to the CERT site and download and read this pdf document.  Get it here

first published week of:   05/13/2013