Sony forecast its losses for the current fiscal year should reach ¥50 billion/ $490 million when it ends March 2015. This is the sixth annual loss for the company in seven years. It expects to remain unprofitable until it finally exits the personal computing market. Although it has undertaken some restructuring in its business units and manufacturing, Sony chief financial officer Kenichiro Yoshida says it is now time for Sony to leave entire businesses behind and it will spend 135 billion yen as it leaves the PC business and on additional restructuring. One of which may be its television products operation, which continues to bleed cash. The announcement took analysts by surprise. The average profit for this fiscal year expected by 19 analysts polled by Bloomberg was ¥57.1 billion. “A lot of additional money-losing businesses remain for Sony to dump, though,” noted Bloomberg Businessweek. “The company hasn’t made a profit on TVs in years, and with stiff competition from South Korea and China, exiting the TV business is probably vital to any Sony turnaround. In its futile attempt to remain a player in TVs, Sony has lost ¥790 billion over the last 10 years, the company revealed today.” Based on its losses, PC market may see similar fiscal issues if it attempts to shed that portion of its business. It is focusing on products such as smartphones, cameras and game consoles. (BBC)(Bloomberg)(Bloomberg Businessweek)
Monday, June 2, 2014
Sunday, June 1, 2014
EU Court Backs “Right to Be Forgotten”
The top EU court has ruled that individuals may legally demand the removal of any links or information returned via search-engine results that could jeopardize their privacy. This is commonly referred to as “a right to be forgotten” and applies to “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data returned in search results. The case originated with a Spanish man who sought to have Google Spain delete a 1998 Catalonian newspaper article regarding his home being auctioned for failing to pay taxes. He argued the matter had been resolved and the material should no longer be linked to him. The new European Court of Justice ruling applies to all 28 EU member countries and all search-engine operators. Opponents say the ruling represents censorship. Attorneys practicing in the EU are concerned compliance could prove difficult because of the thousands of individual requests that could potentially be received by search engines and the need to carefully evaluate each of these. Others say the new rule could result in balkanized search results, with search results differing in Europe. Regulators throughout Europe have expressed concern about the way information on search engines, particularly Google, affect privacy. French, Italian, and Spanish officials have fined Google in the past over privacy matters. (Businessweek)(The Guardian)
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Reuters: Memory Issue in Software Causes Problems in US Air Traffic Control System
A vulnerability in the US air traffic control system’s software, triggered by a military aircraft’s complicated flight plan, caused flight delays and could crash the system in the future, according to a new report by Reuters. On 30 April 2014, a US U-2 spy plane flew through the Western US. Its lack of altitude information in the flight plan as well as its complexity—which was circular rather than point-to-point as is typical for commercial flights—caused the Federal Aviation Administration’s En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) air-traffic-control software to register an operational error and cycle on and off. This process used much of the system’s memory, leaving it unavailable for other tasks, causing problems throughout the Western US including the grounding or delaying of flights in Los Angeles. Experts cited by Reuters contend that attackers could use the same vulnerability to crash the system, although doing so would be complicated. The FAA has added memory to ERAM and changed some of its rules in an effort to prevent such problems. Weaknesses in the system will be the subject of two Def Con hacker convention talks in August 2014. (Reuters)(BBC)
Friday, May 30, 2014
US Bitcoin Hardware Maker Hit with Complaints
Roughly 300 complaints have been filed with the US Federal Trade Commission against a Bitcoin hardware maker that has failed to ship product to customers. Butterfly Labs, a Kansas-based manufacturing company that provides hardware for virtual currency mining operations, has faced numerous accusations of fraud and is in federal court now with a lawsuit, having previously lost a 2013 civil suit. The complaints lodged against the company are from customers around the world, including Argentina, Canada, and Estonia, filed between September 2012 and April 2014 whose orders were never filled or else requested refunds that never materialized, according to Ars Technica. In the court documents it obtained, a Kansas federal judge told the company’s co-founder, Sonny Vleisides, “his company had a ‘strong smell’ of fraud about it during a probation hearing.” (He is on probation after entering a guilty plea in connection with a 2010 lottery scam. The judge extended his probation an additional two years.) Butterfly Labs has claimed it has experienced manufacturing delays. “In light of new details from the recently published transcript of that January 2014 probation hearing,” concluded Ars Technica, “the legitimacy of the Butterfly Labs operation could soon be decided once and for all.” The FTC merely fields complaints, acting on them as warranted, which may include and investigation and possible litigation. It does not guarantee those complaining consumers that they will receive any refund. (Ars Technica – 1)(Ars Technica – 2)
Thursday, May 29, 2014
HP Announces $1 Billion Investment in Cloud Projects
Hewlett-Packard plans to invest $1 billion within the next two years on cloud-computing products and services. Among its projects is the development of services for the OpenStack open-source platform for public and private clouds, which HP will make available in 20 datacenters within the next 18 months. The company also recently announced a collaboration with contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group on creating servers for cloud-computing service providers. Other companies are also investing in cloud computing. For example, Cisco Systems plans to spend $1 billion on a cloud initiative. And Microsoft is making its cloud storage for businesses 40 times larger than it is now. (Reuters)(ZD Net)
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Mozilla Elicits Controversy with Ads in New Firefox Browser Tabs
Mozilla is bucking customer opinion by adding advertisements to newly launched tabs in its Firefox browser. When Mozilla announced in February it would try adding advertisements to its Firefox browser when a new tab opens, users complained about them. Mozilla now says new versions of the browser may include what it calls promotional tiles on a newly launched tab pages featuring ads for Mozilla sites and other sites. Typically, Firefox shows “tiles” or views of pages the user has frequently visited when a new tab is opened. One of these can be launched when double-clicked. This would change to include advertisements. Currently, Internet Explorer is the only major browser with advertising—for its Bing search engine—on its pages. (Telegraph)(Computerworld)(Gizmodo)
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Jury Reaches Verdict in Multimillion-Dollar Samsung-Apple Case
An eight-member federal jury in a trial related to an ongoing patent dispute between leading smartphone makers Apple and Samsung found that each company violated the other’s patented technology. The jury ruled that Samsung violated two Apple patents—the judge had already ruled that it has violated a third—and awarded Apple $120 million—much less than the $2.2 billion it had sought. The jury also found that Apple infringed a Samsung patent and awarded $158,400 in damages, much less than the $6 million Samsung originally sought. Jurors must still decide on a few matters, but experts say they won’t significantly affect the amount awarded. The judge has yet to decide on requests by both companies to ban products with patent-violating technologies. However, she has refused the companies’ requests to do so in the past. The recent trial is the latest salvo in an ongoing, worldwide patent battle between the companies over patents in the lucrative mobile-technology market. In the companies’ first trial in 2012, jurors initially awarded Apple $1.05 billion—less than the $2.75 billion the company asked for—but subsequently reduced the amount to $930 million. (The Associated Press)(San Jose Mercury News)(Tech Times -- 1)(Tech Times -- 2) (Businessweek)