According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)’s 2011 survey, an average patent lawsuit costs between $900,000 to $6,000,000 to defend. In the last month and a half alone, Twitter has received three new patent troll lawsuits.
Author Archives: mea
SpaceX’s first ISS supply mission is a success
The SpaceX Dragon capsule has been successfully grabbed by the International Space Station, marking the first time a private American space flight has run a supply mission to the orbiting platform. The crew of the ISS snatched Dragon out of orbit ahead of schedule, using the space station’s robotic arm to guide the capsule in after its careful approach.
via Dragon captured: SpaceX’s first ISS supply mission is a success – SlashGear.
Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week
The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. ET Friday.
via Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week – CNBC.com – US Business News – CNBC.
Translation: The ultimate goal of many of these programs is to gum up the system so it slows down the quote feed to others and allows the computer traders (with their co-located servers at the exchanges) to gain a money-making arbitrage opportunity.
HTC suffers 79% crash in quarterly profits
HTC’s share of the global smartphone market by shipments fell to 5.8% in the second quarter from 10.7% a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.
via HTC suffers 79% crash in quarterly profits | Technology | guardian.co.uk.
HTC has seen falling average selling prices for its phones as it has tried to break into the fast-growing Chinese market. Approximately 30% of shipments go to China but price pressures mean they account for only 20% of revenues.
Facing Espionage, US Rejects Changes to Global Telecom
Countries would also be able to charge fees for international Internet traffic and establish new engineering and technical guidelines that would affect how the Internet works.
via Facing Espionage, US Rejects Changes to Global Telecom | International | World | Epoch Times.
He also said the ITU’s regulations are “not an appropriate or useful venue to address cybersecurity,” and added, “We are very sensitive about any one organization taking on the sole role of solving cyberthreats.”
Researchers create algorithms that help lithium-ion batteries charge two times faster
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have devised new algorithms that can cut lithium-ion battery charge times in half, help cells run more efficiently and potentially cut production costs by 25 percent. Rather than tracking battery behavior and health with the traditional technique of monitoring current and voltage, the team’s mathematical models estimate where lithium ions are within cells for more precise data.
via Researchers create algorithms that help lithium-ion batteries charge two times faster — Engadget.
VMware realizes it doesn’t rule the cloud, boosts support for Amazon
VMware has long had an aversion to supporting virtualization tools other than its own, even as rivals like Microsoft and Citrix happily built management software that could control the deployment of virtual machines using both their own hypervisors and VMware’s. VMware always had a plausible excuse in that its own vSphere virtualization platform was so widely used that supporting anything else was unnecessary—although Hyper-V’s advances are making that argument less convincing.
via VMware realizes it doesn’t rule the cloud, boosts support for Amazon | Ars Technica.
Alcatel-Lucent Enhances VDSL2 Vectoring
Vectoring, the market term for the ITU’s G.993.5 standard (also known as G.Vector), is a noise cancellation technology that reduces the interference between bundled copper lines and boosts the speed and reach of VDSL2 broadband connections. It is also known as DSM (Dynamic Spectrum Management) Level 3.
If AlcaLu can deliver effective vectoring capabilities using installed CPE, then that’s only going to expand the market potential for its system, especially as more operators look for ways to extend the useful life of their copper plant before taking the plunge into fiber-to-the-home (FTTH).
Flaws allow 3G devices to be tracked
Two attacks were conducted using off-the-shelf kit and a rooted — or modified — femtocell unit which broadcasted a 3G signal. The attacks were made by intercepting, altering and injecting 3G Layer-3 messages into communication between the base station and mobile phones in both directions.
The researchers wrote that the attacks could be used to track staff movements within a building.
“[The employer] would first use the femtocell to sniff a valid authentication request. This could happen in a different area than the monitored one. Then the employer would position the device near the entrance of the building. Movements inside the building could be tracked as well by placing additional devices to cover different areas of the building,” they wrote.
US congress rules Huawei a ‘security threat’
The US congressional panel launched its investigation over concerns that Beijing could use the fast-growing firms for economic or military espionage, or cyber attacks.
via US congress rules Huawei a ‘security threat’.
From the Chicago Tribune via Reuters:
Employee-owned and unlisted Huawei is the world’s second-biggest maker of routers, switches and telecoms equipment by revenue after Sweden’s Ericsson. ZTE ranks fifth. In the global mobile phone sector, ZTE is fourth and Huawei sixth.
Giant US software manufacturer Lotus has been lowering the profile of information about how they have installed an NSA-only trapdoor into e-mail and conference systems used by many European governments, including the German Ministry of Defence, the French Ministry of Education and Research and the Ministry of Education in Latvia.