Friday, November 9, 2012

Most memorable tech industry apologies of 2012: From Apple to Google to Microsoft


Tech vendors have been as bombastic as ever promoting the magical and amazing things their latestsmartphonescloud computing wares and network gear can do. When things go wrong, they're naturally a little less visible, but plenty of companies have sucked it up and done the right thing this year (perhaps with a little legal prodding here and there) and publicly apologized for minor and major customers inconveniences.
Here's a brief rundown of the sorry, sorry action so far in 2012:
*Apple Maps flap
Apple has a reputation for not apologizing for much of anything (or even deigning to comment on anything slightly controversial). It even twisted a court order in the U.K. in October into a sort of non-apology apology/advertisement and then a snoozy newspaper ad.
But actually, the company has said sorry numerous times in recent years, for everything from long waits for buyers of the first iPhones in 2007 to the notorious antenna-gate problems with the iPhone 4. This time around, CEO Tim Cook issued an apology in the wake of the company's release of disappointing maps technology in iOS 6. The apology read, in part:
"At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."
One Apple executive who reportedly didn't want to sign off on the apology -- iOS chief Scott Forstall -- has now left the company in a management shake-up. And Forstall was joined in departing by John Browett, Apple's retail chief, whose group's problems with store staffing over the summer resulted inanother Apple apology
*Cisco stops pushing cloud on customers
Responding to customer backlash over making Cisco Connect Cloud service a default management system for high-end Linksys routers, Cisco apologized and made it so customers need to opt in to the service if they want it. The default is now a traditional setup for management over the LAN.
Customers balked at Cisco Connect Cloud for numerous reasons, including worries about Cisco snooping on their network use and strict terms of service that restricted access to certain content, possibly including spam and porn, among other things.
Brett Wingo, vice president and general manager of Cisco Home Networking, wrote in July:
"We believe lack of clarity in our own terms of service has contributed to many of our customers' concerns, and we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused. Cisco Connect Cloud and Cisco Linksys routers do not monitor or store information about how our customers are using the Internet and we do not arbitrarily disconnect customers from the Internet. The Cisco Connect Cloud Service has never monitored customers' Internet usage, nor was it designed to do so. Cisco will not push software updates to customers' Linksys routers when the auto-update setting is turned off."
*T-Mobile: Sorry about the sneaky ads
T-Mobile USA begged for forgiveness in April after slipping advertisements onto Android smartphone customers' update notification screens promoting the carrier's free VIP Zone offering. The carrier stopped the practice after the complaints came rolling in.
The apology: "During a recent software update, a message to promote T-Mobile's free VIP Zone was mistakenly sent to certain customers and appeared on the notification bar for some Android devices. After T-Mobile was made aware of this mistake, the company stopped the notifications. T-Mobile apologizes for the inconvenience this may have caused customers."
~~
*Motorola, Woot clean up their acts
Motorola Mobility in February warned people who bought but then returned Android-based Motorola Xoom tablets between March and October last year that the devices might have been resold by bargain-of-the-day website Woot with the ex-owners' sensitive data still on them. Motorola said that about 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Xoom tablets that it refurbished "may not have been completely cleared of the original owner's data prior to resale." The tablets were resold by Woot between October and December 2011.
Data possibly accessible on the uncleaned tablets could include photos and documents, as well as user names and passwords for social media, email and other accounts, Motorola acknowledged.
The company issued a statement of apology: "Motorola sincerely regrets and apologizes for any inconvenience this situation has caused the affected customers. Motorola is committed to rigorous data protection practices in order to protect its customers, and will continue to take the necessary steps to achieve this objective."
*Google earnings snafu, Gmail outage
When you're a company as wide-ranging as Google, you're always good for at least a few high-profile apologies during the year. Among the 2012 offerings: A hoarse-voiced CEO Larry Page apologizing during an analysts' call in October for the company's accidental release of its numbers too early ("I'm sorry for the scramble earlier today") , and then in April and June, mea culpas issued for Gmail outages. In April, Google apologized "for the inconvenience," thanked Gmail users for their "patience and continued support" and said that it is continually making improvements to its "system reliability," which the company considers "a top priority." However, as many as 4.8 million users were affected by another outage in June. In July, Google found itself apologizing for a Google Talk outage as well. "Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."
As for the premature release of its earnings statement, Google ultimately pointed to a mistake by financial printer RR Donnelley. Google's stock price got pounded for the error and hadn't quite recovered even a month later.
*Naughty Microsoft
With all the challenges to its Office and Windows products, does Microsoft really need headaches like these, too? Among the issues Microsoft has apologized for in 2012: a coder slipping the term "big boobs" into software code connecting the Linux kernel to Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization product, and a raunchy dance routine that preceded an Azure presentation in Norway. 
As Network World's Paul McNamara wrote about the coding issue: "Some chucklehead working for Microsoft thought it would be funny to slip a thinly camouflaged sexist remark - 'big boobs' -- into software code that connects the Linux kernel to Microsoft's HyperV virtualization product. Naturally, someone noticed -- that was the intent (snicker, snicker) - and, as should surprise no one, criticism has ensued, since the vast majority of grownups have come to recognize that this kind of juvenile nonsense has no place in the business world."
Microsoft issued an apology: "We thank the community for reporting this issue and apologize for the offensive string. We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel."
As for the dance routine in June, Microsoft's Azure team issued this apology: "This week's Norwegian Developer's Conference included a skit that involved inappropriate and offensive elements and vulgar language. We apologize to our customers and our partners and are actively looking into the matter."
Once that was settled, Microsoft was able to focus on apologizing for interruptions to Azure service, such as it did in July when its cloud offering went on the fritz in Western Europe. "We sincerely apologize for any issues this caused impacted customers, and will make the necessary adjustments to help prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future. Impacted customers should contact support to file an SLA credit," wrote Mike Neil, general manager, Windows Azure, on a company blog
On the less racy side, Microsoft also apologized to a blogger in March in the wake of a Windows Phone marketing promotion called "Smoked by Windows Phone" that proved unfair when store employees failed to recognize the blogger's Samsung Galaxy Nexus the winner of a $1,000 laptop prize. Microsoft PC evangelist Ben Rudolph came to the rescue, via Twitter, once the story got picked up: "Hey @sahaskatta , @Microsoftstore & I want to make things right. So I've got a laptop & phone (& apology) for you. Email me!," @BenThePCGuy tweeted.
*Amazon cloud crash
People tend to notice when Amazon Web Service's cloud offerings collapse, not that they necessarily realize Amazon is involved. Rather, it's the companies whose websites depend on AWS that get noticed, and often wind up apologizing to their customers.
That's exactly what happened in October when AWS had an outage (its third major one in two years) following a new hardware installation ("latent memory bug" issue) at one of its northern Virginia data centers. Websites such as Reddit and Imgur were left to do the explaining to their would-be website visitors, while Amazon followed up with credits for its customers and a promise to fix the underlying problem, including an overaggressive traffic throttling policy. Amazon also apologized, writing in part on its AWS support site: "We apologize for the inconvenience and trouble this caused for affected customers. We know how critical our services are to our customers' businesses, and will work hard (and expeditiously) to apply the learning from this event to our services. While we saw that some of the changes that we previously made helped us mitigate some of the impact, we also learned about new failure modes. We will spend many hours over the coming days and weeks improving our understanding of the event and further investing in the resiliency of our services."
Amazon was forced to publicly apologize for another outage of its Elastic Compute Cloud lasting several hours in June that it blamed on power outages (caused by storms), software bugs and rebooting bottlenecks. Amazon's team wrote: "We regret the problems experienced by customers affected by the disruption and, in addition to giving more detail, also wanted to provide information on actions we'll be taking to mitigate these issues in the future."
~~
*LinkedIn passwords free-for-all
LinkedIn, in June, confirmed reports that some of its users' passwords were compromised after reports surfaced that about 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords were compromised and posted online in a Russian hacker forum, in large part because LinkedIn was using a weak hashing algorithm.
The business-oriented social network site quickly updated its security and ensured users who updated their passwords that they'd be in much better shape. Even so, it was hit with a $5 million lawsuit over the breach. 
Here's what one LinkedIn VP blogged, in part: "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members. We take the security of our members very seriously. If you haven't read it already it is worth checking out my earlier blog post today about updating your password and other account security best practices."
*BlueToad victimized by hackers
Digital publishing company BlueToad revealed in September that the unique identifiers of some 1 million Apple iOS devices that hackers leaked were swiped from its servers. CEO Paul DeHart's admission that his company was the hacking victim helped clear suspicion from the FBI, which the Antisec-affiliated hacking group claimed to have taken the UDIDs from. DeHart said in an interview with MSNBC (and he might be the only exec from any of these companies that apologized on camera) that his company did change its code to comply with stricter Apple guidelines earlier this year, but that the hackers got access to information stored via older code.
DeHart wrote in a blog post that: "We sincerely apologize to our partners, clients, publishers, employees and users of our apps. We take information security very seriously and have great respect and appreciation for the public's concern surrounding app and information privacy. BlueToad does not collect, nor have we ever collected, highly sensitive personal information like credit cards, social security numbers or medical information. The illegally obtained information primarily consisted of Apple device names and UDIDs - information that was reported and stored pursuant to commercial industry development practices."
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking newsworld news, and news about the economy
*GoDaddy goes down
GoDaddy's internal investigation of a six-plus hour outage on Sept. 10 for website and domain service business and its 52 million customers concluded that it was caused by a "series of internal network events that corrupted router database tables," not a hacker attack, as was first suspected by many after a supposed Anonymous affiliate initially took credit. GoDaddy emphasized that while customers websites went dark, their personal data was not compromised.
CEO Scott Wagner issued an apology in which he wrote in part: "Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves. We have let our customers down and we know it. We take our business and our customers' businesses very seriously. We apologize to our customers for these events and thank them for their patience."
GoDaddy also awarded customers one month of credits in attempt to keep disappointed ones from fleeing.
*RIM CEO: Sorry about the outage
In the grand scheme of things, RIM BlackBerry network outages haven't been the worst of Research in Motion's problems this year. Rather, the company's loss of market share, weak financial results and new product delays have been front and center.
But RIM did have a three-hour network outage in September in Europe and Africa that affected about 6% of customers and prompted CEO Thorsten Heins to apologize: "I want to apologize to those BlackBerry customers in Europe and Africa who experienced an impact in their quality of service earlier this morning. The BlackBerry service is now fully restored and I can report that no data or messages were lost. Up to 6 per cent of our user base may have been impacted. Preliminary analysis suggests that those customers may have experienced a maximum delay of 3 hours in the delivery and reception of their messages. We are conducting a full technical analysis of this quality of service issue and will report as soon as it concludes. I again want to apologize to those customers who were impacted today."
*Nokia's camera trick
Nokia's big Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 splash in September got off to a rough start when the company overreached in a video promoting the camera's Pureview camera technology. Yes, Nokia resorted to the old not-so-hidden cameraman trick.
As NW's Colin Neagle wrote in September, "Nokia was caught red-handed in a lie, after tech bloggers spotted a cameraman capturing a video the company claimed was shot with its new, highly touted Lumia 920 smartphone. After apologizing, Nokia posted a real video shot with the smartphone, displaying the optical image stabilization (OIS) camera technology that was faked on the first try."
Tech bloggers spotted in the video a reflection of a cameraman with a professional camera actually taking the shot of a women on a bicycle.
The company said its main fault was failing to publish "a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only."
~~
*Yahoo's massive breach
Yahoo apologized for a network breach in July that involved exposure of some 400,000 Yahoo user names and passwords, among other information. The breach was especially bad because it tied in with Gmail, Hotmail and other online accounts. The group claiming responsibility for the hack said it used a SQL injection. Yahoo's apology went like this: "At Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products. We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network (previously Associated Content) containing approximately 400,000 Yahoo! and other company users names and passwords was stolen yesterday,July 11. Of these, less than 5% of the Yahoo! accounts had valid passwords. We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo! users and notifying the companies whose users accounts may have been compromised. We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com."
*Path goes down wrong privacy path
Path, a social journal app for iPhone and Android devices, apologized in February after it came to light that the company was grabbing iPhone contact info and sticking it on its own servers. CEO Dave Morin wrote in part: "We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts. ... Through the feedback we've received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our 'Add Friends' feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts."
The revelation, in turn, led to more revelations that bigger name apps like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare were doing likewise. Apple took steps to require app makers whose wares are in its App Store to ask permission if they want to take contact info.
*McAfee: Just kidding about that malware






Read more »

AT&T reverses FaceTime blocking decision


AT&T has reversed its decision to allow Apple iPhone and iPad owners to use Apple's FaceTime videoconferencing application only on the carrier's most expensive data plans or if they are connected to Wi-Fi.
AT&T on Thursday announced it would allow customers with Apple devices to use FaceTime on other LTE plans in addition to its Mobile Share data plan. The carrier's decision comes after three advocacy groups said in September they planned to file a net neutrality complaint against AT&T at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
Free Press, Public Knowledge and New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute will move forward with the net neutrality complaint if AT&T does not make FaceTime available to its customers in a timely manner, Free Press said in a press release.
"The law is clear," Free Press policy director Matt Wood said in an email. "AT&T simply can't justify blocking an app that competes with its voice and texting services unless customers purchase a more expensive monthly plan that includes an unlimited amount of those very same services."
The FCC approved net neutrality regulations in late 2010.
AT&T made the original decision to limit FaceTime use because the carrier has so many iPhone owners on its network, said Jim Cicconi, the carrier's senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs. "When Apple rolls out new services or changes, as it did in iOS 6, it can have a much greater, and more immediate, impact on AT&T's network than is the case with carriers who have far fewer iPhone users," he wrote in a blog post.
With FaceTime preloaded on "tens of millions of iPhones, AT&T engineers could not predict how much the app would be used and how much it would affect AT&T's network, Cicconi wrote. "It is for this reason that we took a more cautious approach toward the app."
But the decision "raised questions and some concerns," Cicconi added.
AT&T will roll out FaceTime for data users over eight to 10 weeks, he said. Starting on Oct. 26, the carrier began offering new billing plans designed to help deaf and hard-of-hearing customers use FaceTime, he added.
Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.

Read more »

Facebook boosts Hadoop with scheduling muscle


Facebook has beaten some of the limitations of the Apache Hadoop data processing platform, its engineers assert.
Facebook has released source code for scheduling workloads on the Apache Hadoop data processing platform. Engineers at the social networking company claim this program, called Corona, is superior to Hadoop's own scheduler in MapReduce.
In tests, the Corona scheduler was able to put more than 95 percent of a cluster to work on jobs, whereas MapReduce could utilize, at the most, 70 percent of a cluster, Facebook said.
By using the clusters more efficiently, Facebook is able to analyze more information with existing hardware. Corona offers a number of additional benefits as well, including faster loading of workloads and a more flexible way of upgrading the software.
Facebook announced the release of Corona in a posting by a number of Facebook engineers who contributed to the software, including Avery Ching, Ravi Murthy, Dmytro, Ramkumar Vadali and Paul Yang.
Facebook's operations and users generate more than half a petabyte of data each day, which is analyzed by more than 1,000 Facebook personnel, mostly by using the Apache Hive query engine.
Typically, analysis jobs running on Hadoop are scheduled through the MapReduce framework, which breaks jobs into multiple parts so they can be executed across many computers in parallel.
Facebook ran into issues using MapReduce, however. The scheduler could not keep all the computers supplied with work. "At peak load, cluster utilization would drop precipitously due to scheduling overhead," the blog stated.
Another issue with MapReduce is that the software typically delayed jobs before executing them, the Facebook team said. In addition, the framework offered no easy way of scheduling non-MapReduce jobs on the same cluster, and software upgrades required system downtime, which necessitated stopping jobs that are then being executed.
Facebook engineers developed the Corona scheduler so it would not have these limitations. The software would scale more easily and make better use of clusters. It would offer lower latency for smaller jobs and could be upgraded without disrupting the system.
Facebook is now in the process of moving MapReduce workloads onto clusters equipped with Corona. Initially, the social networking company deployed the software on 500 nodes. Once Corona proved effective, it was then tasked with all non-mission critical workloads, including larger workloads involving 1,000 or more servers. Now, the company is deploying Corona for all Hadoop workloads.
In tests, Corona has shown itself to be more effective than MapReduce across a number of metrics, Facebook asserted. In performance tests, Corona took around 55 seconds to fill an empty workspace, whereas MapReduce took 66 seconds -- which constitutes a 17 percent improvement. Job are started more quickly now, as well, within 25 seconds, down from 50 seconds with MapReduce.

Corona is not the only alternative to MapReduce. Facebook also looked at Yarn, which is Apache's overhaul of MapReduce, planned for release as MapReduce 2.0. Facebook engineers were unsure Yarn could execute jobs as large as those of the social networking site, however.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Read more »

How to Secure Big Data in Hadoop


The potential is enormous-as businesses transform into data-driven machines, the data held by your enterprise is likely to become the key to your competitive advantage. As a result, security for both your data and your infrastructure becomes more important than ever before.
Big Data Could Be Toxic Data If Lost
In many cases, organizations will wind up with what Forrester Research calls "toxic data." For instance, imagine a wireless company that is collecting machine data-who's logged onto which towers, how long they're online, how much data they're using, whether they're moving or staying still-that can be used to provide insight to user behavior.
That same wireless company may have lots of user-generated data as well: credit card numbers, social security numbers, data on buying habits and patterns of usage-any information that a human has volunteered about their experience. The capability to correlate that data and draw inferences from it could be valuable, but it is also toxic because if that correlated data were to go outside the organization and wind up in someone else's hands, it could be devastating both to the individual and the organization.
With Big Data, Don't Forget Compliance and Controls
9 Tips for Securing Big Data
1. Think about security before you start your big data project. You don't lock your doors after you've already been robbed, and you shouldn't wait for a data breach incident before you secure your data. Your IT security team and others involved in your big data project should have a serious data security discussion before installing and feeding data into your Hadoop cluster.
2. Consider what data may get stored. If you're planning to use Hadoop to store and run analytics against data subject to regulation, you will likely need to comply with specific security requirements. Even if the data you're storing doesn't fall under regulatory jurisdiction, assess your risks--including loss of good will and potential loss of revenue--if data like personally identifiable information (PII) is lost.
3. Centralize accountability. Right now, your data probably resides in diverse organizational silos and data sets. Centralizing the accountability for data security ensures consistent policy enforcement and access control across these silos.
4. Encrypt data both at rest and in motion. Add transparent data encryption at the file layer. SSL encryption can protect big data as it moves between nodes and applications. "File encryption addresses two attacker methods for circumventing normal application security controls," says Adrian Lane, analyst and CTO of security research and advisory firm Securosis. "Encryption protects in case malicious users or administrators gain access to data nodes and directly inspect files, and it also renders stolen files or disk images unreadable. It is transparent to both Hadoop and calling applications and scales out as the cluster grows. This is a cost-effective way to address several data security threats."
5. Separate your keys and your encrypted data. Storing your encryption keys on the same server as your encrypted data is similar to locking your front door and then leaving the keys dangling from the lock. A key management system allows you to store your encryption keys safely and separately from the data you're trying to protect.
6. Use the Kerberos network authentication protocol. You need to be able to govern which people and processes can access data stored within Hadoop. "This is an effective method for keeping rogue nodes and applications off your cluster," Lane says. "And it can help protect web console access, making administrative functions harder to compromise. We know Kerberos is a pain to set up, and (re-)validation of new nodes and applications take work. But without bi-directional trust establishment, it is too easy to fool Hadoop into letting malicious applications into the cluster, or into accepting the introduction of malicious nodes---which can then add, alter or extract data. Kerberos is one of the most effective security controls at your disposal, and it's built into the Hadoop infrastructure, so use it."
7. Use secure automation. You're dealing with a multi-node environment, so deployment consistency can be difficult to ensure. Automation tools like Chef and Puppet can help you stay on top of patching, application configuration, updating the Hadoop stack, collecting trusted machine images, certificates and platform discrepancies. "Building the scripts takes some time up front but pays for itself in reduced management time later, and additionally ensures that each node comes up with baseline security in place."
8. Add logging to your cluster. "Big data is a natural fit for collecting and managing log data," Lane says. "Many web companies started with big data specifically to manage log files. Why not add logging onto your existing cluster? It gives you a place to look when something fails, or if someone thinks perhaps you've been hacked. Without an event trace you are blind. Logging MR requests and other cluster activity is easy to do and increases storage and processing demands by a small fraction, but the data is indispensable when you need it."
9. Implement secure communication between nodes and between nodes and applications. To do this, you'll need an SSL/TLS implementation that protects all network communications rather than just a subset. Some Hadoop providers, like Cloudera, already do this, as do many cloud providers. If your setup doesn't have this capability, you'll need to integrate the services into your application stack.
Thor Olavsrud covers IT Security, Big Data, Open Source, Microsoft Tools and Servers for CIO.com. Follow Thor on Twitter @ThorOlavsrud. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Thor at tolavsrud@cio.com
Read more about business intelligence (bi) in CIO's Business Intelligence (BI) Drilldown.

Read more »

Priceline to buy travel research site Kayak for $1.8 billion


Online hotel-booking giant Priceline.com plans to acquire Kayak, another Internet-based travel company, for US$1.8 billion in cash and stock, the companies announced on Thursday.
Priceline will pay about $500 million in cash and $1.3 billion in stock and stock options for Kayak. The deal has been approved by both companies' boards of directors but still needs approval by regulators and Kayak shareholders. It should close late in the first quarter of 2013.
Priceline says it offers online bookings at more than 270,000 hotels around the world. In addition to the Priceline.com site, it operates the Booking.com, Agoda.com and Rentalcars.com brands within its Priceline Group of companies. Kayak is a travel research site that consolidates information about flights, hotels and rental cars for comparison shopping. It links to multiple other sites, including Priceline's services, where users can complete a booking.
Kayak processes more than 100 million queries per month, according to a press release. Priceline said the acquisition would help Kayak to build a global brand. The Priceline Group operates in more than 180 countries, Priceline said. Priceline will pay $40 per share for Kayak, a significant premium on the company's closing stock price of $31.04 on Thursday. Kayak went public in July. However, Kayak's stock on the Nasdaq (KYAK) was down $0.50 in after-hours trading late Thursday. Priceline (PCLN) was down $6.74 at $627.87.
Kayak's current management team will remain in place and run the company independently within the Priceline Group, the companies said. Both companies are based in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com

Read more »

Michigan man charged with selling counterfeit Microsoft software


A man from Michigan was arraigned in a U.S. federal court on Thursday on charges of mail fraud and selling counterfeit software worth over US$1.2 million that he purchased from China and Singapore, the U.S Department of Justice said Thursday.
Bruce Alan Edward, 48, of Atlanta, Michigan, was charged in an indictment returned on Oct. 24 and unsealed on Nov. 1 by the federal grand jury in Bay City, Michigan, DOJ said in a statement. He was arraigned on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Edward allegedly distributed counterfeit copies of Office 2003 Professional and Windows XP Professional by selling copyrighted works on eBay and then using the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the counterfeit software, according to the indictment which charges Edward with five counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of mail fraud.
The indictment charges Edward with making more than $140,000 between May 2008 and September 2010 by selling more than 2,500 copies of counterfeit Microsoft software that had a retail value of over $1.2 million.
If convicted of all counts in the indictment, Edward faces a maximum of 45 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines, DOJ said. He could also have to forfeit all criminal proceeds and counterfeit items and any property used to commit the alleged criminal activity, if convicted.
Software piracy has been on the decline in the U.S., but the commercial value of software piracy in the country still adds up to almost $10 billion, with 31 percent of computer users admitting to pirating software, Business Software Alliance, an antipiracy industry group, said in August. Since January, BSA settled a number of cases of unlicensed software including eight cases representing a value of more than $2.5 million, it said. 
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

Read more »

Iranian minister faces US sanctions for Internet censorship


The U.S. on Thursday said it ordered sanctions against Iran's Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Reza Taghipour, and other entities and persons responsible for engaging in censorship in their country.
Taghipour is blamed by the U.S. for ordering the jamming of satellite television broadcasts and restricting Internet connectivity, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of State.
Iran has for some time considered separating its own internal networks from the global Internet describing it as unsafe. Earlier this year, the Iranian Students' News Agency quoted Taghipour as saying that the Internet is an "unsafe network," and that Iran would use local software to create a national grid.
The Iranian government has also put restrictions on Internet users, according to civil rights groups.
Others sanctioned by the U.S. are Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and its Press Supervisory Board, which are said by the U.S. to have limited freedom of expression through their censorship and closure of newspapers and the detention of journalists. The Department of State said it is also designating key individuals and entities "responsible for assisting the regime in its crackdown on and censorship of the Iranian people."
The actions were taken under Section 403 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012, signed by U.S. President Barack Obama in August, and executive order 13628, which Obama signed into effect on Oct. 9.
As a result of the action, "U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions involving the designated individuals or entities, and all designated individuals and members of designated entities are subject to a ban on travel to the United States," the Department of State said. The action also blocks, or freezes, the property and interests in property of the designated individuals or entities.
The U.S. has already imposed a number of sanctions on Iran in connection with its nuclear program, which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. holds may lead to Iran building a nuclear bomb.
The sanctions on Thursday which target "individuals and entities who have engaged in censorship or other activities with respect to Iran on or after June 12, 2009" was included in one of three orders sanctioning a total of 17 individuals and entities, including those charged with terrorism and with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Read more »

China Telecom aims to upgrade to LTE FDD, but authorities will decide


As China continues trials of its 4G networks using the government-backed LTE TDD technology, mobile operator China Telecom is aiming to go another route and deploy LTE FDD technology for its upcoming 4G networks.
The Chinese government has yet to issue 4G licenses to operators. But China Telecom, with 152 million mobile subscribers, wants to upgrade its existing 3G networks to LTE FDD technology, said Xu Fei a spokesman for China Telecom on Friday.
For the past year, the company has been running trials using an LTE FDD (Frequency-Division Duplex) network in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, Xu added.
LTE FDD is a variant of 4G LTE technology currently dominant in use among mobile operators across the world.
China, however, is pushing the development of LTE TDD (Time-Division Duplex), a variant which is based on the country's own 3G technology called TD-SCDMA (Time-Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access).
LTE TDD trials are already under way in the country and will be expanded to 100 cities in China next year. Rival operator China Mobile stands to benefit the most. The company currently uses the TD-SCDMA standard in its 3G networks, and is expected to upgrade them to 4G using LTE TDD technology.
China Telecom, on the other hand, uses CDMA2000 3G networks, a technology widely used outside the country. But no operators have yet to upgrade from a 3G CDMA network to 4G using solely LTE TDD, Xu said.
"The FDD-LTE technology is more mature," he said. "So we think this is the better road for us to take."
China Telecom, however, won't be the one to decide that. The Chinese government has the final say when it issues the 4G licenses, Xu said.
In September, a Chinese official signaled the government could issue those licenses near the end of next year.

Read more »

Judge to consider Samsung's questions about jury foreman


A court in California said Thursday that it would consider Samsung Electronics' concern that the foreman of the jury deciding a patent infringement lawsuit between Apple and Samsung had concealed information.
A jury in California decided in August that the South Korean company must pay Apple US$1.05 billion for infringing several of its patents in Samsung smartphones and tablets.
Samsung has, however, asked for a new trial of the case, alleging that the foreman of the jury, Velvin Hogan, was untruthful and biased. In the voir dire, a court procedure of questioning prospective jurors for potential bias, Hogan did not mention that he had been sued by his former employer, Seagate, for breach of contract after he failed to repay a promissory note in 1993 and filed for bankruptcy six months later, according to the filing on Oct. 2.
Samsung has a "substantial strategic relationship with Seagate," and is the single largest direct shareholder of the hard drive manufacturer after selling it a business division last year, it said in the filing.
On Oct. 30, Samsung filed a motion to compel Apple to disclose the circumstances and timing of Apple's discovery of certain information regarding the jury foreman.
Judge Lucy H. Koh of the District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division, wrote in her order on Thursday that the court will consider the questions "of whether the jury foreperson concealed information during voir dire, whether any concealed information was material, and whether any concealment constituted misconduct."
"An assessment of such issues is intertwined with the question of whether and when Apple had a duty to disclose the circumstances and timing of its discovery of information about the foreperson," Judge Koh wrote.
The court will address Samsung's motion to compel at a Dec. 6 hearing. If the court grants the motion, it will likely order supplemental briefing before ruling on Samsung's motion for judgment as a matter of law, Koh said.

Read more »

Get unlimited E-book

get unlimited e-books after signup and verifying your account. You can download books of many categories.
Visit the following link:
http://liberationbooks.com/vipmembers.html

Read more »