Australian spies in global deal to tap undersea cables

Underwater paths of the world's information.

The nation's electronic espionage agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, is in a partnership with British, American and Singaporean intelligence agencies to tap undersea fibre optic telecommunications cables that link Asia, the Middle East and Europe and carry much of Australia's international phone and internet traffic.

Secret information disclosed by United States intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed that the British Government Communications Headquarters is collecting all data transmitted to and from the United Kingdom and Northern Europe via the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable that runs from Japan, via Singapore, Djibouti, Suez and the Straits of Gibraltar to Northern Germany.

Australia is connected to SEA-ME-WE-3 by a link from Singapore to Perth, and GCHQ's bulk interception includes much of Australia's telecommunications and internet traffic with Europe.

Australian intelligence sources have also told Fairfax Media that Singaporean intelligence co-operates with Australia in accessing and sharing communications carried by the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable which lands at Tuas on the western side of Singapore Island.

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Access to this major international telecommunications channel via Singapore's government-owned operator SingTel and the country's Defence Ministry has been a key element in an expansion of Australian-Singaporean intelligence and defence ties over the past 15 years.

It also underpinned the former Howard government's approval of SingTel's takeover of Australia's second largest telecommunications company, Optus, in 2001.

Commissioned in 2000, the 39,000 kilometre long SEA-ME-WE-3 cable is owned by an international consortium that includes British Telecom, SingTel Optus, Telstra and other telecommunications companies across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Telstra has an 80 per cent stake in the southern segment that covers the 5000 kilometres between Singapore and Western Australia.

The Australian Signals Directorate also accesses the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable traffic from the cable's landing in Perth.

Australian intelligence expert and Australian National University professor Des Ball said that intelligence collection from fibre optic cables had become "extremely important" since the late 1990s because such communications channels now carry more than 95 per cent of long distance international telecommunications traffic.

"Fibre optic cables are much more difficult to intercept than satellite communications," Professor Ball said. Australia's undersea cable links carry both international and domestic traffic because internal Australian communications are often routed overseas depending on traffic loads.

One former Australian Defence intelligence officer told Fairfax Media that access to submarine fibre optic cable traffic ''gives the 5-eyes [intelligence alliance] and our partners like Singapore a stranglehold on communications across the Eastern Hemisphere''.

In June The Guardian newspaper published details from top secret documents leaked by Mr Snowden of a major GCHQ interception program, codenamed Tempora, that involves harvesting all data, emails sent and received, instant messages, calls, passwords and more, entering and exiting Britain via undersea fibre-optic cables.

Details of telecommunications companies including British Telecom, Verizon Business sand Vodafone Cable involved in the British interception program were subsequently published by German newspaper Sü¨ddeutsche Zeitung which also gained access to some of Mr Snowden's information.

Further information obtained via Sü¨ddeutsche Zeitung has now confirmed that the SEA-ME-WE-3 is one of the most important undersea cables accessed by GCHQ and the US National Security Agency.

Australian intelligence sources have separately confirmed that the Australian Signals Directorate and the highly 

secretive Security and Intelligence Division of Singapore's Ministry of Defence also play key roles in intercepting communications traffic through Asia.

Professor Ball says the Australian Signals Directorate has a long history of co-operation with Singapore which has "probably the most advanced" signals intelligence capabilities in South East Asia.

Significantly SingTel also has close relations with Singapore's intelligence agencies. In August 2001, the former 

Howard government approved SingTel's $17 billion takeover bid for Optus in a deal that raised widespread comment on security and privacy issues.

Then Treasurer Peter Costello said the deal was in Australia's national interest after SingTel entered into deeds of agreement with the Defence Department and ASIO.

These agreements dealt with the security of Australian telecommunications systems and the operation of interception facilities for ASIO and Australian law enforcement agencies. Mr Costello said that Australian national security interests were protected and that "full privacy laws in Australia [would] apply" to Australians' phone calls and internet communication.

However, former Australian Defence intelligence officers said the Howard government's approval of SingTel's purchase of Optus also took into account growing Singaporean-Australian intelligence co-operation which in turn rested on Singapore's access to the SEA-MEA-WE-3 cable, as well as the later SEA-ME-WE-4 cable from Singapore to the south of France.

The office of former prime minister John Howard did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/australian-spies-in-global-deal-to-tap-undersea-cables-20130828-2sr58.html#ixzz2dQLqUl21

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In-Room Entertainment Turns Away From TV

By JANE L. LEVERE @ +The New York Times 


Len Markidan, a marketing consultant, says his travel entertainment is the same as at home: “a Hulu subscription, Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

 LEN MARKIDAN, a 26-year-old marketing consultant based in San Francisco, is the type of business traveler who forced LodgeNet, the hotel guest-room entertainment provider, to file recently for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Mr. Markidan, who spends 40 percent of his time traveling on business and is an elite participant in the Hilton and Hyatt loyalty programs, takes his MacBook Pro and iPad with him on the road and watches all television programs by streaming them on his laptop, using a portable router to extend the Wi-Fi signal in his hotel room.

“For a lot of people my age and a lot of people in general, the way we consume entertainment at home is changing,” he said. “I no longer have a cable subscription — the way I watch entertainment at home is the same way I watch it on the road. I have a Hulu subscription, Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

Guest-room entertainment “is not an amenity that will drive my decision to stay at a hotel,” he said, adding, “I’m a lot more concerned with loyalty program perks.”

James Lingle of Highlands Ranch, Colo., a consultant to hotel companies and guest-room entertainment service providers like LodgeNet’s competitor iBahn, observed: “If you look back, typically the first thing a guest would do when they walked into the door of a hotel room would be to turn on the TV. Now people bring their entertainment with them, tablet-based devices like an iPad, accounts and memberships like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus, and they want to be able to use them.”

LodgeNet’s decline directly reflects these changes. According to its bankruptcy filing, the number of hotel rooms it served globally dropped to 1.5 million in 2011 from 2 million in 2009. It provided guest-room entertainment services to most major hotel chains, usually by installing and maintaining free televisions and offering video-on-demand entertainment, for which it and the hotels received fees. LodgeNet’s sales in 2011 were $421.3 million, a 21 percent drop from a high of $533.9 million in 2008.

Colony Capital, a real estate and hotel investment firm in Los Angeles, led a group that invested $70 million in a controlling interest in LodgeNet, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and brought in a management team of former Starwood, Fairmont and Hilton executives. LodgeNet, which emerged from bankruptcy in late March, also signed an agreement with DirecTV to jointly offer entertainment to hotels and hospitals.

The revamped LodgeNet faces strong competition from companies including Swisscom Hospitality Services, based in Geneva; iBahn, based in Salt Lake City; Guest-Tek, of Calgary, Alberta; and Roomlinx, based in Broomfield, Colo. All are developing systems that let travelers consume entertainment the way Mr.

Markidan does — via the Internet, frequently through subscriptions they already have and use at home, either through Wi-Fi or a direct cable connection between their laptop or tablet and the guest-room television set.

Different types of hotels have different policies regarding Internet access. Many less expensive hotels offer it free, while more expensive ones often charge for it. What’s expected to happen next, speaking broadly, is that using the Internet for e-mail will be free, while many hotels will charge for uses requiring a lot of bandwidth, like  downloading or streaming videos, with the cost tied to the amount of bandwidth required.

“We will give customers more short-form content at very attractive prices, affinity packages of sports channels, just-missed TV, video games, as well as movies currently in theaters,” said Michael Ribero, Lodgenet’s new chief executive. “We want to give them the opportunity to watch what they want, even if it’s through Netflix and Amazon Prime.” He said LodgeNet will no longer provide television equipment in hotel guest rooms in exchange for video-on-demand fees. Instead, DirecTV will offer hotel owners lease financing for TVs, freeing capital that LodgeNet can invest in product and service improvements.

C. Scott Hansen, director of guest technology for Marriott International, said his company’s objective over the next several years was to connect every guest-room TV to the Internet. Marriott International also plans to limit the number of TV channels its brands offer to a targeted, all-high-definition lineup and to augment these with Internet-based, streaming content, via services like Netflix and YouTube.

Bandwidth capacity at many Marriott International hotels will need to be increased to support these services, an expense Mr. Hansen said would be offset by guests’ purchases of Internet access, commissions paid by services like Netflix for signing up new members and advertising revenue from companies that could use the TV or guest’s laptop or tablet screen for messages.

Josh Weiss, vice president of brand and guest technology for Hilton Worldwide, said his company offered a broad range of short, low-price TV programs, similar to those available from Netflix or iTunes, in many hotels, provided by LodgeNet and others. This content costs $2 to $5, far less than a full-length movie. Hilton Worldwide also offers a free, DirecTV service similar to DirecTV’s residential service at over 150 hotels across most of its brands and plans to expand this service this year.

Mike Blake, chief information officer of Commune Hotels and Resorts, said the company was considering keeping track of guests’ channel preferences, which would automatically come up whenever a guest turned on the TV in the hotel room. He said this service, which guests could opt in for, should be available by the fourth quarter of this year. Other new services under consideration include the ability to customize music playlists for guests and to stream personal photos on guest room TVs.

Apple TV in hotel rooms at the Aloft Cupertino, a Starwood hotel, lets guests play video and music and display photos from any Apple device on their television set. Starwood is evaluating offering this system and additional entertainment options at other Aloft and Starwood hotels.

CitizenM, a Dutch chain of what it calls “affordable luxury” hotels — now all in Europe, with two slated to open in Manhattan this year and next — provides a Samsung tablet in each guest room, with technology from Swisscom that provides a music library and free video-on-demand TV and also controls the blinds, lighting and temperature.

The 85-year-old Peninsula Hong Kong this month will finish installation of a guest-room entertainment system that Ingvar Herland, Peninsula Hotels’ general manager of research and technology, said costs $10,000 to $25,000 a room. This proprietary system features fully customizable bedside and desk tablets preset in a choice of five languages, with six more to follow this year. The tablet allows the guest to order room, concierge and housekeeping services, and to control lighting, curtains, the temperature and privacy options. It also provides — via a flat-screen, Blu-ray, LED television — terrestrial programming, 90 international television channels, 450 Internet radio stations, free HD and 3-D movies, as well as free international voice-over-Internet protocol telephone calls.

Mr. Herland said the new system would be offered at the Peninsula Paris, opening next year, and would eventually replace existing systems at other Peninsula hotels.

Travelers should not expect a proliferation of new services like the Peninsula’s, said Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University.

He said that although hotels in the United States this year were expected to spend a record percentage of profits on capital expenditures — like entertainment systems — profits per room also were expected to remain well below their 2006 peak. Companies offering new systems “that are expensive for hotel owners are doing so at a challenging time,” he said, adding that many hotel owners would consider premium cable service as an alternative.

One vanishing option is sex-related entertainment. Omni banned such programs in 1999, citing its support of “pro-family issues,” while Marriott International stopped offering it last year. “If you want it, you can access it online on your own,” said Mr. Hansen of Marriott.

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Facebook needs to keep mobile momentum

 

By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech

Facebook finally decided to concentrate on mobile late last year, and its shares have recovered nicely from their post-IPO doldrums. To keep that momentum going, Facebook needs to prove that its mobile strategy is working.

Investors are scrutinizing the company's moves, and at first, even tepid mobile growth was enough to send Facebook shares soaring. That's because the company set expectations at rock bottom: Right after its May 2012 IPO, Facebook said it wasn't making "any meaningful revenue" from mobile.

Facebook turned a corner a few months later, when it launched a new Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) iOS app and began showing ads to mobile users. It worked: Mobile accounted for 14% of the company's ad revenue in the third quarter, which ended September 30. Investors were thrilled, sending shares up 21%.

But some of that goodwill didn't last.

A few months later, Facebook revealed that mobile comprised 23% of its ad revenue in the fourth quarter.

That was a solid bump, but investors focused on the fact that mobile user growth slowed slightly -- and shares fell by 10%.

Clearly, investors are no longer impressed by mere "we're working on it!" assurances. Still, shares are up nearly 16% since Facebook's (FB) strong third-quarter report in October.

Expectations are high for Facebook's first-quarter report, due Wednesday after the market closes. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect sales to have grown 36% over the previous year to $1.4 billion. Profit estimates came in at $308 million, after Facebook warned last quarter that its expenses will rise by 50% this year.

In the first four months of the year, the company has already released three major new products that are clearly aimed at maximizing ad revenue.

The first came last month, when Facebook unveiled a News Feed revamp centered around a more visual design that also includes bigger graphics for ads.

The second and third came too late to be included in Wednesday's results, but they're a clear sign of where Facebook is going. The beginning of this month brought Facebook Home, a custom startup screen for

Android smartphones that will eventually include ads. A week later, Facebook announced "Partner Categories," which lets advertisers target specific users based on their past buying history -- even if the purchases happened offline.

JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note to clients this month that he is "encouraged by newer formats and products." He also reminded his readers that social advertising is in its infancy.

Facebook is trying to prove that space has a viable business model. Its incremental moves have generated cautious optimism. Now it's time to give investors a real reason to believe.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/30/technology/social/facebook-earnings-preview/index.html

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Alibaba takes stake in 'China's Twitter'

By Charles Riley @CNNMoneyTech

A man checks his cell phone in Beijing. The micro-blogging service Weibo is increasingly popular in China

In a wedding of China's leading Internet darlings, online retailer Alibaba has taken a $586 million stake in the country's most popular micro-blogging service.

Alibaba, often referred to as China's eBay, has agreed to buy 18% of Sina Corporation's Weibo, signaling the retailer's intention to make a concerted move into social media.

The tie up will give Alibaba access to Weibo's user base, which includes tens of millions of active users. In return, Sina said it expects to receive $380 million in advertising and social commerce revenue over the next three years.

The deal values Weibo at $3.3 billion, significantly less than recent valuations of U.S.-based Twitter, which has many more active users. Both social media platforms face the same challenge: monetizing the consumers who use their services.

Sina (SINA) shares, which trade on the Nasdaq, increased almost 10% Monday after the deal was announced.

The agreement also contains a provision that will allow Alibaba to increase its Weibo stake to 30% at an unspecified date.

"We believe that the cooperation of our two robust platforms will bring unique and valuable services to Weibo users, as well as making the mobile Internet a core part of Alibaba's strategy." said Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba.

Alibaba is widely expected to pursue an initial public offering this year or next, and has announced that Ma will soonstep down as chairman.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/30/technology/alibaba-aina-weibo/index.html

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What Twitter's Massive Advertising Deal Means for Businesses

Twitter has struck a huge advertising partnership that businesses large and small should pay attention to. Under the deal, Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), a subsidiary of French advertising conglomerate Publicis, and Twitter will pool their resources on a number of analytics projects over the course of multiple years. Starcom represents major brands including Microsoft, Samsung, Walmart and Coca-Cola.

Estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the deal is Twitter's largest ad partnership yet. But what does it mean for for brands beyond SMG's star-studded portfolio?

Here are five details business owners should watch out for:

1. The deal is all about data.
Twitter's interest in SMG isn't just brand-deep. The considerable reach of SMG's clients will serve as a test for what Twitter says it really wants to know -- namely how consumers are engaging with content on its platform.

Twitter intends to mine a massive haul of analytics out of its new partnership. The trends that emerge from that wide swath of data -- particularly the anatomy of a successful, engaging Twitter ad -- will in turn be made widely available via public reports on best practices and engagement insights -- relevant tips for any brand navigating Twitter's fickle social waters.

Related: Facebook Expands Advertising Options With New 'Partner Categories'

2. Fine-tuning the 'when.'
Your company may know who to communicate with and what to say, but on the ever-ephemeral social network, that might not cut it. Twitter wants to leverage the data from this big deal to help all brands crack that other more delicate W -- the when. The realtime social network has a vested interest in helping its advertisers serve up the most engaging content possible. That starts with being in the right place at the right time, Twitter says.

3. Twitter isn't playing favorites.
The SMG deal is nonexclusive, so the rapport between the two companies won't keep Twitter from striking up other partnerships. While the two may work on projects such as custom mobile surveys, Twitter's promoted products suite will remain the same across its ad client base.

4. TV and Twitter: a perfect pair?
If it wasn't already apparent, Twitter and television are an advertising match made in heaven. Twitter's unprecedented collaboration with Nielsen and its recent acquisition of entertainment analytics group Bluefin Labs all point to the TV-Twitter combo as a lucrative frontier for advertisers. Twitter can now reap the benefits of its SMG data harvest using the analytics tools it's cooked up with Nielsen and Bluefin to elevate brands at large.

5. Small businesses won't be left out.
Twitter maintains that its core users are small businesses -- and it won't be ignoring them when it comes to advertising on the social network. The company expects the recent launch of keyword targeting -- which gives advertisers the ability to reach users based on keywords in their tweets and tweets they've recently interacted with -- to prove useful for small businesses in particular. Since they can utilize the same tools as the big fish in SMG's lineup, large-scale insight around keyword targeting should have a potent trickle-down effect for the little guy, too.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226486#ixzz2RSwGEyl0

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Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Tops Apple's Tim Cook As Best CEO Of 2013

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg  
(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

Facebook employees gave Mark Zuckerberg a 99 percent approval rating for his role as CEO of the popular social networking site, displacing 2012 leader  Apple CEO Tim Cook, who fell to 18th place, according to a new survey of employees by career site Glassdoor.

Zuckerberg’s ratings rose from 85 percent last year, while Cook’s dropped to 93 percent from 97 percent, Glassdoor said in its report today on the Top 50 CEOs of 2013. “CEO approval ratings are calculated similar to Presidential approval ratings; employees are asked: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way your CEO is leading the company?”Glassdoor said.

At least 100 employees needed to give approval ratings for the CEOs to make the list.

A variety of technology leaders earned top honors, including SAP’s co-CEOs, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann, who came in second with a 99 percent approval rating. EMC’s Joe Tucci ranked seventh, Qualcomm’s Paul Jacobs ranked eighth and Google’s Larry Page took 11th place. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Intel’s Paul Otellini and Intuit’s Brad Smith were all in the Top 25.

In the bottom half of the list were Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who came in at 46th place, and Michael Dell, who is working on a plan to take the PC maker private after his turnaround efforts stalled. Dell ranked 49th. Still, they fared better than Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, who were absent from the Top 50 rankings.

Current and former employees described Facebook as an “intense and fun,” “awesome,” “amazing,” and “fantastic” place to work. Among the cons: “The free and tasty food, especially deserts, really didn’t help me stay keep very fit.”

“Hard core environment,” wrote one current software engineer. “If you don’t deal well with extra responsibility and require strong leadership instead of autonomy, you probably won’t have the best time.” In his or her advice to senior management, the engineer added, “Keep the hacker culture, beware process and corporate behavior. Always do the right thing for the world.”

As for Apple, many of the reviews seemed to come from retail employees, who praised the training they received but dinged the company for not allowing employees a chance to rise up through the ranks and shift into a job at the corporate offices. Employees also encouraged Cook to promote more from within.

“Listen to your employees,” wrote one current worker. “When they reach out to tell you that they’re getting burned out or need a change, even a temporary one, do something about it before it’s too late. Also, when you tell an employee that you’re going to do something to help, then do it. Focus more on employee development.”

source from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/03/15/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-tops-apples-tim-cook-as-best-ceo-of-2013/

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Why did Eric Schmidt go to North Korea?

Chairman and former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt recently travelled to North Korea on a fact-finding mission of sorts. Schmidt wanted to ascertain how North Korea utilizes the Internet and see for himself just how restrictive it is. The information he shared was startling, but interesting. A country as large and powerful as North Korea is far behind many of its peers, and that could be troubling.

But why go to a communist country? Travel to North Korea is difficult at best, so why take the chance? We also have to wonder why Google cares about how North Korea uses the Internet. Sure, the company is a tech giant and search magnate, but North Korea represents such a small fraction of potential world online traffic. As much as we can learn from what Schmidt reported back, we can also infer that North Korea is indicative of a larger problem for Google.

Why North Korea?

As much as I’d love to leave politics out of this discussion, it’s not possible to do so with a communist nation in reference to openly sharing information. Although called the “Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea,” or DPRK, it’s anything but democratic. Communism is restrictive by nature, and that includes information. With the passing of Kim Jong Il and the rise to power of his son Kim Jong Un, a few problems were exposed. North Korea is a severely depressed nation, and its people face a variety of serious problems daily. While using the Internet for information is probably a distant afterthought for many citizens, it’s a concern for a company like Google. In North Korea, you have a very good example of a larger problem for Google.

It’s important to mention that Schmidt didn’t travel alone. Former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson was his guide and he travelled in a delegation alongside eight other members.

A former UN ambassador, Richardson was in North Korea on a humanitarian mission in response to North Korea’s launching of long range missiles late last year. The White House referred to that trip as “ unsuccessful,” unfortunately. It’s also worth note that Richardson no longer enjoys any official political capacity, so this was a private trip.

A rock star

Richardson described Schmidt’s reception as that of a “rock star”, which sheds a little light on just how important this issue of an open Internet really is. Sure it’s just the Internet, but it represents so much more than that. Right now in North Korea, the Internet is only available to a select few: the government, the military and universities. That’s representative of an intranet, which is basically what its technology is. Schmidt notes that there is a “supervised” Internet, which means “that people were not able to use the Internet without someone else watching them”.
Schmidt also found that, despite the walled-off nature of technology in North Korea, it would be very simple for the country to “turn the Internet on”, as he puts it. From his Google+ page, Schmidt writes:

There is a 3G network that is a joint venture with an Egyptian company called Orascom. It is a 2100 Megahertz SMS-based technology network, that does not, for example, allow users to have a data connection and use smart phones. It would be very easy for them to turn the Internet on for this 3G network. Estimates are that are about a million and a half phones in the DPRK with some growth planned in the near future.

Dollars and sense

For Google, North Korea represents a roadblock for something that is very important to the company: the free and open Internet. Whether or not you’re familiar with the recent issues surrounding this cause, it’s worth understanding that Google is fervently behind the issue. Mostly because it’s the right thing to, but also because its business model is based on it. We visit Google.com, then enter what we want to know about in the search bar. The results pop up and so do some unobtrusively placed ads. We click on the ads, and Google makes money.

In entering a new frontier of search and services, Google is committed to being a mobile-conscious company.

The desktop will always be there, but the world is increasingly mobile. A system like that of North Korea, which operates in such a limited space, concerns Google. How will it drive revenue from a restricted
system?

More importantly, will this catch on anywhere else?

With such a large number of North Koreans unable to access the Internet freely, there is little reason to have devices to access it. An open flow of information is the linchpin to just about everything Google does from selling devices to creating services. If I can’t access the Internet, what good is a device that has such features?

Was the visit worth it?

Educationally, yes. Schmidt learned quite a bit, it seems, about how North Korea operates in regard to treatment of technology. Obviously driving revenue is a concern for Google, but the issue is deeper that that.

This is ultimately about the transfer and open sharing of information. Eric Schmidt may represent the largest search (and arguably the largest tech) company on earth, but I’ll not believe his trip was strictly business. To really understand the situation, it was important for him to see first-hand just what was going on. Schmidt himself said the North Koreans “listened and asked questions,” so they are at least open to being open. The focus is a free and open Internet, and North Korea simply doesn’t have it right now.

Why should we care?

In discussing this issue, we’re remiss to place too much emphasis on the sensational facts: North Korea and communism. They are worth consideration, because in essence communism is the heart of the matter. While I don’t subscribe to a communist mindset, I respect those that do and their belief in that system. For free transfer of information, however, old-line communism simply doesn’t work.

North Korea, like just about any nation on earth, is filled with very bright people doing important work. The open transfer of information can only help the world community. Being able to openly discuss things such as medical research will drive both sides of the equation. Perhaps there is a botanist in North Korea that can analyze cancer research from Scotland, then identify some rare plant to help reduce its spread. While that may be a made-for-TV scenario, it’s also worth exploring.

The definition of “www” is World Wide Web. Without a free and open Internet for all, that simply isn’t true. North Korea is indicative of a problem, sure, but not the problem. North Korea confounds us because it’s a fairly advanced nation that has left an important factor behind: information, We may openly question why it does this, as it seems obtuse, but there is something we should all keep in mind when considering why North Korea resists the sharing of information.

Communism

I live in a democratic nation, as most people do. In the world outside of North Korea, quite a bit of anti-communist opinion and rhetoric is shared. We must respect that North Korea is a communist country, and for them, reducing the flow of anti-communist talk is impossible. This is why it eliminates the open flow of information altogether. We may or may not agree on its politics, but let’s try to appreciate and respect its belief system.

An open Internet could create panic in North Korea, and that’s not something it needs right now. North Korea is a country faced with widespread famine, poverty, among other various economical and human rights issues. The last thing it can really afford is dissension amongst citizens. Communism has the capacity to change, especially with a shift in power to Kim Jong Un, so we can hope for the people of North Korea that a renaissance of sorts is on the horizon.

Controlling the chaos

Change is never easy. To achieve the goal of a truly free and open Internet, some type of change must occur.

North Korea, for its own reasons we only partly understand, chooses to limit or exclude information to its people. In Eric Schmidt visiting the country, it’s fair to say that excluding or otherwise leaving North Korea behind is in nobody’s best interest. Such a rich culture with a lot of potential for positive change should be welcome to join the fight for the open exchange of information, and they are.

A free and open Internet should be for everyone who wants it, not everyone who is allowed to access it. In considering an open exchange of information, North Korea will have to ponder a new way of communism as well. If the current political environment doesn’t lend itself to freely sharing information, what will? Can North Korea adopt a communist country in which information is available at-will? I believe so. Belief is at the core of every great concept, and North Korea simply has to believe it can forge a new path.

The remains of the day

The Chairman and former CEO of one of the largest companies ever visiting a communist country in this day and age is monumental. He didn’t stay long, or necessarily achieve anything, but the lessons were invaluable.

A body of information that shows opportunity is there, but not being realized. Google’s ever-present mantra is “don’t be evil,” so we can safely assume this visit had only the purest of aspirations. Google has never hidden its intentions in generating revenue, nor does it make it the driving force of its dealings. Doing the right thing will bring the money eventually, and it understands that.

While the trip was important and poignant, it could have been for naught. Schmidt’s daughter and travelling companion, Sophie, has a Google Sites blog detailing the trip. It sheds a different light on the trip than Eric’s carefully measured feedback, and suggests at a dog-and-pony show orchestrated by North Korea. If what she saw was truly staged rather than carefully measured presentation, it doesn’t bode well for the people of

North Korea in having access to information any time soon.
The concept of a free and open Internet is a strict juxtaposition to the core concepts of communism. Like any concept, idea, or belief, communism is adaptable to change. The world has evolved in a way few people thought it could over the past decade or so. We have more knowledge at our fingertips than we ever thought we would, and a truly global community. If North Korea would include itself as we all hope it will, it would be a beacon for change and a signal of hope. Eric Schmidt opened the door, so let’s hope North Korea sees fit to come outside. The playground is open.\

by Nate Swanner 
http://www.androidauthority.com/why-eric-schmidt-north-korea-148851/

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Jack Ma steps down as Alibaba CEO

At 48, Ma says he is too old to lead the Internet company

HONG KONG (CNNMoney)

Jack Ma is stepping down as chief executive of Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba, saying in a letter to employees Tuesday that he was making way for younger leaders with better ideas.

The billionaire will remain as the company's executive chairman. A new CEO will be chosen by May 10, and Ma will stay in the post until that date.

"At 48, I am no longer young for the Internet business," Ma wrote in the letter, obtained by CNNMoney.

"I see that Alibaba's young people have better, more brilliant, dreams than mine, and they are more capable of building a future that belongs to them."

Alibaba did not issue a statement about Ma's decision to resign.

Ma and 18 partners launched Alibaba.com from his Hangzhou apartment in March 1999, with a dream of making business easier for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

With Ma at the helm, Alibaba grew to become China's dominant e-commerce site through its Taobao Marketplace, which lets consumers trade goods online.

To tap into China's fast growing business-to-consumer e-market, Alibaba also runs Taobao Mall, a service that lets consumers buy goods directly from retailers online.

Alibaba collects additional revenue through an online payment company called Alipay, which functions like PayPal.
The letter suggests that Ma's role change is part of a larger shakeup at the company.

"This year, most of the Alibaba leaders who were born in the 1960s will retreat from management and execution roles as we hand over leadership responsibility to colleagues from the 70s and 80s generations," Ma said.

Alibaba said last week that it was dividing operations into 25 divisions, in order to improve flexibility.
Ma's tenure has not been without difficulties.

At one point, U.S. Internet giant Yahoo held a 40% stake in the company. But as disputes between the two companies escalated, Alibaba sought to repurchase shares, with Yahoo finally consenting in September to sell back about half its stake for $7.1 billion.

9:32 AM | 0 comments | Read More

Critical Java vulnerability due to incomplete earlier patch

Someone looking to exploit a Java vulnerability can use affected websites to quietly install malware

 (CNN) -- The critical Java vulnerability that is currently under attack was made possible by an incomplete patch Oracle developers issued last year to fix an earlier security bug, a researcher said.

The revelation, made Friday by Adam Gowdiak of Poland-based Security Explorations, is the latest black eye for Oracle's Java software framework which is installed on more than 1 billion PCs, smartphones, and other devices.

Miscreants use these exploits to turn compromised websites into platforms for silently installing keyloggers and other types of malicious software on the computers of unsuspecting visitors.

Last year saw a steady stream of attacks that exploited Java vulnerabilities, allowing miscreants to surreptitiously install keyloggers and other malicious software when unwitting people browsed compromised websites. The abuse has already continued into 2013, when on Thursday researchers reported yet another critical bug that is being "massively exploited in the wild".

According to Gowdiak, the latest vulnerability is a holdover from a bug (referred to here as Issue 32) that Security Explorations researchers reported to Oracle in late August. Oracle released a patch for the issue in October but it was incomplete, he said in an e-mail to Ars that was later published to the Bugtraq mailing list.

"Bugs are like mushrooms, in many cases they can be found in a close proximity to those already spotted," 

Gowdiak wrote. "It looks like Oracle either stopped the picking too early or they are still deep in the woods."

Oracle representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. This post will be updated if a reply comes later.

People who don't use Java much should once again consider unplugging Java from their browser, while those who don't use it at all may want to uninstall it altogether. The release notes for Java 7 Update 10—the most recent version—say users can disable the program from the browser by accessing the Java Control Panel. 

KrebsOnSecurity has instructions here for other ways to do this.

Exploits of the latest Java vulnerability, which were first observed more than a month ago, are the combination of two bugs. The first involves the Class.forName() method and allows the loading of arbitrary (restricted) classes. The second bug relies on the invokeWithArguments method call and was also a problem with Issue 32 that Oracle purportedly patched in October.

"However, it turns out that the fix was not complete as one can still abuse invokeWithArguments method to setup calls to invokeExact method with a trusted system class as a target method caller," Gowdiak wrote. 

"This time the call is however done to methods of new Reflection API (from java.lang.invoke.* package), of which many rely on security checks conducted against the caller of the target method."

Developers of the Metasploit framework for hackers and penetration testers have released a module that should exploit the vulnerability on machines running Windows, Apple OS X, and Linux regardless of the browser they're using. The US-CERT, which is affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security, is advising people to disable Java in Web browsers.

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Facebook charges $100 to message Mark Zuckerberg

 

Facebook says it is experimenting with "extreme price points" for its new messaging feature to discourage spam.

 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Want to message Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook? For $100, your note will land in his inbox.

Traditionally, if a Facebook user messages someone outside his or her network, the missive gets sent to the "Other" mailbox -- a rarely checked purgatory most users don't even know exists. It's a practice intended to protect users from a spam deluge

Facebook said in December that it would begin testing out paid messages, allowing users to contact people with whom they have no direct connection in return for a fee. Facebook didn't say at the time how much it would cost, but the answer turns out to be "a lot."
Mashable discovered on Thursday that sending a message to Facebook founder Zuckerberg carries a $100 price tag. That's also what it costs to message Facebook COO Sheryl Sandburg , CFO David Ebersman, and several other Facebook members CNNMoney tried, such as Digg founder Kevin Rose.
"We are testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam," a Facebook representative told CNNMoney.

The messaging fee is one of several new revenue streams Facebook is testing out. The company has traditionally drawn most of its revenue from advertising sales, but its latest experiments explore generating cash directly from its 1 billion members.

Ahead of the holidays, Facebook (FB) launched"Facebook Gifts," allowing users to purchase real-world gifts for their Facebook friends. In October, the social network started testing out a "Promote" feature that lets users pay $7 to broadly broadcast important pictures or announcements.

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An Early Tale of the Internet

by http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/author/john-markoff/

Last Friday I interviewed Peter E. Hart, an electrical engineer who was an early artificial intelligence researcher, about one of the first robots, a machine named Shakey that was designed at SRI International beginning in 1966. SRI was one of the laboratories from which many personal computing and networking technologies were first developed.

The forerunner to today’s Internet, the ARPAnet, began with a first link between SRI and UCLA in 1969, and for years afterward only an elite group of engineers, scientists and students had any idea of what computer networking was.

After I left his office, Peter remembered an additional story about the early ARPAnet. With his permission, here is an e-mail he sent to me:

SRI International, where I was the director of the AI Center, was periodically visited by U.S. government auditors. One day I got a call from an internal contracts administrator telling me to expect such a visit– in other words, I was supposed to be on my best behavior.

The government auditor soon appeared in my office, armed with a no-nonsense demeanor and a bulging briefcase. He pulled up a chair, pulled a file from his briefcase, and without preamble said in an authoritarian tone of voice, “Dr. Hart, it says here that you’ve received 2,493,786,916 packets of bits. Is that correct?”

I certainly hadn’t expected that question, but I was on my best behavior, so I politely replied, “Well, I’m not sure of the exact number, but that sounds about right.”

He made a check mark on his file.

He then asked, “Were adequate procedures set up to inspect the condition of these incoming packets?”

I was starting to get an inkling of where this was going. I thought there must be some error-detecting codes somewhere in the communication path, so I simply answered “Yes”.

A second check mark.

Next he asked, “And did all the packets arrive in good condition? Was there any corrosion or tarnish on any of the packets?”

At this point I was struggling to keep a straight face, but I truthfully answered, “No sir, there was no tarnish or corrosion on any of the packets we received.”

One more check mark.

Another question: “And did you have adequate facilities available to store all of these packets?”

I thought, hey, didn’t you see all those disk drives in the machine room across from my office? So I answered, “Yes.”

He made a final check mark, stuffed the file back into his briefcase, thanked me and left.

You can’t make this stuff up.

original source from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/an-early-tale-of-the-internet/?src=recg

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Explore the top 10 tips on UC solutions from 2012

The holidays can be a busy time as you look for those perfect gifts, take the kids to see Santa or prepare yourself before seeing your nosey extended family. With this is mind, we understand if you haven't had time to keep up with all the expert advice on SearchUnifiedCommunications.com. Before you look to the future of unified communications (UC), we wanted to give you another chance to take a good, hard look at this year's top 10 tips. With topics like free UC, business collaboration technology, UC as a Service and telecom solutions, it's certainly been a busy year, so why not take some time to get yourself up to speed?

No. 10: Putting the 'U' in 'UC'
Vendors each have their own definition of UC, so what is it exactly? This tip explains what sets UC apart from other communications and offers a detailed description of various unique UC components.

No. 9: Which voice telecom solution should you choose for your organization's size?
There is no one-size-fits-all voice telecom solution. The size of your organization determines the practical telecommunication product for you. Which of them work best for each business segment? VoIP expert Matt Brunk gets to the bottom of this question in this tip.

No. 8: Free collaboration tools spur better enterprise UC applicationsA major goal of UC is to create a single platform for worker communication and collaboration, and one must acknowledge the fact that existing applications already have made huge progress toward this goal. Free applications such as Microsoft/Skype and Google Apps seem to be just as capable and functioning as commercial enterprise collaboration tools and UC apps. With that said, these free collaboration tools are prompting commercial vendors to improve security and integration -- sparking the question: Is free UC good enough, or should you splurge for commercial UC products?

No. 7: 10 questions to ask your potential collaboration vendors
Are you having a hard time deciding between collaboration vendors? Ask your potential collaboration vendors these 10 questions. Don't choose the wrong vendor -- ask the right questions!

No. 6: Study reveals unified communications and collaboration market drivers
As the mobile workforce continues to grow, employees have had to find the means to communicate with co-workers. This ever-increasing need for mobile access, along with advances in video communications and social software tools, has inspired the creation of new communication technologies and is growing the UCC market. This tip acknowledges the need for UCC solutions and uncovers what forces are driving this largely untapped market, according to a new study.

No. 5: Hosted UC and its five major advantages over on-premises solutions
Competitive carriers, UC vendors and the majority of enterprise IT professionals are skeptical of the value of UCaaS, but should they be? Analyst Zeus Kerravala says no. According to Kerravala, hosted UC or UC as a Service (UCaaS) services have reached feature parity with premises-based solutions. For many smaller organizations or companies with limited IT staffs or budgets, a hosted UC service is actually better than premises-based. These services offer five main advantages over on-premises deployments in the new IT reality.

No. 4: How the iPad affects your enterprise video-conferencing strategy
The iPad has seen rapid success, quickly making its way into the enterprise. Its video capabilities are infiltrating enterprise video-conferencing strategies, which must be managed by IT and network managers, not just tolerated. It is vital to incorporate the iPad into your enterprise video-conferencing strategy by checking the network impact, buying the right tools, educating users and checking out the competition. Read this tip to find out how you can incorporate the iPad into your video strategy.

No. 3: Assess the benefits of business collaboration technology
Collaboration technology is an asset to any organization, and this helpful tip proposes a business case for using collaboration services in the enterprise. It also offers counterpoints to business case arguments and stresses the need to develop UC solutions and strategies that provide a migration and/or integration path for legacy systems while addressing governance, compliance and security requirements.

No. 2: Compare business phone systems with freeware solutions
If you could envision the perfect UC product, what would it look like? Is the ability to integrate UC features with existing business phone systems enough, or do you want to be able to manage UC features collectively? Skype and Google Voice both offer free UC capabilities, but which one is better? Does one bring you closer to UC nirvana than the other? This tip gives some insight into this question and explains the five major differences between free and for-a-fee phone systems. Perhaps Skype or Google Voice is the UC solution you've been looking for all along.

No. 1: What the future of unified communications holds
While none of us possess a crystal ball to tell us what the future of UC holds, the president of CIMI Corp., Tom Nolle, is more than qualified to speculate -- which is exactly what he does in our top tip of 2012. Nolle foresees the UC market evolving radically by 2020, fueled in part by mobile broadband and cloud services adoption. By that time, will communications, collaboration, application execution and information be truly unified?

original source: http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/feature/Explore-the-top-10-tips-on-UC-solutions-from-2012

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Windows 8 Sales Disappoint in Shaky PC Market

Plenty of consumers already own PCs and seem content to make do with what they have.

By NICK WINGFIELD, nytimes.com

BELLEVUE, Wash. — It used to be that a new version of the Windows operating system was enough to get people excited about buying a new computer, giving sales a nice pop.

Not this time. Windows 8, the latest edition of Microsoft’s software, failed to pack shoppers into a Microsoft store in a mall here last week, at a time when parking lots in the area were overflowing. The trickle of shopping bags leaving the store with merchandise was nothing like the steady stream at a bustling Apple store upstairs.

Claude Ballard was among the customers at the Microsoft store who tried out Surface, a new Microsoft-designed Windows tablet. Mr. Ballard, who described himself as a “semiretired” computer systems manager for a real estate firm, said he was intrigued by the eye-catching design of Windows 8 — but not enough to scrimp to buy a new computer this year.

“It’s economics, really,” he said. “It’s going to be a better year for my mechanic than it is for me.”

Weak PC sales this holiday season suggest that the struggles of Microsoft and other companies that depend heavily on the computer business will not abate soon. Plenty of consumers already own PCs and seem content to make do with what they have, especially in a shaky economy in which less expensive mobile devices are bidding for a share of their wallets.

While there are also many tablets running Microsoft’s new, touch-friendly Windows, they have so far failed to emerge from the shadow of competing products from Apple and Amazon and other devices that are being snapped up by holiday shoppers.

Emmanuel Fromont, president of the Americas division of Acer, the world’s No. 4 PC maker, said sales of the company’s Windows 8 PCs had been lower than expected. He said one factor was the system’s unfamiliar design, which appeared to be making consumers cautious.

“There was not a huge spark in the market,” Mr. Fromont said. “It’s a slow start, there’s no question.”

The clearest evidence of Windows 8’s disappointing introduction comes from the research firm NPD, which estimates that sales of Windows machines have actually dropped from a year ago.

According to NPD, stores in the United States sold 13 percent fewer Windows devices from late October, when Windows 8 made its debut, through the first week in December, than in the same period last year.

Those figures do not include sales in Microsoft’s own stores, which were the only place to buy a Surface tablet during that period, but because the stores are scarce, analysts believe it is unlikely they made a big difference.

“I think everybody would have hoped for a better start,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD. “The thing is, this market is not the same market that Windows 7 or Vista or even XP launched into.”

Those earlier versions of Windows all came out during periods when the PC’s status as the center of computing seemed far more secure. In the intervening years, smartphones and tablets have become much more serious rivals for a share of consumer spending on technology. Sales of PCs have been declining for much of the year.

While most people are not getting rid of their PCs altogether in favor of mobile devices, analysts believe they are postponing purchases of new ones.

“What you’re seeing is not a retirement of PCs, but a push-out in the replacement cycle,” said A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “If people used to buy PCs every four years and are now buying them every five years, that could lower PC sales by 20 percent over time. That’s substantial.”

Mr. Sacconaghi predicted that global PC shipments would be down 3 percent in 2012.

The shift in spending to tablets is one reason that Windows 8 is so critical for Microsoft’s future. The company overhauled its operating system with a radically different, tile-based interface that is easier to navigate on touch-screen devices. Microsoft intends the software to be flexible enough that it can still be used on conventional laptops and desktops, including newer models with touch screens.

But the changes have disappointed a lot of reviewers and interface design experts, who have focused in particular on the potentially confusing coexistence of the new tile interface alongside the old desktop one.

Mr. Fromont of Acer said he thought there would be more excitement around PCs when more of the devices on store shelves had touch screens. Only 15 percent of Acer’s current Windows 8 products in North America have touch screens, he said.

Mark Martin, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to comment, referring to past statements by Microsoft executives arguing that because Windows 8 is such a big shift, its rollout cannot be fairly judged over one shopping season.

The company says it sold 40 million copies of Windows 8 during its first month on the market, a figure that includes upgrade discs sold to consumers and copies installed on new machines by PC makers.

Apart from Acer, PC manufacturers showed little interest in discussing holiday sales of their products. Representatives for other big PC makers, including Lenovo, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus and Toshiba, either declined to comment on sales or did not respond to requests for comment.

Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel, which provides the microprocessors at the heart of most PCs, did not dispute that PC sales had been slower than hoped for this holiday season, but he predicted that new

Windows 8 devices coming out next year would change that. “We’re excited about the prospects,” Mr. Calder said.

Big retailers of PCs were also mostly silent on their holiday sales. Jeff Haydock, a spokesman for Best Buy, said Windows 8’s effect on PC sales had “met our expectations.” Abt Electronics, a Chicago-based retailer, painted a more positive picture, estimating that unit sales of computers were up 13 percent so far this year.

Amazon’s list of its 100 best-selling electronics products offers a telling overview of the must-have devices for this holiday season: tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Apple’s iPad. On Friday afternoon there were just five computers on the list, all laptops, including two from Apple that cost more than $1,000. Only one laptop on the list came with Windows 8 as an option, while another ran Windows 7.

Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said tablets were sapping the growth of laptops, which represent the biggest chunk of computer sales. “Tablets are doing to the laptop market what laptops did to the desktop market,” he said. “They’re not going away.”

At a cavernous Best Buy store in Tukwila, Wash., last week, displays of mobile devices like the Kindle Fire HD and the iPad were much more crowded than the displays of Windows 8 devices arrayed around a much bigger section of the store. Hunched over a Windows 8 laptop was Jeff Lindstrom, a resource specialist at a Y.M.C.A. in Seattle, who said he needed to buy a computer that day for a youth program.

He didn’t care for the design of Windows 8 himself, though, and said he had no plans to replace his own six-year-old laptop. “I’m not impressed,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “It’s such a different direction than what I’m used to.”

7:03 AM | 0 comments | Read More