Is this merely a
continuation of the Ballmer era strategy or will we see “Skype
phones?”
Microsoft
to Buy Nokia’s Device Business in Deal Worth $7.17 Billion
Microsoft announced
late Monday that it is buying the majority of Nokia’s cellphone
unit for 3.79 billion Euros ($5 billion), and spending another 1.65
billion Euros ($2.18 billion) to license Nokia’s patent portfolio,
for a total of 5.44 billion Euros ($7.17 billion).
… The move is a
clear sign that Microsoft believes it can and must succeed in the
phone business, and that it cannot afford to leave the success in the
hands of a partner – even one like Nokia, that had bet its future
on Microsoft’s phone software.
(Related)
“How
can they be so good?”: The strange story of Skype
(Related) Just for
perspective, 7 Billion is cheap.
Verizon
to pay Vodafone $130B for stake in Verizon Wireless
… The deal is the
third largest corporate acquisition ever, behind Vodafone's $183
billion deal for Mannesmann AG in 1999 and AOL's $164 billion deal
for Time Warner the next year. Under the terms of the deal announced
Sunday, Verizon will pay $60.2 billion in stock and $58.9 billion in
cash for Vodafone's 45 percent share.
More than target
practice. Did Syria even notice? There is provocation and then
there is an announcement of capabilities...
Israel
Just Fired Missiles into the Mediterranean
With the entire world
on edge over (possible) impending airstrikes on Syria, it seems that
Israel decided to freak everyone out and
start launching ballistic missiles into the sea.
Around 6:00 a.m. ET on
Tuesday morning, Russian news services began reporting that
Russian-based radar systems detected two
ballistic "objects" over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
With multiple U.S. warships already in the region, and Barack Obama
threatening an attack on Syria, officials naturally wondered if this
was the planned assault they were worried about. When nothing
fell out of the sky on Damascus, it soon became apparent that
whatever was shot into the air had
fallen harmlessly into the water.
Probably less than
Citibank spends on paperclips.
Back in June 2011,
I noted a breach involving Citibank (previous coverage here
and here).
There’s now a follow-up to that breach:
Citibank
N.A. will pay $55,000 to the state of
Connecticut and will obtain a third-party data security audit of its
online credit card account system under a settlement filed in court
today, Attorney General George Jepsen has announced.
The
settlement comes after a joint investigation with the California
Attorney General’s Office revealed that a known technical
vulnerability in Citibank’s Account Online Web-based service
permitted hackers to access multiple user accounts. Hackers
accessed account information through Account Online by logging in
with an account number and password, and then modifying a few
characters in the resulting Universal Resource Locater (URL) bar
in a browser in order to access additional accounts. This
vulnerability was known to the company at the time of the breach and
may have existed since 2008.
Citibank
discovered that Account Online had been breached on May 10, 2011, but
did not permanently fix the vulnerability until May 27, 2011, and did
not begin notifying affected customers until June 3, 2011. Account
information for more than 360,000 Citibank customers, including about
5,066 Connecticut residents, was accessed or obtained by hackers.
“Citibank
represented to its customers that its online system was secured, but
ultimately the techniques hackers used to obtain individual account
information were relatively simple and unsophisticated,” Attorney
General Jepsen. “This settlement not only ensures that Citibank
will be responsive to its customers should this system experience a
breach in the future, it also requires the company to review and
audit its security protocols.”
…
The settlement is not final until approved by the court.
Please
click here to view the
complaint and the
settlement documents.
The
settlement does not contain any admission of liability or guilt on
Citibank’s part.
SOURCE: Attorney
General Jepsen
My Math topic this week
is Probability. What are the odds that this is the only company that
ever did this? (Other than Big Brother in 1984)
Valerie Vlasenko
reports:
TP
Vision is a joint venture based in Amsterdam, the
Netherlands, which develops, manufactures and markets Philips branded
TV sets in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay, Paraguay and selected countries in Asia-Pacific.
In
2012 TP Vision made statements about their monitoring the use of
Philips branded smart TVs in the Netherlands, such as
“60%
of our active users switch on their television more than 50 times a
month”.
The
Dutch Data Protection Authority started an investigation into TP
Visions collection and handling of usage data.
Not surprisingly, they
were found to be in violation:
TP
Vision used cookies and logfiles in order to monitor the users
behavior – the programs, which the users were watching, the
websites they were visiting and the apps they used for that, and
intended to offer personalized ads to its customers. However TP
Visions did not ask their prior permission to these actions.
Moreover the company did not inform their customers about such
monitoring, providing them with insufficient information about
processing their personal data.
Read more on Legal
Artviser.
Would this be legal in
the US? (If providers could charge for it, they would do it)
Juliette Garside
reports:
Broadband
providers are being asked to create a database of customers illegally
downloading music, films and books, which could be used to disconnect
or prosecute persistent offenders.
Measures
to combat digital piracy will be among the topics discussed at a
Downing Street breakfast on 12 September, when record-label bosses
and their trade association, the BPI, have been invited to meet David
Cameron.
BT,
Virgin Media, BSkyB and TalkTalk are being asked by music and film
companies to sign up to a voluntary code for policing illegal
downloading.
Read more on The
Guardian.
So BPI wants to make
broadband providers their agents for purposes of identifying and
stopping illegal downloads? I don’t see how they can do that under
the Data Protection Act there, but I’m no lawyer. I only hope the
providers do not agree to create such records or databases at the
BPI’s behest.
Attention Ethical
Hackers: I want one. Let's discuss extra credit...
Dan Goodin reports:
Recently
leaked brochures advertising next generation spy devices give
outsiders a glimpse into the high-tech world of government
surveillance. And one of the most tantalizing of the must-have
gizmos available from a company called GammaGroup is a body-worn
device that surreptitiously captures the unique identifier used by
cell phones.
“The
unit is optimized for short range covert operation, designed to allow
users to get close to Target(s) to maximize the changes of only
catching the Target(s’) identities and minimal unwanted
collateral,” one of the marketing pamphlets boasts. “The
solution can be used as a standalone device or integrated into wider
data-gathering and geo-tracking systems.”
Read more on Ars
Technica.
“Governments don't do
a good job, so we want to be your government?”
Australia
– The Coalition’s Policy for E-Gov and Digital Economy
“One of the
Coalition’s core principles is a preference for markets, because
markets typically produce better outcomes than governments. But
government can play a valuable leadership role in the economy,
particularly in periods of structural change. If elected, a
Coalition government intends to play such a leadership role in
driving Australia’s transition to a digital economy and recognising
the importance of prioritising investments in ICT. The centrality of
ICT to productivity, innovation and growth is beyond dispute: it
shows up in the data, in business and in our everyday lives.
McKinsey Global Institute has calculated around a fifth of GDP
growth in advanced economies over the past five years has arisen from
the Internet and associated technologies – with 75 per cent of
this growth occurring in sectors not traditionally seen as
‘technology’ industries.”
A major benefit (or
downside) of Big Data?
New
on LLRX – Will Data Analytics Allow Us to “Do Less Law?”
Ron
Friedmann is an expert on the legal market, where hardly a day
goes by without an article or blog post about alternative fee
arrangements (AFA) or delivering more value. Yet both clients and
law firms struggle to define value and adopt alternatives to the
billable hour, so Ron proposes perhaps the time has come to re-think
the question.
For my students who
don't have time to read an article, but can sit and watch a video...
– Two of the top
sites on the Internet today are YouTube and Wikipedia. Together,
they provide lots of entertainment and information. But what if you
could combine both sites, so that relevant YouTube videos appear on
Wikipedia pages? Well, that’s what WikiTube does.
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