Microsoft: Update glitch hit 10% of WP7 users

Microsoft shed a little bit of light on the problems it had sending out the first update for its Windows Phone 7 software, but it has still suspended updates to Samsung phones while it works out the issue.
Ironically, the update was designed to improve the software update process rather than add features that people have been waiting for, like cut and paste.
In a blog post late on Wednesday, Microsoft said that 90% of people who received an update notification installed the software successfully.
Nearly 5% of people who had a problem did so because they had a bad Internet connection or insufficient computer storage space, Microsoft's Michael Stroh wrote in the blog post.
A "technical issue" is affecting the update process for a "small number" of Samsung phones, he said. As a result, Microsoft has briefly suspended updates to Samsung phones until it can correct the problem, he said.
It's unclear if the issues will have an impact on the timing of Microsoft's next update, which CEO Steve Ballmer recently said would come out in early March. That update will add copy and paste, a function in high demand, and other performance enhancing changes, the company has said.
The HTC Arrive, the first CDMA Windows Phone 7, announced by Sprint Thursday, will include that update, Mark Elliott, a Sprint spokesman said. The Arrive is set to go on sale March 20.
Like many other smartphone software developers, Microsoft requires users to connect the phones to their computers and make the update download through its Zune software on a PC or the Windows Phone 7 Connector for the Mac.
Also like most other phone software makers, Microsoft is rolling the update out over time. It started on Tuesday and said it could be days or even weeks before some people get it.

Iran claims two new supercomputers

After Stuxnet attacks damaged its computer systems, Iran tries for an IT comeback via supercomputing
Iran's government is claiming that it has developed two new supercomputers powerful enough to earn rankings on the Top500 list of the world's most powerful systems.
The supercomputing announcement, made Wednesday, is being treated as a big deal in Iran and involves top Iranian government officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
If this announcement was made by any country other than Iran, it would get little attention. The larger of the two systems is far, far behind the current top-ranked system in China.
But a U.S. embargo means Iran has to buy many of its components from the black market. The country is also a target of a cyberwar, as the Stuxnet worm illustrated.
Ahmadinejad discussed this project, via a videoconference with officials at the two universities where these systems were installed, according to government media press reports.
Iran's supercomputing claims could not be independently verified. It may well be a fake and an elaborate attempt to demonstrate IT prowess after the Stuxnet worm hit its nuclear control systems.
It could also be an effort by the regime to offer some distraction from the region's spreading turmoil threatening authoritarian governments.
A photo spread in one of Iran's news outlets shows what purports to be one of the two systems at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran.
In it are a series of racks on what may be a raised floor, not unlike a typical data center. Other photos show people at terminals and in conference rooms.
Reports include a claim that the largest system is capable of 89 teraflops. One teraflop equals 1 trillion floating point operations per second. The fastest computers in the world now exceed 1 petaflop, or a thousand trillion floating point operations per second.
Although an embargo prevents U.S. companies from selling microprocessors and other components to Iran, U.S.-made computer technology seems to be readily available in that country.
In 2007, for instance, Iranian officials disclosed the source of AMD chips in a Linux-based high-performance computing system. The name of a distributor in the United Arab Emirates was visible on the boxes in one of the photos.
AMD, at the time, said it had never authorized the sale. The photos were quickly removed from the Iranian site after the details were published.
But Iran's latest supercomputer announcement appears to have no details about the components used to build the systems. Iranian officials have not yet responded to request for details about them.
Mehdi Noorbaksh, an associate professor of international affairs at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, urged skepticism around Iran's supercomputing announcement and said it may well be fake.
"The Iranian government is notorious for fabricating this kind of information -- believe me," said Noorbaksh. "When the government announces something like this, it is very difficult to confirm it."
Noorbaksh said Iran's announcement may be a reaction to the malware attack on its nuclear systems, to demonstrate to the world that "we are in control."
Iran's nuclear capabilities and many of its computers were hurt by the Stuxnet worm, which damaged the country's nuclear refining capabilities.
If Iran wants its systems considered for listing on the Top500 list, it will have to run the high-performance Linpack Benchmark and submit the results to the list. It has thus far not submitted anything to the list, according to a list official.

Update: HP reports mixed quarter on weak PC sales

Hewlett-Packard reported a jump in profit for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year but sales were dragged down by weakness in its PC and services divisions.

The poor performance from those groups prompted HP to lower its revenue forecast for the year, causing its share price to slump 12% after the results were announced.

"If you use Q1 as a marker, it's clear we do a lot of things well at HP. It's also clear that we have isolated areas that we need to improve," CEO Leo Apotheker told reporters on a conference call.

HP's profit for the quarter ended Jan. 31 was $1.36 per share before one-time items, up 27% from a year earlier and ahead of the $1.29 per share that financial analysts had expected, according to a consensus poll from Thomson Reuters.

Revenue was $32.30 billion, up 4% from a year earlier but below the $32.96 billion that analysts had been looking for.

Revenue from HP's services division declined 2% from last year to $8.6 billion. It did well with bigger, long-term deals, but short term contracts for IT outsourcing and application services fared poorly, Apotheker said.

Revenue from its Personal Systems Group declined by 1%, to $10.4 billion. Sales of business PCs were up 11%, HP said, but the growth was offset by weak sales to consumers, especially for netbooks computers. HP has also had channel problems in China, though Apotheker said the company is "getting past the issues."

HP's enterprise hardware business fared better. Revenue from servers, network and storage gear climbed 22 percent to $5.6 billion. And revenue from printers and related products increased by 7% to $6.6 billion, HP said.

"We reported good results across most of the business but we have opportunities to improve growth in a few areas," Apotheker said.

HP's shares ended the regular trading day at $48.23, down 1%. Following the earnings announcement they slumped more than 12% in the after-hours markets, to $42.40.

Apotheker took the reins at HP last November and is in the midst of a minor makeover to improve HP's profitability and competitiveness. He's due to outline his plans for the company at an event in San Francisco next month.

The former SAP executive is expected to expand HP's efforts in enterprise software, as well as other profitable areas such as networking and storage. On Tuesday he said he'll describe HP's view of technology trends and explain how they mesh with HP's products and services.

HP is also expanding its focus on mobile gadgets. Earlier this month it announced a tablet PC and two smartphones based on the webOS software it acquired when it bought Palm last year.

HP is also shuffling its board, replacing four directors that were involved in the decision to oust CEO Mark Hurd last year. The new members include Patricia Russo, the former CEO of networking vendor Alcatel-Lucent, and Meg Whitman, who used to run eBay.

What's still missing in the HTML5 spec

Although the HTML5 spec won't be finalized until July 2014, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), has scheduled its "last call" for feature-completeness for this May. So what's missing?

According to the editor of the specification, refinement of the HTML5's multimedia capability is the only outstanding issue to be resolved before the W3C can move to the final stage of the HTML5 specification effort: finalizing the technical specs, getting final comments, and creating test suites to validate interoperability across browsers and other technologies, said Ian Jacobs, head of W3C communications. That last stage will take about three years.

The multimedia holes in the HTML5 spec The primary aspect of multimedia capability to be resolved this spring is multitracking for audio and video, though the W3C isn't committing to having this capability in the final HTML5 spec. Multitracking would, for example, enable a choice of spoken languages to accompany a video, allow the presentation of a video within another video, and permit applications like chat rooms to display simultaneous audio from multiple people.

Also possible to be added to the HTML5 spec after the "last call" are extensions to the canvas 2D technology and the ability to mark up photo credits, said HTML5 specification editor Ian Hickson. He expects such additions to first come up in the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) HTML5 proposals, then migrate to the W3C effort through the W3C HTML working group chairmen. (The two organizations are collaborating on the HTML5 spec.)

One technology not slated for HTML5 is a standard video codec. Developers of the specification have been unable to find a satisfactory open source codec to use, so they are leaving each browser maker to choose its own codec and instead providing standard APIs for them to use in HTML5. "That's pretty much the deal," Hickson said. "HTML5 doesn't care what the codecs are," Jacobs added.

The lack of a video codec does not have to be resolved for HTML5 to be completed, said Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond. "It's a pain for developers, but [they] can work around it for the time being" by encoding in multiple formats, he said.

WebSocket, developer tools not yet HTML5-ready HTML5 has been paired with complementary specifications, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 3 and WebSocket, for two-way Web communications, in an effort to promote an "open Web." HTML5 is in pretty good shape in terms of the language, but WebSocket capabilities are needed for applications like stock trading and real-time data feeds, Hammond said. "You can do that fine with Flash or Java," but not with HTML5, he said. There's also a security issue: WebSocket implementations have been pulled from current browsers because of concerns over potential screen hijacking, he said.

Developer tools support is also lacking for HTML5, Hammond said. Although there are some HTML-savvy tools available today, there's nothing on the order of a Microsoft Visual Studio or Adobe Dreamweaver, Hammond said.

HTML5's newest target date could slip again The July 2014 deadline for the final HTML5 standard is not set in stone, Hickson noted. He pointed out that in 2007, the W3C projected a final specification would arrive in 2010, which did not happen.

That lack of certainty may explain why Jacobs is championing use of HTML5 as it is right now. "We're telling people to use it already," he said. "The goal is to get feedback to improve interoperability," he added. That advice contradicts what Philippe Le Hegaret, the W3C interaction domain leader, said last fall, when he cautioned against deploying HTML5 in websites at the time because of the incompleteness of the specification.

Army of fake social media friends to promote propaganda

It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contacted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors.

EFF previously warned that Big Brother wants to be your friend for social media surveillance. While the FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook (PDF) mentioned using "covert accounts" to access protected information, other government agencies endorsed using security exploits to access protected information.

It's not a big surprise that the U.S. military also wants to use social media to its benefit. Last year, Public Intelligence published the U.S. Air Force social media guide which gave 10 tips for social media such as, "The enemy is engaged in this battlespace and you must engage there as well." Number three was "DON'T LIE. Credibility is critical, without it, no one cares what you have to say...it's also punishable by the UCMJ to give a false statement." The Air Force used the chart below to show how social media influences public opinion.

The 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base sought the development of Persona Management Software which could be used for creating and managing fake profiles on social media sites to distort the truth and make it appear as if there was a generally accepted agreement on controversial issues. "Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms." What happened to don't lie and the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

Everything revealed after Anonymous leaked emails from private security firm HBGary Federal is disturbing on many levels. However, the Daily Kos said with the Persona Management Software it would take very few people to create "an army of sockpuppets" which could distort the truth while appearing to be "an entire Brooks Brothers riot online."

So again I ask, what happened to number three . . . the rule about not lying that was also "punishable by the UCMJ to give a false statement"?

President and CEO of Plessas Experts Network, Inc, Kirby Plessas pointed out some of the unethical and potentially illegal activities that Aaron Barr's leaked emails suggested like "Chumming and baiting" which sounded like "entrapment of some sort." There would be no warrant for the data collected on individuals which could then be stored for how long? "THIS is the entire reason Intelligence Oversight was created - to avoid this sort of thing from ever happening again."

According to Redacted News, the leaked emails showed how names can be cross-referenced across social media sites to collect information on people and then used to gain access to those social ciricles. The emails also talked of how Facebook could be used to spread government messages:

Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a person's hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts, then create the account and send a friend request.

Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending a friend request to the target. To that end friend's accounts can be compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected as his/her weakest friend.

Lots of people have multiple online aliases, Facebook or Twitter accounts for both business and private life. What most bothers me is the lying and seemingly unethical means to an end. Although the government says it doesn't approve of censorship, etc, when its secrets come to light, it seems to be Okay with recommending underhanded tactics.

Secretary Clinton delivered a speech called, "Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices and Challenges In A Networked World." To help promote and support Internet freedom, the State Department intends to award $25 million in grants. While that is great news, the EFF reported, "For every strong statement about preserving liberty, freedom of expression, and privacy on the global Internet, there exists a countervailing example of the United States attempting to undermine those same values."

Secretary Clinton later told "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpou that most Americans "are in favor of human rights, freedom, democracy. We know that ultimately the most progress that can be made on behalf of human beings anywhere is when those individuals are empowered, when they have governments that are responsive." Clinton added, "At the same time, we recognize that this process can be hijacked. It can be hijacked by both outside and inside elements within any country."

So while the U.S. government can talk a good talk, what it does and what it says often doesn't seem to jive. Gasp, I know, it's not a big shocker but sometimes I find that utterly frustrating. The President wanted an Internet Kill Switch, the FBI keeps pushing for backdoors on all-things-Net. What happened to a code of ethics? Does it disappear behind closed doors, dirty deeds done in the dark and used against the American people who are supposed to be free to express themselves?

Motorola Xoom: The complete FAQ

It's been months in the making, but it's finally here: the Motorola Xoom, Google's inaugural Android Honeycomb tablet.

Launching today, the Xoom will be the first in a tidal wave of Android tablets set to hit the market this year. It's essentially Google's flagship device, kickstarting the category and setting a golden standard for all the high-end Honeycomb products on the way. Android engineers actually used the Xoom to test and develop the Honeycomb OS, and it's considered a "pure Google" product -- meaning you get what Google created, with no manufacturer-added skins or interfaces getting in the way.

As I've covered the Xoom and Honeycomb these past several weeks, I've heard plenty of questions -- questions on everything from the technical nitty-gritty to the truth about those irksome Verizon data plans. It's time for some simple, straight-forward answers. Here's a Q&A-style guide to everything you need to know.

What is the Motorola Xoom?

Come on -- that's just too easy. The Motorola Xoom is an Android-based tablet that runs on Google's new Honeycomb platform.

How's the Motorola Xoom different from previous Android tablets, like the Galaxy Tab?

Motorola Xoom Android Honeycomb

Aside from differences in form, Honeycomb -- the operating system debuting on the Xoom -- is the first version of Android that Google actually built with tablets in mind. The software was written from the ground up in order to optimize the Android experience for larger-screen devices.

With Honeycomb, the devices' hardware buttons are gone and replaced with on-screen buttons that change position based on your orientation. There's a whole new notification system that puts desktop-style alerts at the bottom of your screen. Android's multitasking system is revamped to make it easier to switch between running applications. And speaking of apps, Honeycomb allows developers to split their programs into multiple panes -- like in Honeycomb's Gmail app, where you can actively scroll through your inbox while simultaneously viewing (and scrolling through) individual messages.

Put simply, it's a very different interface -- and, if you ask me, a drastically improved one. Check out my Android Honeycomb hands-on impressions for a deeper dive into the Xoom experience.

How 'bout hardware -- what kind of specs does this bad boy have?

Motorola Xoom Hardware

The Xoom has a 10.1-inch, 1280-by-800 display. It runs on a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz processor with 1GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and SD card support for additional storage space. As of now, the Xoom supports 3G and Wi-Fi connections; Verizon promises, however, that you'll be able to get a free hardware upgrade that'll enable 4G access by this spring.

The Xoom comes with a 5MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera for video chat (which Honeycomb natively supports via Google's Google Talk system). The tablet records 720p HD video and supports 1080p playback. It has HDMI and USB 2.0 ports. And according to Motorola, its Android battery life can give you up to 10 hours of video playback on a single charge.

So how can I buy this Xoom, and how much is it?

The Xoom is on sale in the U.S. as of today, February 24. It's available for $800 at Verizon Wireless or Best Buy stores. Verizon is also offering the Xoom for $600, if you sign a two-year contract for data services; those will run you a minimum of $20 a month.

Do I have to get a data plan?

Verizon is requiring you to sign up for one when you buy a Xoom -- obnoxious, I know -- but you can cancel it immediately after. So basically, you'll have to pay $20 for one month, plus a $35 activation fee (sigh). But there's no obligation to continue paying for data beyond that point; once your first month is up, you can use your Xoom via Wi-Fi only and never pay Verizon another nickel.

UPDATE: Verizon Wireless has changed its mind on this policy as of Thursday morning (thank goodness). I've just confirmed with a Verizon spokesperson that if you purchase the Xoom for $800, without a contract, you will not be required to pay the $35 activation fee or sign up for a data plan. As of now, the Verizon Wireless website is not reflecting this change; however, an online customer service representative tells me you can contact customer care to have the data plan removed after making your purchase.

UPDATE #2: Best Buy has now revised its policy and is allowing Xoom purchases without data plans as well.

So what if I want to activate data for a month here and there as I need it? Will I get charged an activation fee each time?

I've been wondering that very thing myself (how coincidental!). I checked with Verizon Wireless yesterday. The annoying answer is that yes, they'll charge you 35 bucks every time you activate data service. So you can switch the data plan on as you need it, but you'll have to pay that fee each time.

Isn't there supposed to be a Wi-Fi-only Xoom, too?

Yes -- but it isn't here yet. Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha has said a Wi-Fi-only edition of the Xoom will sell for about $600; he hasn't said, though, when it'll launch. So if you want the Xoom now, you'll have to spring for the full 3G/4G version, even if you're planning to use it only over Wi-Fi; otherwise, you can wait, but it's anyone's guess how long the wait might be.

Can I just use my phone's data plan to get my Xoom online?

Motorola Xoom Adobe Flash

Maybe. Standard Android tethering -- where you use a program like PdaNet to connect your phone to another device via USB or Bluetooth -- won't do the trick, as those kind of connections require a Windows- or Mac-based client to work.

If you're able to create a wireless hotspot from your phone, though -- either by subscribing to your carrier's hotspot option or by going the underground route and rooting your phone -- then yes, you can use that connection to get the Xoom online. It would be no different than connecting the Xoom to any other wireless hotspot.

What's with all this Flash talk? Will the Xoom support Flash or not?

The Xoom will support Flash, but not immediately; Adobe is still putting the finishing touches on its Flash Player 10.3 software, which the Xoom needs in order to play Flash-based content. Adobe promises, though, that the software will be sent to the Xoom as an over-the-air update "within a few weeks" of today's launch.

Should I get the Xoom or wait for one of the other upcoming tablets?

That, my friend, is a tricky question; I take a stab at answering it here.

Okay, Mr. Smartypants, tell me this: Can you eat the Motorola Xoom?

Technically, yes, but it isn't advisable.

Android Power TwitterCan you drop it from a 40-story building?

Sure, but you probably wouldn't want to.

Can you legally marry it in the state of California?

Right -- I think we're done here.