HP lawsuit toward Oracle is a publicity stunt

A few times ago Oracle has announced that the company will stop the development for Intel’s software Itanium. HP, which is the largest customer of Oracle, filed a lawsuit against the company over the decision. In a court filing on Wednesday, Oracle’s lawyers retaliated by stating that HP lawsuit is a publicity stunt.

The publicity stunt is meant to lay the blame on Oracle instead of HP. This is because when the Itanium-based server business has been fully stopped, HP will have troubles from their existing customers who require continuous support.

Oracle also stated that HP will be the only one that retains the decades-old Itanium processor. HP also said to spread the myth that Itanium has a 10 years road-map while in fact there is no such thing in Oracle as the developer of the processor.

Another counter-allegation made by Oracles is that HP has told a lie when stating that there is an agreement between HP and Oracle that the later company will continue to support Itanium processor. There is no such agreement and HP makes use of the confidentiality feature to protect a document that practically does not exist.

HP’s former CEO Mark Hurd took a job as Oracle’s co-present a few times ago and this resulted in a kind of corporate hug between the two companies. But the cooperation in the porting department was never stated explicitly in any document. However, Oracle has the document in which it is stated that the company will port some of the sections of HP-UX Itanium-based database.

The agreement was directed for E-Business Suite which contained a potential asset of millions of dollars.

In conclusion, Oracle said that HP’s appeal to force Oracle continues support for the Itanium customers is baseless. Oracle has every right to stop the development of the processor but it has its own support plan for existing customers.

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Sprint struggles to stop AT&T and T-Mobile merger

AT&T announced a few times ago that they want to merge T-Mobile into their management. Experts have been uttering worry about the possibility of the monopoly if the merger really takes place. The merger will make the AT&T and Verizon Wireless hold up to 79 percent of the U.S. market share.

Based on the market share, AT&T counts the second seat while the highest seat is occupied by Verizon Wireless.  Sprint sits on the third in the list so that unsurprisingly they struggle hard to block the merger. Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse has been running through the states and to Washington to convince legislators of 18 states to stop the merger.

While working hard to draw public opinion toward his side, Mr. Hesse is also trying to convince top tech companies that the merger will be disaster for the industry. Sprint recently filed a dissent amounted to 377 pages with the Federal Communications Commission. Sprints’ engineers even also tried to convince AT&T to cancel the merger by showing how AT&T is able to optimize its existing network resources.

AT&T was still convinced that it will have the greater benefits when the merger is successful. Last week, they stated that they are pursuing the way to fully merger T-Mobile USA in March 2012. They are now collecting the information for the second round hearing asked by the Justice Department. Meetings between the company and FCC have been also scheduled.

The merger, if successful, will worth about $39 billion. If it is failed, AT&T will have to pay a compensation of $6 billion in services, cash and assets to Deutsche Telekom.

Al-Qaida network is unsafe

While the organization itself is a danger for most countries, it does not have trusted channel to spread its propaganda and media. Evan Kohlman of Flashpoint Partners yesterday said that the terror group’s latest forum, Shumukh, has been offline since at least three days ago.

There are still many other jihadi forums online but Al-Qaida does not trust them. Some of these jihadi forums also has been mysteriously knocked offline, including the Ansar al-Mujahideen Network, a forum in Arabic. Some mirrors still available for Al-Qaida’s material like aljahad.com/vb.

However, Al-Qaida will need an entirely new route to have a direct relation with any new forum, or the broken forum Shumukh has to be totally restructured, said Mr. Kohlmann. He also suggested that the group must also have the backup copies of the knocked down forum.

Last year, Al-Qaida’s forum Al-Faloja was down but the group immediately replaced the forum with the currently broken Shumukh. Kohlman assured that the group will form another forum once they have found the safer channel. He also listed several suspect, from the Jester to government-sponsored in the U.S. and U.K.

The Jester did not confirm to hack Shumukh.

Six hackers that go to establishment

They were still very young when they made digital-based companies upset. Most of them have incredible skill with codes. But now these six famous hackers are known to confirm the establishment. Georgo Hotz, or Geohot, the hacker that hacked Sony's PlayStation Network protection, is know at Facebook, working as software engineer.

Gotz is not the only one. Ian Paul of PCWORLD has listed at least five other ex-hackers who now converting their skills into 9-to-5 legitimate job on several Internet-based companies -- employed or as the employer. They are Chris Putnam, Michael Mooney, Owen Thor Walker, John Lech Johansen and Kevin Mitnick.

They surely reminds people of young geniuses when the computer-and-Internet age was started in the 70s. Bill Gates, Vint Cerf and Mark Zuckerberg, though, did not started like them: these computer-Internet personages were practicing their art through legitimate ways -- read: not violating existing regulations associated with the technology.

1. George Hotz, Facebook Software Engineer

Hotz first drew attention when he posted jailbreak for iPhone. However, his fame came when he became a part of the team that the jailbreak tools for hacking Sony's PSN 3. As a result, Sony sued him. The court prohibited him to have any connection with Sony while he himself announced a boycott toward Sony's products. He is know working for Facebook, working as a software engineer. Some people believe that he is the man behind Facebook app for iPad.

2. Chris Putnam, Facebook Software Engineer
Chris Putnam, together with two friends, created a great worm in 2005 that can make the Facebook page looked like MySpace. The team at the social network giant was exhilarated and tracking back the worm and they find Putnam. Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz immediately admired him and a few month afterwards Putnam went to California for beginning an employment at Facebook.

3. Michael Mickeyy Mooney, Web app developer
Michael Mooney was only 17 years old in 2009 when he created a worm that posted spam messages to the entire Twitter environment. He stated that he created the worm "out of boredom". Chief executive at exqSoft Solutions Travis Rowland shortly afterwards contacted him. Now, he works 9-to-5 for the Oregon-based Web application company as a security analyst and programmer.

4. Owen Thor Walker, Security consultant
The 18 years old Owen Thor was targeted by FBI investigation when he was suspected to be the creator of a botnet that affected 1.3 million computers. New Zealand Herald wrote that the botnet was responsible for millions of dollars loss in the computer economy at that time. Australia telecom Telstra hired him for a 12-month contract. He was invited to speak about security on seminars and board meetings. But Telstra had not given him the access  to its internal network.


5. Jon Lech Johansen, Co-founder of doubleTwist

DVD Jon is a Norwegian programmer that helped created DeCSS, a program that can remove the digital copy protection in DVDs. He was only 15 years when he created the software. Motion Pictures Association of America filed a complaint which was followed shortly afterwards with a police arrest upon Jon. In 2004, He again breached into Apple's DRM technology and enable users to bu songs iTunes much easier. In 2007, he went 9-to-5 after co-founding a mobile app development company called doubleTwist.

6. Kevin Mitnick, not a hacker but security professional

Before he was arrested in February 2005, Kevin Mitnick was the most-wanted computer criminal in the USA. He was charged with theft over the proprietary software of Motorola, Fujitsu, Novell and Sun Microsystems. In 1999, he was charged with two counts of computer fraud, one count of illegally intercepting a wire communication and a four counts of wire fraud. He spent 46 month in prison. After five years in jail, he was released in 2000. But he was not granted permission to access the Internet until 2003. He is now a consultant in his own information security firm.

All images are taken from PCWORLD.

Two new clean technology alternatives for consumers

Electricity produced with fossils is diminishing while nuclear reaction has proven to impose danger for the environment. Cleaner, greener technology have been researched for a very long time by scientists but, while hailed by general public, these alternatives are not yet accepted by industries.

Piezoelectricity for laptops.

However, this might change some times in the future -- but not too far away. Citing Advanced Journal Material, Gizmag reported on June 26, 2011 that scientists from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia, has been able to demonstrate that a technology called piezoelectric, perform in nano-scale, indeed has a chance to convert mechanical stroke into electricity power.

Dr. Madhu Bhaskaran, leader of the Australian researchers, stated that they focused on the thin film coatings which they believe "hold the only practical possibility of integrating piezoelectrics into existing electronic technology". She also insisted that the technology can be applied for a wide range of consumer goods, from running shoes and mobile phones battery to laptop.

In the case of laptop, Dr. Bhaskaran said that piezoelectric technology enables laptops to be powered through typing.

Samsung NC215S.

Shortly before the news was made public, Gizmag also reported that Samsung's Russian branch has been able to produce laptops which are powered by the solar power. Samsung NC215S is expected to be shipped in Rusia in August and the U.S. in July 3. The price tag for each market is, according to Liliputing.com, $500 and $399, respectively.

The Samsung netbook features, according to Clean Technica, are as follows:

• 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel matte display
• 1GB of RAM
• 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N570 dual core processor

The netbook will be powered by a solar panel which is embedded in the lid. The panel charges a 6-cells battery. To extend the running times, the battery is equipped with PowerPlus technology.

To get 1 hour life for the battery, the lid needs to be exposed at full 2 hours. The overall life of the battery was said to be more than 14 hours. Since it the power source is the sunlight, the netbook's 10.1 inch 1024 x 600 pixels display is designed to perform best under bright lights, even in direct light. The display reportedly will be able to offer 300cd/m2 brightness. Anti-reflective coating is also embedded to provide clear and colorful images.

Pictures were taken from here and here.

Hackend: LulzSec disbands

After 50 days of uproar, hacktivists LulzSec on their Twitter account announced yesterday that they disband. The group released a full line of torrents containing around 750,000 users data stolen from several target, one of which is AT&T. The exact reason behind this disband is not clear yet but the group insisted that they knew that they would end after 50 days.

But they hope that their AntiSec campaign, a war against government and other high end establishments, shoulkd continue without them. The announcement said:

The support we’ve gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don’t stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

Zack Witthaker in ZDNet suggested four theories on the disband. The group may believe that fifty days is a set milestone. Topiary, the person ran the group's Twitter feed, is likely a British, judged by his/her writing of style and time zone. A politic-aware person must remembered George Orwell whose death was happened to be of this date. But Whittaker ruled out this possibility because the announcement was posted after midnight.

LulzSec is not immune from hacker attack which means that their identities have been compromised. A confrontation has developed with The Jester appeared to be able to take down LulzSec's main website on Friday albeit for a short while. They may be get bored too since press and media coverage for them have been below their target. Or, the movement has found its natural end. AntiSec campaign wants general population to revolt against their respective government. Considering how the majority of the public has voted for their current government, majority votes are unlikely in the hacktivists' favor.

Are You Confused with - + Icon in FF5?

Firefox 4 is dead and will not be supported by Mozilla for security and bugs fixings. General users now have safer and faster browser. But three days using the browser, and after adding necessary customization, I found a little confusion over the right corner of my browser window.

If you right click anywhere on your FF 5's tab, you will be presented with options like Menu Bar, Navigation Toolbar, Bookmark Toolbar, Add-on Bar and, just below the thin line, Tabs on Top and still further down you will see the "Customize". Click this "Customize". And you will be presented with the Customize Toolbar box.

The box contains icon like Paste, Separator, Flexible Space and others.

As you probably knew, when you scroll your mouse down, there will be a feature in this box called "Zoom Controls". The icon for this is the - and + signs. Now, if you drag this feature into your tab, you will have fast tool to make the webpage larger or smaller.

You only need to click appropriate icon.

- for making the page smaller
+ for making the page larger

In the previous version, you would have to press Ctrl and + to make the page larger and Ctrl and - to make it smaller.

If you have already dragged the Zoom Control, you can zoom in or zoom out the page without you have to raise your hand from your mouse.This of course will be greatly help for surfers as well as for people with poorer eyes and those who want to have closer look without having to lean on.

However, I found that the icons are rather easily confusing with the " + " for the add new tab function. To make it easier, I inserted some other icons between the two functions. However, there are still two " + " icons. Countless time I get wrong click: the browser opens a new tab instead of enlarging the webpage.

I think it is only a matter of habit though. You will get along with these icons after some time.