Showing 31-40 of 58 results
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Phishing, Stuxnet & Samsung
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/12/2014
» Today's new IT term is spear-phishing. According to Kaspersky Labs, Australia is attacked by phishers a quarter of the time, which I suppose makes them the most gullible nation.
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Unconcerned China hacks the iCloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/10/2014
» Apple was temporarily enthused that their iPhone 6 was going on sale in China since this has been a reasonable marketplace for them in the past. Then it was reported that China state-supported hackers were actively implementing a so-called man-in-the-middle attack against Apple's iCloud which would give them access to people in China trying to connect to the iCloud.com server. This attack replaces the certificate used by the customer and allows monitoring of user names, passwords and activity.
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Good old E-merica
Life, James Hein, Published on 03/09/2014
» One of the first things you notice when looking at anything computer-related in the US is that it is probably less expensive there than where you come from. The second thing you notice is that you can order nearly anything — and if you pay a little extra, can have one delivered in a couple of days, even faster if you pay a little more. All of those "we can't ship this product to your address" messages also vanish. The world of online ordering becomes completely open to you.
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Sour Apples, high Notes
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/10/2014
» Apple, at the time of writing, says it has sold more than 10 million iPhone 6 units — which is an amazing claim. Of course, the figure for units sold, as we have seen in the case of other manufacturers like Microsoft, could also include orders sent to stores. After some people had lined up for the iPhone 6 for days, reports are starting to come in about some of the problems experienced by these eager, first-time users. Phones are bending in pockets; there are video-formatting issues with the larger unit; and the software on both units is behaving the same, for example the same number of icons being displayed per line on the larger screen. It seems that in the rush to come out with a larger screen, the support and software was not adapted to this new format. The iPhone 6 (both versions) can still be spoofed with the same fake fingerprints the iPhone 5S were susceptible to. All in all, no wow factor and nothing that could attract anyone with a comparable phone in the same market space.
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Can’t hide your head in the Cloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/07/2014
» According to marketing hype, the Cloud is good for businesses, both small and large, and for social media (i.e. everyone). Microsoft, Amazon, Google and a whole bunch of others will sell you Cloud-based access with a wide range of options and plans. To be fair, there are a lot of businesses out there that don’t care where their data is kept. There are also banks, healthcare providers and a range of others subject to privacy and strict data protection laws that do care where and how their information is looked after. Since we are talking about the Cloud, your data could be held in countries that don’t care for such things, or those which have different rules on privacy. In that case, what could you do to stop them from accessing your data? Hint: not much at all.
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The Blu-ray blues
Life, James Hein, Published on 19/03/2014
» It's a few years on and where are we with Blu-ray? Years ago Beta was the best option and VHS won the war, while a few years back HD-DVD was the best option and Blu-ray won, primarily because Sony didn't want to lose another format battle. Years later, Blu-ray still has had only a minor impact on the market. DVDs are still going strong, as new Blu-rays are still too expensive and consumers aren't really using them as a storage medium like they are DVDs. Some places do use Blu-ray storage farms, but they are few and far between.
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Myforecasts and how they fared in the end
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/12/2013
» It's that time of year again where we look back and review what the past 12 months brought us _ and check how well I did with my predictions from this time last year. While I forecast that the Galaxy S4 would do well against the iPhone, I didn't expect Apple to fall as far as it did this past year, compared to other firms, in terms of overall market position and sales. The 5S was indeed a catch-up for Apple and had no wow factors at all, causing some users to move away from the Apple line. The 5C was a sales failure and the iPad mini didn't do very well at all against the less expensive equivalents. As expected, Apple is still actively involved in litigation and trying to secure as many ridiculous patents for itself as possible instead of focusing on true innovation.
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Will IT firms tighten their belts in 2014?
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/01/2014
» It is just after New Year and things are quiet in the IT world as people reflect on the past and try to work out what is coming in the future. One of the stories that caught my eye was that Hewlett-Packard is planning to make 34,000 positions redundant by the middle of the year. The problem is that HP is not selling its products _ at least not in the volumes required to keep the positions active. They blame this on a contraction of the PC market, poor enterprise demand as companies tighten their belts, competitive pricing pressures and poor currency exchange rates. I suspect that HP will not be the only company to tighten its belt in 2014.
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Don't bank on security of websites
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/01/2014
» In more hacking news this week, the names, home and email addresses, phone numbers and other personal information of around 70 million Target shoppers were grabbed in yet another a database raid that included 40 million credit card details. One of the reasons I use PayPal is because I only have to give my credit card details to one provider. I try to minimise who gets access to my credit card and banking details and PayPal is one way to do that.
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Battle of the boxes heats up
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/11/2013
» The console wars are heating up again with the PS4 up against the Xbox One. As you might expect, both units have come with hardware upgrades and Microsoft has dropped the silly requirement to be always connected to the internet after it received a huge amount of negative feedback guaranteeing poor sales.
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