Tag Archive for 2013

| February 5, 2013
Comments Off on Holy Sticker Shock Batman

Holy Sticker Shock Batman

Holy Sticker Shock BatmanHoly bidding war, Batman! The original Batmobile from the iconic ‘60s TV series, Batman, has nabbed a $4.2 million winning bid at the Barrett-Jackson Auction reports TheDetroitBureau.com.

Batman and RobinIt took legendary Los Angeles customizer George Barris just 15 days to design the bubble-topped 2-seat Batmobile. Mr. Barris says he wanted it to be “a star on its own,” along with the show’s Adam West and Burt Ward, who played Batman and Robin. “With every pow, bang, wow, wee, I wanted the car to do something just like the actors,” the 87-year-old Barris told Reuters. “The car had to be a star on its own. And it became one.”

Phoenix entrepreneur Rick Champagne placed the winning $4.2 million bid for the one-of-a-kind Batmobile, at the Barrett-Jackson Auction, one of the country’s biggest classic car auctions. The winner will pay another $420,000 in buyer premiums before driving it back home. “I really liked Batman growing up and I came here with the intention of buying the car,” explained the 56-year-old Champagne. “Sure enough, I was able to buy it. That was a dream come true.”

The nearly 20 feet long black with red stripes Batmobile was based on the 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car. Mr. Barris, who had already created a number of unique vehicles for TV and film, purchased the show car from Ford (F) for $1 but then spent another $15,000 customizing it for Batman, which ran on TV from 1966 to 1968.

Barris, the “King of the Kustomizers” equipped the Caped Crusader’s cruiser with a variety of weapons and special effects, including laser beams, oil slick, and smoke generators, an ejector, rockets, nails, and an anti-theft system. Bloomberg says the 500-horsepower Batmobile has a fake jet exhaust in the back (a painted 10-gallon bucket), a Batphone, and two packed parachutes that actually work used to effect a “Bat turn.”

George BarrisMr. Barris also made other memorable TV and movie cars, including the “Back to the Future” DeLorean, “The A-Team” van, and KITT Trans Am. Mr. Barris maintained ownership of the Batmobile and has kept it in his private museum in California. He finally decided it was time to sell.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Cars | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| February 2, 2013
Comments Off on Acer Halts eMachines

Acer Halts eMachines

Acer Halts eMachinesTaiwanese PC maker Acer confirmed to ChinaTechNews.com that the company has terminated the operations of its eMachines brand, which was gained during the company’s 2007 $710 million acquisition of Gateway. Gateway acquired eMachines in 2004 for $30 million, and Packard Bell in 2007.

emachne logoThe termination of the operation of the eMachines brand is in line with the streamlining policy announced at the end of 2011 by J.T. Wang, chairman of Acer (ACEIY) The company will continue to carry out brand integration and the entire process is expected to be completed in three years. Reportedly, Acer will continue to invest in post-PC Gateway and Packard Bell products to sell “a variety of devices that would have been thought of as beyond the PC in the past,” Lisa Emard, an Acer spokeswoman, said in an email to PCWorld.

Acer was the fourth-largest PC vendor behind HP (HPQ), Lenovo (LNVGY) and Dell (DELL). They have shipped around 7 million units, in FY 2012, a drop of 28.2% compared year over year reports PCWorld.

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eMachines, the ultimate throw-away machine, has fallen victim to the iPad. I had an eMachines for a while at the turn of the century, and yes it survived Y2K. Do you think it matters that Acer stopped selling eMachines?

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| January 31, 2013
Comments Off on Are Users the Future of CyberSecurity?

Are Users the Future of CyberSecurity?

Are Users the Future of CyberSecurity?Gartner is shopping the idea that the people using IT systems and corporate data are perhaps the best ones to guard them. They are calling the People Centric Security (PCS). According to a ZDNet article, People Centric Security loosens IT controls and relies on end-users to assume responsibilities for protecting IT systems and data.

Gartner logoTom Scholtz at Gartner (IT) presented the idea at the recent Gartner Identity and Access Management conference. They explained it this way, empower users with responsibility for systems and data important to their work, sprinkle in consequences for breaching that responsibility, and users will do the right things to secure their environment.

Gartner argues that the convergence of social, mobile, cloud and big data are eroding corporate boundaries and controls in many areas long thought to be state-of-the-art defenses. “The current approach in developing policies and controls doesn’t scale to current realities,” Mr. Schotlz said.

users will do the right thingMr. Scholtz argues current information security policies and tools grind on productivity. He says the relationship between IT, the business, and workers has transformed and necessitates a change in regard to information security. “In this brave new world, what we do as security people is viewed as negative. We are the people who slow things down.”

However, Gartner is not advocating losing all controls and policies only loosening them. Mr. Schotlz argues that taking away controls on data and replacing them with new user-based responsibilities, principles, and rights may just improve end-user focus and produce a more managed and secure environment.  “We cannot forget about the bad guys outside our enterprise; we do not get rid of all our defenses,” he said.

We treat them like children“One of the realities in the current approach to information security is we treat the 95% of people that want to do the right thing, we treat them like the bad people in order to protect against the bad things done by the 5% of people who have bad intentions,” said Scholtz. “We treat them like children, and if you treat people like children, they will act like children.”

The PCS goal is to implement a “trust space.” ZDNet explains that concepts surrounding “mutual trust” are not new, they have been used in traffic planning, Europe’s Schengen Agreement, open source, and even cloud computing, where companies trust that large providers will protect their data as part and parcel of protecting their own valuable brands.

Gartners People Centric Security Principles

Such an environment “makes it easier to monitor for exceptions, the good people are not trying to circumvent the controls,” says Scholtz.

Protect your dataGartner’s Scholtz knows PCS is not for everyone and that implementation requires cultural and educational challenges. “Maybe we could develop a situation where we have a set of underlying principles that underpin how people use data and how they access systems, and we link those with specific individual responsibilities,” he said. “Maybe we get a more collaborative and social environment.”

There are specific requirements if PCS is to prosper according to the article, the process has to be top-down and there have to be effective punishments for those that abuse their rights. Scholtz admits his concepts are in the embryonic stage, but that they will evolve in the coming months as he works with select enterprises. He noted that a European bank and a U.S.-based agricultural business are already adopting PCS concepts.

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How crazy do you think the PCS concept is? Can it work? Remember that just a couple of years ago, Gartner called BYOD, which I covered here in 2010.

Are your users the future of cybersecurity?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| January 29, 2013
Comments Off on Bach Seat Under Attack from China

Bach Seat Under Attack from China

Sean Buckley at FireceTelecom reports that China Telecom is setting its sites on the U.S. market. He is reporting that China Telecom announced plans to expand its global business unit. The move will drive $1.6 billion (CNY 10 billion) of sales in 2013.

Wang Xiaochu, China Telecom’s chairman, said in a China Daily report that the service provider saw the potential for its international business, after developing its China Telecom Global division. They plan to target including Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas.  The article states that the service provider said it will aggressively purchase international assets to expand its presence in the U.S. “It is for sure that China Telecom will conduct M&As globally, and we are training talent to be more well-prepared,” said Wang.

China Telecom Americas

China Telecom Americas (CHA) is the largest international subsidiary of State-run China Telecom. CHA has launched its self-branded retail mobile service in Chicago. Donald Tan, president of CHA said the service will expand to Los Angeles and New York soon. In addition, the Chinese service provider has opened an office in Chicago.

However, one analyst says that given the recent government opposition to Chinese-based companies Huawei and ZTE (783), China Telecom could face similar challenges in serving the U.S. market in a significant way.

“Given the failure of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp. in their attempts to gain a foothold in the U.S. market, I am not optimistic that China Telecom, a truly State-owned Chinese company, will do any better,” said Xiang Ligang, a Beijing-based telecommunications expert who also runs the industry information website cctime.com.

China Telecom, the State-owned Chinese service provider owns and operates CHINANET (China’s largest Internet network). This may be why U.S. regulators will try to squash CHA’s growth. My personal experience says that China Telecom does not control its networks very well.

For the last several months, this blog has seen a huge uptick in attacks. The attacks were primarily from China Telecom-controlled IP subnets. So far they have been defended off by the smart use of good software. For the past 10 weeks, there has been a peak of 87 attack attempts and an average of 27 attacks per day from China Telcom-controlled subnets. The attacks originated from the Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shanghai provinces. Over this time the most attacks came from China Telecom’s CHINANET locations ib:

 

Attacking IP addresses

Akami (AKAM) claims that China is the source of most cyber-attacks in its latest State of the Internet report. The Content Distribution Network (CDN) reports that about 33% of attack traffic originated in China between July and September 2012. Akamai also reports China has been the top source of attack activity since the end of 2011.

CHINANET claims to be the world’s largest Internet network

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| January 24, 2013
Comments Off on Another Net for IoT

Another Net for IoT

Another Net for IoTKevin Fitchard at GigaOM writes about the French start-up Sigfox that wants to take on the mobile service providers. Sigfox plans to build a new network just for the Internet of Things (IoT). Thomas Nicholls, Sigfox business development chief, and internet of things of evangelist said that cellular networks are built to connect humans, not objects. Sigfox is proposing to build an alternate wireless network dedicated solely to linking together the internet of things.

Sigfox logoThe Toulouse France-based start-up argues that the majority of objects linked to the network will connect rarely. A GPS tracker in a vehicle or shipping container may send out its coordinates just once a day. A smart meter may link back to its utility company’s servers once a week. Many of the sensors being embedded in devices from vending machines to security cameras only transmit when something goes wrong, meaning an M2M module may wait months if not years between connections to the Internet of Things. Connected home appliances like LG Electronic’s (LGLD) new Smart Thinq refrigerator, GPS tracking devices, smart meters and medical alert sensors are all the types of devices that Sigfox hopes to target.

Mr. Nicholls added that Sigfox thinks there’s a huge opportunity in the growing business-to-consumer connected device space. The assortment of gadgets and wearable devices making their way into the connected home and onto our bodies are typically connected by local area networking technologies like Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Wi-Fi. But he thinks there’s a big case to be made for replacing those technologies with Sigfox according to the article.

Wireless networkThe author claims that as Sigfox achieves economies of scale, its radio will not only shrink, their costs will fall to just a few dollars per module. Due to the huge efficiencies in running its network, Sigfox can support a device connection for little more than a dollar a year, Mr. Nicholls said. At those prices, gadget manufacturers can include IoT connectivity costs into the device costs without requiring customers to sign up for a subscription.

Not only would using Sigfox give these devices a range far beyond local networks, but they would also be “on” right out of the box, the Sigfox IoT evangelist said. It also wouldn’t require any signing up or logging on, as the machine-to-machine communication would just work out of the box.

Noisy networkTo host these devices over power-hungry and expensive cellular radios makes little sense, the business development chief said. The better course is to attach these devices to a network optimized for their use cases — one that can support billions of devices each sending relatively little data at distinct intervals, the start-up believes. “Our network is structured in a radically different way,” Nicholls claims in the GigaOM article. “There is really no notion of a network. You only connect when you have a payload to deliver.”

Sigfox has developed a wireless architecture using ultra narrow-band modulation techniques that can theoretically support millions of devices with only a handful of network transmitters. Using the unlicensed frequencies commonly used for baby monitors and cordless phones (868 MHz in Europe and 915 MHz in the US), Sigfox says it can offer the same coverage with a single tower that a cellular network could provide with 50 to 100 cell sites. Sigfox is building a network covering all of France with 1,000 transmission sites, and Mr. Nicholls estimates that the company could do the same in the US with 10,000 transmitters.

size of two thumbnailsThe author describes the embedded radio modules as about the size of two thumbnails, and they transmit at power levels 50 times lower than their cellular M2M counterparts. Such low consumption levels mean that objects that normally have no external power supply could stay connected for as long as 20 years before their module batteries would need recharging, Mr. Nicholls said.

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Apparently, Sigfox’s ultra narrow-band technology can only support bandwidths of 100 bps (YEAP THAT’S BPS, NOT KBPS) — which makes it far slower than even the poorest 2G data connection so it will be popular with wireless service providers who will try to connect everything to the Internet of Things.

Sigfox does not seem to be the answer for devices that send large quantities of data or keep up constant connections to the network like telemedicine aren’t the “things” that Sigfox intends to connect to the Internet.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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