Business, Financial & Legal - Page 155

Biswamohan Pani, a former Intel engineer and newly-hired AMD employee has plead guilty to fraud that is centered around the theft of sensitive Intel documents. The stolen information is considered to be worth approximately $1 billion, which includes chip-related design and manufacturing data.

It's thought that Pani intended to use the information for career advancement, but AMD has denied any knowledge of Pani's wrongdoing, and has fully cooperated with federal investigators. Pani had previously worked at Intel's Hudson-based chip making plant located in Massachusetts before submitting his resignation on May 29, 2008. Pani's last day at Intel was June 11, but little did Intel know he had actually begun working at AMD on June 2, while simultaneously retaining access to Intel's network.

It is thought that during this time, Pani had been downloading sensitive documents that held information on Intel's manufacturing and chip designs. Corporate espionage and intellectual property theft, in the form of trade secrets, schematics, or other proprietary information can be extremely lucrative in the right hands. Investigators have found no links between Pani and AMD.

With all the fanfare that Apple often brings to a financial discussion, it's odd to hear the words "Apple" and "downgrade" in the same sentence. But those two words found themselves together in a sentence released by BTIG Research's Walter Piecyk when he downgraded Apple's rating on the company's shares from "buy" to "neutral."

And why shouldn't he? There is plenty for investors to be worried about in the company. First, they no longer have Steve Jobs. Old news I know, but it still has an effect on the company's future. More importantly, though, is that wireless carriers are getting fed up with the subsidies that they give to new iPhone buyers.

Carriers are taking a cut in their profit margins while Apple continually earns larger and larger portions. Take a look at AT&T: in 2010, AT&T's margin was over 44% but now are hovering around only 30%. "We expect post-paid wireless operators to remain firm in their plan to stunt the pace of phone upgrades in 2012 and we expect to see some initial evidence of their success in the current quarter," Piecyk said.

The insanely popular photo app and social sharing site Instagram has been aquired by none other than Facebook for a sum somewhere around $1 billion in cash and shares. CEO Kevin Systrom confirms that the service is not going anywhere and will continue to run as-is for now.

Zuckerberg confirms the acquisition and says that the Facebook team will be "able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests." This purchase comes with some incredible statistics.

This deal took place roughly 551 days after Instagram's launch meaning that they made $1B in value in less than 2 years. That's simply incredible. But there's more. This incredible company only has 13 employees! Also, with a valuation of $1 billion, that means each Instagram user is worth approximately $33 a piece.

In stark contrast to the bleak news regarding HTC's financials, Samsung has reported record profits today as the first-quarter revenue is reported. Samsung close to doubled its profits from this time last year by bringing in $5.1 billion in profits which is up from $2.95 billion last year.

The figures have been helped along by the sales of the hot Galaxy lines of smartphones and tablets. The two main devices that aided these record profits have been the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Note. Sales of TVs, such as my own, have also helped propel the figures into the record setting range. "Sales of new models of smartphones, such as the Note, were better than expected," analyst James Strong told Bloomberg.

"They have a good line-up of new products, so they will be able to keep the momentum alive for two or three quarters, at least." Another analyst speculates that Samsung shipped 44 million smartphones during the first 3 months of the year. This would make Samsung the biggest manufacturer in the world for that time period.

A Foxconn recruiter has let slip in an interview with World Business Satellite via TV-Tokyo that Foxconn are hiring 18,000 new employees to help manufacture the next-generation iPhone. The representative continued, saying that he believes the new iPhone could go on sale as early as June this year.

You can actually see the conversation here, (fast-forward to around the 7:10 mark) and although its spoken in Chinese, the translation is said to be in Japanese. The recruiter says it "seems" like it will go on sale in June, not it "will" go on sale in June. But, in the land of Apple, nothing is 100-percent until they say so.

Another thing to consider is that the camera in the video is off in the distance, so it is completely possible they didn't know they were being filmed, and was simply talking about the product, or something else, or trying to get new workers in the door. Who knows. A launch in a few months would mean the last release from Apple, the iPhone 4S, has only enjoyed 8 or 9 months on the market, but Apple will need to combat any release from Samsung, like the GALAXY S III, if they don't want to see their market share slowly erode away.

If you're living in Dubai, or plan on travelling there, you might want to not use social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, as the Dubai Police are keeping tabs on Twitter and Facebook to catch out 'culprits' who criticize the UAE. Dubai Chief of Police has called for legal action against Twitter, for users who do so.

Emirates 24/7 reports that the Dubai Police are keeping a 24-hour watch on both Twitter and Facebook, according to statements made Major Salem Obaid Salmeen, Deputy Director of Anti-Electronic Crimes of Dubai Police's Criminal Investigations Department. Salmeen says:

Salmeen has made it quite clear that any violations of the law on the website would be as "punishable as in the real world". What could land you in trouble with the Dubai Police? Spreading rumors, defamation and even Facebook tagging without permission are all offenses that will get you in trouble, and following several instances, they've decided to make sure they catch each and every offender in the act.

Facebook is playing the Yahoo vs. Facebook lawsuit by the book. Facebook, in its turn, has counter sued Yahoo for infringing on 10 of its patents. This move was predicted by Erin-Michael Gill, the chief intellectual property officer for MDB Capital. "Facebook is following the playbook," he said. "They're doing exactly what potentially Facebook investors would expect them to do. They're leveraging the IP that they've acquiring the past few years. They're putting their best assets on the table and now can engage in negotiations from a far stronger position."

Ted Ullyot, Facebook's General Counsel, said, "From the outset, we said we would defend ourselves vigorously against Yahoo's lawsuit, and today we filed our answer as well as counter-claims against Yahoo for infringing ten of Facebook's patents.... While we are asserting patent claims of our own, we do so in response to Yahoo's short-sighted decision to attack one of its partners and prioritize litigation over innovation."

Yahoo has sued Facebook because Yahoo has been unable to keep up in the changing landscape of the modern internet. They used to be an internet pioneer, but have fallen behind with the times. They are losing the search wars to Google. The counterclaim paints a different picture. Facebook is claiming that they are the damaged party. They want the court to dismiss Yahoo's case and award Facebook damages.

A new law in the state of Arizona could make my favorite pastime illegal. No, I'm not a cyber bully, I'm an internet troll. The new law has implications that could turn every chat room and comment section on the web illegal. The law is set to make just about any annoying, harassing or offensive online comment, reply or message illegal in the state of Arizona.

If I were to continue being a troll after the passing, I could be fined $250,000 and put in jail for 6 months. The bill takes an older telephone bill regarding these issues and just updates it to read "electronic or digital communications." No one took the time to consider the differences in the media, such as, you know, the internet doesn't sit there ringing at you. You actually have to voluntarily seek out the internet.

Media Coalition has sent a formal request to the governor after realizing the potential dangers the bill has. They did a great job of capturing the issue in just a few paragraphs:

A new study from Canaccord Genuity is claiming that Apple and Samsung account for a combined 95-percent of all handset profits in Q4 2011. Apple accounts for 80-percent of profits, while the company behind the GALAXY range of handsets, Samsung, takes 15-percent. The remaining 5-percent is left to all of the other manufacturers.

This leave companies such as Research in Motion (RIM), HTC and Nokia with just 5-percent of the profits, considering they were at once time all top dogs of the market, this is a big change and I'm sure it's hard to swallow for these companies. CNET reports that Apple's iPhone is outselling all other phones combined at AT&T and Sprint, and with Verizon Wireless they are even with all Android phones available.

Samsung has seen incredible success with their GALAXY S range of phones, with the GALAXY S II selling 20 million units in 2011. The GALAXY S III is the most anticipated phone ahead of its official announcement, and Samsung's GALAXY Note has been selling quite well, even if it is half way between a tablet and smartphone. I'm predicting this market share will change with HTC dishing out their One series, and the GALAXY S III should be Samsung's home run this year.

It seems as though AMD execs have been jumping ship left and right. Is AMD really doing this poorly, or is there something else going on that's resulting in all of these resignations? Emilio Ghilardi left less than two months ago, and now Pat Patla, former General Manager and Corporate VP of AMD's Commercial Business unit, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of AMD's Client Technology Unit have left or are in the process of leaving.

First, let's look at Pat Patla. His departure is official. His LinkedIn profile confirms it as well as the Wall Street Journal. He has reportedly defected to Samsung where he holds the title of Vice President. The WSJ blog speculates that Samsung wants to build some ARM-based server chips, and Patla is a good fit because he oversaw the Opteron series from AMD.

Then we have Cheng. He hasn't officially left yet, but according to a Facebook post by him, he's tendered his resignation. "after almost 12 years at ATI Technologies / AMD, I tendered my resignation last week. I will be here for approximately the next week then I may wander the earth and get into adventures......" Cheng oversaw AMD's graphics marketing as well as the Client Technology Unit.

Today's news has been filled with business and legal happenings, so here's one more! A teacher's aide has found herself on administrative leave after refusing Facebook access to her employer. This all started back in April of 2011 when Kimberly Hester posted a picture on her own time of her co-worker's pants around her ankles and a pair of shoes.

Hester felt the image was harmless enough, but someone disagreed. A parent of a student at the school where she worked felt that it wasn't appropriate filed a complaint with the school district. Hester was summoned to the office of the Intermediate superintendent Robert Colby. Colby asked to see her Facebook account.

"He asked me three times if he could view my Facebook and I repeatedly said I was not OK with that," Hester told WSBT. Because of this refusal, Hester received a letter from the Special Education Director which informed her that "...in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly."

There's a new bill running around in the UK and it is akin the US Patriot Act. This bill, if passed, would give the Government Communication Headquarters, or GCHQ, the ability to access phone calls, text messages, emails, and online activity of any citizen without a warrant. The actual contents of the emails and messages would be off-limits, but this is still a gross violation of privacy.

I know we live in an age where privacy doesn't exactly mean much to anyone anymore, but at least with Facebook, we get to choose what to share with the world. This new bill would share the recipients, time, duration and frequency of conversations, plus a list of websites being visited with the government without the need for a warrant.

A similar bill was tried in 2009, but they made the decision to drop it after the massive public outcry. The public was not to happy about having their privacy violated anymore than it already was. The question is, will it pass? It most likely will have a similar outcry to the 2009 attempt, but Britain might still try to pass it. It's estimated at costing $2 billion, and that was in the 2009 attempt. Hopefully it's cost prohibitive enough so that it doesn't get passed.

It looks like life is starting to get fair for the inventors of the technology that everyone uses daily around the world. Yes, I'm talking about the inventors of the Wireless LAN. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) patented the technology in the 1990s, and has used that patent to sue companies without a license since 2005.

Back in 2009, CSIRO recovered AUD$205 million (US$212 million) after suing and settling with 14 companies. They have continued to sue and settle with an additional 23 companies in which they have just received another AUD$220 million as payment. "It was important that Australia protect its intellectual property, and that those major companies who are selling billions of devices pay for the technology that they were using," Australian Minister for Science and Research Chris Evans said.

"CSIRO's commercial and legal teams on both sides of the Pacific have worked very hard over the past several years to gain a reasonable return and I would like to pay particular tribute to them for their extraordinary efforts," Nigel Poole, a senior executive at CSIRO, said. But, some credit also goes to the inventors. They had to solve the problem of the radio waves bouncing off of indoor surfaces and creating echos. They did just that and beat many of the major communications companies that were trying to do the same.

Apple has, until now, only given developers 60-percent of the revenue from iAd clicks. But, just now, Apple have increased this from 60- to 70-percent. This isn't a big change in the short-term, but in the long-term it means fatter profits for developers who rely on the iAd platform for their income.

Apple notes the change in their updated developer agreement:

It's being reported that starting from today Apple will only count impressions, not clicks, for developer revenue. If this is true, it would mean that Apple is including the extra 10-percent to make up for the lost click money. Advertisers also only have to create a $100,000 (or above) account with Apple, which is down from the much higher $500,000 and $1,000,000 minimums.

The U.K. has always been a strange place in terms of security policy and the amount of CCTV cameras per citizen, but this is just going a step too far. If you aren't already aware, the U.S. and various security agencies (namely the NSA) already monitor online chatter in real-time, but they just don't admit it freely. The U.K. government is at least putting the news out there.

Under new U.K. legislation, Internet service and broadband providers will be obligated to pass personal browsing, e-mail and call data to the intelligence services for real-time processing. Shocking, isn't it? These new "Internet firms" could also include things outside the basic three options listed above, such as social networks and search engines. This would mean everything you type into Google, Facebook, Twitter and more would be accessed, in real-time.

Access to ISP logs will be opened up to the government on-demand. Scared yet? Currently, the 'third' U.K. intelligence service, GCHQ, which is a signals and electronics station based in Cheltenham, process call, web and e-mail data, but not the contents of the data itself. ISPs, on the other hand, do process this data within their facilities and datacenters. The new legislation would force ISPs to 'mirror' all traffic through GCHQ allowing for more detailed inspection on a law enforcement level to quickly process information as it happens.

We only reported a few weeks ago that GAME had gone into administration, with share prices tanking and job losses on the chopping board. But, in a reverse April Fools Day joke, OpCapita scooped up 333 GAME stores across the UK.

This new agreement secures nearly 3,200 jobs, which is a great thing in this shaky economy. There were also a few employees from head office who were made redundant, that may be re-employed. OpCapita is a private investment firm specializing in retail, they have set up a company called Baker Acquisitions to buy the GAME stores.

Financial terms of the deal haven't been disclosed, but it's being reported that OpCapita will not have to pay much up-front for the business, but will have to absorb a considerable amount of their debt. BBS business editor Robert Peston said on Saturday that the deal had been approved by six banks, led by the Royal Bank of Scotland, who are owed £85m between them.

Apple and Foxconn are making changes after one of the largest investigations ever conducted of a U.S. company's operations outside of America turned up some major labor law violations. Apple was almost forced into allowing the Fair Labor Association in to conduct a probe by the mounting complaints of Americans who wanted to see better working conditions.

Some of the issues included extreme overtime and unpaid overtime. Foxconn is cutting the maximum working hours from 60 to 49 a week and hiring thousands of new employees to cover the demand. "If Foxconn's labor cost goes up ... that will be an industry-wide phenomenon and then we have to decide how much do we pass on to our customers versus how much cost do we absorb," HP Chief Executive Meg Whitman told Reuters in February.

The cutting of the hours without any sort of pay increase is not something that the workers themselves want, because they need the hours in order to subsist on the low wages. "Until Apple shares a larger proportion of its profits with its supplier factories, workers will receive the same pittance for a salary while working around the clock," Li Qiang, the director of China Labor Watch, said in an emailed statement.

Facebook is currently stuck in a lawsuit with Paul Ceglia regarding whether or not he is entitled to half of the company. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has released a cache of personal emails which refute those claims. Many of these date back to his years back at Harvard where the social network was first created.

Facebook and Zuckerberg are hoping that the emails will be enough to refute Ceglia's claim to Facebook and have the case dismissed. The emails paint Zuckerberg in somewhat of an unflattering light, but should refute any claims to the company. Ceglia has previously released his own emails. Well, at least the content portion of the email.

This is an important point. Ceglia didn't have the entire email to release, but instead released Word documents in which he had copied and pasted into. Forensic investigators have since proven the documents to be forgeries. Ceglia's legal team hasn't quite given up yet:

We've all seen those ads that focus on Apple's personal assistant Siri. But does it really perform that seamlessly? Well according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, it doesn't. This isn't the first time that someone has accused Apple of falsely advertising Siri either.

"Through its nationwide multimedia marketing campaign, Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature," Jones charges, according to the LA Times, which obtained a copy of the suit. "For example, in many of Apple's television commercials, consumers are shown using Siri to make appointments, find restaurants, and even to learn the guitar chords to classic rock songs. In its advertisements, Apple depicts these tasks as easily accomplished 'just by asking' Siri."

Often times, according to Jones, Siri misunderstood what he was asking or when Siri did understand what he was asking, she returned the wrong answer. In Apple's defense, they have publicly said that Siri is in beta and acknowledged that it is a work in progress. Whether or not this will help if the case gets to trial, only time will tell.

Everyone and their uncle loves messing around with Siri by trying to get her to swear, both successfully and unsuccessfully, but it really is a cool piece of technology. The art of voice recognition is a pretty tough field, yet Siri works surprisingly well. It would appear that Apple is patenting a Siri-esque system that would be used to control cameras or portable music players through a computer or smartphone.

"Siri, turn on the flash and take two pictures with my camera after waiting three seconds." This is a representative of what could be possible with this new patent. Apple filed the patent way back in 2010, but it was just now posted online. An excerpt reads:

It appears as though you can have the software reside on an iPhone or MacBook, but use the capabilities on a wide variety of different devices. As always, this is an Apple patent, so it may never see the light of day. But if it does, it's going to be pretty darn cool.