Arm uses laptops to protect mobile phone turf from Intel

Arm Holdings is positioning its chips as the main processors in the low-end laptop market, but does not expect these chips to account for a significant part of its revenue, an executive said on Friday. The company forecasts that royalties from its microprocessors in laptops and other entry-level computing devices may account for between 5 to 10 percent of its royalty revenue in five years, he added. It decided to enter this market mainly to counter Intel's moves in the mobile phone market, Simon Segars, Arm's executive vice president and general manager of its Physical IP Division, said in an interview.

Unit sales in the mobile phone market are likely to be far larger than the low-end laptop market, Segars said. The main reason why Arm is targeting the low-end laptop and desktop market is that it would like to place significant hurdles to Intel's bid for the mobile phone market in which Arm has a dominant position, Segars said. There is also the trend for sophisticated mobile phones to have up to four or five Arm processors in them, he added. If mobile phone vendors like Nokia and Samsung want to get into computing devices, Arm would prefer they use its chips rather than look to alternate suppliers like Intel, he added. "We are more worried about Intel encroaching into the high-end of smartphones, than we are about netbooks," said Segars. Arm designs processor cores that are licensed to chip makers and vendors like Freescale, Texas Instruments, Marvell, and Nvidia. If Arm is successful in devices like netbooks, it will be a nice incremental revenue for the company, he added.

These chip vendors then use the cores in chips known as SoCs (system-on-chip) designed for mobile phones, including smartphones, and some of these companies are now targeting the entry-level laptop market. Arm last month increased the clock speed of its Cortex A9 processor to 2GHz, positioning it against Atom, Intel's processor for the entry-level computing market. Some small computer makers like Pegatron have announced entry-level laptops and desktops built around these processors. Arm's low power, and low cost technology helps drive down system costs on fans, and makes the devices power-efficient, Segars said. A mobile version of Windows is already ported to the Arm architecture. Though the Arm architecture can run Linux, including a distribution from Ubuntu, Microsoft has said its upcoming Windows 7 operating system will not support the Arm architecture.

If Windows 7 is ported to its architecture it would certainly help, but its absence is not "the end of the world" for Arm, Segars said. Kids and many other users do not run office applications but use their computers for YouTube, Facebook, e-mail and other online applications, according to Segars. "For that you don't need office applications, but things like video codecs," he added. Linux computing is taking off, and a lot of people are happy doing web browser based computing, and accessing office and other applications in the cloud, he added. Arm announced earlier this month that Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will be supported on Arm-powered devices. "Our view is that Microsoft would have to be crazy to ignore us forever," Segars said. As it is backed by Google, the new operating system may also make Microsoft change its mind on a port of Windows 7 on Arm, Segars said. Google's Chrome operating system could also change the low-end laptop market in favor of Arm, as the operating system will support both Arm and x86 processors.

Restaurants sue vendors after point-of-sale hack

When Keith Bond bought a computerized cash register system for his Broussard, Louisiana, restaurant, he thought he was modernizing his restaurant. His story reads like a warning for small businesses, who in connecting their businesses to the Internet, have also become prey for sophisticated cyber-criminals. Today, he believes he was unwittingly opening a back door for Romanian hackers who have now cost him more than US$50,000. Bond's is one of more than a half-dozen Louisiana restaurants that have sued the makers of their point-of-sale system, alleging that the companies that made and resold the systems are the ones who should be responsible for fines levied by payment processors following the hack.

Bond says that systems at his Mel's Diner, Part II, were hacked, along with several other restaurants in the region, sometime around March 2008. Investigators told him that the systems were compromised by Romanian hackers who used the devices' remote access software to steal credit card numbers from the systems. The criminals took those credit card numbers and then used them to make fraudulent purchases throughout the U.S., he said. This software let Bond's reseller, Computer World, provide remote support to the systems. In the class-action lawsuit, Bond and the other plaintiffs allege that their point-of-sale systems were out of compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which defines how secure the big credit card companies expect their merchants' computers to be. He was then assessed tens of thousands of dollars in fines and chargeback fees generated by the 699 credit card numbers that were stolen from his three point-of-sale devices. "Our clients are restaurants," said Bond's lawyer, Charles Hoff, in a statement. "They are food experts, not technologists. Bond and others blame the maker of his Aloha point-of-sale system, Radiant Systems, and its Louisiana reseller, Computer World (Computer World is not related to IDG's ComputerWorld magazine). After the hack, Bond had to spend close to $20,000 to audit his systems.

When major players in the hospitality industry such as Radiant Systems and its distributors say their software and business practices are PCI-DSS compliant, our clients trust them." The class-action lawsuit was filed in October but was not widely known until the privacy blog DataBreaches.net disclosed it last week. Citing company policy, a Radiant spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuits, but in an e-mailed statement, she said that the company believes that the allegations are without merit. "These customers were victims of criminal acts almost two years ago. Another similar lawsuit was filed against Radiant and Computer World in April by plaintiffs in Georgia. Unfortunately, in today's world criminal acts like these are not uncommon in the restaurant industry," the statement read. There's no level of responsibility with the processor, the reseller or with Visa Mastercard. Bond doesn't buy that. "You're buying an expensive point-of-sale system," he said. "But when you're compromised, Visa and Mastercard come after the merchant.

So the merchant is the person who is suffering." The lawsuit claims that Visa warned Radiant and Computer World that they were not PCI compliant the year before the hack, but that merchants were never notified of these problems, even though they were the ones who ultimately had to pay big fines. The alert warned Aloha users to disable a Remote Desktop feature on their equipment if it's not being used to provide remote support to the point-of-sale system. That's a real problem, said Avivah Litan, an analyst with the Gartner research firm. "Merchants should be notified directly when Visa or MasterCard issue alerts about non-compliant software," she said in an e-mail interview. "Restaurants are in the business of selling food; they should not be expected to be experts in the intricacies of credit card processing certification processes, especially when they are not even privy to most of the communications surrounding them." Radiant warned about the problem, according to a security alert posted by a San Francisco Bay Area Radiant reseller. The plaintiffs in Bond's lawsuit say they received no such alert. According to Bond, Computer World used this Remote Desktop feature to access his systems.

Computer World did not respond to a request for comment on this article. To make matters worse, Computer World had set up his and other restaurants with the same default password: "Computer," Bond said.

Week in Google news: Loses Apple board ties, spiffs up Google Docs

A look back at the week's biggest Google-related news stories:   Apple severs board ties with Google  The final ties have been cut between Apple's and Google's board, with Arthur Levinson (he had been serving as an independent member on both the Apple and Google board of directors) resigning from the Google board. Not to be confused with the Google Books project, but possibly a threat to Amazon.com and other online booksellers.   Google bullish on economy The company posted increases in Q3 revenue and earnings, beating Wall Street expectations. This follows the departure of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple's board in August shortly after Google announced it would be competing head on with Apple in the operating system market with Chrome OS just as it was competing with the iPhone with Android.   Amazon, meet Google Google revealed plans for Google Editions, an online store offering digital books to users of various devices, from e-book readers to laptops and cellphones. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement. "While there is a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future."   Google's cloud security double talk  Computerworld reported that a group called Consumer Watchdog fired off a letter to the head of the Los Angeles City Council's Budget and Finance Committee, claiming that Google was talking out of both sides of its mouth in pitching its Google Apps to the city.

Unfortunately, Google didn't get all the bugs out first.   Google on the prowl for website malware  Google on Monday rolled out a service to help Webmasters identify malware that may have been slipped into their sites. The watchdog group said Google assured the city its cloud-based apps were safe, but separately acknowledged risks in a financial filing with the federal government.   Google Docs get upgraded, but bugs surface  Google pleased users of its Docs offerings by introducing folder sharing, an ability to upload multiple items to Docs simultaneously and by improving the interface. The new tool uses automated scanners to show Webmasters of sites flagged as "unsafe" just what the offending code is.   Google Voice gets friendly Google has started allowing early adopters of Google Voice  to invite friends to join them.   Google's Postini goes on the fritz  Users of the messaging security and archiving service were festering when service problems emerged during the week. For more on Google, visit Network World's independent Google community, Google Subnet. By week's end, Google had fixed the delayed e-mail delivery issues, but some customers were unhappy with a lack of communication on Google's part, Computerworld reports.   Also, here's a look back at the previous week in Google news.

Privacy advocate has ally in Social Security numbers fight

A fight by the Virginia government to stop a privacy advocate from republishing Social Security numbers obtained legally from public records on government sites on her Web site is attracting the attention of some privacy heavyweights. In its brief, EPIC noted that Ostegren's advocacy work is focused on getting state and local governments around the country to stop posting unredacted public records containing Social Security numbers and other private data on their Web sites. The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a friend of the court brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to uphold privacy advocate Betty Ostergren's First Amendment right to publish the numbers.

As part of an effort to highlight the problem, Ostergren has taken the Social Security numbers of prominent people she has found in public records and republished them on her Web site. Over the past seven years, she has chronicled dozens of cases where local and state governments have inadvertently exposed thousands of Social Security numbers and other personal data on their Web sites, making them attractive targets for identity thieves. When a person publishes lawfully obtained and truthful information, that action is "pure free speech," said John Verdi, senior counsel at the Washington-based EPIC. "It is exactly the type of speech that is protected by the First Amendment." Ostergren runs the Virginia Watchdog Web site, which she has used to highlight identity theft risks that can result from the posting of unredacted public documents, such as land and tax-lien records posted on government Web sites. As part of the campaign, Ostergren routinely posted the Social Security numbers of high-profile individuals that she obtained from county and state government Web sites. Jeb Bush, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, former Missouri Sen.

The list includes former Florida Gov. Jean Carnahan and several county clerks in Virginia. In August, Ostergren provided links to an image of a mortgage document containing the Social Security number of Iowa Secretary of State Mike Mauro. Over the years, her campaign has succeeded in forcing state and county governments to revise images of public records that were posted online or to break online links to document images containing Social Security numbers. She removed the link only after Mauro agreed to take down images of corporate documents that contained Social Security numbers from the state's Web site. Violators are subject to fines of up to $2,500 plus $1,000 in court costs for each Social Security number posted.

Largely in response to her campaign, Virginia lawmakers passed legislation in 2008 that prohibits the dissemination of any records that contain Social Security numbers, no matter how the records were obtained. Lawmakers said the law was needed to prevent even wider dissemination of the numbers obtained from public records. The Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberites Union promptly filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ostergren challenging the constitutionality of the law. The law would have required Ostergren to remove Social Security numbers from her Web site or face punitive fines. Last August, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that it would be unconstitutional for the commonwealth of Virginia to force Ostergren to remove the numbers from her site.

That ruling in turn was appealed to the Fourth Circuit court by Virginia's attorney general. While the court did not say the law itself was unconstitutional, it ruled that it would be an unconstitutional application of the law in Ostergren's case. In it, the government said that the case raised the issue of "crime facilitating speech." The Social Security numbers posted by Ostergren on her Web site exposed the individuals assigned those numbers to a serious risk of identity theft, the appeal claimed. EPIC's Verdi, however, said that Ostergren was simply republishing information that was already made public by the state, and even then, only in a highly targeted manner. First Amendment rights do not protect speech that exposes public officials to the "the very real prospect of devastating criminal predation," the appeal read.

Meanwhile, Ostergren, who has temporarily removed documents containing the Social Security numbers of Virginia public figures from her Web site, plans to put the documents back up after she removes any data that might belong to the individuals' spouses or children. Any time she finds such documents, she will post them, she said. "It's amazing that I still have to be at this after seven years," she said. Speaking with Computerworld today, Ostergren said that local governments in Virginia and elsewhere are continuing to post documents containing sensitive data on their Web sites.

Intel connects PCs to devices using light

Intel is working on a new optical interconnect that could possibly link mobile devices to displays and storage up to 100 meters away, a company official said on Wednesday. The technology uses light to speed up data transmission between mobile devices and connected devices like storage, networking and audio devices, the company said. The company is researching the Light Peak optical interconnect technology, which could communicate data between systems and devices associated with PCs at speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second, said David Perlmutter, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobility group. For example, Light Peak could help improve the quality of high-definition video on displays, Perlmutter said during a speech at the Intel Developer Forum trade show in San Francisco.

Data was transmitted from the PC using Light Peak technology to the monitor, which retained its video quality despite the long distance. Company officials demonstrated a thin cable that connected a monitor to a gaming PC many meters away. The technology could help transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds, according to an entry about the technology posted on Intel's site. It could also lead to thinner and fewer connectors on mobile devices, Perlmutter said. Light Peak can run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling mobile devices to perform tasks over multiple connected devices at the same time. "Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible," according to the Intel entry.

Existing cable technology uses electricity to transfer data, which has limits in speed and length, according to the entry on Intel's site. The platform includes a controller chip and an optical module that performs the conversion from electricity to light and vice versa. Light Peak uses light to transfer data, which can reach longer distances compared to electricity. The new technology could compete with connector technologies like USB and Firewire, which are used to connect PCs to storage and audio devices. It is intended to be a complementary technology.

However, Light Peak is not intended to replace current technologies, an Intel spokesperson said. Components based on the optical technology could ship in 2010, and Intel is working with optical component manufacturers. Intel is trying to making the technology a standard by working with the industry, which could help boost its adoption in mobile devices, consumer electronics and PCs. Sony has already expressed an interest in the technology, Perlmutter said.