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Seagate Buys Samsung's Hard Disk Drive Division
Its Official: Apple to Buy Flash Memory Firm Anobit For $500M
Don't Break the Internet - Anti Piracy Legislation Could Wreck DNS System Say Law Professors
Six Reasons OS X is Better Than Windows
Six Reasons Windows is Better Than OS X
Steve Jobs, the Wow Factor, and Apple's Stellar Growth
The NeXT Years: Steve Jobs before His Triumphant Return to Apple
Apache Forges Ahead With OpenOffice.org Suite
MacScan 2.9.2 Released Protecting Mac OS X from Malware and Privacy Threats
Seagate Buys Samsung's Hard Disk Drive Division
Seagate Technology plc has announced closing of the transaction to acquire the hard disk drive (HDD) business of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Under the terms of the transaction, Seagate has gained select elements of Samsung's HDD business, including assets, infrastructure and employees that enable Seagate to drive scale and innovation. These assets include Samsung's leading M8 product line of high-capacity, 2.5-inch HDDs. Samsung employees joining Seagate include a number of senior managers and design-engineering employees from Samsung's Korea facility, who will focus on development of small form-factor products for the mobile compute market. The combined value of these transactions and agreements is approximately US $1.4 billion. N.Y. Park, senior vice president and general manager, will oversee Seagate's product development activities in Korea and serve as country manager of the Korea design center, reporting to Bob Whitmore, Seagate's executive vice president and CTO.
"Together, Seagate and Samsung have aligned our current and future product development efforts and roadmaps in order to accelerate time-to-market efficiency for new products and position us to better address the increasing demands for storage," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "It is an exciting time in the industry with rapidly evolving opportunities in many markets including mobile computing, cloud computing, and solid state storage."
This transaction was announced in April 2011 along with a series of other agreements between Seagate and Samsung. Seagate is supplying disk drives to Samsung for PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics devices. Samsung is supplying its market-leading semiconductor products for use in Seagate's enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid-state hybrid drives and other products. The companies have also extended and enhanced their existing patent cross-license agreement and have expanded cooperation to co-develop enterprise storage solutions.
"The strategic relationship will open new opportunities for the two companies by mutually complementing each other's creative technology solutions for a broad diversity of IT applications," said Oh-Hyun Kwon, vice chairman of Device Solutions of Samsung Electronics.
The transactions and agreements substantially expand Seagate's customer access in China, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Germany and the Russian Federation. Seagate and Samsung also have been working together to ensure that customers continue to receive a high level of service, support and innovation, including activities to align the two companies' supply bases and delivery infrastructure. To ease the transition of products and technologies, Seagate will retain certain Samsung HDD products under the Samsung brand name for 12 months, and maintain or establish a number of independent operations including sales staff, key production lines and R&D. More informatioMay s available at:
http://www.seagate.com/samsung
and
http://www.seagate.com
Its Official: Apple to Buy Flash Memory Firm Anobit For $500M
Cult of Mac's Ed Sutherland reports that the rumor is now official: Apple, the worlds largest consumer of flash memory, has paid $500 million for consumer-grade flash memory maker Anobit, and that the move solidifies Apples supply of solid-state memory used by the iPhone, iPad, iPod and MacBook Air. He notes that the half-billion dollar price tag tops the inflation-adjusted $472 million acquisition of NeXT back in 1997.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/rSVNDh
Don't Break the Internet - Anti Piracy Legislation Could Wreck DNS System Say Law Professors
Writing in the Stanford Law Review, Professors Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post say that two Internet anti-piracy bills now pending in Congress - the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House - represent the latest legislative attempts to address a serious global problem: large-scale online copyright and trademark infringement.
The authors note that although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet's addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet's extraordinary growth, and for free expression.
The three experts says that to begin with, the bills represent an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internet's critical technical infrastructure. Based upon nothing more than an application by a federal prosecutor alleging that a foreign website is dedicated to infringing activities, Protect IP authorizes courts to order all U.S. Internet service providers, domain name registries, domain name registrars, and operators of domain name servers - a category that includes hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and the like - to take steps to prevent the offending sites domain name from translating to the correct Internet protocol address. These orders can be issued even when the domains in question are located outside of the United States.
The writers contend that directing the remedial power of the courts towards the Internet's core technical infrastructure in this sledgehammer fashion has impact far beyond intellectual property rights enforcementit threatens the fundamental principle of interconnectivity that is at the very heart of the Internet. They point out that the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) is a foundational block upon which the Internet has been built and upon which its continued functioning critically depends, and that court-ordered removal or replacement of entries from the series of interlocking databases that reside in domain name servers and domain name registries around the globe undermines the principle of domain name universality, and will also have potentially catastrophic consequences for DNS stability and security.
Plus, the government's ham-fisted approach won't have the intended effect anyway, and could backfire spectacularly, they say.
Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor at Stanford Law School.
David Levine is an Assistant Professor at Elon University School of Law.
David Post is a Professor at Beasley School of Law, Temple University.
Their entire paper can be read here:
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/dont-break-internet
Six Reasons OS X is Better Than Windows
Lockergnome's Matt Ryan notes that in the Windows vs. OS X dailectic, people tend to mention the same two or three differences: gamers claim that OS X is terrible for gameplay; programmers might say that Windows offers a more open-ended environment for developers, and just everyone can agree that the price of entry to the platform is less for a Windows-based PC.
However, Ryan contends that OS X actually has quite a few advantages over Windows, and that depending on what you plan on doing with your computer, you might find that your job can be done easier on the Apple platform, and moreover every Mac comes with a variety of bundled programs that are easily comparable to very expensive software equivalents on the Windows platform.
Ryan proposes six reasons why OS X is better than windows:
Included Software
The App Store
Video Editing
Community
Lessened Virus Threat
Stability and Flexibility
For full discussion of all six points, see:
http://bit.ly/vXEfQx
Six Reasons Windows is Better Than OS X
Lockergnome's Matt Ryan notes that the Mac vs PC debate that's been been waged since the 1980s doesn't look like it will be settled any time soon, and that the software is where the real battle lies. Differences between the two are obvious, Ryan says, but not as significant as you might imagine, with both operating systems sharing many common features that allow you to get the same job done on either platform.
However, he suggests that there are quite a few reasons to choose Windows as your primary operating system over OS X, six in particualr:
Hardware Options
Customizability
Gaming
Larger Selection of Available Software
Less Expensive
Almost Everyone Knows How to Use It
For full discussion, visit:
http://bit.ly/sYfgMY
Steve Jobs, the Wow Factor, and Apple's Stellar Growth
Low End Mac's Dan Knight notes that
Apple really does Think Different. Innovation is in its DNA, and it markets its hardware based on what it does, not on raw specifications, and this all began with the Apple II in 1977 - the first personal computer to support color graphics.
Dan notes that the Apple II had expansion slots, built-in sound, and a decent keyboard, but the thing that gave it a leg up on the competition in the business world was VisiCalc, the world's first electronic spreadsheet, which was launched in 1979. Versions were later released for the TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Atari 800, but Apple had it first. (Ironically, it was another spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3, introduced in 1983, that helped establish IBM PCs as the standard in the workplace.)
He also notes that although the graphical user interface (GUI) had been developed at Xerox PARC, nothing was done with it outside the lab until Apple saw it. Apple licensed the technology and incorporated it in Lisa, its 1983 answer to the IBM PC. When it was introduced, Lisa wowed the tech world.
Then Steve Jobs pulled out all the stops when Apple introduced the Macintosh a year later. Dan also observes that during a decade without Steve Jobs, Apple created some of its least memorable projects and most poorly designed Macs, lost its focus, and nearly killed itself when it decided to allow licensed Mac clones and its competitors began to offer more powerful top-end hardware that ate away at Apple's most profitable lines.
Then Apple acquired NeXT, getting Steve Jobs back as part of the deal, and restored the "Wow!" factor.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/musings/11mm/the-apple-wow-factor.html
The NeXT Years: Steve Jobs before His Triumphant Return to Apple
Low End Mac's Tom Hormby says that despite an enormous launch campaign, the original Macintosh was a failure, noting that Steve Jobs had predicted that Apple sell 500,000 Macs the first year, but by March 11, 1985 the company had sold only 10% of Jobs' original prediction. Then he probably made matters much worse during the first meeting of the new division by instantly alienating some of the most talented engineers in the company and had stunned members of his own team.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/4y0pMK
Tom continues his Steve Jobs saga with "Full Circle: A Brief History of NeXT" at:
http://bit.ly/blBIva
and "NeXT, OpenStep, and the Triumphant Return of Steve Jobs" at:
http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/next-acquisition.html
Apache Forges Ahead With OpenOffice.org Suite
InfoWorld's Paul Krill reports that in its new role as steward of the OpenOffice.org open source office suite, the Apache Software Foundation expects to offer an Apache-branded version of the package for developers in 2012. Apache also is carefully guarding its trademarks.
Krill says that Apache on Tuesday is releasing a statement about its OpenOffice efforts, entitled "Open Letter to the Open Document Format Ecosystem," which notes the planned 3.4 release, tentatively slated for early 2012. Adobe has just about completed with code clearance stage of the effort, said Don Harbison of the Apache OpenOffice project management committee in an interview.
OpenOffice.org incorporates a suite of six personal productivity applications: a word processor with a Web-authoring component, a spreadsheet, a presentation graphics module, a drawing module, an equation editor, and a database. It is offered for Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Macintosh operation systems
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/vIlaN0
MacScan 2.9.2 Released Protecting Mac OS X from Malware and Privacy Threats
SecureMac is celebrating the release of MacScan 2.9.2 and offering users a free 30-day trial to audit their computer's security for malware and privacy threats. The latest version adds additional browser support, scheduler bug fixes, interface changes and the latest definitions to protect against the malware affecting Mac OS X.
MacScan 2.9.2 is immediately available for download to try for 30 days or purchase for $39.99. Upgrades from previous versions of MacScan 2 are free, and can be obtained by either selecting "Check for Updates" under the "MacScan" menu, or by downloading the demo version from http://macscan.securemac.com and entering your serial number.
MacScan Family Pack lets you install the MacScan anti-spyware software on up to three computers for $49.99. Existing single-license owners of MacScan can upgrade to the MacScan Family Pack, allowing installation on up to three computers, for the difference of the original price and the Family Pack price.
MacScan is claimed to quickly detect, isolate and remove spyware from Apple Macintosh computers as well as enhancing Internet privacy and security by cleaning up Internet clutter. It is designed for Mac OS X version 10.2.4 and higher including Apple's latest Lion (10.7).
For more information, or to download a demo version of MacScan, visit:
http://macscan.securemac.com
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