04/10, 2:30pm
ZTE contract for embargoed US gear to Iran found
China's second biggest telecommunications gear maker ZTE was found to have sold embargoed US computer equipment to Iran. A Tuesday Reuters report claimed that documents show ZTE sold some computer gear as part of a $10.5 million supply contract to a unit that controls Iranian telecoms. The documents are dated June 30, 2011 and explain how Iran got sophisticated US hardware despite sanctions against such transactions.
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03/30, 1:25pm
Ernest & Young, Qualcomm CEOs round out podium
Apple CEO Tim Cook has taken the top spot on a Glassdoor list of the 25 most highly-rated CEOs. The site records ratings from anonymous workers, who in this case judged their CEOs regarding a 12-month period ending on March 15th. Over 280,000 people participated; each rating was based on a five-point scale, from "strongly disapprove" up to "strongly approve." Cook won with an overall score of 97 percent.
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07/19, 5:55pm
Canada won't look into $4.5b Nortel patent sale
Unlike the rumored investigation by the Department of Justice and the FTC of the recent Nortel patent buy, the Canadian government won't review it, the Industry Minister Christian Paradis said on Tuesday. While the Investment Canada Act requires foreign investments of more than $328 million must be reviewed, the book value of the $4.5 billion deal may be much lower, said a Tuesday report.
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05/30, 10:35am
Became industry icon with his management style
Tom West, a pioneer in computing hardware, passed away last week. West was best known for leading the team that developed the Data General MV/8000, one of the computer industry's first and then widely used mini computers. He is also credited with championing DG's first full-screen laptops at a time when the category was still new.
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04/27, 7:30pm
$2.2 billion Novell buy-out by Attachmate final
The acquisition of Novell by Attachmate is now complete, as the company's stock will no longer be publicly traded, Datamation reported on Wednesday. Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Attachmate and part of the deal involves selling 882 patents to CTPN Holdings for $450 million, which was approved by the Department of Justice.
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04/21, 7:00am
DOJ ensures that Linux license remains unchanged
The Department of Justice has stepped in to regulate patent sales arising from the buy out of Novell. Novell agreed to be bought out by Attachmate, a group of private-equity firms for $2.2 billion in November. However, CPTN Holdings, a separate holding company owned by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC, had sought to buy some of Novell’s patents in a move that would have threatened the ability of the open source Linux operating system to continue to develop server, desktop and mobile operating systems. The revised arrangements mean that the critical patents CPTN had sought to purchase will now remain under the GNU General Public License.
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03/18, 11:20am
RSA hacked, SecurID clients may be vulnerable
RSA, the security division of EMC and maker of SecurID systems used by many large corporations, has just admitted that its security systems were hacked. The company assures everyone that it has taken aggressive measures against the "extremely sophisticated" cyber attack along with an extensive investigation of the attack. It claimed the attack was an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) that would have been difficult to stop.
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12/16, 11:00am
Novell patent acquirer CPTN has Apple, MS, Oracle
The acquirer of 882 Novell patents as part of Attachmate's buyout of Novell includes Apple, EMC, Microsoft and Oracle, Germany's antitrust regulator Bundeskartellamt revealed in a notice for the deal. While created by Microsoft, the organization includes some of its competitors and suggests the buy wasn't intended solely or primarily for Microsoft's attempt to discourage Linux use through patent lawsuits. None of the companies have mentioned their plans or, until now, acknowledged their involvement in public.
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10/28, 1:05pm
SSD Form Factor Working Group aims to improve SSD
A newly-formed SSD Form Factor Working Group has been formed, with the aim of bringing out a PCI Express-based SSD standard. Made up of promoter members Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, IBM and Intel, the group will focus on enterprise customers who need ever-higher performance storage that is cost effective and easy to use. While PCIe based SSDs are available now, they aren't simple and are usually reserved for servers, workstations and very high-end gamers.
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10/07, 3:45pm
Samsung ships enterprise 100GB, 200GB SSDs
Samsung this week said it began offering its 100GB and 200GB solid state drives for enterprise applications. The 3.5-inch form factor drives aim to reduce the long-term costs of main storage media and increase system performance. Storage experts EMC will be the first to utilize these new drives.
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11/11, 5:25pm
Gives HP control of networking
HP in a late afternoon update said it had bought 3Com in a cash deal the equivalent of $2.7 billion. The deal is meant to help HP's involvement in the server and networking businesses and turns the PC builder into a near-total source for datacenters and other large-scale server environments. The two partners are still waiting on government approval but hope to complete the deal sometime in the first half of next year.
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07/22, 5:10pm
Secure iPhone App launches
EMC's security division, RSA, has launched the RSA SecurID Software Token for iPhone, enabling an Apple handheld to be used as a SecurID authenticator. It works in conjunction with a SecurID token seed -- and RSA's Authentication Manager software -- to provide a one-time password that changes every 60 seconds, creating a secure access point. A single tap enables the program, using a unique token seed provided by a person's IT organization.
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