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UK Bribery Act Guidance: Freeing Foreign Companies

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(Westlaw Business) The UK Bribery Act guidance is out and it looks like foreign companies and Wimbledon fans may breathe a sigh of relief as the guidance suggests that sporting events and non-UK companies may not be caught by the new regime.

Released this week, the guidance seeks to provide practical advice to companies ahead of the Bribery Act (“the Act”) coming into force on July 1, 2011, although questions remain over the legal standing of the guidance. The 45-page guide builds upon and departs from earlier draft guidance in that it provides substantially more concrete examples and describes the policies that sit behind many of the new provisions of the Act. Some commentators have, however, complained that the guidance does not have the force of law and that it will be up to the government and the courts not to revise the new provisions

via UK Bribery Act Guidance: Freeing Foreign Companies.

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Adobe Bringing Photoshop to the iPad

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Adobe (news, site) has pulled at the heartstrings of creatives everywhere with an early demo of Photoshop on the iPad.

Full-Fat Photoshop

Okay, there’s already a Photoshop Express available for the iPad, but that’s not really going to cut it for art and web content workers who want to design on the go. So, those present at Photoshop World got a pleasant surprise when the company demoed a new proper version of Photoshop on the iPad.

With layers, effects and all the tools that arty types need to create their finest works, it looks as close as you can get to the real thing on a limited screen and with fingers for control. Even if it’s just an excuse for designers to show off their latest works on the train, this is a further step on the iPad-as-a-practical tool that Apple showed off at the iPad 2 launch with Garageband and other apps.

via Adobe Bringing Photoshop to the iPad.

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Google Ends QR Code Initiative – PCWorld

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google has quietly stopped offering QR codes for businesses with Places pages.

Google had been offering a QR code to businesses that when scanned opened that business’ Google Places page. Google creates Places pages for many businesses but the company has encouraged shops to update their pages with additional information. When it launched the QR code program in late 2009, it started sending stickers with the code to the most popular businesses that updated their pages, with the idea that the businesses would place the stickers in their store windows.

Smartphone users “scan” a QR code by first downloading a QR code application and then taking a photo of the code with their phone, which launches an associated Web page.

Over the past week, some businesses began noticing that their QR code was no longer available in their Places dashboard, where they manage their pages. Google had been letting businesses download the codes to use in their own collateral.

The search giant confirmed that it is no longer offering the codes to Places businesses. “We’re exploring new ways to enable customers to quickly and easily find information about local businesses from their mobile phones. In the meantime, the QR codes on stickers from our previous Favorite Places campaign still continue to take users to the Place page for that business,” the company said in a statement.

Google could be exploring ways to use near field communications instead of QR codes. It recently added support for NFC to Android. NFC is most commonly discussed as a mobile wallet tool, where users can wave their phones on a sensor to pay for goods. But people can also use NFC devices to download information by waving the device in front of an advertisement on a poster.

via Google Ends QR Code Initiative – PCWorld.

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Google Ends QR Code Initiative – PCWorld

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google has quietly stopped offering QR codes for businesses with Places pages.

Google had been offering a QR code to businesses that when scanned opened that business’ Google Places page. Google creates Places pages for many businesses but the company has encouraged shops to update their pages with additional information. When it launched the QR code program in late 2009, it started sending stickers with the code to the most popular businesses that updated their pages, with the idea that the businesses would place the stickers in their store windows.

Smartphone users “scan” a QR code by first downloading a QR code application and then taking a photo of the code with their phone, which launches an associated Web page.

Over the past week, some businesses began noticing that their QR code was no longer available in their Places dashboard, where they manage their pages. Google had been letting businesses download the codes to use in their own collateral.

The search giant confirmed that it is no longer offering the codes to Places businesses. “We’re exploring new ways to enable customers to quickly and easily find information about local businesses from their mobile phones. In the meantime, the QR codes on stickers from our previous Favorite Places campaign still continue to take users to the Place page for that business,” the company said in a statement.

Google could be exploring ways to use near field communications instead of QR codes. It recently added support for NFC to Android. NFC is most commonly discussed as a mobile wallet tool, where users can wave their phones on a sensor to pay for goods. But people can also use NFC devices to download information by waving the device in front of an advertisement on a poster.

via Google Ends QR Code Initiative – PCWorld.

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Over 900 laptops lost at Heathrow each week? | IT PRO

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Business travellers in the US and Europe lose a staggering 15,648 laptops per week, according to a new study by Dell.

On behalf of the computer organisation, Ponemon Institute surveyed 3,034 business travellers at 113 major airports located in the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

Ponemon found that the airports with the highest number of lost, missing or stolen laptops included Los Angeles’ LAX, with an estimated weekly loss of 1,200 and London Heathrow, with an estimated weekly loss of 900.

Of those lost laptops, the survey found that 43 per cent were reclaimed in Europe, compared to only 33 per cent in the US.

Ponemon attributed travellers feeling that they were either being rushed, carrying too many things or worrying about flight delays as to reasons why laptops are most commonly lost.

Worryingly, the survey found a high number of travellers who took no steps to protect or secure the information contained on their laptops.

Up to 47 per cent of travellers in France said that the data on their laptops was not backed up, compared to 43 per cent in the UK. Spanish travellers admitted that 71 per cent of them did not take steps to protect the confidential information contained on their laptops, compared to 59 per cent in the UK.

Meanwhile, 50 per cent of trusting US travellers said that they left their laptop computers under the watchful eye of a fellow passenger, compared to 42 per cent of UK travellers who did the same.

via Over 900 laptops lost at Heathrow each week? | IT PRO.

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Over 900 laptops lost at Heathrow each week? | IT PRO

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Business travellers in the US and Europe lose a staggering 15,648 laptops per week, according to a new study by Dell.

On behalf of the computer organisation, Ponemon Institute surveyed 3,034 business travellers at 113 major airports located in the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

Ponemon found that the airports with the highest number of lost, missing or stolen laptops included Los Angeles’ LAX, with an estimated weekly loss of 1,200 and London Heathrow, with an estimated weekly loss of 900.

Of those lost laptops, the survey found that 43 per cent were reclaimed in Europe, compared to only 33 per cent in the US.

Ponemon attributed travellers feeling that they were either being rushed, carrying too many things or worrying about flight delays as to reasons why laptops are most commonly lost.

Worryingly, the survey found a high number of travellers who took no steps to protect or secure the information contained on their laptops.

Up to 47 per cent of travellers in France said that the data on their laptops was not backed up, compared to 43 per cent in the UK. Spanish travellers admitted that 71 per cent of them did not take steps to protect the confidential information contained on their laptops, compared to 59 per cent in the UK.

Meanwhile, 50 per cent of trusting US travellers said that they left their laptop computers under the watchful eye of a fellow passenger, compared to 42 per cent of UK travellers who did the same.

via Over 900 laptops lost at Heathrow each week? | IT PRO.

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SSD security: the worst of all worlds | ZDNet

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Data security on SSDs is a mess. Good luck removing data! Preserve it for digital forensics? Uh-oh. Secure erase might work, but it that good enough?

SSD data recovery

SSD security is important because data recovery is so much easier than for hard drives. For less than $1k you can buy the equipment that will read flash chips.

Flash SSD architecture leaves sensitive data at risk. Unlike hard drives, when flash SSDs rewrite a block, they don’t overwrite a fixed block: they grab some empty block and write over that, leaving the original data untouched.

Architectural insecurity

Flash is written to the first free 128k or 256k blocks. Rewriting means making a copy of the block and writing the old data plus the new data to another block.

Flash drive controllers virtualize the flash capacity through the flash translation layer (FTL). The blocks your OS sees are not the blocks that are being written. In addition, flash SSDs maintain a large pool of capacity that is not seen by the operating system.

Which leaves your old data on the old block. New writes are written to the first free location, not, as on a disk, to a specified physical location.

Garbage collection eventually overwrites the old block to adds it to the free block pool. Cheaper MLC drives avoid aggressive garbage collection because it wears out the drive sooner.

In addition, the flash failure mode is that the block cannot be written. As blocks reach their end of life, they may not get rewritten at all – leaving sensitive data there for years.

In the meantime you can have 10’s of gigabytes of data sitting on capacity that your OS can’t see. And like hard disks, “deleting” a file does nothing of the sort.

via SSD security: the worst of all worlds | ZDNet.

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Samsung investigating report of keylogger on its laptops – Computerworld

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Samsung Electronics is investigating allegations that some models of its R Series laptops contain keylogging software that could be used to record anything typed on the laptop computers.

Mohamed Hassan said he became aware of the issue last month, when he purchased a Samsung R525 at a Best Buy in Toronto. The laptop had keylogging software on it, which he deleted immediately. Two weeks later, Hassan decided he wanted a more powerful machine, so he returned the R525 and bought a new model — the R540, at a local FutureShop. To his surprise, the keylogger was there too, Hassan said in an interview Wednesday.

“These were new systems. They weren’t used for anything,” he said. “I could give them the benefit of the doubt on the first one. But then when I got a second model, a different model from a different store, that tells me that Samsung is aware of the problem.”

Hassan, an IT consultant based in Toronto, said that Samsung tech support told him: “We just put it there to find out how the computer is being used.”

Samsung spokesman Jason Redmond said that his company is looking into Hassan’s allegations. “We take these claims very, very seriously,” he said. He had not previously heard of the problem, or heard of de Willebois Consulting, the company that makes the StarLogger software that Hassan said he found on the laptop. “We have no understanding of a relationship with this company and we have no prior knowledge of this software being on our laptops,” he said.

via Samsung investigating report of keylogger on its laptops – Computerworld.

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Britain Backpedals on Bribery Act – Law Blog – WSJ

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Lawyers, company executives, and politicians have been waiting feverishly for guidance on how to apply the U.K’s new Bribery Act, the supercharged corruption law dubbed the FCPA on steroids.

Well, the wait is over. The British government today offered guidelines here that some believe indicate that the U.K. has caved into pressure to soften its bribery law, which is due to take effect July 1, the WSJ reports.

For example, the guidance says that gifts and hospitality, which were thought to be verboten under the Bribery Act, will not be prosecuted so long as they are “reasonable and proportionate,” WSJ reports.

Also, the guidelines appear to reduce the geographical scope of the law by saying that companies with subsidiaries or listings in the U.K. may not be impacted.

via Britain Backpedals on Bribery Act – Law Blog – WSJ.

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Microsoft: Run IE9 for long-lasting laptop battery – Computerworld

March 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is the most power-efficient browser on the planet, Microsoft claimed this week.

IE9, which launched March 14, bested rivals from Apple, Google, Mozilla and Opera when Microsoft ran the five biggest browsers through six power consumption scenarios, the company said.

In a lengthy blog post thick with graphs, a trio of Microsoft managers laid out the results of those tests, which showed that on a Windows 7 laptop with a 56 Watt/hour battery, IE9 could be used for three hours and 45 minutes before exhausting the power supply. (The “56 Watt/hour” designation means that the battery can provide 56 Watts of power for one hour before it’s drained.)

The closest competitor was Mozilla’s Firefox 4, which came in at 3 hours and 35 minutes, just 10 minutes shy of IE9.

via Microsoft: Run IE9 for long-lasting laptop battery – Computerworld.

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