Saudi held for Muhammad tweets freed

29 October 2013 Last updated at 06:28 ET

A Saudi journalist detained after writing posts on Twitter deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad has been released, his friends and activists say.

Hamza Kashgari fled Saudi Arabia to Malaysia in February 2012 after his posts angered conservative Muslims and he received death threats.

He was extradited by Malaysia days later and detained by the Saudi authorities, reportedly on blasphemy charges.

The Saudi justice ministry has not yet commented on Mr Kashgari's release.

On the occasion of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday last year, he wrote: "I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you. I will not pray for you."

The former columnist for the Jeddah-based al-Bilad newspaper issued a public apology after deleting the tweets, saying: "I have made a mistake, and I hope Allah and all those whom I have offended will forgive me."

News of Mr Kashgari's release first emerged on social networking websites and was later confirmed by friends and the prominent human rights activist Waleed Abu al-Khair.

"The authorities freed Kashgari at 06:30 (03:30 GMT)," he told the AFP news agency.

Prosecutors never made public any formal charges against him.

However, Interior Minister Abdul Aziz Khoja said at the time that Mr Kashgari's tweets had made him weep and King Abdullah demanded he be held accountable.

Saudi Arabia applies the death penalty to a wide range of offences, including blasphemy and apostasy.

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UK 'li-fi' data speed breakthrough

28 October 2013 Last updated at 09:10 ET

UK researchers say they have achieved data transmission speeds of 10Gbit/s via "li-fi" - wireless internet connectivity using light.

The researchers used a micro-LED light bulb to transmit 3.5Gbit/s via each of the three primary colours - red, green, blue - that make up white light.

This means over 10Gbit/s is possible.

Li-fi is an emerging technology that could see specialised LED lights bulbs providing low-cost wireless internet connectivity almost everywhere.

High speed

The research, known as the ultra-parallel visible light communications project, is a joint venture between the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Strathclyde, Oxford, and Cambridge, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The tiny micro-LED bulbs, developed by the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, allow streams of light to be beamed in parallel, each multiplying the amount of data that can be transmitted at any one time.

"If you think of a shower head separating water out into parallel streams, that's how we can make light behave," said Prof Harald Haas, an expert in optical wireless communications at the University of Edinburgh and one of the project leaders.

Using a digital modulation technique called Orthogonal Frequency Divisional Multiplexing (OFDM), researchers enabled micro-LED light bulbs to handle millions of changes in light intensity per second, effectively behaving like an extremely fast on/off switch.

This allows large chunks of binary data - a series of ones and zeros - to be transmitted at high speed.

Earlier this year, Germany's Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute claimed that data rates of up to 1Gbit/s per LED light frequency were possible in laboratory conditions.

And this month, Chinese scientists reportedly developed a microchipped LED bulb that can produce data speeds of up to 150 megabits per second (Mbps), with one bulb providing internet connectivity for four computers.

'Light fidelity'

In 2011, Prof Haas demonstrated how an LED bulb equipped with signal processing technology could stream a high-definition video to a computer.

He coined the term "light fidelity" or li-fi - also known as visual light communications (VLC) - and set up a private company, PureVLC, to exploit the technology.

Li-fi promises to be cheaper and more energy-efficient than existing wireless radio systems given the ubiquity of LED bulbs and the fact that lighting infrastructure is already in place.

Visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum and 10,000 times bigger than the radio spectrum, affording potentially unlimited capacity.

Another advantage, Prof Haas argues, is that evenly spaced LED transmitters could provide much more localised and consistent internet connectivity throughout buildings.

The disadvantage of traditional wi-fi routers is that the signal weakens the further you are away from it, leading to inconsistent connectivity within offices and homes.

Prof Haas also believes light's inability to penetrate walls makes VLC technology potentially more secure than traditional wi-fi connectivity.

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IBM PC pioneer William C Lowe dies

29 October 2013 Last updated at 07:57 ET By Matthew Wall Technology reporter, BBC News

William C Lowe, who supervised the birth of IBM's first personal computer, has died aged 72 in Lake Forest, Illinois.

The IBM Personal Computer, known as the 5150, was launched in August 1981, several years after Apple had brought its first computer to market.

Mr Lowe was instrumental in driving IBM's PC project from conception to manufacture within the space of a year.

Until then, IBM had been primarily known for large, mainframe computers.

Aware that IBM needed to play catch-up in the nascent PC market, Mr Lowe bypassed the company's rather cumbersome proprietary development process and brought in components from outside to speed things up.

The operating system, MS-DOS 1.0, was provided by a little-known technology company called Microsoft, while the 8088 microprocessor came from Intel.

It cost $1,565 - about $4,000 (£2,500) in today's money - without a monitor and was IBM's first foray into the consumer market.

Off-the-shelf

Mr Lowe studied physics at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, and joined IBM in 1962 as a product test engineer.

In 1975, he became director of development and manufacturing operations for the company's General Systems Division.

Three years later, as laboratory director of the division's Boca Raton site in Florida, he hatched the idea of IBM selling an own-branded computer targeted at small businesses and consumers.

Mr Lowe originally suggested using Atari to help IBM gain quick entry to the market, but this idea was rejected.

Instead, management gave the go-ahead for him to develop a prototype made from off-the-shelf components.

He assembled a team of 12 engineers to work on the Acorn Project (not to be confused with the UK's Acorn Computers) under the direction of Don Estridge.

Part of the testing involved the computer's ability to run the Pac-Man game.

"We didn't just design a computer; we created an industry," said Patty McHugh, Acorn project team member responsible for designing the PC's motherboard.

The rest, as they say, is history.

More than 250,000 IBM PCs were sold in the first year after its launch.

As a reward for his efforts, Bill Lowe was promoted to vice president of the Information Systems Division and general manager of IBM's facility in Rochester, Minnesota.

'Scamp'

But the IBM PC was not, technically, the very first personal computer the company made.

In 1973, IBM's General Systems Division produced a prototype called "Special computer, APL machine portable" (Scamp), also made from off-the-shelf materials and components.

Scamp could be used as a desktop calculator and interactive programming device and led to the development of the IBM 5100 two years later.

But the IBM PC was the first machine designed specifically for the mass market.

Collaboration

The IBM PC project had highlighted the benefits of collaboration, and in 1985, IBM and Microsoft agreed to develop software together that could also run on other machines.

But while Mr Lowe believed in the "open architecture" concept, it opened the back door to rival manufacturers who could build IBM-compatible machines more cheaply.

It seemed to some that the approach had backfired, as IBM faced increasingly tough competition in the PC and software markets.

Mr Lowe took a lot of the blame and this may have contributed to his decision to leave IBM in 1988 to join Xerox, the photocopier specialist, then looking to expand into other product areas.

In 1991, he became president of corporate jet maker, Gulfstream.

Mr Lowe died on 19 October 2013 from a heart attack.

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Dolphin-inspired bomb radar tested

28 October 2013 Last updated at 08:14 ET

British engineers have taken inspiration from dolphins for a new type of radar that could help detect roadside bombs more easily.

The device sends out two pulses instead of one, mimicking how dolphins pinpoint their prey.

The twin inverted pulse radar (TWIPR) can distinguish between the electronics at the heart of an explosive and other "clutter" such as pipes or nails.

Experts said the system "showed promise".

The radar device has been developed by a team led by Prof Tim Leighton, of the University of Southampton, and scientists from University College, London.

Strong signal

Prof Leighton took his inspiration from the way dolphins are able to process their sonar signals to pinpoint prey in bubbly water.

Some dolphins blow bubble nets around schools of fish to force them to cluster together.

Their sonar would not work if they could not distinguish the fish from the bubbles.

He wanted to see if the same technique would work with radio waves, and so developed a system that also sent out pulses in pairs.

Traditional radar typically sends out just one pulse.

The device his team came up with was just 2cm in size and cost less than £1 to put together.

The second pulse has the reverse polarity of the first.

Continue reading the main story

Any technology that increases the probability of detecting IEDs [improvised explosive device] or buried earthquake victims while reducing false alarms will undoubtedly save lives"

End Quote Gary Kemp Cambridge Consultants

This means that if it hits an electronic device, it turns the pulse into a positive, which in turn gives off a very strong signal.

In tests the team applied the radar pulses to an antenna typical of the circuitry used in explosive devices, which was surrounded by "clutter" metals.

The antenna showed up 100,000 times more powerfully than the other metal "clutter".

Animal super-senses

Such a device could also be extremely helpful in finding surveillance device as well as bombs, the team said.

It could even help locate people buried after an avalanche or earthquake by detecting their mobile phones.

"Such technology could also be extended to other radiations, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and light detection and ranging (Lidar)... offering the possibility of early fire detection systems," said Prof Leighton.

Gary Kemp, programme director at technology consultancy Cambridge Consultants, said that the system "shows promise".

He said: "We continue to take inspiration from the many animal super-senses found in nature, whether from the sophisticated echolocation techniques used by bats and cetaceans or the remarkable chemical detection ability of dogs and bees.

"Any technology that increases the probability of detecting IEDs [improvised explosive device] or buried earthquake victims while reducing false alarms will undoubtedly save lives," he added.

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Briton accused of US military hacks

28 October 2013 Last updated at 14:37 ET

A 28-year-old British man has been arrested on suspicion of hacking into US military and US government computer systems.

Lauri Love, arrested in Suffolk under the Computer Misuse Act, has been released on bail until next February.

The US authorities claim he placed "back doors" in hacked networks to steal data.

The arrest was the culmination of a joint investigation by the UK's National Crime Agency and the FBI.

According to the US authorities, the arrested man hacked into systems of the US Army, Nasa and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

He has been charged in the US with accessing a government computer without permission.

Recruitment campaign

US authorities, including the army, allege that information accessed included budgets, the disposal of military facilities, and personal information on thousands of people, including military personnel.

Mr Love, from Stradishall, Suffolk, is accused of working with at least three others, who are not named.

The alleged conspirators are said by prosecutors to have chatted online in secure web forums to identify targets, then hacked into thousands of computer systems.

The suspected hackers allegedly placed "back doors", or code, to allow them to get back into the systems later to steal confidential information.

The high-profile arrest is the latest in a series that have involved the UK's newly formed National Crime Agency.

Last week the NCA launched a campaign to recruit up to 400 trainee cyber and intelligence officers.

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Apple phone sales up but profit down

28 October 2013 Last updated at 19:04 ET

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Apple's profits have dropped despite an increase in iPhone sales - Samira Hussain reports

Apple has reported a fourth quarter profit of $7.5bn (£4.6bn), beating analysts' expectations.

Although iPhone sales surged 26% to 33.8 million, profits slid for a third consecutive quarter as margins fell.

On an annual basis, Apple ended its fiscal year with its first earnings decline in 11 years as net profit slipped to $37bn.

Nonetheless, Apple boss Tim Cook insisted that "business was stronger than ever" on an earnings call.

But analysts were disappointed by forward guidance given by the company, which indicated that future profits might continue to slide.

Apple said it expected revenue next year to be somewhere between $55 - $58bn.

It indicated that the gross margin on its products - the difference between the amount the company spends to make a products versus how much consumers pay - would be between 36.5% - 37.5%, less than analysts were expecting.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, explained that this was partly because it cost more to manufacture the company's new iPads and Macbooks and that prices weren't boosted accordingly.

'Game changer'

The company also said it had more than $146.8bn in cash on hand, adding to its considerable reserves.

It indicated that it would be returning more of that money to shareholders in the coming weeks.

Continue reading the main story

Apple's stock briefly slid before recovering in after hours trading. It remains down by more than 13% for the year.

"We're at the point that people are getting anxious to see the next big game changer that Apple has," says Evan Niu of the financial website The Motley Fool.

"Overall, this is a transitional quarter with the new iPads and iPhones coming out. This coming quarter will be the real test," added Mr Niu.

Chinese market

These were the first earnings to include sales of Apple's new iPhone models: the iPhone 5s and the cheaper iPhone 5c, meant to appeal to the Chinese market.

Revenue in the greater China region - which includes Tawain - rose by 24%, however the company did not break out sales figures for the iPhone 5c.

Overall, Apple has said that 9 million new iPhones were sold in the first weekend of availability.

Mr Cook insisted that the iPhone 5c was not meant to be the company's "cheaper" model, and defended the company against criticisms that it had made the phone too expensive to appeal to consumers.

"I realise that some people were reading rumours that the entry iPhone would be the 5c but that was not our intent," said Mr Cook.

"Our entry iPhone was the iPhone 4s."

Mr Cook touted the number of new products Apple has released in the past few months, almost completely refreshing its product line.

The releases include the new iPhone models, an iPad mini with retina display, the new iPad air, updates to its Macbook laptops, and a release of an update to its operating system, iOs7.

"We're excited to go into the holidays" with these new models said Mr Cook in a statement to discuss the earnings.

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Google's build-your-own-phone plan

29 October 2013 Last updated at 07:26 ET

Google-owned phone firm Motorola has announced a new project to let users customise their smartphone components.

Project Ara allows users to buy a basic phone structure and add modules such as keyboard, battery or other sensors.

Motorola has partnered with Dutch designer Dave Hakkens, who has created Phonebloks, a modular phone idea, on the project.

Experts were unsure on how big a shake-up for the mobile phone industry the customisable handsets would represent.

In a blog post, Motorola said that it had been working on the project for more than a year.

"We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software - create a vibrant, third-party developer ecosystem," the firm wrote in a blog post.

"To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it's made of, how much it costs and how long you'll keep it."

The project will consist of what Motorola is calling an endoskeleton, the frame that will hold all the modules in place.

"A module can be anything from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter - or something not yet thought of," the firm said.

Continue reading the main story

• It is predicted that 1.8bn phones will be sold this year, and that 1.5bn will be thrown away, or fall into permanent disuse
• A total of 5.5bn are estimated to be in use worldwide
• The environmental cost of making handsets includes mining for components
• Used phones contain hazardous elements such as lead, mercury and chlorine, but also valuable metals like gold
• Electronic waste is often exported to the developing world for processing - the work poisons workers and pollutes the environment

Source: CCS Insight, United Nations

Motorola plans to begin inviting developers to create modules in a few months time with a module developer's kit launching soon afterwards.

Motorola came across the work of Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks, while developing the project and asked him to team up with them. Phonebloks has gained much interest in recent months.

Lego phone

Mr Hakkens launched Phonebloks on crowd-promoting website Thunderclap and quickly amassed 950,000 supporters.

"We've done the deep technical work. Dave created a community," Motorola added in its blogpost.

Chris Green, principal technology analyst at the Davies Murphy Group consultancy, dismissed the project as a "gimmick".

"I don't see this as being a big deal. It is not responding to any particular demand and there is no real benefit to assembling your own device,

"The days of DIY IT, people building their own desktop PC, are gone due to falling costs of hardware," he said.

Ben Wood, a mobile expert from CCS Insight, is equally unsure of how mass market such a product can be.

"Creating a Lego-like phone seems on the face of it like a great idea but the commercial realities of delivering such a device are challenging. Consumers want small, attractive devices and a modular design makes this extremely difficult.

"It's a nice idea on paper but whether we'll ever see a commercial product remains to be seen. Right now it would be a great improvement if it was easier to replace batteries and screens but even that seems unlikely in the near term."

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Nokia profits fall by one-third

29 October 2013 Last updated at 08:31 ET

Operating profit at Nokia's telecoms solutions and networks - its main business once its phones division is sold - fell 33% in the third quarter to 218m euros ($300m; £186.6m).

The Finnish firm forecasts the business's profit margin will rise sharply next quarter to 12% from 8.4%.

That lifted its shares by 6%.

Sales of its Lumia smartphones rose 19% to almost nine million units. They will be sold with the rest of the phones division to Microsoft early next year.

The US tech giant is paying 5.4bn euros in the deal.

Sales of Nokia's basic mobile phones rose 4% to 55.8 million units.

Core operating profit at Nokia's telecoms solution and networks business was down from 324m euros in the same period last year.

Once the mobile business changes hands, Nokia will continue to license its patents and mapping services to Microsoft.

About 32,000 Nokia employees will transfer to Microsoft.

Nokia has fallen behind rivals Samsung and Apple, while critics say Microsoft has been slow into the mobile market.

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Samsung woos software developers

29 October 2013 Last updated at 10:03 ET By Richard Taylor North America Technology Correspondent

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Samsung seeks more exclusive apps for its devices

Samsung has unveiled a raft of new software tools to help developers create apps specifically designed for its devices.

The South Korean firm is releasing five new software development kits (SDKs).

It said they would make it easier to create programmes that can share content on its phones, tablets and TVs.

The company announced the news in San Francisco at its first ever developer conference. It is already the best-selling Android device manufacturer.

Samsung wants to defend that position by ensuring new software takes advantage of its devices' proprietary features, such as support for its S Pen stylus and its Multi Window function, which allows two apps to be run in split-screen mode.

"Consumers want the best possible experience," Samsung Senior Vice President Curtis Sasaki told the BBC.

"So, part of our job is to get developers excited about supporting all of our new features. That ends up benefiting the consumer with much better applications.

"We're hoping that innovation happens outside of the company. That's why we have developers from 33 different countries."

Stand-out smart devices

In holding a developers conference, Samsung follows the lead of other firms including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Blackberry.

All are seeking to offer unique software features to help their platforms stand out.

In the last couple of years Samsung has overtaken Apple to become the world's top-selling smartphone maker.

But, unlike Apple and Blackberry - which develop both their own hardware and the operating systems that power it - Samsung relies on a third-party OS, Android, which is engineered by Google.

The same software is also used by many of Samsung's competitors - including Sony, HTC and LG.

Although Samsung adds its own TouchWiz user interface to the system, its use of Google's OS means its customers may find it relatively easy to migrate to other Android devices when they decide to upgrade.

It also means that customers who purchase apps after they buy a device typically funnel revenue to Google rather than Samsung itself, a situation the Asian firm is keen to address.

To do so, Samsung has developed a multi-pronged approach.

In terms of hardware, it is trying to build an ecosystem in which one device relies on another. This is the case with its recently launched Galaxy Gear smartwatch, which is only being made compatible with the company's Galaxy Note, Mega and S handsets.

On the software side, Samsung is entering into partnerships with developers to offer exclusives.

These include Twitter's new tablet-optimised app, which currently only works with the Galaxy Note 10.1, and Pandora's multiscreen music app, which allows Galaxy handset owners to pick songs and then play them through one of Samsung's Smart TVs.

Dawn of Tizen

The electronics giant is also working with chip maker Intel to develop a new open source operating system called Tizen.

Tizen did not feature prominently in Samsung's San Francisco event. But it is seen as part of a long-term strategy to give the firm more flexibility in the way it develops relationships with its customers.

Tizen is also attractive to developers, as it promises to run software written in the HTML5 web language smoothly.

Mozilla's Firefox OS also relies on HTML5, offering developers the prospect of cross-platform compatibility in which they can write a single version of their app for multiple operating systems, helping cut costs and coding time.

HTML5-based apps can also be made to work on Android and iOS. But developers - including Google and Facebook - faced performance issues when they released products using it, and later switched to native versions.

The first handsets running Tizen were expected to be out by the end of 2013, but that date has now slipped. They are expected to be aimed at the lower end of the smartphone market, rather than premium models.

Samsung has previously hinted at greater ambitions for the Tizen OS, indicating it might feature in everything from TVs to systems for car infotainment (media content mixing information with entertainment).

There has also been speculation that Samsung could take another tack by "forking" away from the Google-released version of Android.

This would involve it developing its own version of Android, which would no longer offer all of the search firm's services.

So, for instance, it might only support the Samsung Apps and Hub marketplaces but not the Play equivalents - preventing Google from taking a cut of sales.

To date, Amazon is the only company to have succeeded at doing something similar, with its Kindle Fire tablets.

But that has come at a price - namely that some developers have not made the necessary tweaks to make their software compatible with Amazon's customised version of Android, Fire OS.

Samsung may feel it has the clout to pull off a similar feat at some point in the future - but unless it can build compelling alternatives to Google's own services, it risks alienating its consumer base rather than fostering the loyalty it craves.

You can follow Richard on Twitter @RichTaylorBBC.

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ISPs told to block 21 pirate sites

29 October 2013 Last updated at 10:36 ET

UK ISPs have been asked to block 21 more websites that are believed to be linked to pirated music.

The court order comes from the BPI which represents the British music industry.

The list includes BeeMPS, Abmp3 and several torrent sites, which link to copyright infringing material.

Previously ISPs have been asked to block access to the Pirate Bay and seven other websites.

The new blocks must come into force by Wednesday, 30 October.

Continue reading the main story

• Abmp3
• BeeMP3
• Bomb-Mp3
• FileCrop
• FilesTube
• Mp3Juices
• eMp3World
• Mp3lemon
• Mp3Raid
• Mp3skull
• NewAlbumReleases
• Rapidlibrary
• 1337x
• BitSnoop
• ExtraTorrent
• Monova
• TorrentCrazy
• TorrentDownloads
• TorrentHound
• Torrentreactor
• Torrentz

"We asked the sites to stop infringing copyright but unfortunately they did not and we were left with little choice but to apply to the court," said Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive.

Gareth Mitchell, a Virgin Media spokesman said: "As a responsible ISP we obey court orders addressed to the company."

BT also said that it would block the sites.

Casual pirates

The BPI and other copyright holders regard site blocking as a more effective tool in the fight against piracy than targeting individuals which was originally the plan under legislation passed in the Digital Economy Act.

The BPI feels that the blocks currently in force have "significantly reduced the use of those sites in the UK".

But music analyst Mark Mulligan thinks that other developments are more responsible for the decline in usage of file-sharing sites.

"As things move more towards cloud-based models and streaming, there is less use of peer-to-peer sites," he said.

"While such blocks will deter the casual pirate, there are still plenty of workarounds for those more determined to get content for free."

Much of the focus of copyright infringement has shifted from music to illegal film and TV downloads.

According to the TorrentFreak website, popular TV show Breaking Bad was downloaded 500,000 times from various sites when the final episode aired in October.

Popular torrent site isoHunt closed this month following a lengthy court battle with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).

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