Hackers say they attacked Sony network again

NEW YORK — Hackers have again broken into Sony Corp's computer networks,
this time claiming to have stolen customer data to show that the company's
systems remain vulnerable to attack.
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That marked the latest setback for Sony, which discovered in April that
hackers had broken into its PlayStation networks, stealing data from more
than 100 million accounts. Nobody has claimed responsibility for that
attack.
The group LulzSec said Thursday it broke into servers that run Sony Pictures
Entertainment websites, and accessed the personal information of more than 1
million Sony customers.
To underscore the point that the Japanese electronics giant is unable to
keep intruders out of its network, LulzSec published the names, birthdates,
addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of people who
had entered contests promoted by Sony.
A Sony spokesman said the company was "looking into these claims" but
declined to elaborate.

Huawei releases low-cost Ideos X3 and other Androids in Singapore

Huawei is bringing a series of low-cost Android phones to Singapore this
month, in the hope of winning over a part of the market that tech-savvy
Singapore users often don't spend too much time checking out.

While we are talking up the Samsung Galaxy S II and Sony Ericsson Xperia
Arc, phones closer to the S$1,000 mark (without contract), Huawei has been
banking on the low-cost segment (S$300 to S$500) where Android can play a
big part. Hey, the software is free, after all.

This is where the Ideos X3, a followup to the original Ideos, comes in. The
new Android phone will cost just S$299 when it ships on June 15, said Huawei
executives who launched the phone along with three other low-cost numbers
yesterday in Singapore.

Considering that telco rebates here often start from about S$300, don't be
surprised to see this phone debut with one of the operators here as a
"zero-dollar" phone.

What do you get for paying, er, nothing? Huawei's biggest selling point is
Android 2.3, the latest iteration of the most popular phone OS out there. A
3.2-inch HVGA capacitive touch-screen and a 3.2-meg camera, among other
features in a 115g frame. To be sure, the X3 has got no Super-AMOLED, no
shiny 4.3-inch screen and certainly no dual-core processor.

Competitors in the field include Samsung's Galaxy Mini running Android 2.2
(S$368), which is often sold as a zero-dollar phone as well. But Huawei will
boast that the Ideos X3 is the only one with Android 2.3 for the low-end
market.

Does that matter? I'm not sure because at that end of the market,
presumably less geeky users would look at more obvious features like screen
size, screen quality and yes, smoother performance. Here, the Ideos X3′s
600MHz CPU shows its age when you swipe your finger on the screen – it
betrays a very slight lag, compared to smartphones powered by a 1GHz or
faster chip.

To be fair, I still found the phone to be quite usable on the whole, for an
entry-level aimed at first-time smartphone buyers. For for "zero-dollar"
phone, I'd recommend it over another Nokia Symbian or "feature phone"
(or "dumb" phone) for folks looking to jump on the smartphone bandwagon.

Besides the Ideos X3, Huawei yesterday also unveiled two other phones and a
"Mi-Fi" dongle. Here's what I thought of them after a quick hands-on
session:

Huawei Boulder (S$299, end June): Another low-cost option for those who want
a keyboard to go with a touchscreen, this comes with Android 2.2 and some
social media network features. I'm wondering if this will fly well in
Singapore, as the social media crowd are often also quite the tech-savvy
lot.

Huawei IDEOS X6 (S$499, end June): An interesting offering that looks a bit
like a cheaper version of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. Note the big
infinity edge screen (4.1-inch), the squarish facade and 1GHz processor for
much smoother operation than the X3. Runs Android 2.2 but will be
upgradeable in Q4 2011, says Huawei.

Huawei Mobile WiFi Smart Pro (S$299, Q3 2011) – a handy and sleek-looking
Wi-Fi sharing dongle that will share the HSPA+ mobile connection (21Mbps up,
5.76Mbps down) with other devices through your own portable Wi-Fi hotspot.
Great for mobile warriors.

Mainland checks up on DEHP products

BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhuanet) --China's top quality watchdog has ordered more
intensive supervision over food imported from Taiwan, as some toxic drinks
have been already found in the mainland market.

This small free trade market in Xiamen city, is a major place for cross
strait sales exchanges. But many shelves have quickly emptied since the DEHP
scandal, and businesses have been affected.

Distributor of Xiemen, Fujian province said "The tainted drinks are supposed
to be sent back to Taiwan but it might not be feasible. They will have to be
destroyed. I think my loss will be compensated by the factory in Taiwan. "

A total of ten Taiwan enterprises have so far been banned from exporting to
the mainland, including popular names such as Uni-President. The company was
found to have exported 200 cases of tainted asparagus juice to Fujian
province. A spokesman from the company said these toxic drinks have now been
recalled.

In the meantime, food additives containing DEHP were also found to have been
distributed to southern China's Guangzhou, Jiangmen, and Dongguan areas.
Mainland-produced drink products have been declared safe for the moment
after a sampling check of 17 brands proved DEHP free.

China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine has stepped up its investigations, and many online shops were
also asked to stop selling the blacklisted products.

China calls for tougher Internet controls

BEIJING: Chinese military scholars are calling for stronger measures to
protect the country from a US-led "Internet war."

The call, which appeared on Friday in the Communist Party-controlled China
Youth Daily newspaper, follows allegations from Google that personal Gmail
accounts of several hundred people, including senior US government
officials, were compromised by computer hackers in China.

The scholars from the Academy of Military Sciences did not mention Google's
claims, but said recent computer attacks and incidents employing the
Internet to promote regime change in Arab nations appeared to trace back to
Washington. They said China needs to erect an "Internet border" and defend
its "Internet sovereignty."

Develop Cloud-Based Collaborative Solutions with SharePoint Online and Office365 Beta

In addition to Office Professional 2010, the Office365 Beta includes an
updated communication and collaboration suite known as Microsoft Online
Services. It consists of the cloud-based versions of Exchange 2010, Lync
Server 2010, and SharePoint 2010.

The process of building solutions for SharePoint Online is similar to
SharePoint 2010. Developers can use the same tools they're accustomed to,
such as SharePoint Designer 2010, Visual Studio, and the SharePoint API and
SDKs. However, there are several key differences that must be taken into
account when planning to deploy a SharePoint solution on Office365 Beta.

For example, Farm scope (for an entire server farm) is not available on
SharePoint Online, as it runs in a shared datacenter with multiple clients.
Only Site and Web scopes apply in the cloud. Full Trust is not available for
the same reason.

While a majority of SharePoint 2010's features are also available for
SharePoint Online, some are not supported. (The Office365 documentation
provides a full side-by-side comparison of the two platforms.) Business
Connectivity Services are not currently included, but there are plans to add
them at a later date. One of the more interesting exclusions from SharePoint
Online is Web Services, because their use is not supported in only
partial-trust applications. Microsoft does note, however:

"Although … external data connections are not available for use in
sandboxed solutions, you can access them through client applications such as
Microsoft Silverlight and ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript)."
Because of the limitations of using SharePoint Online in the cloud,
Microsoft recommends developing for it using Sandbox Solutions, so that
applications will automatically meet the criteria for scope and trust.

Sandboxed SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio 2010 support IntelliSense,
but do not include compilation support. To aid with this, Microsoft recently
introduced Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools, which add compilation
support and a Visual Web Part project item template specifically tailored to
sandboxed SharePoint Online projects.
The SharePoint Online developer guide is available now from the Microsoft
Download Center.

IBM to Contribute to New, Proposed OpenOffice.org Project

ARMONK, N.Y., - 01 Jun 2011: Continuing its long-standing commitment to
open source, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it will take an active,
supportive role in the new OpenOffice.org code base submitted to The Apache
Software Foundation Incubator. As part of today's news, IBM will contribute
staff resources to collaborate with the Apache community during the
project's incubation period to further the Open Document Format standard.
The move will help facilitate the long term viability and new innovation for
OpenOffice.org development in collaboration with the Apache community. IBM
plans to commit new project members and individual contributors from its
global development team to strengthen the project and ensure its future
success.
"Open source and standards are key to making our planet smarter and
improving the way we live and work," said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president,
IBM Collaboration Solutions. "As IBM celebrates its Centennial, we're
actively investing in projects that will help our clients to collaborate in
an open manner over the next 100 years."
IBM's participation is the latest of many the company has made to open
software development. These include IBM contributing code and staff
resources to Apache projects, the initial formation of the Eclipse
Foundation, and over a decade of working with industry colleagues on Linux.
In 2007, IBM introduced Lotus Symphony, IBM's no charge, on premise, office
productivity suite based on the Open Document Format standard.
The Open Document Format is the standard for document interoperability
across software from many vendors. Advances around ODF, combined with
alternative forms of communication (email, IM, tweets, blogs), cloud
delivery models for business applications, growth in smart, mobile devices,
and economic pressures are all converging to apply pressure to the status
quo of documents. As these industry factors converge, IBM is helping
organizations move towards a model that offers low-cost acquisition of
document tools, coupled with high value and high collaboration solutions
around a document. This news strengthens IBM's ability to continue to offer
our own distributions based on the OpenOffice code base and make our own
contributions to reinforce the overall community.
IBM's contribution to the incubating OpenOffice.org code base at Apache will
further advance the adoption of office productivity suite alternatives.
For more information on IBM's open source initiatives, visit
http://www.ibm.com/opensource.

The Document Foundation=Statement About Oracle’s Move To Donate OpenOffice.Org Assets To The Apache Foundation

The Internet, June 1st, 2011 – The Document Foundation constitutes a global
team of hundreds of developers working together to improve the LibreOffice
product for the benefit of all users. We are governed by an open, and
meritocratic community headed by a diverse interim Steering Committee, and a
vendor neutral Engineering Steering Committee overseeing development.

Today we welcome Oracle's donation of code that has previously been
proprietary to the Apache Software Foundation, it is great to see key user
features released in a form that can be included into LibreOffice.

The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org
and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of
the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken
in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache
community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and
norms – licensing, membership and more – to the existing OpenOffice.org and
LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to
working with all active community members to devise the best possible future
for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

On the bright side, one benefit of this arrangement is the potential for
future-proof licensing. The Apache License is compatible with both the
LGPLv3+ and MPL licenses, allowing TDF future flexibility to move the entire
codebase, to MPLv2 or future LGPL license versions. The Document Foundation
believes that commercially-friendly, copy-left licensing provides the best
path to constructive participation in, and growth of the project.

Thus, the event is neutral for The Document Foundation, which – as always –
remains open to every company, individual or foundation that wishes to
participate in co-development. There has never been a better time to get
involved and advance the state of the art in free software office suites.

TDF is therefore willing to start talking with Apache Software Foundation,
following the email from ASF President Jim Jagielski, who is anticipating
frequent contacts between the Apache Software Foundation and The Document
Foundation over the next few months. We all want to offer corporate and
individual users worldwide the best free office suite for enterprise and
personal productivity.

Finally, TDF continue executing on our time-based release plan for
LibreOffice 3.4.0, due out this week, while continuing work on our bug fix
release train, with 3.4.1 due in a months time, as well as ongoing feature
development for our 3.5 release.

About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of the
OOo Community into an open, meritocratic and democratic organization. An
independent Foundation is a better reflection of the values of our
contributors, users and supporters, and will enable a more inclusive,
effective, efficient and transparent community. TDF will protect past
investments by building on the achievements of the first decade, will
encourage wide participation within the community, and will co-ordinate
activity across the community.

Statements on OpenOffice.org Contribution to Apache

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwire - Jun 1, 2011) - "With today's proposal to
contribute the OpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation's
Incubator, Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer
and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this
popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established
infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software
Foundation's model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer
contributors to collaborate on open source product development." -- Luke
Kowalski, vice president, Oracle Corporate Architecture Group.

"We welcome highly-focused, emerging projects from individual contributors,
as well as those with robust developer communities, global user bases, and
strong corporate backing." -- Jim Jagielski, president, The Apache Software
Foundation. Mr. Jagielski is also the proposed podling mentor for the
OpenOffice.org community during the incubation process.

"IBM welcomes Oracle's contribution of OpenOffice software to the Apache
Software Foundation. We look forward to engaging with other community
members to advance the technology beginning with our strong support of the
incubation process for OpenOffice at Apache." -- Kevin Cavanaugh, Vice
President, IBM Collaboration Solutions.