Newspapers Online. 08-12-2013 | ScienceTechn

The tussle between Chief Executive Michael Dell and firebrand activist investor Carl Icahn is also starting to spook some customers.

It's the last thing a company, grappling with the ever-darkening global outlook for personal computers, needs. IDC estimates Dell's PC shipments slid 4.2 percent in the second quarter, compared to a year earlier.

Some customers have begun asking if Dell is even going to be around in the longer term, said Michael Gavaghen, vice president of sales and marketing at Florida-based Dell reseller SL Powers. Sales are taking longer to close as well, he said.

"We hold their hand and gently say to just table the purchasing decision another few weeks," said Gavaghen. He stressed, however, that customers are "not fleeing by any means."

The cacophony surrounding the $25 billion buyout bid proposed by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners has picked up over the past month. Icahn threatened to wage a campaign to replace the CEO and his board, and sued the company in Delaware to try to force an earlier shareholder vote.

Michael Dell raised his offer twice to try to win over major investors. A shareholder vote has been scheduled for September after being delayed three times.

Morale within the company is stable for now, say some employees, though they add that could change rapidly if Icahn has his way and were to reshuffle management.

John Pucillo-Dunphy, senior engineer and owner of Miracle Networking Solutions, a Dell reseller based in Middleboro, Massachusetts, said he supports Dell's going private and is more comfortable with Michael Dell's leadership since it remains unclear what Icahn's long game is.

"I have seen the emails from Michael Dell. I haven't seen anything from Icahn," Pucillo-Dunphy said.

Icahn, who with 8.9 percent of the company is now its second-largest shareholder, has said little about what future he envisions for the company beyond that it has promising prospects based on its large base of PC customers, and that it should remain partly public.

Pucillo-Dunphy said customers are not overly concerned about the drama. "For the most part, they kind of have that mentality that (Dell is) too big to fail."

Chatbots greet users when they enter an online chat room, for example, or kick them out when they get obnoxious. More insidiously, spambots indiscriminately churn out e-mails advertising miracle stocks and unattended bank accounts in Nigeria. Bimbots deploy photos of gorgeous women to hawk work-from-home job ploys and illegal pharmaceuticals.

Now come socialbots. These automated charlatans are programmed to tweet and retweet. They have quirks, life histories and the gift of gab. Many of them have built-in databases of current events, so they can piece together phrases that seem relevant to their target audience.

They have sleep-wake cycles so their fakery is more convincing, making them less prone to repetitive patterns that flag them as mere programs. Some have even been souped up by so-called persona management software, which makes them seem more real by adding matching Facebook, Reddit or Foursquare accounts, giving them an online footprint over time as they amass friends and like-minded followers.

Researchers say this new breed of bots is being designed not just with greater sophistication but also with grander goals: to sway elections, to influence the stock market, to attack governments, even to flirt with people and one another.

“Bots are getting smarter and easier to create, and people are more susceptible to being fooled by them because we’re more inundated with information,” said Filippo Menczer, a professor at Indiana University and one of the principal investigators for Truthy, a research program at Indiana University that tracks bots and Twitter trends.

Socialbots are being circulated around the Web for many purposes. To irritate his adversaries, a software developer from Australia designed a bot that automatically responds to tweets from climate change deniers, sending them counterarguments and links to studies debunking their claims. A security engineer in California programed a bot to scoop up reservations for State Bird Provisions, a trendy restaurant in San Francisco. Mercenary armies of bots can be bought on the Web for as little as $250.

The 95-year-old anti-apartheid leader has been in a Pretoria hospital for two months for treatment of a recurrent lung infection.

"The former president is making a slow but steady improvement," South Africa's Presidency said in a statement, adding Mandela still remained in a critical condition.

Mandela's youngest daughter told state broadcaster SABC on Friday that her father's health was improving daily and he was able to sit up for minutes at a time.

Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected president in all-race elections in 1994 that marked the end of the apartheid system.

Israel has made a push on settlements since the resumption on July 30 of U.S.-brokered talks on Palestinian statehood, signaling its intention to continue to build in major enclaves it wants to keep in any future peace deal.

Israeli media, in unconfirmed reports, have suggested Sunday's housing plans were disclosed to Washington in advance and were aimed partly at overcoming opposition within the pro-settlement cabinet to prisoner releases designed to spur negotiations halted three years ago.

"I saw that important newspapers reported this morning that there is purportedly some kind of coordination regarding the construction," Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a member of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, said on Army Radio.

"I very much believe the newspapers and the media but I don't know whether I can authenticate this," he said, calling the "release of terrorists" unjust.

Israel's Housing Ministry said on its website that tenders were issued for building 793 new apartments in areas of the West Bank that Israel annexed after capturing the territory and the eastern part of Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.

Plots for the construction of 394 more units were being sold in Ariel, Efrat, Maale Adumim and Betar, settlements in areas Israel has said it aims to retain in any land-for-peace accord.

While condemning settlement expansion, Palestinians have stopped short of threatening outright to abandon the peace negotiations, which are due to go into a second round on Wednesday in Jerusalem after a session in Washington.

"The international community must stand with this peace process and must stand shoulder to shoulder with us and hold Israel accountable for its continuing settlement activities," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose centrist party is right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's biggest partner in the governing coalition, called the decision to issue the settlement housing tenders "unhelpful to the peace process".

PRISONER RELEASE

Israel is expected to free, on Tuesday or Wednesday, a first group of 26 Palestinian prisoners out of a total of 104 Arab inmates whose release was approved last month to help restart the talks.

The candidates faced an hour of questioning from a panel of journalists in the capital, Canberra.

Current opinion polls put Mr Abbott's Liberal-National coalition in the lead for the 7 September election.

But Labor has narrowed its lead since Mr Rudd returned to office in June.

And while his party lags behind, Mr Rudd is seen by polls as Australians' preferred choice as prime minister.

Sunday's debate was the first of three such possible meetings before polling day.

Analysts had been predicting a fiery exchange between the two men, but Australian media said the tone of the debate had been far more cordial than expected.

In his opening comments, Mr Rudd said the election was "a clear choice on the economy, on jobs, on how we support families under pressure and how we support education and health". He said he offered a "new way to take Australia forward" as the country's economic mining boom begins to decline.

Mr Abbott, meanwhile, told viewers the election was not about personalities, but about deciding "who can make your future more secure".

"Mr Rudd talks about a new way. Well, if you want a new way you've got to choose a new government," he said.

The opposition leader immediately addressed the key election issue of immigration control, criticising the government's policies and saying his coalition would put an end to large numbers of people arriving in Australia by boat.

"No self-respecting country can hand over part of its immigration control programme to people smugglers," he said.

'Stop being evasive'

When challenged on his economic plans - which Mr Rudd says contain a A$70bn ($65bn: £42bn) gap - Mr Abbott said voters would "see in good time before polling day exactly how much we're going to spend".

Mr Rudd responded by saying: "Surely four weeks before an election he can stop being evasive" about how the shortfall will be made up.

The debate briefly touched on whether the leaders would take steps towards legalising gay marriage.

Mr Abbot said there had been a "fairly decisive" parliamentary vote against this a year ago, and it would not be a priority for his government.

Since Snowden leaked secret documents to the media, critics have called the NSA's domestic surveillance -- including a program that monitors the metadata of domestic phone calls -- a government overreach. Many of those same critics have asked the Obama administration and Congress to rein in the programs. "Given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives," Obama said during a news conference in the East Room of the White House.

Documents shed light on U.S. surveillance programs

But the president slammed the release of the information that has "come out in dribs and drabs," saying a general impression has taken hold "that we are somehow out there willy-nilly sucking information from everybody." At the same time, Obama sought to assure the public that there are safeguards in place, while acknowledging the need for transparency.

Among the steps being taken, according to the president: Working with Congress to pursue appropriate improvements of the telephone data program; reforming the secret court that approves that initiative; improving transparency to provide as much information as possible to the public, including the legal rationale for government collection activities; and appointing a high-level, independent group of outside experts to review surveillance technologies.

"There's no doubt Mr. Snowden's leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than if I had simply appointed this review board," the president said.

'Take a pause'

But Obama refused any characterization of Snowden as a "whistle-blower" or "patriot," saying there were "other avenues" the former NSA contractor could have taken instead of leaking national security surveillance information. Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, has been charged with three felony counts related to the leaks, including violations of the U.S. Espionage Act.

If Snowden believes his actions were right, "he can appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case," the president said. Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia, a move that further strained already tense relations between Washington and Moscow.

Diana visited Angola in support of the Halo Trust in 1997, not long before her death in a car crash in Paris. Images of her wearing protective gear as she witnessed mine-clearing efforts in the towns of Huambo and Kuito helped draw the world's attention to the suffering caused by landmines.

Her son's private visit to Angola comes three years after he traveled to Mozambique to see Halo's work there. "Prince Harry is visiting a number of demining teams across the region and will be touring minefields and meeting with beneficiaries of Halo's work," said the charity's chief executive, Guy Willoughby.

The trip will include a stop in the southern Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale -- which according to Halo is believed to be the most heavily mined town in Africa. The remote town, population 43,000, was heavily mined and attacked during Angola's long-running civil war -- and work to make it safe for its residents continues today. Halo has removed and destroyed 21,300 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines from the area so far, with its efforts steadily moving out from the town center to areas farther afield. Halo, which began its work in the country in 1994, employs more than 650 Angolan staff.

Its demining activities are focused in four of Angola's eighteen provinces -- Benguela, Bie, Huambo and Kuando Kubango. Its mine clearance work is increasingly focused on more rural areas, away from provincial centers, Halo says. As such areas are cleared, they can instead be used for growing crops, grazing animals or building houses. According to the charity, on average each hectare of land cleared benefits 11 families directly and 59 families indirectly.

Halo is also involved in the country's national disarmament program. Angola's protracted civil war, which broke out after it gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and finally ended in 2002, killed up to 1.5 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook. About 4 million people were internally displaced, more than half of them children, the United Nations said.

In early July, the U.K.'s National Audit Office investigated the severance packages of 60 BBC senior managers and found the company paid 14 of those managers larger amounts than they were entitled to by contract, costing taxpayers just over $1.5 million. Between April 1, 2005 and March 31, 2013, two-thirds of the senior managers who left the BBC were paid an inflation-adjusted $93 million in severance, the report found. In a statement, London's Metropolitan police said they are gathering information following allegations of misconduct in public office and fraud related to severance payments at the BBC. The authorities said they will decide whether or not to proceed with a full investigation in "due course."

A spokesperson for the BBC noted that the National Audit Office's report found no criminal wrongdoing when it investigated the company's severance payments earlier this year and has not been contacted by police on the matter.

When the report was released, the BBC Trust, which oversees the public broadcasting company on behalf of taxpayers, said some of the findings regarding the severance payments were "deeply worrying, particularly the failure, in the past, of the BBC Executive and its Remuneration Committee to always follow agreed policy and entitlement."

New York Times (NYT) chief executive Mark Thompson was the director general of the BBC during the time that many of the severance payments were made. He is scheduled to testify about the findings before Parliament on September 9.

Chief Executive Thorsten Heins and the company's board is increasingly coming around to the idea that taking BlackBerry private would give them breathing room to fix its problems out of the public eye, the sources said.

"There is a change of tone on the board," one of the sources said on Thursday.

No deal is imminent, however, and BlackBerry has not launched any kind of a sale process, the sources said. Even if it tried, BlackBerry could find it hard to come up with a buyer and the funding to go private. With the company still posting losses and bleeding subscribers, private equity firms and other buyers may not want to step up.

The company's shares have fallen more than 19 percent this year. Its market value has fallen to $4.8 billion, from $84 billion at its peak in 2008.

BlackBerry, which had been pinning its hopes for a turnaround on its new line of BlackBerry 10 devices, declined to comment. The sources declined to be named because these discussions are private.

BlackBerry's openness to consider a deal marks a radical shift in thinking at the once high-flying smartphone maker. Until recently, BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion and a pioneer in providing secured emails on handheld devices, had been bent on staying independent, betting its turnaround on its latest smartphones.

Last month, Heins said the company was on the right track and just needed more time to fix its problems. He said the company will unveil more devices that run on the BlackBerry 10 operating system over the next eight months.

The company has also been looking at options such as licensing its BlackBerry 10 software and other partnerships.

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry has recently had discussions with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners about potential collaboration in enterprise computing, one of the sources said.

Silver Lake is caught in a bruising $25 billion battle to take Dell Inc (DELL.O) private. Should it succeed in the Dell buyout, one possibility could be for it to collaborate with BlackBerry in mobile computing, where the PC maker has struggled to gain traction, the source said.

Texas-based Lavabit service has shut down but said legal reasons prevented it explaining why.

Correspondents say Lavabit appears to have been in a legal battle to stop US officials accessing customer details.

In addition, secure communications firm Silent Circle has shut its email service because messages cannot be kept wholly secret.

Web watchers

Mr Snowden, a former contractor to the American National Security Agency (NSA), has admitted leaking information about widespread US surveillance on electronic communications to the media.

He fled the US - where he now faces espionage charges - and has been granted temporary asylum in Russia.

Lavabit came under scrutiny following reports that Mr Snowden was using the service while holed-up in Moscow airport.

"I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," Mr Levison wrote in a letter posted on the Lavabit website.

He said he had decided to "suspend operations" but was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision.

"This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States," he wrote.

Silent Circle said it shut down its email service for both technical and political reasons. "Email as we know it... cannot be secure," wrote Jon Callas, co-founder and head of technology officer at Silent Circle, in a blogpost. "Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has."

By contrast, he said, the firm was keeping its secure voice and text services going because it had control over the infrastructure supporting them and could guarantee that messages were not intercepted or tampered with en route.

In addition, said Mr Callas, it was anticipation of future government calls to hand over customer details that prompted the Silent Mail shutdown.

"We see the writing (on) the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now," he said. "We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now.

Last month Apple was found guilty of conspiring with publishers to fix the price of e-books bought via iTunes.

It was ordered to terminate deals with five major companies and allow other e-book retailers to sell to iPad and iPhone users for the next two years.

The publishers say they are being punished by the restrictions.

Under agreements put in place between Apple and companies including Hatchett and Macmillan, electronic book price-fixing took place, creating unfair competition for other retailers, the court ruled last month.

At the time most of the publishers reached separate settlements totalling more than $150m (£96m) but Apple said it would fight the "false allegations".

According to the Associated Press news agency, the publishers' complaint says: "The provisions do not impose any limitation on Apple's pricing behaviour at all.

"Rather, under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish [publishers that settled in the case]."

Garner analyst Van Baker told AP that the ruling seemed "heavy-handed".

"It is basically putting a stake through a portion of Apple's business, and I confess to being surprised by that," he said.

"The Department of State ordered this drawdown due to specific threats concerning the U.S. consulate in Lahore," said a travel warning posted on the Department of State's website on Thursday.

The warning in Lahore, near Pakistan's border with India, comes two days after Washington evacuated some diplomats from Yemen and told its nationals to leave that country immediately.

The United States shut nearly two dozen missions across the Middle East after a worldwide alert on August 2, warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.