Samsung urged a note of caution for the future, despite announcing bumper profits for the last three months of 2012.

The two big drivers that powered the Korean super-manufacturer to record revenue of 56.06 trillion Korean won ($52.7bn, £33.3bn) at the end of 2012 are showing signs of decelerating. Samsung execs expect cooler markets and slower growth in 2013. Revenue was up 7 per cent on Q3 and up 19 percent on the same quarter the year before.

Chips and smartphones were sectors where Samsung made a killing in the Christmas quarter. But these two big engines of Samsung’s record Q4 2012 profits show signs of slowing down.

Profit pressures on chips and mobes

Chip and component sales showed pressure from the shrinking PC market, and it’s expected that Samsung may lose one of its key contracts in the mobile and tablet market. Apple is expected to shift its contract for iPhone and iPad chips away from Samsung as rivalry between the two gets more intense.

In the mobile sector, Samsung has been rampantly successful and is by far the biggest manufacturer of smartphones in the world. But the explosive growth of the mobile and tablet market is expected to become more measured which means that returns in the sector will lessen.

The booming area for mobile is likely to be in emerging markets for low and mid-end products where profit margins are tighter.

A squeeze on profits from Samsung’s mobile sector was already visible this quarter: though sales were up quarter on quarter – rising 4 per cent to 27.23 trillion won – operating profit was down. Operating profit fell 3.4 percent to 5.44 trillion won, compared to the three months before, showing that margins are already constricting in this sector.

Strong product mixes have kept Samsung afloat in even difficult areas of consumer electronics, such as LCD screens and consumer electronics. High-end fridges did well in the US; cheaper TVs did well in Africa; and LCD screens sold strongly in China. But while the company is in good health, Samsung is holding its total investments in 2013 steady at 2012 levels – a contrast to previous years where it ramped up spending, and a sign of caution about the year ahead.

What do all new social apps need to quickly build a community? Support from Facebook. What will Twitter’s new Vine app be prohibited from having? Support from Facebook

Primarily, a normal flow is the default scheme used for any element on a web page. Therefore, the normal flow is applied to any element which does not specify a position, fixed or absolute, and thus is not floated. For example, a block of boxes will flow vertically starting at the top of their containing blocks that will be placed directly below the preceding one. However, the inline boxes will flow horizontally from left to right. An element could also be set to normal flow if the user is unable to control this element. In such a case, the normal flow will remove certain positioning that may have been applied to an element. The limitation of the normal flow position scheme could be using the properties such as top, right, bottom and left which the user is unable to apply. For this reason, the user agent may treat the positioning of the box as static on the root elements. The example below illustrates the use of fixed positioning in a style sheet document:

.maindiv {
position: static;
}

If the position is set to relative, the positioned box will retain its normal flow size, which will include the original space reserved, including the line breaks. In other words, the surrounding boxes will be positioned accordingly, and the box will be moved according to its offset properties. However, the re-positioned box may cause an overlap onto other surrounding boxes. Browsers will control these overlap instances differently as the specification is unclear as to how this situation should be dealt with. In order to control the overlap situation, the z-index property could be used. The offset values of a relative positioning scheme could be specified by using top, right, left and bottom style properties. In contrast, normal flow style properties would not be functional. The value of the offset properties in the relative positioning scheme will be interpreted into a distance, and the corresponding box’s outer edge would move to its original position which will be the normal flow. The limitation of the absolute positioning scheme is the opposing offsets. For example, when the left and right style properties are specified, the value of one has to be not exact to the negative of the other, as this could ignore the right setting.

Conversely, the width, top, bottom and height setting could also cause an offset property to be ignored in the same way. Another limitation of using a relative positioning scheme could be if the width element is specified (e.g., width: 50%); Internet Explorer positions the width based on the parent element instead of a correct positioning element. The example below illustrates the use of a relative positioning scheme in a style sheet:

.div2 {
position: relative;
top: 40px;
left: -80px;
}

The absolute positioning scheme could be applied to any element which has its property set as absolute or fixed. In other words, the box would be removed from the normal flow position scheme and thus not have any effects on the boxes within that flow. For this reason, the floated elements and absolute positioned elements will be treated as a block-level element. Therefore, the absolute positioning and floating elements will contain a new containing block to any descendants, such as those elements contained by the absolute position. The position of the absolute scheme will be determined from its offset values; top, right, bottom and left. Furthermore, the offset values will function in contrast to the relative positioned scheme. However, the offset value in relative positioning is measured in the normal flow position elements. In contrast, the absolute positioned element will be the offset from its container block. For this reason, absolute positioning will enable flexibility by the user by means of placing elements within their desired location. The limitation of an absolute positioning scheme could be if the elements are incorrectly used or misused; this could limit the flexibility of the web page. The example below illustrates the use of an absolute positioning scheme in a style sheet:

.div2b {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
right: 0;
width: 300px;
}

The fixed positioning scheme is similar to the absolute positioning scheme. For example, the positioning of the elements is calculated the same as with the absolute positioning scheme. The only difference with a fixed position scheme is that the containing block will be established from the viewport of the browser, and other surrounding elements would not be affected. For this reason, a fixed positioned element will not move when the web page is scrolled up or down; in contrast, the other elements will move. Various browsers will support fixed positioned elements in a different way. For example, Netscape 6.0 and Internet Explorer will not support all fixed positioned elements. However, both of these browsers do support fixed background images.

Users will need to be cautious when placing fixed elements within a web page. For instance, if the fixed elements are used at the top of the page and the client prints the page, the top fixed element will appear at the top section of every printed page. For this reason, the web designer could use media types that will control the way the printed page will display fixed elements. The limitation of the fixed position scheme could be the paged media boxes which contain fixed positions. Therefore, the paged media will be repeated on every page. However, this limitation could be an advantage for web designers if they use paged media as a signature at the bottom of every single page. A web designer could also use a fixed element scheme for the navigation bar to be fixed to a location for every page. For this reason, users will be able to easily access content and navigate appropriately as they scroll through the web pages. The example below illustrates the use of a fixed positioning scheme in a style sheet:

.navbar {
position: fixed;
right: 0;
top: 60%;
width: 10em;
margin-top: -4.5em;
}

The float property could be used on an element, but special rules would apply to the floating elements. Firstly, a box is positioned vertically, and it will be the same in contrast to normal flow; the top aligned width will be according to the top of the current box. However, horizontally, there will be a shift to the far left or right of its containing block. For this reason, the content has the ability to flow alongside of the floated elements. The floating elements could be set with the right, left, none or inherit property. If the box is floated, the width needs to be defined, i.e., implicitly or explicitly. Conversely, the box will be filled with its containing block horizontally, in comparison with non-floated contents, without leaving any space for other contents that will flow around. For this reason, floated boxes need to be treated as a block of boxes; in such a case, there will be no difference with the inline elements that are defined. The vertical margins within a floating element will not collapse with the margins of the boxes below or above. However, given a normal flow scheme, the boxes would collapse. The limitation of the floating elements could be the floating boxes overlapping the block level of boxes nearby. However, this situation could be overcome by using the clear property. In other words, the clear: right setting will move the box down below the floating box. The example below illustrates the use of a floating element scheme in a style sheet:

. img1{
float: left;
width: 120px;
height: 80px;
margin: 5px;}

In conclusion, the differences of position schemes have been identified and how they could be used has been illustrated. The findings above illustrate that browsers support elements differently depending on their version. For this reason, web designers need to be cautious when using elements which are not supported by Internet Explorer or Netscape as their users could be affected. This suggests that there could be bugs within certain browsers or that specifications could be too difficult to cover the situation. Although CSS3 is not supported by all browsers to date, many web designers will shift to using this powerful tool in the future. For this reason, CSS3 has become increasingly popular by allowing web designers to make changes easily rather than by using JavaScript plugins or by creating different versions of the same image. As some browsers do not support CSS3 elements, web designers could put the CSS3 standard below the standard version that will allow the browser to render styling elements.

Judging by the post-launch social buzz about the products, some of Apple’s shine might be wearing off, said John Feland, CEO and founder of Argus Insights.

“Our tracking of social capital shows that the consumer market is falling out of love with Apple,” he told MacNewsWorld.

Still, the company’s stock is up 55 percent on the year and remains the leader in market capitalization over its next highest competitor, ExxonMobile, and there seems to be excitement generating around the stock about a possible iPad Mini.

Lift from Rumors

Rumors of the smaller iPad heated up this week, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Apple ordered 10 million devices from its Asian supplier. The report indicated the new tablet could hit shelves just in time to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7 during the holiday shopping season. While it’s no question Apple has the ecosystem and consumer base needed to compete on that level, the company hasn’t named a price point, said Feland.

Without knowing if it plans to launch a product that could rival the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 in price (both retail for around $199) it’s impossible to know whether an iPad Mini could be another record-seller for Apple. Even though Apple might not like taking lessons from tech competitors, it only has to look as far as HP to see how badly a premium-priced product could fall short, said Feland. The TouchPad, originally priced at $500 for the 16GB model, failed to meet expectations and was pulled after a short time on the market.

“The bombing of the HP Touchpad showed the chink in Apple’s armor, price,” he told MacNewWorld. “At $99, consumers snapped up whatever inventory HP and their retail partners had because at the end of the day, people want tablets to surf the Web, watch movies, read email and play games.”

Trouble in China?

Apple’s stock decline isn’t the only negative news surrounding the company. Workers at Foxconn, one of the major assembling factories for the company’s smartphones, were reportedly overwhelmed with new quality demands meant to prevent casing scratches on the iPhone 5, according to a report from China Labor Watch. As many as 4,000 may have walked off the job and then returned to work, which could cause a delay in iPhone 5 availability, according to the report.

Foxconn denied any workers were on strike and said the incidents were under control. But part of Apple’s decline on the stock market could be because of supply chain delay of some sort, said Shaw Wu, analyst at Sterne Agee, although he remained confident Apple would keep up with demand.

“Our sources indicate that the iPhone 5 is not easy to build with Apple’s very high standards where it aims to produce each model to be an exact replica, and where variance is measured in microns,” Wu told MacNewsWorld. “It is overwhelming demand that is causing lead times to remain at three to four weeks and low stock at the retail level despite increased production.”

Paying for Standards

Foxconn and Apple are no strangers to labor disputes, having previously been the subject of consumer outrage for allowing unfair working conditions and wages. Apple has since taken measures to improve conditions at the Taiwanese plant, including lessening overtime, raising wages and ensuring better factory safety.

This time around, however, the incident was different, said Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch. Whereas previously labor rights and consumer advocacy groups argued on behalf of improving working conditions at Foxconn and other major supply chain factories, this time the protests started within Foxconn as a direct result of quality control standards imposed by Apple, said Qiang.

“This incident totally differs from those in the past,” he told MacNewsWorld. “When workers cannot meet those high standards, they are returned by quality inspectors, and those inspectors are getting beat up. Because they were afraid if they continued to carry on with those high standards they would get beat up again, they went on strike.”

Apple has not responded to the claims from China Labor Watch. If it does, said Qiang, it should be to acknowledge that there are challenges involved with producing top-quality iPhones, iPads and iPods.

“If Apple wants higher standards, it should give the workers proper training, benefits and wages so they can meet those standards,” he said.

Apple did not respond to our request for comment on any aspect of this story.

However, there are some success stories: IBM and Apple lead the field of firms that were reborn to become stronger than they initially were, and both arguably lead their respective industries in valuation and financial performance.

The idea that you can come back is driving Meg Whitman’s effort to rebuild HP, and I got an update on her efforts last week. The company is making solid progress, showcasing that Whitman’s experiences at eBay and Bain Capital equipped her with many of the necessary skills to drive a positive result.

Some key lessons from the Apple and IBM efforts are being applied, but some are perhaps being forgotten. I’d like to make sure they are captured this week in this exploration of the science and art of corporate rebirth.

I’ll close with my product of the week: the HP ElitePad, which showcases what may be the most aggressive Windows 8 tablet to hit the market and one that nicely blends future innovation with past success. It’s kind of a metaphor for what Whitman needs to accomplish at HP.

Apple’s Lessons Applied

One of the things former Apple CEO Steve Jobs lamented before his return to Apple — and drove after he took over again — was the company’s handling of design. Before coming back, he was very critical of how badly Apple was building products, many of which were increasingly copies of what others were building and effectively cheap crap. When he came back, he cut most of them and the related departments and made design a primary driving goal for the company. It paid off massive dividends.

Meg Whitman came out strongly pointing to this same element as important and then her team developed a series of products that were some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The new Spectre, Envy and ElitePad products show a consistency and design effort that are rare in a typical PC company and very consistent with Jobs’ own efforts. They remain a milestone on a path, but I think Jobs himself, as well as both of the HP founders, would have been proud of the direction.

Apple Lesson Missed

Steve Jobs also knew the importance of image and the need to control what was said about his company. He aggressively closed off all leaks from inside the firm (something that Tim Cook appears to have relaxed to his own detriment) and put in place marketing programs that dwarfed the industry in terms of funding and execution. He had Apple looking more successful long before it was, and he knew the importance of having image lead reality.

Folks who believed Apple was a success were more likely to invest in it and buy its products, thus creating a self-fulfilling sequence. (It is also no secret that former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner put much of his initial effort into corporate marketing funding and staffing early on.)

While HP is showing progress in this direction, the firm is still leaking from inside and it has not executed a program to rebuild the company’s image, which often seems more controlled by Oracle — and others — than HP. Oracle has done a substantial amount of damage using Apple-like skills, which is not a surprise given Oracle’s CEO and Jobs were the closest of friends.

Jobs actually got control of Apple’s image before he fixed the products, and it was the combination of both that ensured his result. There was no real marketing presence at the HP analyst meeting, and that likely contributed to the stock price decline that occurred during it.

Jobs learned that perception trumps reality, and while HP is making organizational changes that suggest a fix, that fix isn’t yet evident and Whitman didn’t speak to marketing this time.

IBM Lessons Learned

The most important person in a turnaround initially isn’t the CEO — it is the CFO, who’s responsible for making sure the company can both survive the process and execute financially to the plan. In effect, the CFO has a bigger stick than the CEO does, because the CFO can control the budget. Jerry York was a godsend to IBM and he drove much of the initial rapid progress and positive results. When he left to attempt a Chrysler turnaround, IBM’s efforts nearly stalled and took far longer to complete.

Cathie Lesjak, HP’s CFO, is undertaking a similar Herculean effort, and the metrics that are being used to demonstrate HP’s improvement are largely under her control. She has proven to be both one of the most consistently right HP executives over time and one of the most capable — and Whitman and HP’s board are giving Cathie most of the tools she needs to get the jobs done.

IBM Lessons Missed

Gerstner identified early the people he could trust and those he couldn’t. He made sure he had a team that was hand-selected to turn IBM around, and he had Jerry York solidify the team. Rebels were managed out of the company, often very rapidly, because while internal disagreement was healthy, internal attempts to cripple the turnaround effort or make Gerstner look bad were not.

This was something that Carly Fiorina did not do when she ran HP, which contributed greatly to her failure, because she was betrayed from inside the company several times. In her case, you could generally see which executives were behind her and which weren’t just by observing their behavior at HP events.

At the HP analyst event, once all of the executives were on stage it seemed obvious which ones were all in and which ones thought Whitman needed to find a new job. From casual body language to a tendency to talk over Whitman, there was at least one executive who appeared to be looking for an opportunity to rebel. With Carly Fiorina, a number of us regretted not pointing out earlier one of the executives who would later betray her, and I hope Whitman doesn’t repeat that mistake.

Wrapping Up: If Only Presidential Candidates Behaved as Well

There three things that stand out in my mind about the HP event that bode well for the company. Whitman demonstrated an impressive knowledge of the company and its problems, she articulated a detailed plan to address the problems identified, and she reported impressive early progress in executing this plan. There is little doubt now in my mind that she is the right person for this job.

But — and this is consistent with her campaign for California governor — she still needs to understand the critical importance of owning the firm’s image, and she has to unify her team. Weakness in either of these areas could destroy what she has accomplished and derail her future plans.

In the end I was left with the idea that if the presidential candidates, either of them, could present problems, solutions, or progress as eloquently I’d be a much happier American. While not perfect, this is an impressive first-year start to what could be another amazing turnaround.

roduct of the Week: the HP ElitePad

In a few weeks, we’ll be up to our armpits in tablets running Windows 8, and because Microsoft set a very tight specification, many of them will look like identical twins. I’m a big fan of unique products, and the HP ElitePad falls into this category. It goes back to HP’s past to pull forward an idea that I still think is brilliant.

The HP ElitePad uses a series of smart sleeves called “expansion jackets,” which change the utility of the tablet so that it is optimized for a particular use. Need massive battery life? Put on a battery sleeve. Need a keyboard? There’s a keyboard sleeve.

I expect folks who need a better camera, or a scanner, or a space alien detector (for my Men in Black friends, yes I KNOW you are out there) will one day be able to easily slip on the appropriate sleeve (once they are all created) and suddenly transform the device into something that is uniquely capable.

I was always fascinated by the idea of a modular computer; in fact, IBM came up with the idea and Compaq/HP executed it with the old iPaq PDA. Of course, were it me, I likely would have called the ElitePad the iPaq 3 just to piss off Apple (the “iPaq” name precedes iPod and iPad).

I can imagine a military sleeve, a car diagnostics sleeve, a medical sleeve in the product’s future. In short, this is the most un-iPad product coming to market and the most unlike any other tablet, and it is arguably both the most innovative and the most uniquely HP. As a result the HP ElitePad is my product of the week.

Researchers at Tufts University announced Sunday they’ve created an electrical motor many thousands of times smaller than the width of a single human hair, a breakthrough they claim could eventually lead to innovations in healthcare and technology.

The microscopic motor is the size of a single molecule and is electrically charged, an innovative feat since previous single-molecule-sized motors were powered by chemicals or light.

The distinction is important. With a light or chemically charged motor, scientists struggle with precision in adding chemicals to a clump of trillions of molecules. In that scenario, the practicality of charging the motors decreases.

With the Tufts research, though, a team led by Associate Professor in Chemistry Charles Sykes found that electricity could be used with precision and accuracy to control a single molecule, even when additional molecules sat just a nanometer away.

The team says the ability to control a single-molecule motor could lead to innovations in more precise medical and engineering technology and could lead to tinier, advanced digital devices.

“An interesting thing would be to get this into opto electronics, where you are interfacing light with electronics. With the tiny chargers on the motors, you have a tiny rotating motor and you could create something that would give off light, or a tiny microwave generator or tiny antenna,” Sykes told TechNewsWorld.

Big Technological Steps

The research, published in a recent edition of Nature Nanotechnology, was made possible in thanks to huge advances in research technology such as the scanning tunneling microscope, which uses electrons instead of light.

The scientists sent an electrical current through a butyl methyl sulfide molecule using the tip of the microscope as the molecule rested on a copper surface. In that position, a single atom worked as a pivot.

From there, the scientists could measure the molecule as it spun to prove the movements were directed by the electrical charge.

Long Way to Go

While the implications could be far-reaching in the technological field, Sykes and other chemistry experts say applications are still a long way off.

“It’s definitely fundamental work right now,” said Skyes.

One reason for that is the extreme temperature needed to measure the molecules as they spin. Since higher temperatures increase the rate at which the motors charge, the scientists had to keep the molecules in a chilly environment.

Even at 100 Kelvin, or about negative 279 degrees Fahrenheit, the molecules spin at an astonishing million spins per second. To have the capacity to measure what was going on, the research team had to keep temperatures closer to 5 degrees Kelvin, or about negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit

To apply the information found in the study to practical applications in medical or engineering fields, scientists must figure out how to operate at easier-to-attain temperatures, an issue Sykes believes is conquerable.

“I think we just have to be more clever with the chemistry of the motors to have different molecules and stronger bonds,” said Sykes.

However, different problems may exist with the practicality of this newly revealed research.

“Low temperature is not the only serious problem for applications of the phenomenon,” Alex Vologodskii, research scholar of chemistry at New York University, told TechNewsWorld.

If advances in technology do come through, Sykes envisions the motors being used in medical devices, perhaps to pump fluid through the pipes to better pinpoint a spot where medicine is headed or to sense the local environment for a clearer diagnosis. Those applications, though, are far from fruition.

“There is no reason to talk about practical applications at the moment,” said Vologodskii.

It’s been another wild and crazy week for the security community.

Scotland Yard arrested two suspected members of Anonymous and LulzSec Thursday.

Meanwhile, the major players in the browser market – Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Microsoft(Nasdaq: MSFT) and the Mozilla Foundation – have chopped Dutch certificate DigiNotar off at the knees, apparently because it was slow to warn that hackers had broken into its network and issued rogue SSL security certificates.

Further, a security researcher released information that hackers could use to leverage Google’s massive bandwidth and launch large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) and SQL injection attacks.

The Star Wars Galaxies gaming site was also hacked this past week, and the hacker posted the user IDs and passwords of 23,000 of the site’s members on the Web.

Finally, a survey by security vendor Veriphyr has found that healthcare organizations are suffering data breaches hand over fist.

Ho, Hackers! The Game’s Afoot!

Scotland Yard arrested two suspects in separate counties Thursday, reportedly under suspicion of conducting online attacks under the handle “Kayla.”

“Kayla” was allegedly among those behind the February Anonymous intrusions perpetrated on HBGary Federal, a company claiming to provide security to the United States federal government.

The attackers defaced HBGary’s website, stole and published 71,000 internal emails from the company, and posted a message denouncing the HBGary.

Lack of Speed Kills

On Monday, Google learned that some users of its encrypted services in Iran suffered attempts at man-in-the-middle attacks, where someone tries to intercept communications between two parties.

The attacker used a fake SSL certificate issued by Dutch root certificate authority DigiNotar.

It seems an intruder had broken into DigiNotar’s systems back in July and stolen up to 200 rogue, or fraudulent, SSL certificates, some for major domains.

DigiNotar had known about the breach since July 19 but apparently had not disclosed the information.

In response, Google, Mozilla and Microsoft all revoked trust in the DigiNotar root certificate in their browsers.

“These certificates could be used as part of attacks designed to harvest user Gmail credentials and gain access to sensitive data,” Norman Sadeh, cofounder of Wombat Security Technologies, told TechNewsWorld.

Disabling DigiNotar’s root certificate authority was justified because “security across the Internet is a shared responsibility and our root certificate authorities must be held to the highest standard,” Don DeBolt, director of threat research at Total Defense, told TechNewsWorld.

Google spokesperson Chris Gaither declined comment.

Leveraging Google’s Bandwidth for Hacks

A security researcher has disclosed on the IHTeam blog how attackers can use Google’s servers to launch a DDoS attack.

Hackers can also use the technique to launch SQL injection attacks, one of the top 10 vectors of attack, according to the tester, who goes by the handle “r00t.ati.”

The tester posted the information Monday after Google’s security center had failed to respond to a notification of the threat sent Aug. 10.

Google posted a message on the IHTeam blog Friday apologizing and stating it has tweaked its security.

“This is a serious issue, and even if Google fixes these two vulnerable pages, bad actors will likely comb Google’s pages from now on looking for a similar vulnerability,” Total Defense’s DeBolt remarked.

“My understanding is, this is not a software vulnerability, but rather a description of service misuse that we have not seen in practice,” Google spokesperson Jay Nancarrow told TechNewsWorld.

Multiple social networking and online translator sites could also be used by hackers to launch attacks in the same way, Nancarrow pointed out.

The Force Isn’t Strong With This One

This past week, a hacker broke into the Star Wars Galaxies gaming site, stole the user IDs and passwords of 23,000 members, and posted them on the Internet.

All the passwords are in plain text, the hacker said.

SWGalaxies isn’t the only gaming site to have been victimized in recent months. Earlier this year, the Sega website and the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation Network were hacked, with data on more than 100 million users stolen in each case.

Are game sites more vulnerable than others? Not necessarily, but they often aren’t as heavily fortified as, say, banking sites. That needs to change, Todd Feinman, CEO of Identity Finder, told TechNewsWorld.

“Any institution that stores personal information, including a password, should be held to a higher standard and be accountable for loss of sensitive data,” Feinman stated.

Healthcare and Privacy

More than 70 percent of respondents to an online survey on privacy breaches concerning protected health information have suffered at least one breach in the past 12 months, according to a study conducted by security vendor Veriphyr.

Hospitals and health systems constituted 52 percent of the 90 respondents, Veriphyr CEO Alan Norquist told TechNewsWorld. Half the responding organizations had more than 1,000 employees.

The two leading types of breaches “involve legitimate insiders misusing their legitimate access to patient data by accessing the records for reasons other than healthcare,” Norquist said.

My first thought was that someone was engaging in click-bait journalism. Even the title of the post — “Android GPLv2 termination worries – one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3″ — is something I would expect from anti-Android trolls, not the Free Software Foundation.

The conclusion at the bottom of the article, that companies using Android should urge Linux developers to switch to the GPLv3, is so bad it’s not even wrong. It betrays a singular unawareness of the mobile market that Android serves.

Mobile phone manufacturers don’t make different silicon for each market — instead, they customize the software so that the phone can be type-approved by regulators and carriers in each country individually. Things like maximum transmitter output, radio channels, and how the device interacts with the cellular network all need to be customizable, and the device needs to be tamper-resistant.

A GPLv3 Android phone, with all the decryption keys available to any user on demand, is a non-starter. No manufacturer will make such an insecure-by-design device. No telco would put the stability of its network at such risk. No informed consumer would want one.

So what about those GPLv2 “permanent” terminations?

“Take-it-or-leave-it” licenses like the GPL are a form of contract known variously as a “contract of adhesion,” “boilerplate contract” or “standard form contract.” As such, they are subject to special rules that require any ambiguities to always be resolved in favor of the recipient (contra proferentem). This “you made your bed, you sleep in it” approach is the same one we learned when we were kids — whoever cuts the birthday cake can’t complain about getting a smaller slice.

Contrary to the article’s claim of “permanent termination” for violating the GPLv2 license, it’s very easy to get a new license to resume distribution of a GPLv2 program. Just download or otherwise get a new copy, as per section 6 of the GPLv2, and you automatically receive a new license grant, which is valid for as long as you remain in compliance.

While this doesn’t “whitewash” any problems that arose under the old license grant, it’s clear that the new license cannot have additional restrictions, such as a past license termination, imposed on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. (emphasis added)

What does contra proferentum mean for entities that had a GPLv2 license instance terminated? Among other things, if they return to compliance, they have every right to rely on the automatic license grant provisions of section 6 of the GPL when they obtain a new copy of the program.

The word “permanently” never appears in the license, and any ambiguity as to whether the termination of a previous license under section 4 prohibits them from getting a new license must be resolved in their favor. Not that there’s much room for ambiguity — “Each time … receives a license” makes it clear that every copy comes with its own license instance.

Quick Summary for the TL;DR Set

While it is true that section 4 of the GPLv2 license terminates your right to redistribute when you fall out of compliance, section 6 is equally clear when it states that you get a valid license from the copyright-holder with each new copy you receive. Resuming distribution is simply a matter of returning to compliance and downloading a new copy.

It’s true that this won’t “fix” previous compliance problems; depending on their nature, they may have to be negotiated with the copyright-holders or decided by a court, but the threat of the ultimate “big stick” — of never being able to resume distribution with the new license automatically granted under section 6 — is an attempt to impose restrictions that neither a plain reading of the license nor the rules dealing with take-it-or-leave-it contracts allows.

My First Email

I went to the source to try to clarify both points — changing Linux to GPLv3 and terminations under GPLv2 licenses. I wrote the author, Brett Smith, on August 22:

Hi: 

In an article posted on the fsf website, you wrote the following: “Companies that sell products that use Android can help out by encouraging the developers of Linux to make the switch to GPLv3.”

Unlike most GPL-licensed software, linux is licensed as “GPL version 2,” not “GPL version 2, or at your option any later version.”

Linux simply cannot ever be switched to GPLv3 without a significant rewrite, because at least some of the people whose code is in linux are now dead, and others will refuse because they have no problem with GPLv2 license terms.

This has been pointed out time and again. Under copyright law — which is the basis of the GPL — Linus doesn’t have the ability or the right to take code written and owned by other people, that was licensed by them exclusively under the GPLv2, and change the license to “GPLv2 or later.”

It would almost be easier (and would certainly avoid the whole “derived works” problem) to switch to BSD. Fortunately, there is no need to consider that — the “problem” of forever losing the right to redistribute even after you are back in compliance simply doesn’t exist.

The only requirement for being allowed to redistribute under the GPLv2 is that you are currently in compliance with the license, and this is how everyone except the “usual suspects” have been treating it on a case-by-case level. There is simply nothing in the GPLv2 license to prevent someone who is currently in compliance from redistributing, and it is in nobody’s interest to imply otherwise.

Unfortunately, your article has already attracted the attention of people, and is generating FUD around Linux usage, as “proof” that Linux is unsafe for business.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test, an app from Ookla, is available for free at the App Store.

For the most part, I barely notice the incoming speed of my Internet data connections on my iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Sure, if I want to download something large, I make sure I’m on a WiFi connection. If I’m in a car (riding as a

passenger), I’ll think twice about attempting to download a bunch of email out of range of an AT&T (NYSE: T) 3Gtower.

But sometimes — usually when I’m streaming a video or really need to get some work done — it’s painfully obvious that the tiny invisible blips of data are not riding the waves very fast at all, for no discernible reason. In fact, I’ve had poorNetflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) streaming response while using a WiFi connection only to turn off WiFi on my iPhone 4 and stream via AT&T’s cellular data service instead — with much better results.

This used to be sort of trial and error, hit and miss. But now there’s an app to help you better understand what sort of Internet data movement performance you can expect: Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test by Ookla.

This free app works much like the widely and wildly popular desktop browser-based version atSpeedtest.net. You start the test, which sends some sort of meaningless download data to your desktop (or in this case, iPhone) while the app measures the speed at which you’re able to gobble the data. Then it reverses and uploads a smaller bit of data.

As with most home Internet connections, at least in the U.S., the download speeds are far faster than the upload speeds. I’m not sure where the bottleneck or tech limitations are with this; I just recognize it as a fact of the data plans, most notably seen when a regular consumer is surprised at how long it takes to upload a simple video.

Back to Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test

The Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test app uses Ookla’s massive global infrastructure to minimize the impact of Internet congestion and latency when it tests your bandwith. I’m not sure what this means, exactly, but I get the impression that Speedtest.net has some brains that decide which servers to connect you to in order to try to get a reasonably accurate measure of your true download/upload speeds.

For example, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to connect you to a small overloaded server in Antarctica that’s trying to communicate through a tiny pipe, nor does it make sense to connect you to servers with all sorts of switches and hops in between you and the server. Technically, a blip of data ought to be moving so quickly that thousands of miles mean nothing. But really, what all this means is that you’ll likely see the Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test app connect you to a regional server for your test. The default server chosen in my tests has been from a city about 80 miles away.

In my home, I tend to get my best bandwidth during the morning hours, but as the afternoon wears on, it seems as if my bandwidth falls off a cliff. I’m guessing that every kid in my neighborhood, in the city, in the county, and in the state, et al, either gets home from school and starts playing video games on Xbox Live or starts streaming some kid flick from Netflix. Or maybe it’s not the kids, but if I’m thinking about downloading a video to buy on iTunes … let’s just say that I don’t usually bother attempting it from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

In fact, I’ve had a roomful of family over during the holidays, and when we all finally agreed on which HD movie to rent on my Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) TV, we realized that, oops, this puppy will be ready to watch in two hours.

For some people with wicked-fast Internet service plans, this is never an issue. For those of us unwilling to shell out big bucks for high-speed — or who are located in areas not served with high-speed options — the Speedtest.net mobile app will give you a quick way to judge your likely bandwidth, even if you’re sitting over at your friend’s house watching football or thinking about downloading a movie to watch while sitting in an airport waiting for your flight.

The Results

During one test in the wee hours of the morning, my download speed via my home-based DSLservice (rated at 3.0 Mbps) delivered 2.21 Mbps to my iPhone 4. Not bad. I turned off WiFi and tried AT&T directly and got a paltry 0.43 Mbps download. Wow. I was shocked at the difference. Obviously, I expect WiFi to usually be faster, particularly when I’m browsing the Apple App Store. But this was a massive difference.

What about uploads? The WiFi delivered 0.55 Mbps in upload speed while AT&T let me push 0.24 Mbps.

What about bars and signal strength? When just using AT&T, I realized that I was in an area of my house that only gave me two bars of signal strength to my iPhone 4. With more bars, might I get a faster response? I moved to a couch where I get four bars and ran the test again, just a few minutes after the first test. The result? Worse. I got 0.27 Mbps on the download and 0.04 Mbps on the upload. I don’t doubt that signal strength can influence your upload and download speeds, but I’m guessing that factors beyond your control, like perhaps how the people around you consume data, will have a larger effect your personal bandwidth.

Bottom Line

All in all, the Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test app won’t actually fix any bandwidth problems, but it will alert you to possible issues with your data connections no matter where you go. For this reason, I count it among the pack of utility apps you’ll want to have on hand, just in case. As a practical solution, if you need some evidence to use in an argument with an Internet service provider in an effort to get a faster connection or a refund, this data won’t technically help you. But from a practical standpoint, companies sometimes respond to customers who seem to have at least some data that backs up their righteous anger.

Or, you might want to have it on hand to help you pick a local coffee shop that’s better able to suit your Internet-guzzling needs.

We have crazy months from time to time, but August will likely go down in history as one of the biggest tech news months of any year. From the torpedoing of Android by Google(Nasdaq: GOOG), to the off-again, on-again TouchPad sales, to the departure of Steve Jobs, to the slashing of Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) US$1.3 billion settlement, to the…

Well I’ll get to all this in a moment, and I’m sure we are all glad to look back at the insane month of August.

I’ll end with my product of the week: the first five-door hatchback that I might actually be tempted to buy, the Audi A7.

HP’s Do-Over Month

August was the month that I think HP (NYSE: HPQ) would like to do over. Pretty much every time I turned around, I was trying to explain something it did. It may have had good reasons, but with its valuation down sharply, its execution left a bit to be desired.

The biggest was its getting out of, er selling, er spinning out, the PC business. Now to be clear, nothing will be changing at all in the next 12 to 18 months, and then you’ll only know the plan — which will likely take three to 24 months to execute (depending on the details). So there should have be no news here, certainly nothing actionable.

Yet by announcing it was thinking of doing something big, it scared the crap out of buyers (both consumers and businesses) and investors, and put a smile on the face of Michael Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and his peers at the other PC firms. The reason it did this was that the plan to develop a plan had leaked out, and given this would be clearly material, it needed to avoid an SEC event. Boy, if there was ever a firm that should borrow Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) “loose lips sink ships” posters, it is HP.

That alone would have been enough to cause HP to stand out, but it also discontinued its TouchPad and then un-discontinued it so it could discontinue it again.

Now HP made a ton of mistakes bringing the TouchPad to market, from the name it chose to the method used for the merger with Palm (more than 80 percent of mergers like this are unsuccessful).

Then Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) threatened to send a ton of unsold TouchPads back, and HP pulled the plug — this despite the fact that most reviewers I know placed this crippled product right behind the iPad, suggesting the second generation (which now won’t exist) could have kicked some Apple butt.

Then it un-pulled the plug because pulling the plug created too many short-term problems. The whole thing had some folks even questioning whether HP could run a data center.

Who would have thought that selling more tablets than Apple did iPads in a given period would be a bad thing?

Oracle Out of Luck

HP’s mortal enemy Oracle had a very strange month as well. There was the filing it made in the Oracle/HP litigation that must have been made to make it look like Oracle’s attorneys were doing something to justify their hourly charges.

They maintained that Oracle wouldn’t have settled with HP on Hurd’s hiring if Oracle had known HP was going to hire on old (like more than a decade old) Oracle CEO as chairman and an ex-SAP (Oracle competitor) CEO as the new HP CEO. These things were so not related, it put a new meaning on the term “throwing sh*t against the wall.” Seriously Oracle, no one was planning on pulling the plug on Itanium; this won’t fix that.

Adding to this impression is the latest news that Oracle had its $1.3B judgment against SAP(NYSE: SAP) overturned. That’s not chump change, and the attached pleadings would indicate that Oracle didn’t meet its burden. It is really tough to lose on appeal like this. It is great to see a legal team really step up.

OK, I shouldn’t kid about this because Larry is likely running around shooting attorneys this week. Wonder if he wants any help?

Speaking of help, Oracle fell under bribery investigation. Now I used to be an internal auditor, and bribery charges like this are a bit of an inside joke. You see, to do business in some countries, you have to use bribery. The only other choice is to exit the country, and no one — including the U.S. government — wants to you to do that.

On top of that, the cause is that the politicians and bureaucrats who require the bribes are too powerful to touch. So this is kind of a Russian roulette tax; virtually no one goes to jail — instead you pay a hefty fine and then are allowed to go on your way. You do this hoping the next company caught won’t be you (the Russian roulette part). In effect, it just became Oracle’s turn to be punished for doing something pretty much everyone agrees they have to do.

Google Buys Motorola

Boy, after Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) experience with the Zune, Apple’s with licensing MacOS, and IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) with OS/2, if there’s one hard rule in tech, it’s that doing hardware while trying to license software is a losing battle. No, that isn’t right — it is typically a multibillion-dollar disaster. So what does Google — the company that hasn’t met a Microsoft mistake it doesn’t repeat — do? It buys Motorola and announces “Android Will Stay Open.” Which in tech speak means it probably won’t be open much longer.

Suddenly Samsung – the company that hasn’t met an OS it doesn’t like – is looking to buy WebOS from HP. Boy, if there was ever a platform that didn’t need any more drama, it’s Android.

August also saw the Samsung Galaxy Tab get blocked and unblocked in a running battle across Europe, which also likely contributed to Samsung’s interest in a less litigation-prone platform. One accountant argued Google did it for the tax breaks. Sure it did.

Steve Jobs Leaves Apple

I’ve said plenty about this before (The Day the Magic Died), but Jobs is not only the glue that holds Apple together. It is largely his design influence that is keeping us from going back to cheap white box computers and largely uninteresting smartphones.

His exit as CEO did have a bunch of us looking back and talking about different aspects of the Jobs’ experience. One of the best was this piece on why Apple thought tablets were stupid. I did point out that one of our big problems as an industry is that under current hiring practices, Google, Microsoft and even Apple wouldn’t ever hire a young Steve Jobs.

And that is ending us on a sad note. But I think HP, Oracle, Google and Apple folks can all smile about one thing. August is over.

Product of the Week: Audi A7

Occasionally I get to do car reviews, and I really look forward to them. The five-door hatchback has been one of those configurations that always seemed to work poorly — outside of SUVs, where it kind of dominates. My own Infinity FX35 is in this class, but we consider it a truck even though, being based on the car platform, it really isn’t.

Audi A7

The Audi A7, however, is the most perfect blend of performance and practicality I’ve yet seen, and it is wrapped with one of the most stunning designs and best technology packages I’ve ever tested.

It really is a very pretty car — supercharged so it is fast, and four-wheel drive so it sticks like glue. And it seems to draw admiring glances regularly.

In tech, it has the Nvidia-based infotainment system, which provides strong graphics, in-dash DVD playback (when you aren’t driving) — and new this year, tablet-like interface elements that are fun to learn and use.

At around $60K it isn’t cheap, and the S version isn’t out yet (which will be more) — but I fell in love with this car in the brief week that I had it, so it is my product of the week. I think of it as my portable man cave.