Gregg Keizer, Author at NetworkingNexus.net

Gregg Keizer

Author Archives: Gregg Keizer

Reprisals against Apple in a U.S.-China trade war would be indirect

If the Chinese government retaliated against tariff increases by the United States, it would not take direct aim at Apple, an economist argued today."For China, the best target is Boeing," said Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.Freund was responding to questions after Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-supported newspaper, warned of reprisals if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on a campaign pledge to dramatically increase tariffs on goods imported into the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

China hints at retaliation against Apple and iPhones if trade war goes hot

China yesterday signaled that if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with campaign pledges to slap steep tariffs on goods imported into the United States, retaliation will result in shrunken iPhone sales.In an op-ed piece published Sunday in Global Times -- one of several newspapers controlled by the Communist Party -- the editorial writers warned that higher tariffs imposed by the U.S. would trigger reprisals."China will take a tit-for-tat approach then," the piece said of any tariff action by Trump after he takes office in January. "A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. U.S. auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and U.S. soybean and maize imports will be halted."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google punishes web backsliders in Chrome

Google said it will deal with website recidivists that have dodged the company's punishments for spreading malware and spawning email scams.When Google flags sites for hosting malicious code or unwanted software, or running some kind of scam, users see warnings in Chrome and other browsers. The alerts appear as long as Google believes the site poses a threat.But after making changes to align their sites with Google's "Safe Browsing" terms, webmasters may ask Google to lift the virtual embargo.Not surprisingly, some took advantage of the mechanism for lifting the warnings. Sites would cease their illicit practices, but only long enough to get back into Google's good graces. Once Google gave the all-clear, the once-dirty-then-clean site would have a serious relapse and again distribute malware or spew phishing emails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google punishes web backsliders in Chrome

Microsoft fixes Windows flaw that Google divulged

Microsoft today patched a Windows vulnerability that was disclosed just over a week ago by researchers from Alphabet Inc.'s Google.In one of several security updates -- 14 to be exact -- Microsoft fixed the bug in the Windows kernel drivers that Google security engineers had revealed on Oct. 31, 10 days after notifying Microsoft of the vulnerability.Microsoft credited Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard of Google's Threat Analysis Group for reporting the flaw. Last week, the two said that because the vulnerability was being actively exploited, a disclose-within-seven-days policy applied.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft fixes Windows flaw that Google divulged

Microsoft postpones Windows anti-exploit tool’s retirement

Microsoft last week announced that it would support the Enterprise Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) through July 2018, a year-and-a-half extension for the anti-exploit utility.At the same time, the Redmond, Wash. company dismissed EMET as a behind-the-times tool, and again urged customers to upgrade to Windows 10, arguing that the new operating system is much more secure than previous editions when supplemented by EMET."EMET hasn't kept pace," wrote Jeffrey Sutherland, a Microsoft principal program manager lead, in a post to a company blog Nov. 3. "Its effectiveness against modern exploit kits has not been demonstrated, especially in comparison to the many security innovations built into Windows 10."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft postpones Windows anti-exploit tool’s retirement

Microsoft to patch Windows bug that Google revealed

Microsoft on Tuesday said it would patch a Windows vulnerability next week that Google publicly revealed just 10 days after notifying Microsoft.Microsoft also identified the attackers, asserting that they were the same who had been accused by authorities of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC)."All versions of Windows are now being tested ... and we plan to release [the patches] publicly on the next Update Tuesday, Nov. 8," wrote Terry Myerson, the head of the Windows and devices group, in a post to a company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft to patch Windows bug that Google revealed

Microsoft stops sales of Windows 7 Professional to OEMs

Microsoft today quietly put an end to sales of Windows 7 licenses to computer makers, marking a major milestone for the seven-year-old OS.According to Microsoft's rules, the Redmond, Wash. company stopped selling Windows 7 Professional or any version of Windows 8.1 to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) as of Oct. 31.The end of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 left only Windows 10 as a long-term choice for OEMs that pre-load Windows on their wares.The original end-of-sales deadline for Windows 7 Professional was to be Oct. 31, 2014 -- two years after the launch of Windows 8 -- but early that year Microsoft broke with practice and only called for an end to consumer systems. It left open the cut-off for Windows 7 Professional, saying it would give a one-year warning before it demanded that OEMs stop selling PCs with that edition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mozilla plans to rejuvenate Firefox in 2017

Mozilla last week named its next-generation browser engine project and said it would introduce the new technology to Firefox next year.Dubbed Quantum, the new engine will include several components from Servo, the browser rendering engine that Mozilla has sponsored, and been working on, since 2013. Written with Rust, Servo was envisioned as a replacement for Firefox's long-standing Gecko engine. Both Servo and Rust originated at Mozilla's research group."Project Quantum is about developing a next-generation engine that will meet the demands of tomorrow's web by taking full advantage of all the processing power in your modern devices," said David Bryant, the head of Firefox engineering, in a piece published Thursday on Medium.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Financial experts forecast more bad news for Apple

Later today Apple will once again announce a sales decline for its biggest product lines, including the iPhone, the company's financial powerhouse, according to more than two dozen analysts.The September quarter results will be highlighted by a 6% year-over-year reduction in iPhone sales, making the third consecutive quarter of smartphone slump. The good news? The contraction will be less than half of the two previous quarters.Apple's continued problems were spelled out by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who runs the subscription-based Apple 3.0 website. Elmer-DeWitt has been collecting data from financial analysts for years -- starting when he blogged for Fortune -- and the seven independent and 21 institutional experts he queried forecast a drop in unit sales of the iPhone, iPad and Mac, and another decline in total revenue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple sues Amazon supplier over fake iPhone chargers

In a federal lawsuit filed this week, Apple asserted that nearly all the iPhones, chargers and cables it surreptitiously purchased from online retailer Amazon were fakes."As part of its ongoing brand protection efforts, [Apple] has purchased well over 100 iPhone devices, Apple power products, and Lightning cables sold as genuine by sellers on Amazon.com and delivered through Amazon's 'Fulfillment by Amazon' program," Apple's complaint said of a nine-month operation. "Apple's internal examination and testing for these products revealed almost 90% of these products are counterfeit."Although Apple did not target Amazon in the lawsuit -- instead, Apple sued Mobile Star, a New York-based former supplier to Amazon -- the retailer came off poorly in the complaint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows users face update bloat, and tough choices

Windows 10's cumulative updates have ballooned in size, and a similar bloat will also affect the Windows 7 updates that Microsoft revamped this month.According to data published last month by LANDesk and refreshed by Computerworld with October's numbers, Windows 10 cumulative updates for the three versions of the new OS have surged in size.Updates for Windows 10 version 1507 -- the debut that launched in July 2015 -- have grown 153% (for the 32-bit edition) and 181% (64-bit), from 184MB and 368MB to 466MB and 1,034MB (or over a gigabyte), respectively, in just over a year.Those for version 1511 -- Windows 10's first "feature update," issued in November 2015 -- exploded in comparison: The first 64-bit 1511 update was 49MB, but the cumulative update released earlier this month was a whopping 989MB, for a growth rate of 1,918% in under 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Younger consumers more likely to fall for tech support con jobs

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it's not older consumers who are most easily duped by technical support scams, a survey released today claimed.According to the poll's results, people between 25 and 34 were more than three times as likely to fall for the fake-out as those aged 55 to 64. And the youngest age group -- between 18 and 24 -- were little better than their slightly-older cohort; they were tricked by the scams more than two and a half times the rate of the group aged 66 and older.The survey, conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs this summer and paid for by Microsoft, queried 1,000 adults ages 18 and up in each of several countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany and India.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Consumer PCs: Ailing, but not dead yet

Personal computer shipments again contracted in the third quarter, research firms said this week, as consumers continued to refuse to buy replacements for their aged machines. IDC pegged the PC downturn at 4% for the quarter ending September 30, while rival Gartner said shipments shrank 6% from the same period the year before. Gartner blamed consumers for the two-year slump, the longest decline in the industry's history. "According to our 2016 personal technology survey, the majority of consumers own, and use, at least three different types of devices in mature markets," said Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa in a statement. "Among these devices, the PC is not a high priority device for the majority of consumers, so they do not feel the need to upgrade their PCs as often as they used to."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iOS 10’s one-month adoption rate hits 68%

iOS 10 adoption continued to climb a month after its release, with some sources pegging the upgrade on more than two-thirds of iPhones.At the one-month mark, iOS 10 accounted for 68.2% of all iOS editions detected by Mixpanel, whose analytics platform is used by mobile app developers to track usage and user engagement.That was slightly higher than the 62.8% accumulated by iOS 9 last year at the same post-release point, and far above iOS 8's 48.9% in September 2014.The modern record for iOS uptake remained with iOS 7 -- a major UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) overhaul -- which captured a 72.7% share in its first month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft fleshes out seismic change to Windows patching

Microsoft has elaborated on the new patching policy for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that takes effect Tuesday.In a post to a company blog accompanied by graphics that resembled a periodic table, Michael Niehaus, a product marketing director for Windows 10, fleshed out the massive change in how Windows 7, the standard in business and the most popular OS on the planet, will be serviced starting with this month's Patch Tuesday.Microsoft announced the new plan two months ago, saying then that as of Oct. 11 it would offer only cumulative security updates for Windows 7 and 8.1, ending the decades-old practice of letting customers choose which patches they apply.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft fleshes out seismic change to Windows patching

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