Cisco, US tech firms reportedly urged Congress to investigate Huawei, ZTE

Other US tech companies are reportedly suspicious of Huawei, ZTE

Cisco Systems, among others, may have nudged Congress into investigating Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE for security concerns, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

China's two largest telecommunications companies have taken a beating from U.S. Congressmen as they tried to enter the States' technology market.

Politicians are concerned the tech giants will use their systems to help expand the Chinese government's spying networks into the US.

Earlier this week, the US Intelligence Committee said the duo shouldn't be allowed to operate in the U.S. But the only proof of those claims are held secret in classified reports.

Cisco in the captain's chair

Cisco and other U.S. tech companies urged Congress to investigate Huawei and ZTE, according to an unnamed senior Hill staffer.

The staffer said politicians were already concerned about the two companies, and major players in the U.S. tech industry just fanned the flames of their suspension.

"What happens is you get competitors who are able to gin up lawmakers who are already wound up about China," the anonymous staffer said to the Post. "What they do is pull the string and see where the top spins."

The Post even found a seven-page sales presentation called "Huawei's & National Security," which is meant to give ammo to Cisco representatives on why clients should avoid Chinese competitors and go with American companies.

"Fear of Huawei spreads globally," according to the presentation. "Despite denials, Huawei has struggled to de-link itself from China's People's Liberation Army and the Chinese government."

The vitriol is no surprise in the cutthroat world of telecommunications. Cisco CEO, John Chambers, has repeatedly criticized Huawei for "not playing by the rules" and declared the company a "long-term threat."

The new McCarthyism

Huawei has been repeatedly denied entry into the U.S. tech game by the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investments for years. All based on security concerns.

The two Chinese companies and their government have all denied the allegations of spying.

Last month, Huawei published a 81-page document when its top brass was being grilled by the House Intelligence Committee.

The report made the case for the benefits of Huawei entering the U.S. tech market, but said the investigation was "allegations based on allegations" and likened its treatment to McCarthyism.

Even though the barriers to entering the U.S. market seem pretty high, Huawei and ZTE still seems pretty determined to take a slice of that American telecom pie.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/cisco-us-tech-firms-reportedly-urged-congress-to-investigate-huawei-zte-1103864

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Jolla to demo MeeGo-based Sailfish OS at Slush Conference next month

Open-source OS codenamed Sailfish to embark from Finland

Jolla's MeeGo-based OS is official saying "me too" in the crowded world of mobile operating systems.

The Finnish smartphone start-up was rumored to introduce its new OS, codenamed Sailfish, as reported by TechRadar yesterday. Now the company is saying when and where.

The Slush start-up conference in Helsinki, Finland will be the venue for the first Sailfish demo. With the event running Nov. 21- 22 - the unveiling is expected to take place on one of those two days.

Jolla is made up of ex-Nokia employees who worked on the Nokia N9 - the only smartphone to run MeeGo despite Nokia's prior commitment to iOS and Android rival.

The new company is promising to continue with a highly scalable, open source version of the OS and UX for smartphones, tablets, TVs, and vehicles.

MeeGo-based Sailfish goes to China

Jolla expects to license its Sailfish operating system to other device manufacturers, design houses and service companies in spring 2013.

One advantage that Jolla has already is a partnership in China with phone retailer D.Phone Group.

"China is a game changer in the technology industry," said Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola in a press release. "The next big mobile change will come from China and Jolla wants to be enabling it. There are massive resources and competence to transport the whole industry."

Plenty of Sailfish competitors in the sea

Sailfish remains an unproven OS, despite the commitment in China and Jolla's game plan to keep the mobile OS open to community participation.

Google's Android and Apple's iOS are making tremendous gains throughout China, and BlackBerry 10 is set to launch in 2013, around the same time as Sailfish.

What's more, Firefox OS is also throwing its hat in the ring, targeting "budget phones." Samsung could easily do the same with Bada, and Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei is working on a fail-safe OS just in case.

Still, it will be interesting to see what new features this open-source mobile OS has to offer next month, especially knowing that it will continue MeeGo's unique community involvement initiative.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/jolla-to-demo-meego-based-sailfish-os-at-slush-conference-next-month-1102082

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Sandia’s MegaDroid goes public

What has 300,000 Android Operating Systems and helps tech professionals predict how mobile devices would react in a crisis? It's a massive project called MegaDroid, based in California.

What do you call an artificial system that simulates a network of hundreds of thousands of Android devices, allowing to predict the behavior of said devices in case of new app, malware or unforeseen technological breakdown? If your answer was “The Matrix,” then somewhere the Wachowski siblings would like to thank you, but the real answer is something far more entertaining than any amount of Keanu Reeveses staring blankly at the screen. World, meet the MegaDroid.

The MegaDroid is the creation of researchers at California-based Sandia National Laboratories, and virtually simulates 300,000 separate Android devices in an attempt to analyze the reactions of large-scale networks to any number of situations. According to computer scientist John Floren, the MegaDroid is completely insulated from all other networks in the world, but nonetheless offers a realistic network environment inside itself, complete with full domain name service, Internet relay chat server, web server and multiple subnets. It even includes a fake GPS system so that the fictional users of the multiple Android devices being simulated can be tracked in different environments to see whether environment would have any effect on the particular data being studied, and also whether areas without WiFi or Bluetooth impact service significantly.

The need for MegaDroid is explained by Floren very simply: “You can’t defend against something you don’t understand,” he says, pointing to the system’s use in running simulations that will allow Android users to be protected against cyber attack or disruption of service from more benign sources. It’s something echoed by Sandia’s David Fritz, who says that, although “smartphones are now ubiquitous and used as general-purpose computing devices as much as desktop or laptop computers,” they remain easy targets for those seeking to disrupt the system. “No-one appears to be studying them at the scale we’re attempting,” he added.

Continuing, Fritz said that “It’s possible for something to go wrong on the scale of a big wireless network because of a coding mistake in an operating system or an application, and it’s very hard to diagnose and fix. You can’t possibly read through 15 million lines of code and understand every possible interaction between all these devices and the network.”

MegaDroid uses data gleaned from 2009′s MegaTux project, in which Sandia ran a million virtual Linux machines (They have also created MegaWin, which runs multiple Windows OSs simultaneously; clearly, they find mass production very attractive). The experience helped when it came to duplicating the surprisingly complex Android code, with Google’s coding running on top of Linux. Sandia plans to make much of MegaDroid open source once the bugs have been worked out, with Fritz explaining that decision with remarkable ease. “Tools are only useful if they’re used,” he said. What would you do with 300,000 Android devices…?

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/megadroid-farm/

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