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Category : Software News

HomeArchive by Category "Software News" (Page 2)
ddos

Wells Fargo warns of ongoing DDOS attacks

by Soloiston 27 March 2013in Software News No comment

Some customers may experience intermittent access, the bank said.

Wells Fargo warned on Tuesday that its website is being targeted again by a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack.

The bank said most of its customers were not affected. “For customers who are having difficulty accessing the site and mobile banking, we encourage them to try logging on again as the disruption is usually intermittent,” Wells Fargo said in a statement.

Wells Fargo is one of several large U.S. banks that have been targeted by cyberattacks in the past six months. A group claiming responsibility for the attacks, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, said Wells Fargo is being targeted due to the continued availability online of a video clip that denigrates Islam.

The 14-minute trailer, available on YouTube, caused widespread protests last September in predominantly Muslim countries. Google restricted viewing in countries including India, Libya and Egypt but kept it available in most countries because it didn’t violate the company’s guidelines.

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters wrote on Pastebin on Tuesday that it was also targeting Citibank, Chase Bank, SunTrust and others.

The group drew up a mock invoice, calculating the cost to a bank of a DDOS attack at about US$30,000 per minute. It contained a formula for how much the banks should lose based on the number of times the offensive video has been watched. The group did not spell out how the attacks would cost the banks money or why it was attacking those banks.

 

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xl_pro-gamers

Facebook woos serious gamers

by Soloiston 27 March 2013in Software News No comment

The social network aims to lure a wider variety of developers to its games platform.

If 2012 was the year of arcade, casino and hidden object games on Facebook, such as “Diamond Dash,” “Bubble Witch Saga” and “Bubble Safari,” the social network hopes 2013 will be the year of more immersive, strategy-oriented games.

Facebook wants to offer more of these games, sometimes called “core” or “midcore,” which are associated with more serious gamers like those that play on PCs and consoles. Getting more core games is part of a larger effort by Facebook to attract more developers and gamers across a range of devices.

The bulk of the company’s current offerings are casual games, “but when you look at the remaining market, most of that is core,” said Sean Ryan, game partnerships director at Facebook.

“That’s where we see the opportunities,” he said Tuesday to an audience of developers and gaming enthusiasts at the Game Developers Conference in downtown San Francisco.

“We’re going to expand the business for Facebook games above and beyond what we’ve done for desktop and mobile, to make sure we have games for everybody,” he said.

ChronoBlade, an RPG (role-playing game) currently in beta on Facebook, and Imperium, a science-fiction title in which players build a galactic empire of spaceships, are two such titles Facebook will be launching soon.

Facebook is already seeing some success in core gaming, Ryan said. Candy Crush, a hugely popular game on the social network in which players mix and match different types of candy, is an example of a seemingly casual game that is also attracting core gamers as the person advances through the game and the matches become more complex, he said.

It may sound like all good fun, but Facebook is serious about its gaming goals. Ryan’s comments, and similar statements made by other executives, came during a Facebook-sponsored forum intended to engage with developers, promote the Facebook games platform and provide guidance on how it could be used to launch developers’ games. It was the third such event held by Facebook at the annual conference.

Facebook launched its gaming platform in 2007, and its success has been on somewhat of a rollercoaster ride over the years as the company has experimented with new promotion game strategies and site redesigns.

“We think we’ve reached a balance now where we have a stable and growing platform on both desktop and mobile so developers can be assured we’re committed to growing the games ecosystem,” Ryan said.

Of Facebook’s roughly 1 billion monthly active users, 250 million play games on its platform, according to the company.

Facebook’s recent News Feed redesign and its early stage Graph Search social search engine could make it easier for people to discover new developers’ games on the site, the company said.

News Feed’s right-hand column filter now prominently displays “games” as a filter topic, making it easier for users to access games on Facebook, said George Lee, a Facebook product manager who handles distribution of games on the platform.

On Wednesday Facebook will also be rolling out a new feature to a small percentage of users allowing them to spotlight specific games they are interested in, as well as pages they have liked that are related to games, within their profile pages, the company reported.

In the end, however, “games are never going to be a primary pillar of what Facebook is about,” unlike News Feed, Timeline and search, Lee said.

“But one thing we haven’t done well in the history of games on Facebook is really define a way to make sure they are woven into the experience across all of these pillars, and that’s what we’re investing in going forward,” he said.

 

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silica_nanowire

Nanowires could boost solar power 15X

by Soloiston 26 March 2013in Software News No comment

Discovery breaks former theoretical limits

Building solar voltaic cells from nanowires instead of standard metal conductors can increase the amount of energy that can be captured by a factor of 15, according to a new study by scientists from the Nano-Science Center in Denmark.

The study, published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Photonics, found that nanowires have unique light absorption properties, meaning the limit of how much energy can be harnessed from the sun’s rays is vastly higher than previous believed.

 

solar voltaic cell graphic

The research focused on improving the quality of the nanowire crystals, which is a cylindrical structure with a diameter 1/10,000th that of a human hair.

The typical efficiency limit for photovoltaic cells, known as the “Shockley-Queisser Limit” has been the benchmark for solar cell efficiency.

The Denmark researchers, however, found that nanowires naturally concentrate the sun’s rays into a very small area in nanowire crystal and because the diameter of a crystal is smaller than the wavelength of the light coming from the sun, it can cause resonances in the intensity of light in and around nanowires. Those resonances then offer a higher conversion efficiency for the sun’s energy, according to Niels Bohr Institut researcher Peter Krogstrup.

The nanowires are predicted to have great potential in the development not only of solar cells, but also of future quantum computers and other electronic products.

“It’s exciting as a researcher to move the theoretical limits, as we know. It will have a major impact on the development of solar cells, exploitation of nanowire solar rays and perhaps the extraction of energy at [the] international level,” Peter Krogstrup a Niels Bohr Institute researcher, said in a statement.

“However, it will take some years years before production of solar cells consisting of nanowires becomes a reality,” he said.

 

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US-MOBILE-BROWSER-USAGE

Mobile’s browser usage share jumps 26%

by Soloiston 26 March 2013in Software News No comment

Safari is the biggest beneficiary, making Apple’s browser punch over its desktop weight.

Mobile-based browsing has tripled in the last two years, and is making significant inroads on traditional Internet access from personal computers, according to statistics from a Web metrics company.

Mobile’s gains are in part a side effect of a global slump in personal computer sales as customers instead purchase smartphone and tablets, and as a result, increasingly shift their time-spent-online from PCs to mobile. Last month, mobile browser usage — a combination of browsing from smartphones and tablets — surged by 1.4 percentage points to account for 13.2% of all unique visitors to the 40,000 websites that California-based Net Applications monitors for clients.

February’s jump was atop a one percentage point increase in January and a half-point gain in December. In the last three months, mobile browser usage has climbed 2.8 percentage points, representing a 26% upswing since Nov. 2012.

The longer trends are even more impressive: In the last 12 months, mobile browser usage has nearly doubled, and in the past 24 months has more than tripled.

Gains on the part of mobile have come at the expense of what Net Applications defines as “desktop,” a category that includes both desktop and notebook PCs, primary powered by Microsoft’s Windows, and Macs running Apple’s OS X. Desktop browser usage dropped 3.1 percentage points in the last three months, and fell 6.3 points in the last 12.

For February, desktop browser use averaged 86.2%, down from 92.5% a year earlier. In September 2009, when Computerworld began tracking mobile browser usage — seven months before Apple started selling its first iPad — desktop owned 98.9% of the usage total.

Browser makers have not missed that trend, and in fact began emphasizing mobile long before its share doubled in 2012-2013.

Mozilla, the open-source developer of Firefox, took the bold step of building a mobile operating system based on that browser. Google, which has long relied on a basic browser for its Android operating system, ported Chrome to the platform and pinned its future in mobile on that browser.

Microsoft, with its two-pronged strategy of pushing both Windows 8 and Windows RT into mobile, created the tablet- and touch-centric Internet Explorer 10 (IE10). Google also quick-kicked Chrome into Windows 8’s “Modern” user interface (UI) and slapped together one for iOS as well. Mozilla is working on a Firefox for Modern, too.

But the browser that’s profited the most from the rise in mobile browser usage has been Apple’s Safari.

 

Mobile_browser_usage_share

Safari, the default browser on all iOS devices — and untouchable unless Apple relents on rules that bar rivals from the App Store or at least cripple those that are accepted — accounted for 55.4% of all mobile browser used in February, leading the Android browser (with 22.8%) and Opera Software’s Opera Mini (12.7%), and far, far ahead of Chrome (2%) and IE (1.6%).

Apple’s mobile dominance — Safari is used twice as much as the Android browser, even though Android smartphones and tablets outsell iOS devices by wide margins — gave it a combined desktop-mobile share of 12% of all browser usage last month. Google’s various desktop and mobile browsers, meanwhile, accounted for 17.3% of all usage, while Microsoft and Mozilla, neither with appreciable mobile share, ended February with 48.3% and 17.3%, respectively.

In plainer words, Apple’s browser share of 12% is much closer to both Google’s and Mozilla’s than the desktop-only numbers indicate.

And the likely growth of mobile browser usage will only be good news for Apple, assuming Safari maintains its supremacy. If mobile continues to gain ground by its 12-month average, it will assume 20% of all browsing by April 2014; if the faster-paced average of the last three months continues, mobile should reach the 20% mark in Sept. 2013.

 

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screen-shot-2010-07-15-at-113033-am

US senate passes Internet sales tax proposal

by Soloiston 25 March 2013in Software News No comment

The nonbinding proposal is the first step toward allowing states to collect sales tax from e-commerce sellers.

The U.S. Senate has overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding proposal to allow states to collect sales tax on Internet sellers that have no presence within their borders.

The proposal was an amendment to a 2014 budget bill that the Senate debated Friday. It was pushed by Senators Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, and Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and was designed to give backers a sense of whether they had enough votes to push forward with final legislation to impose an Internet sales tax.

The vote showed they have plenty of backing to overcome any filibuster seeking to block a final sales tax bill. Sixty votes are needed to overcome a filibuster, and senators voted 75-24 for the nonbinding resolution. The Enzi and Durbin amendment would allow the Senate Budget Committee to include the sales tax in the budget, providing it does not increase the federal deficit.

The budget amendment is an initial step toward allowing state and local governments to collect sales taxes from out-of-state retailers who sell more than US$1 million worth of products in a year over the Internet. Enzi and Durbin are the lead sponsors of the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would still have to pass through Congress before a tax is imposed.

Forty-six U.S. states now have sales taxes, but a 1992 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited states from collecting sales tax from catalog sellers because of the burden it would place on the sellers. The court, however, left it up to Congress to allow states to collect sales taxes on remote sales if the states created a streamlined tax collection system.All states with sales taxes require Internet shoppers to report on their Internet purchases and pay taxes, but the rules are not well-known and few shoppers comply.

Supporters of the amendment said the current tax system isn’t fair to brick-and-mortar businesses, which have to collect sales taxes from their local shoppers.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, argued against the amendment, saying it would encourage U.S. Internet sellers to move overseas, where it’s tougher for states to collect sales taxes. “The Internet is now the shipping lane of the 21st century, and foreign retailers are going to get an advantage,” he said.

But past arguments against the sales tax suggesting e-commerce was in its infancy and needed to be protected are no longer true, Durbin said. “You’re asking for a safe haven here, an advantage over a lot of good small businesses in my state,” he said.

 

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DellLogo

Blackstone proposes counterbid for Dell

by Soloiston 25 March 2013in Software News No comment

The equity firm’s counteroffer could start a bidding war

Blackstone Group has reportedly sent a preliminary counterbid to buy out Dell, which would rival the current proposed offer of US$24.4 billion from Silver Lake Partners and Michael Dell made in early February.

Blackstone, an equity firm, submitted its offer to Dell on Friday, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources. The offer sets the stage for Dell to hold discussions with Blackstone about a possible buyout, and Dell has until Tuesday to respond to the offer, according to media reports.

Blackstone’s proposed counterbid is in the price range of between $13.65 and $15 per share, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. That either matches or exceeds the $13.65 per share offered by Michael Dell and equity investor Silver Lake to take the company private.

In a letter sent to Dell, Blackstone envisions shedding Dell’s financial services division as part of the buyout deal. Blackstone has already discussed selling that division to GE Financial Services, the Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.

Dell is expected to soon detail counteroffers to the one made by Michael Dell and Silver Lake, which was announced on Feb. 5. Dell on March 22 wrapped up a 45-day “go-shop” period in which other parties could make counteroffers.

Dell cannot comment on the reports, a company spokesman said via email on Saturday. Any deal needs to approved by shareholders.

The Blackstone counterbid could set the stage for a long buyout process in which offers are examined and debated. Some of Dell’s major shareholders, including Yacktman Asset Management and Southeastern Asset Management, believe the company is worth more than the $24.4 billion Michael Dell and Silver Lake are offering.

Counteroffers had been rumored to be in the works. On Thursday, the Journal reported that Blackstone had approached Southeastern Asset Management and TPG about a possible counterbids.

According to the Journal’s article on Saturday, a possible counteroffer was also in the works by investor Carl Icahn, who is opposed to the current proposed offer and earlier this month reached an agreement with Dell to examine the company’s books.

Analysts have said that any long, drawn-out battle is not in the best interest of Dell as it could erode customer confidence.

“It’s in everyone’s — company, employees, partners, customers — best interest to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. The longer this drags on the more likely we will see impact to Dell’s business,” said Matt Eastwood, group vice president of IDC’s Enterprise Platform Group, in an email on Friday.

An open question is whether it’s best for the company to execute on the original deal that Michael Dell outlined last month, or whether there would be a change in strategy if his offer isn’t accepted, Eastwood said.

“I believe there is more long term value to be unlocked by continuing the business transformation that Dell started five years ago,” Eastwood said.

Dell is focusing more on enterprise products as it tries to move away from the low-margin PC market.

 

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Dell-Inc.

Long buyout battle could erode customer in Dell

by Soloiston 22 March 2013in Software News No comment

Michael Dell needs to get his privatization deal done quickly to avoid harming his business.

With Michael Dell still battling to get his US$24.4 billion buyout deal approved by shareholders, his company needs to avoid a long, drawn-out battle that could erode customer confidence.

Dell will soon provide details about any counteroffers to the proposed purchase by Michael Dell and equity investor Silver Lake, who have offered $13.65 per share to take the company private. The deal was announced Feb. 5, and Dell is in the final day of its “go-shop” period in which other parties can make counteroffers.

There have been signs the proposed deal could fall apart, with some big Dell shareholders, including Yacktman Asset Management and Southeastern Asset Management, opposing the buyout on the grounds that it undervalues Dell.

Some counteroffers seem to be in the works, with equity firm Blackstone Group having approached Southeastern Asset Management and TPG about possible alternative bids, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Blackstone is said to have also approached Mark Hurd, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who now works for Oracle, about running the company, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The current offer by Silver Lake and Michael Dell included a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, and debt financing commitments from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets.

After the go-shop period ends, Dell will file documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission giving its shareholders a chance to examine any alternative offers and their risk factors, said James Post, professor in management, markets, public policy and law at Boston University.

The documents will give shareholders a chance to ensure there is no deception and that there are no better offers on the table than the proposed $24.4 billion deal. Shareholders are usually looking for the highest price for their shares.

It’s clear that some shareholders won’t back the current deal because they think there’s not enough money on the table. “They could go back and forth through several rounds,” Post said. “It could be settled in as little as 30 to 60 days. It could be much longer than that.”

The deal could get tied up as Dell and dissident shareholders make their cases to shareholders about specific offers, and each maneuver could take months, Post said. There may even be legal proceedings, which would take up even more time, Post said.

Some shareholders will lose money on the current deal, and Dell may end up spending more to win them over, something it clearly wants to avoid, Post said.

“If this deal is going to be accomplished, it will be because the big investors have put the document under the microscope and they’re convinced their ownership is being … rewarded. Otherwise they are going to turn it down,” he said.

It’s uncertain if there will be a concrete new offer before Friday’s deadline, but analysts expect that Michael Dell will have to raise his current offer.

“I expect that the final price per share to acquire Dell will be higher than what was initially offered,” Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, said via email. “I also believe that if Michael Dell is not involved in the final deal, that the winning bidders could be paying a premium for the company that will be difficult to manage or sustain,” he said.

Any wrangling in the buyout process could erode Dell’s value and shake customer confidence, and it’s in the best interest of all parties to get a deal done soon, King said.

There are multiple scenarios under which Dell could get purchased, but the new owners need to be on board with Michael Dell’s vision of moving further into enterprise systems and software and dialing down on PCs, said Roger Kay, principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Dell has been trying to move away from low-margin PCs and instead emphasize higher-value hardware, service and software offerings. It has bought around 25 companies since 2007 to expand its enterprise product portfolio, but is struggling to package the products into cohesive offerings. Dell has said its enterprise plans will remain intact in case of a buyout.

Shareholders are right to be suspicious of Michael Dell because he is on both sides of the proposed deal, Kay said, meaning his interest in buying the company could conflict with shareholders’ desire to get the highest price for their shares. Dell may also try to block any deal that moves away from the direction he has laid out for the company, Kay said.

“I don’t see Michael cooperating with any other group. So, an alternative proposal seems like a long shot,” he said.

It’s unlikely a rival deal would match Michael Dell’s vision for the company, according to Ezra Gottheil, analyst at Technology Business Research, so the company could remain public if Michael Dell’s original offer is not accepted.

“He has a vision for Dell that includes all the major pieces, and he would prefer staying public to dismemberment,” Gottheil said.

 

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Twitter_birthday2

HappyBirthday! Twitter and 7 years of transformation

by Soloiston 22 March 2013in Software News No comment

Twitter goes from inane to tweets from popes, presidents and natural disaster survivors

Seven years ago today, Twitter was born when the first tweet was sent out.

And, oh, what changes seven years can bring.

“I see the Twitter we know today as much more of a communications medium than when it was initially launched — when tweeting was viewed as an information vacuum, something used by lazy bloggers to announce the contents of their blue plate special,” said Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis. “Today, such inanity continues, of course, but via search, hashtags and following, we rely on Twitter to stay informed on world events, keep up with brands and people, and reach out for help in times of distress.”

That, he added, is a pretty diverse set of crucial communication capabilities – all within 140 characters at a time.

Twitter today has more than 200 million active users, who are sending out more than 400 million tweets every day, wrote Karen Wickre, Twitter’s editorial director, in a blog post.

Through the last seven years, Twitter has gone through a dramatic transformation. When it first started out, people tweeted more about their favorite sandwich than about world politics or social injustice.

That’s no longer the case.

During last year’s U.S. presidential race, Twitter became a key player, helping the different campaign camps get out their messages and amass volunteers. It also enabled voters to support their favorite candidates, get information about voting and encourage others to get out and vote.

Like a few other social networks, Twitter has become a lifeline during natural disasters, like tsunamis, tornadoes and earthquakes.

In the last few weeks, Pope Benedict XVI used Twitter to say good-bye to his more than 1.6 million Twitter followers. And earlier this week, his successor, Pope Francis, used Twitter to greet his nearly 2 million followers.

“Twitter is so young and so new, yet so vital to the way we communicate and share information,” said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst. “It has gone through enormous changes in a few short years. During the last five years, we have seen it used in very creative ways no one imagined.”

He pointed out that Twitter is able to make people feel connected to celebrities, politicians and world leaders.

The big question is what comes next for the social network?

“Well, when Twitter introduced Vine this January with the idea of letting users share short, looping videos, I felt as though we were seeing a bit of a rebirth with the introduction of a new, seemingly inane service that might grow into something vital,” said Shimmin. “I feel that Twitter, as a communications utility rather than a social destination site like Facebook, will evolve in line with market and cultural demand.”

And Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, said Twitter`s biggest challenge may be maintaining its simplicity and speed while adding sticky and money-making services.

“Consumers like Twitter because it`s simple, fast and pervasive. If Twitter gets complicated and slow, [it] becomes just another Facebook and we don’t need two,” he said. “I expect Twitter to build into a very streamlined version of Facebook, adding many more forms of media to share.”

 

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Intertrust-logo-large

Intertrust hits Apple with broad patent suit

by Soloiston 21 March 2013in Software News No comment

The company alleges broad infringement of 15 patents throughout the Mac ecosystem

A company owned by Sony and Philips is suing Apple, alleging it’s infringed numerous patents covering digital rights management technology.

In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Intertrust alleges that Apple has been infringing 15 of its patents for years.

The patents relate to DRM and security in computer systems and carry names such as “Systems And Methods For Secure Transaction Management And Electronic Rights Protection,” and “Systems And Methods Using Cryptography To Protect Secure Computing Environments.”

Digital rights management runs through many parts of modern computers and mobile devices, so it’s perhaps not a surprise that Intertrust’s accusations against Apple are broad and include the iPhone, iPad, iPod, iTunes and Apple’s desktop and laptop computers.

“Apple uses Intertrust’s patented technologies at virtually every level of its consumer electronics enterprise,” Intertrust said in its lawsuit.

Intertrust says it has licensed the patented technologies to many of Apple’s competitors, including Microsoft, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Adobe and Sharp. The Microsoft license came after a 2004 settlement, which resulted in Microsoft paying the company a one-off licensing fee of US$440 million for the technology.

Intertrust said it repeatedly tried to license its patents to Apple.

“In designing its iOS and OS X operating systems and devices, and its iTunes platform, Apple could have licensed Intertrust’s technology,” the complaint said. But despite knowing about the patents, Intertrust alleges, Apple chose to infringe them instead.

Intertrust was formed in 1990 and both Philips and Sony acquired stakes of 49.5 percent in 2003.

Apple and Intertrust did not respond to requests for comment.

 

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iqi6RYU0Vf6E

HP board survives confidence vote, but only barely

by Soloiston 21 March 2013in Software News 2 comments

Two board members received only slightly more than the required 50 percent approval.

Hewlett-Packard’s shareholders have voted to reelect its entire board of directors, despite opposition from investors who want some members held accountable for recent troubles at HP, including its ill-fated acquisition of Autonomy.
All 11 HP directors were reelected, with at least 50 percent of HP’s shares voted in their favor, Chairman Ray Lane said at the conclusion of HP’s shareholder meeting in California on Wednesday.
Some of the board only barely survived, however. The two directors seen as most vulnerable, G. Kennedy Thompson and John Hammergren, who are both members of HP’s Finance and Investment Committee, received 55.15 percent and 53.91 percent approvals, respectively.
Lane was reelected with 58.88 percent of votes and Marc Andreessen with 69.77 percent, an HP spokesman said. CEO Meg Whitman and most of the other board members received greater than 90 percent approvals, he said.
HP’s shareholders also voted to reelect Ernst & Young as the company’s public auditor, again over the objections of some investors.
The meeting, which was webcast, went off with no real fireworks, although several investors mourned what they see as the loss of the “HP Way,” a set of principles established in HP’s early days that placed a high value on innovation and employees.
One shareholder held up a 20-year-old HP calculator that he said had “taken a few knocks” but was still working. “It’s an example to me of the HP Way, and I’d really like to see that return,” the shareholder said.
HP’s board has faced mounting opposition from shareholders in recent months. They are particularly upset about HP’s acquisition 18 months ago of UK software company Autonomy. HP had to wipe $8.8 billion from its books as a result of the deal, because, it says, it was misled about the value of Autonomy’s business.
Some of HP’s bigger shareholders said before the meeting they would vote against reelecting some of its board members, and they urged other shareholders to do the same.
The New York City Pension Funds, which holds 5.5 million HP shares, said it would vote against Thompson and Hammergren. The Finance and Investment Committee bears “primary responsibility” for the Autonomy deal, the fund said.
“As the two longest-serving directors, they also bear responsibility for approving HP’s ill-advised acquisitions of EDS and Palm, and for the board’s hasty decision to hire Leo Apotheker, whose short-lived tenure as CEO ended shortly after the Autonomy acquisition that he engineered,” the fund said in a regulatory filing ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.
Other investment groups said they would vote against the two men as well, along with Lane, Andreessen and Rajiv Gupta.
HP argued before the meeting that changing the board could be “destabilizing” for the company. “Losing some of our directors in an abrupt and disorderly manner could undermine our efforts to stabilize the company,” it said in a regulatory filing.
At the meeting, Whitman again laid out her plans for getting HP back on track. They involve building solid products, improving customer satisfaction, expanding sales and energizing HP’s channel partners.
“Despite what you might have heard, innovation is alive and well,” Whitman said.
Despite reelecting the board, some shareholders are clearly dissatisfied with the current management.
“It seems that when more business-trained executives started taking over the company, rather than engineering-trained executives, it really changed,” said the shareholder with the calculator. Another shareholder suggested HP should be more like Oracle, building a single, integrated stack of products.
Autonomy’s former management also got in on the criticism Wednesday, releasing an open letter questioning HP’s allegations of impropriety. It asked the board to explain how it was misled and to provide evidence of the misconduct.

 

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