FCC Votes to Move Ahead on Net Neutrality Rules (PCMagazine)

• BY CHLOE ALBANESIUS
• MAY 15, 2014 

The FCC will now accept comments until Sept. 10, after which the agency will craft final rules.

A divided FCC on Wednesday voted to proceed with Chairman Tom Wheeler's net neutrality proposal, with those in favor stressing that today's vote simply begins the rulemaking process and the chairman arguing that he would not back anything that crushes an open Internet.

The net neutrality portion of the hearing, which was interrupted several times by Internet activists, ended with Wheeler and Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel voting in favor of the proposal and Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly dissenting.

During her presentation, Rosenworcel said that "I think we moved too fast," and that she "would've preferred a delay." But she praised the chairman for being open to changes to his proposal; he "expanded its scope and put all options on the table," so Rosenworcel was more comfortable proceeding.

Now Putin Has to Figure Out What to Do With the Separatists (BusinessWeek)

By Joshua Yaffa May 14, 2014

Denis Pushilin, the public face of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk, addresses a rally marking Victory Day in Donetsk, Ukrainian on May 9

The seat of government of the Donetsk People’s Republic is an 11-story building—once the headquarters of the regional administration until it was stormed by pro-Russian fighters in early April—that houses everything from a press-accreditation office to a medical dispensary. Young men roam the hallways in fatigues with Kalashnikovs slung on the backs. The front steps have been turned into a tribune for impassioned speeches against the “fascist” government in Kiev and its backers in the West.

On Monday, from a conference room on the top floor of the occupied administration building, Denis Pushilin, the public face of the self-proclaimed separatist leadership, declared a sovereign state and appealed to join Russia. He based his proclamation on the results of a makeshift referendum carried out the day before, in which, according to the separatists, 89 percent voted in favor of a vaguely worded call for self-rule. (The neighboring Ukrainian region of Luhansk held a similar referendum the same day, though it has yet to ask to be annexed by Russia.) “Based on the will of the people and on the restoration of an historic justice, we ask the Russian Federation to consider the absorption of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” Pushilin said.

At first glance, events in eastern Ukraine may seem a repeat of Crimea—the seizure of administrative buildings and police stations, followed by a hastily organized referendum. But the history and politics of the two regions are incredibly different, and Moscow’s ultimate aims in the east are far from what it hoped to achieve in its annexation of Crimea. This split in attitude is obvious: In Crimea, in a sign of its approval, the Kremlin sent official election observers to the referendum—and within days of the result, Putin had called on the Duma to incorporate Crimea into Russia.

STORY: Why Putin's Ukrainian "New Russia" Could Be an Ungovernable Mess

But in eastern Ukraine, Putin urged separatists to postpone their referendum, and when they held it anyway, he made no personal comment on the results of the voting. The Kremlin issued only a vague statement in support of the “popular will” of the people of eastern Ukraine, a far cry from legally recognizing the referendum. The hopes of Pushilin and others seeking Russia’s direct intervention are not likely to be realized soon. So what sort of future, then, awaits the fledgling Donetsk People’s Republic?

For starters, Putin has “no appetite or readiness to absorb eastern Ukraine,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Moscow does not relish the idea of being responsible for the region’s disaffected coal miners and Soviet-era industrial infrastructure. Nor does it want to bear the costs of a civil war among the local population—or even worse, find itself in the quagmire of a real war if the Ukrainian army were to resist Russia’s land grab. It also wants to avoid the hardship of sectoral economic sanctions that the U.S. and European Union would introduce if Russia were to invade or annex Ukraine’s eastern regions.

Instead, Trenin explained, the Kremlin would like to exploit the uncertainty and instability of eastern Ukraine to ram through its ultimate, and most important, strategic aim: a so-called “federalization” plan that would see eastern regions handed a wide degree of autonomy, thus keeping the country from moving closer to the EU or NATO and ensuring a powerful countervailing voice for a pro-Russian elite. With these interests in mind, Russia views Ukraine’s eastern territory more as a bargaining chip than as a potential territorial acquisition. In future rounds of negotiations with the Ukrainian government and Western officials, the Kremlin can wield the unresolved status of eastern Ukraine and the appeal by the separatists to join Russia as an ever-present threat: Give us what we want, or we’ll break Ukraine apart. If no grand bargain can be found, or if Russia decides it prefers permanent instability in Ukraine to a diplomatic solution, the Kremlin could keep eastern Ukraine as a perpetually contested territory, a grander version of the political and security headache posed by the breakaway republic of Transnistria.

STORY: Can This Mega-Rich Oligarch Bring Peace to Eastern Ukraine?

It is clear that Russia considers unrest in eastern Ukraine—at least in a form it thinks it can manage—in its interest. After weeks of inconclusive protests across the Donetsk region, the fact that several local government buildings and police stations have been taken over in a coordinated fashion by men with clear military training suggests a degree of logistical and operational support from Moscow, at least in the beginning of the armed uprising. (Although these fighters did not appear to be the same “little green men” from Russia’s special forces who appeared in Crimea.) Moreover, what is undeniable is that a nonstop information campaign overseen by Russia’s state-run media serves to confirm every worst conspiracy about the interim government in Kiev and the motives of the West, hardening attitudes among the local population and stoking hatreds that can turn into violence.

STORY: What Happened When Shots Rang out in Mariupol, Ukraine

It would be a mistake, though, to see the unrest and dissatisfaction spreading throughout eastern Ukraine only through the prism of Kremlin manipulation and subterfuge. The Donetsk referendum may have been a farcical piece of political theater—with no voter registration lists, for example, people could vote as many times as they liked simply by presenting their identification—but the diffused sense of grievance and fear that pushed many people to voice their disapproval with the authorities in Kiev is quite real. And these feelings, more than plots hatched in Moscow, may be driving events now.

People may not “have understood exactly what they were voting for” in the referendum, said Ihor Todorow, a professor of international relations at Donetsk National University, but they were drawn to vote by a number of sincere reasons: “deep internal sympathy” to Russia, nostalgia for the Soviet past, and a distrust of western Ukrainians and their motives, especially now that a government of pro-Maidan protest leaders has taken power in Kiev. A Ukrainian military offensive against separatist militia groups in recent days has sharpened the sense of mistrust. Much of the fighting is done by recently formed pro-Kiev paramilitary brigades, meaning that accidents and civilian casualties are practically unavoidable. At the same time, rebel attacks—such as an ambush on Tuesday that left eight Ukrainian soldiers dead—only locks in the cycle of violence and bloodshed.

Both sides are projecting an air of unjustified confidence, which makes dialogue difficult and, so far, largely fruitless. A day after the Donetsk separatists announced their independence, the acting governor of the Donetsk region, Serhiy Taruta, announced that the “Donetsk People’s Republic does not exist”—even though Taruta is forced to work out of a hotel, seeing as his official governor’s office is occupied by separatists. He also said the Kiev government will carry out its presidential vote in eastern Ukraine as planned on May 25, a difficult task considering that pro-Russian forces control many of the administrative buildings that would function as polling places.

STORY: Five Reasons Obama Won't Push Harsher Russia Sanctions—Yet

At the same time, Pushilin, an accidental and unpolished leader, has quickly adapted to the trappings of power that come with being a head of state—even one of a country that is more imagination than reality. He declared no voting will happen on May 25, as the self-proclaimed Donetsk authorities are not inclined to assist in “the presidential elections of a neighboring state.” He and other separatist leaders are especially vague in their plans for economic self-reliance, which is in practice impossible, given the the east’s dependance on sales of its industrially produced goods to other parts of Ukraine and foreign markets.

Most dangerously, the events of recent weeks have stirred up an atmosphere of chaos, violence, and antagonism that will be hard to reverse. The region’s many loosely organized militias will not disappear simply as a result of officials in Kiev, Moscow, or anywhere else saying so. Many anti-Kiev fighters are driven by a sense of hatred and mistrust that has taken on its own localized momentum. The armed separatist movement has also given cover to criminal groups that would not readily give up their new status and impunity. The dark contours of a civil war are taking shape—one fought over not ethnicity or religion but political allegiance and, in the eyes of its combatants, historical destiny. For many residents of the east, nursing decades of social and economic grievances, the pull of the gun is simply too strong to ignore. As a local journalist in Donetsk who has gone into hiding said, “a Kalashnikov is the first form of social lift many of these people have received in their lives.” They won’t give it up easily.

STORY: Eastern Ukraine Votes for Independence. Now What?

Yaffa is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

What Makes for a Good Boss? (Salary.com)

Picking a boss, someone you can work with, trust and who can inspire, may be as important to your job satisfaction as the salary and benefits you negotiate.

While you're making a good first impression, make sure the person on the other side of the table is trying to win you over as well. If he’s looking at his watch or flipping through messages on his smart phone, he may not be that in to you as an employee.

Just as a prospective employer will without a doubt do his homework on your background - checking references and those pesky social media posts - you should take the time to do some research of your own.

Looking at a prospective boss’s Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter accounts could provide some topics to ask about during the interview, Donna Schilder, a leadership, career and business coach based in Long Beach, California, who has her own web sitewww.DonnaSchilder.com, said.

“You could look to see if you have anything in common, something you can build a rapport with,” Schilder said. “You could also search for clues about what type of person they are and what kind of values they have.”

No boss is likely to have all the traits you’d like to see, but here are seven things you should key in on during the interview.

7. Honesty

It seems obvious, but honesty is important in a leader. If the boss is telling you things about your future with the company that just aren't true, like there is room for growth when no one has been promoted from within for years, you're in trouble.

You want someone who will tell it like it is, pull no punches and be realistic about what the future holds. After all if he or she is willing to lie to you, what makes you think they won't tell tall tales about your performance to their bosses? Next thing you know, you're doing all the work while he takes credit for the performance behind closed doors.

It’s OK to ask honest questions, Schilder said. “Do you think it’s important to tell the truth, even if it’s painful? How do you help people hear the truth when it’s hard to hear?”

The answers can be telling.

6. Integrity

Integrity goes hand in hand with honesty. You can't go in with guns ablaze grilling the interviewer, but it is appropriate to ask some questions to get at a boss’s business ethics.

“I think you show your intelligence through the questions you ask,” Schilder said.

You just have to do it delicately. “You could sabotage your chances,” she said. “You have to be really careful.”

5. Commanding Presence

A leader should have what police officers often call a command presence – a confidence that shows he or she is in charge.

“Without it this person’s not going to advocate for you,” Schilder said. “You’re not going to learn a lot from this person.”

If the boss strays too far into self promotion and away from substance, it may be a sign that he or she is a narcissist.

“To me that’s the kind of boss who would make you the most unhappy,” Schilder said. “They tend to rise because they’re confident in themselves, at least they portray themselves that way.”

A narcissist is fairly easy to spot, she said. “Do they use the word we or do they use the word I?” Schilder said. “Sometimes they’re very charming so they can trick you. But if you get a narcissist, that’s going to be a miserable job.

4. Optimism

In any job you want someone who is optimistic – someone who sees good things for the company and good things for you as a part of that company.

You don't want someone who is talking down about other employees or the company, Schilder said.

You can find that out by asking questions about the future of the company, the future of the department and opportunities for growth.

  

3. Supportive

Finding a boss who will be supportive is also key, Schilder said.

“You want someone who wants the best for their employees. Someone who wants best for the company, but won’t sacrifice you for the company. They’ll have your back,” she said. “They’ll support you in disagreements.”

During the interview, you should ask questions about how a boss would handle an error or a difficult situation.

Afterwards, don’t be afraid to reach out to other employees of the company to find out how the boss handles mistakes. Does he help employees recover from them or does he blow a gasket?

“Some people will admit they have anger issues,” Schilder said. “If that’s the case, you should run for the hills.”

In some cases, Schilder said, it’s easier to figure out what you don’t want in a boss like a micromanager or a dictator.

2. Inspirational

You should be looking for someone who can inspire, who communicates well his vision for staff and his department, she said.

Depending on the type of job you’re going for, you many want a boss who promotes creativity. “That’s not so important if you’re going for a job as an accountant or an auditor,” Schilder said. 

But if you’re a writer or in marketing, you want a boss who encourages and is open to the creative process, she said.

1. Sense of Humor

And when all else fails there is one trait that’s key for any good leader – that’s a sense of humor.

“That speaks to flexibility and how (the boss) will react to a mistake,” Schilder said. “You’ll get a sense of whether it’s going to be a fun place to work or not.”

Lagrimas de cocodrilo, para qué??? Por: Ricardo Tribin Acosta

E   N     M   I     O   P   I   N   I   O   N

Errores? , quien no comete errores? La totalidad de las personas puesto que somos humanos (oh…disculpa para excusar las equivocaciones). Lo más delicado no es incurrir en ellos, sino continuar con los mismos sin mayor reato de conciencia, haciéndose el de la vista gorda ante los hechos y las circunstancias afectadas.

Se habla a nivel religioso del arrepentimiento constante y de la contrición de corazón, mas en la práctica ello se aplica apenas de dientes para afuera, pues se usa en diversas ocasiones tan solo como escusa para recibir un perdón otorgado por los seres humanos.

Por lo anterior es importante tener en cuenta que hay que creer sinceramente en que las verdaderas enmiendas a nuestros comportamientos errados será la corrección de los mismos en el presente, partiendo de la base de que, si mejoramos hoy en nuestros negativos procederes, el mañana podrá verse y empezarse con una óptica diferente, ya que el mismo empieza…. desde hoy.

http://ricardotribin.blogspot.com

Miami, Mayo 1o de 2014.

Libres de pagar alquiler?

Por: Ricardo Tribin Acosta

Libres de pagar alquiler?. Qué bueno sería, verdad? Resultaría esto como algo milagroso, pues nos liberaría de una de las cargas más importantes cual es la de la obligación de sufragar para el arriendo mensual. Ello sin embargo resulta bastante improbable ya que mecenas que perdonen el pago de la renta están bien escasos.

Sin embargo el asunto es bastante diferente ya que no es de ese concepto del que estoy hablando. A lo que me refiero es a no dejar que nadie ocupe espacio en nuestra mente sin haber pagado alquiler, lo cual implica que mis pensamientos no

se alquilan , menos gratis, y tampoco se controlan desde afuera, si no le otorgamos a nadie el poder de lograrlo sin nuestro consentimiento.

No hay libertad más grande que la mental pues nos permite pensar, proyectar, soñar, y fantasear, sin que ello nos cueste nada , excepto, cuando con los mismos pensamientos, damos el poder a otros para que ejerzan influencia fundamental en lo que creemos, siendo la más importante de las victorias , aquella en la

cual trascendemos a esto y por tanto nos hacemos verdaderos dueños de nuestras propias verdades.

http://ricardotribin.blogspot.com

Miami, Mayo 3 de 2014

Apple, Intel, Google and Adobe: The Silicon Valley Conspiracy (BusinessWeek)

Apple, Google, and the Hubris of Silicon Valley's Hiring Conspiracy

By Paul M. Barrett and Brad Stone May 01, 2014

Steve Jobs wouldn’t appear to have been an emoticon guy, but history will show that on at least one occasion, when words failed to convey his delight, he resorted to one. It was March 2007, and Jobs had received an e-mail from Eric Schmidt, then Google’s (GOOG) chief executive officer and a board member at Apple(AAPL). Schmidt wanted to let Jobs know that Google would terminate “within the hour” a recruiter who’d dared to contact an Apple employee in violation of a “do not call” policy between the companies. Schmidt abjectly apologized, adding: “Should this ever happen again please let me know immediately and we will handle. Thanks!! Eric.”

Jobs forwarded Schmidt’s groveling e-mail to an Apple subordinate. His cover note said, in its entirety, “:)”.

Jobs forwarded Schmidt’s groveling e-mail to an Apple subordinate. His cover note said, in its entirety, “:)”.

This telling material—and there’s oh, so much more of it—comes from the voluminous court record in the recently settled Silicon Valley hiring antitrust case. On April 24, Apple, Google, Intel (INTC), and Adobe Systems (ADBE) ran up the white flag in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 64,000 programmers and engineers who accused the companies of conspiring not to raid one another’s workforces in the interest of stifling competition and suppressing wages.

STORY: Behind Silicon Valley's Hiring Settlement, a Star Judge With Power to Reshape Tech

The tech aristocrats, who from 2005 through 2009 secretly forged a series of no-recruit agreements, suspected what they were doing wasn’t quite kosher. Schmidt at one point instructed a junior executive to disseminate the pacts “verbally,” because, he explained, “I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later.” But why did they think they could get away with it? And now that they’ve been exposed, what does the episode tell us about the nature of a corporate culture built on the labor of a relatively well-paid but evidently exploited cohort of digitally talented serfs?

“If you hire a single one of these people,” Steve Jobs told Sergey Brin, “that means war”

The first point that demands underscoring is that Jobs, Schmidt, et al did kind of get away with it. The $324 million Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe agreed to pay works out to about 0.4 percent of their combined total revenue for the most recent quarter. At an earlier stage of the case, three other defendants—Intuit (INTU), Pixar (DIS), and Lucasfilm—bought their way out of trouble for a mere $20 million. Lump together both settlements, subtract some healthy lawyers’ fees, divide what’s left, and the individual plaintiffs will end up with a few thousand dollars apiece. (Which is not to say that the putative victims have been going hungry; many earn well into six figures, despite their employers’ obstruction of job mobility.)

It’s unlikely, moreover, that the defendants will suffer any lasting taint when it comes to new hires. One reason the bosses had the cojones to try this caper is that Apple and Google in particular are the dream factories of America’s digital and marketing elites. People would work at those places for free—and in some ways, that makes the exploitation even worse. “It’s shocking primarily because I’ve never heard of an industrywide web of bilateral agreements to suppress talent competition,” says Jeff Connaughton, a former Washington tech industry lobbyist and Clinton White House aide.

VIDEO: Baffling Pay: Who Earns What in Silicon Valley?

No one understood better the hold Silicon Valley came to have on the modern meritocratic imagination than Jobs. Nor was anyone his rival when it came to self-regard. In 2005 he relished the resurgence of his beloved Apple; soon he’d be obsessing over losing key personnel. His iPhone would help spark the renaissance of the tech economy in the wake of the dot-com bust, but the social networking boom would pique the curiosity of promising young employees.

Jobs’s immediate concern was Google. In February 2005 he demanded that Sergey Brin, co-founder of the search-engine giant, instruct his troops to cease recruiting from Apple’s ranks. “If you hire a single one of these people, that means war,” Jobs told Brin, according to Brin’s account in the court record. Apple’s co-founder can’t speak for himself, having died of cancer in October 2011 at the age of 56, but the Brin version sounds like classic Jobs.

Google’s obsequiousness reflected Jobs’s almost unfathomable influence and the industry’s penchant for corporate cross-pollination. The companies alleged to have participated in the no-recruiting conspiracy shared directors and senior advisers. Google and Apple had two directors in common: Schmidt and Art Levinson, then CEO of Genentech (ROG:VX). Brin and fellow Google co-founder Larry Page viewed Jobs as a mentor, regularly joining him on his meditative walks. During this period, Apple’s iPhone funneled users to Google’s map and search services.

VIDEO: Real Tech Execs React to HBO's 'Silicon Valley'

The antitrust court files show that Google and Apple shared something else: fear of Facebook (FB), the latest magnet for top managers and programmers. In a deposition, Schmidt fretted about Google executive Sheryl Sandberg’s defection in March 2008 to become the social networking company’s chief operating officer. “Sheryl,” Schmidt recalled, “had built our recruiting organization, was an excellent recruiter, and as she went over to Facebook, many people left Google to work for her in jobs which they perceived as promotions.”

In her own pretrial testimony, Sandberg said her former Google comrades tried to persuade her to lean in and join the no-recruiting cabal. To her credit, she refused. Facebook was not named as a defendant in the case. Sandberg didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The original Apple-Google arrangement expanded into “a series of six bilateral agreements,” U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh observed in a March 28 order denying the defendants’ request for summary judgment. The companies had conceded that the pacts “contained nearly identical terms, precluding each pair from affirmatively soliciting any of each other’s employees,” Koh noted. The judge stressed how unusual this kind of systematic plotting is—in the Valley or anywhere else. CEOs of rival companies may nod and wink to each other over drinks at the club. Competitors may refrain from going after a select number of one another’s most highly valued employees. In the antitrust case, Koh said, the defendants’ own experts admitted “they are unaware of these types of long-term, all-employee agreements ever occurring between other firms.

VIDEO: San Francisco's Tech-Job Growth Tops Silicon Valley

The chiefs of the Valley normally boast of their dedication to merit and market forces. The antitrust case revealed another side. “This is one of hundreds of examples in which our economy has been corrupted by the intense concentration of power and wealth,” says Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners, a private equity firm specializing in technology and media.

Ultimately, brazenness on such a broad scale was impossible to conceal. By 2009 the U.S. Department of Justice got wind of the situation, leading to a federal investigation and a court-approved settlement in 2011. The companies didn’t admit wrongdoing or pay fines but agreed to refrain from restraints on “soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.” The DOJ action, in turn, inspired the private litigation, the settlement of which included the companies reiterating that they hadn’t done anything illegal.

Apple and Google declined to comment on the settlement; spokesmen for Adobe and Intel said the companies settled to avoid the burdens of further litigation. Indeed, Koh had issued a series of interim rulings hinting they faced a real risk of losing in front of a jury at the scheduled late-May trial—and risk much larger damages. Last October she allowed the plaintiffs to amass their claims into a single class action, despite a series of recent Supreme Court rulings discouraging trial judges from certifying mass suits. Koh’s March 28 order refusing summary judgment indicated she’d open the door wide to embarrassing e-mail and deposition evidence. From the deposition of Edward Catmull, president of Pixar, she plucked his assertion that it was economically sensible for the alleged conspirators to cooperate because intercompany talent raiding “messes up the pay structure.” From the e-mail account of Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO and a member of Google’s board, she selected this description of the Intel-Google agreement: “[W]e have a handshake ‘no recruit’ between Eric [Schmidt] and myself. I would not like this broadly known.” Even without a law degree, one could get Koh’s drift: This trial would have been ugly for the tech overlords.

STORY: Are the Techno Riche Really Ruining San Francisco? Yes, Says Rebecca Solnit

On the other hand, the judge did nothing to reassure the plaintiffs that lead members of the class would be able to avoid intense public scrutiny of their personnel records. That prospect doubtless played into their willingness to settle for the modest-seeming $324 million. Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, declined to comment on or confirm the dollar figure. She praised the settlement and emphasized that it constituted “a wake-up call for the Valley” and a reminder that the tech industry “cannot make up its own rules. We all play by the same rules.”

  

Koh’s role in the antitrust case highlights her growing status as the face of commercial law in Silicon Valley. While shepherding the no-hire suit to a resolution, the 45-year-old judge has simultaneously been presiding over the main battle in a worldwide smartphone-patent war pitting Apple against Samsung Electronics and other device manufacturers that use Google’s Android operating system. In both matters, Koh, who wears a trademark strand of white pearls against her black robe, has demonstrated an impressive mastery of abstruse civil jurisprudence and a blunt common sense.

BLOG: Google and Other Tech Companies Need Lessons in Local Philanthropy

The smartphone conflict began in 2010 with Jobs’s outrage that Google—via Android—was encroaching on the iPhone and its walled-off iOS software. Near the end of his life, Jobs told his authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson, he was “willing to go to thermonuclear war on this.” The provisional Apple-Google solidarity bred only a few years earlier by common anxiety over Facebook gave way to antagonism over which company would predominate in what’s become a $340 billion global phone market.

Google has gone so far as to indemnify Samsung against some of Apple’s claims that the South Korean company’s phones infringe on Apple patents. Apple was awarded $930 million in damages after the first jury trial before Koh two years ago. Now the companies are back in her courtroom, with a jury poised to decide whether Apple deserves an additional $2 billion. The inevitable appeals guarantee that, barring a settlement, the patent litigation will continue for years.

Koh may be ideally suited to serve as the Valley’s modern-day Solomon. The double-Harvard graduate (college and law school) worked for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Justice Department before earning a partnership at the law firm McDermott, Will & Emery, where she represented tech clients. In 2008 the Republican governor of California at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger, appointed her to a state judgeship; two years later a Democratic president, Barack Obama, elevated her to the federal bench. The Senate confirmed her unanimously.

STORY: In Horowitz's Silicon Valley Tell-All, a Woman's Place Is Strictly Hypothetical

While steering the antitrust defendants toward a settlement, Koh has been signaling to the smartphone combatants that they, too, would be wise to call off the litigator pit bulls and work out some kind of cross-licensing truce. Smartphones rely on so many layers of innovation that it’s difficult to look at the final products and declare with absolute certainty who invented what. Koh has on occasion observed in court that even as their lawyers snarl and gnash their teeth, Samsung remains one of Apple’s main component suppliers, a relationship akin to a multibillion-dollar-a-year co-dependency.

The judge has also joked that she’d send Apple and Samsung to mediation with “boxes of chocolates” if that’s what it takes to get them to compromise. So far, conciliation hasn’t worked. Significantly, though, Koh has refused to convert Apple’s 2012 trial victory into a ban on U.S. sales of infringing Samsung devices, a goal the iPhone maker has said is more important than monetary compensation.

One suspects, Apple, Google, and Samsung will eventually come to terms on just what Apple’s allegedly infringed intellectual property is worth, and that amount—plus a lot of legal fees—will be amortized by the accountants as the cost of doing business.

STORY: The Next Silicon Valley Will Always Be Silicon Valley

Barrett is an assistant managing editor and senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek. His new book, Law of the Jungle, which tells the story of the Chevron oil pollution case in Ecuador, will be published by Crown in September 2014. His most recent book is GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun.

Stone is a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in San Francisco. He is the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Little, Brown; October 2013). Follow him on Twitter @BradStone.

Treat cyberspace like a battlefield...(TechRepublic)

By Michael Kassner                                                                May 1, 2014
Some IT professionals are going military style by using kill chains to defend their internet presence

Treating cyberspace like a battlefield is gaining momentum among information-security professionals. Proponents also suggest private organizations adapt military-style strategies to defend their internet presence. One such game plan involves analyzing what Lockheed Martin calls the Cyber Kill Chain. The concept first surfaced in the seminal paper: Intelligence-Driven Computer Network Defense Informed by Analysis of Adversary Campaigns and Intrusion Kill Chains.

The paper written by Eric M. Hutchins, Michael J. Clopperty, and Rohan M. Amin develops a cyber-defense framework based on a well-known methodology used by the military known as kill chain analysis. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of US Naval operations, and General Mark Welsh, chief of staff of the US Air Force, described the term kill chain: "[T]o attack our forces, an adversary must complete a sequence of actions, commonly referred to as a 'kill chain.' Because each step must work, our forces can focus on the weakest links in the chain, not each and every one."

That is interesting. Anyone involved in IT security has heard the mantra: attackers only need one weakness, whereas defenders must protect every eventuality.

Why now?

The authors specifically state the kill chain analysis is important because of an uptick in Advanced Persistent Threats (APT). Also, kill chain analysis offsets the fact that organizations do not collaborate anywhere near as much as the bad guys who are attacking them. Arthur Wong, HP senior vice-president and general manager of HP Enterprise Security Services (ESS), told ZDNet, "When anyone wants to launch an attack on a particular company, they're going into chat rooms and asking, 'Hey does anybody own a computer or a system inside this company?', and someone will put up their hand, or they'll know someone else, and a deal is negotiated."

Cyber kill chain

The authors took the military's kill chain analysis approach and revamped it for use by private organizations, mentioning in the paper's introduction, "Using a kill chain model to describe phases of intrusions, mapping adversary kill chain indicators to defender courses of action, identifying patterns that link individual intrusions into broader campaigns, and understanding the iterative nature of intelligence gathering based on the intelligence-driven computer network defense."

The introduction referred to "kill chain indicators." The military's version of the indicators is known as F2T2EA: Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess. The authors reworked the military's indicators to focus on intrusion detection:

Reconnaissance: Research, identification, and selection of targets: for example, crawling internet websites for email addresses, social relationships, or information on specific technologies.

Weaponization: Creating a workable exploit by combining a trojan (get past defenses) with a malware payload constructed to accomplish the attacker's goals.

Delivery: Transmission of the weapon to the target. Popular APT delivery vehicles are email attachments, websites, and USB removable media.

Exploitation: When the malware weapon is delivered, the payload activates exploiting a vulnerable program or system.

Installation: Installation of a backdoor on the victimized system allows the adversary to maintain contact.

Command and Control: APTs typically require manual intervention to explore the victim's network. This is accomplished by the malware contacting a remote command and control server.

Actions on Objectives: If everything goes according to plan, the attackers now pursue the reason for the intrusion, possibly compromising additional servers or exfiltrating data.

An "after the fact" example

A telling example was A "Kill Chain" Analysis of the 2013 Target Data Breach. The report prepared for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation described Target's data breach using cyber kill chain analysis. Granted, it was after the fact, but if you want to learn how this militarization technique works, reading the report will help. The following slide points out the weak links in the chain, and suggested ways to improve Target's defenses so the attack will not happen again.

To militarize or not?

To learn if organizations are implementing cyber kill chain analysis, I had a conversation withRodrigo Bijou, consultant at the Data Guild in Palo Alto. Bijou said, "I've been tasked by major U.S. banks to build features into their security programs based on their concept of the cyber kill chain.' Specifically, the roadmap for the work I was doing was to be delivered in stages based on the cyber kill chain: Reconnaissance, Exploitation, Exfiltration, etc."

What Bijou said next was especially interesting and something worth looking into. "I think this [cyber kill chain], like APT and other buzz words, points to a trend where marketing is becoming more influential in driving product decisions, and what services are delivered," he said.

Note: The initial slide is Websense's interpretation and simplification of the seven indicators.

.About Michael Kassner: Information is my field...Writing is my passion...Coupling the two is my mission.