Android scare: percentages do not tell the real tale

In its eagerness to put a computer running its software on every desk, Microsoft has spawned a number of ancillary industries, the most pernicious of which is the anti-virus group. McAfee is a major force in this industry.

Anti-virus companies operate on the Chicken Little principle: the sky is going to fall on your head unless you use A-V software to protect your computer; you might as well buy from us. Politicians use the same principle but are much less successful than the A-V crowd.

With Windows being the insecure platform that it is, A-V companies have built up businesses worth billions and, understandably, are keen to guard their terrain.

Hence, when Microsoft decides that it is going to provide dedicated A-V software as a core part of its next operating system, Windows 8, A-V companies know that their slice of the pie is going to decrease. This seems like the ultimate definition of the word chutzpah - create a problem and then provide a solution - but Microsoft, no longer under the restrictions of a consent decree, probably knows it will get away with it.

Thus it is not surprising that A-V companies are looking for new markets into which they can sell their software. And the new kid on the block is Android, a rapidly spreading mobile operating system which is attracting some interest from malware writers. The headlines that are being generated are, thus, not surprising.

McAfee issued a press release last week that, in its very first paragraph, said Android malware was up by 37 percent. Looks impressive until you ask McAfee for the actual numbers. Michael Sentonas, chief technical officer for Australia and New Zealand, said they were unable to provide numbers - I wonder why - and then referred me to a graph in the 21-page report (PDF) that accompanied the press release.

According to said graph, there were 60 samples of unique Android malware collected in the second quarter. That number grew to 82 in the third quarter. There you have the 37 percent growth. Sounds like a declamation from a prophet of doom when you use the percentage instead of the actual numbers.

The word Windows was mentioned once in that 21-page report. Once. And yet on probing, Sentonas admitted that of the 75 million unique malware samples McAfee expected to collect in 2011, more than 95 per cent would attack only one platform. No prizes for guessing the platform in question.

In my book, the second fact would be the headline. It is much more shocking, after all these years of development, that every form of malware just continues to increase when it comes to Windows. One can understand if these were early days. Windows, remember, has been around for 26 years in one form or another.

Android is a baby in terms of development. And in the haste to add new features and make it do more than its competitors, Google is disregarding the basic principles that underlie the security of any UNIX-like operating sytem. The Mac people are streets ahead because they have been using a UNIX-like base for many, many years. Google will take some time to catch up.

Source http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/51382-android-scare-percentages-do-not-tell-the-real-tale

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Republican senator presses Obama on trade deals

Senator Rob Portman on Wednesday urged President Barack Obama to quickly send three long-delayed free-trade pacts to Congress for approval, rather than wait until after the August congressional recess.

Portman, a former U.S. trade representative under President George W. Bush, also said 12 Republican senators have agreed to support an extension of Trade Adjustment Assistance, a worker retraining program that Obama has insisted be approved along with the pacts.

That, combined with the 53 votes in the Democratic caucus, would be enough to ensure that Republican opponents of Trade Adjustment Assistance in the Senate can not block it, he said.

"Mr. President, please tear down these walls. Send these agreements forward," Portman said, echoing late President Ronald Reagan's call for the Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

"If we don't (pass the agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama) now, my fear is that over the August break there will be additional pressure from those who oppose the agreements," said Portman, an Ohio Republican.

The administration has hoped to win approval of the three trade deals before the August recess but with each passing day that looks increasingly doubtful, due in large part to intense negotiations on a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling by August 2 that is occupying both the White House and Congress.

While Portman may have enough votes to overcome an initial procedural effort to kill Trade Adjustment Assistance, Democratic sources said a Senate leadership deal is needed to give the White House confidence the program will survive a prolonged Senate debate.

Trade Adjustment Assistance, known as TAA, is a nearly 50-year-old retraining and income assistance program to help workers who have lost their jobs due to foreign competition.

Republicans have objected to a White House plan to include an extension of the TAA program in the implementing legislation for the South Korea trade deal and have demanded a separate vote on the legislation. But Democrats fear the program will be killed if not shielded by the South Korea pact.

Democrats view TAA as a vital part of the U.S. social safety net. Many Republicans question the program's cost and effectiveness. The White House has negotiated a bipartisan deal to reform TAA but it has not reached a deal with Republicans on how Congress will consider the package.

Early on Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said he hoped a deal would be struck soon with Senate leaders on a path to consider both TAA and the pacts.

"I am still confident we are going to get these agreements passed and we're going to get them passed sooner rather than later," Kirk said.

But a business lobbyist, speaking on condition that he not be identified, said his organization was told on Tuesday that the administration would not submit the agreements until September. Kirk's office has not confirmed that.

A Senate Democratic aide, also speaking on condition he not be identified, said the only way the pacts could be passed quickly was if Republicans agreed to let TAA remain in the legislation to implement the Korea pact.

Given the tight floor schedule, the demand for a separate vote on TAA makes it impractical the pacts could be passed before September, he said.

Still, Republican Representative Kevin Brady, who chairs a key trade subcommittee in the House of Representatives, urged the administration and Senate leaders to reach an agreement allowing the pacts to be approved in coming weeks.

"If the White House is considering not sending them, I hope they'll reconsider," Brady said.

The United States risks losing sales to competitors in Europe and Canada, which have negotiated their own agreements with the countries, Brady said.

The South Korean parliament also needs to pass the U.S.-Korea agreement for it to go into force. South Korea's ruling Grand National Party chief repeated a pledge to see the deal ratified in August.

South Korea's opposition Democratic Party has issued 10 points it wants revised, including a delay in the opening of the beef market, before it can agree on ratifying the deal.

Source http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/us-usa-trade-deals-idUSTRE76K0HH20110721

Congress, Barack Obama, and the Malia-Sasha middle school test

While complaining about Congress’s failure to raise the debt ceiling, Barack Obama noted: “Malia and Sasha generally finish their homework a day ahead of time. Malia is 13, Sasha’s 10.”

He continued: “It is impressive. They don’t wait until the night before. They’re not pulling all-nighters. They’re 13 and 10. You know, Congress can do the same thing.”

First of all, I hope D.C.’s most intrepid reporters are fact-checking this! Assuming it’s true, though, why are Malia and Sasha doing their homework a day ahead of time? I don’t know anyone who does that, except for maybe the Chua children, and that is only so they can have more spare time to lovingly decorate their pianos with bite marks.

I would describe myself in middle and high school as somewhere between “cheerfully scrupulous” and “an obnoxious, insufferable workaholic” and even I did not do my homework a day ahead of time. I knew someone who did, but she also color-coded all her notes using a complicated system of multiple highlighters. As a consequence, her only friends were people like me. And I wore the same shirt in different colors every day.

I am not saying that Malia and Sasha should not be doing their homework. Although, if they have enough time for that, they clearly are not extracurricularly involved enough. Don’t they realize that their futures hang in the balance? They should be out teaching catfish about self-expression, or something.

But whether or not it’s accurate, this comment concerns me on a number of levels.

Telling Congress to be more like Malia and Sasha is a slippery slope. First we say Congress should do its homework like middle-school-aged girls, then the next thing we know they’ll be curled up on a couch watching the Teen Choice Awards.

Congress is already too much like middle school. There are the ill-advised sexts. There’s the constant need for attention. The desire to avoid doing the assigned reading. The flights of enthusiasm at the sighting of a putative celebrity. The craving to seem cool and fit in that leads to doing what everyone else wants you to do. The over-dramatized desire to stalk from the room rolling your eyes rather than having a productive discussion. “I’m not going to vote to raise the debt ceiling!” you yell. “And you can’t make me!”

So even if Malia and Sasha are paragons of studiousness who actually do everything a night ahead of time, I hope Congress doesn’t listen to this advice. If it’s this bad when they aren’t trying to be like middle-schoolers, imagine what would happen if they were.

Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/congress-barack-obama-and-the-malia-sasha-middle-school-test/2011/06/29/AGXsEDrH_blog.html

Michelle Obama heads to Africa next week

First lady Michelle Obama’s official visit to South Africa and Botswana next week will focus on engaging African youth and paying tribute to the cultural heritage and political struggles of both countries.

Obama’s schedule — which includes a hearty mix of public events, visits with local consulate officials and tourism — was released by White House officials Wednesday afternoon. She will be accompanied by her daughters, Malia and Sasha, her mother, Marian Robinson, and her niece and nephew, Leslie and Avery Robinson, on the five-day goodwill tour.

Their trip will begin June 20 in Pretoria, where Obama will meet with South African President Jacob Zuma’s wife Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma at Zuma’s official residence. The meeting will highlight one significant cultural difference: Zuma is a Zulu traditionalist and polygamist. Reports conflict on how many wives he has.

In Johannesburg, Obama and her entourage will visit the Nelson Mandela Foundation, where the anti-apartheid movement’s archives are housed. A visit with Mandela, who is 92 and battled a difficult respiratory infection earlier this year, is not on her schedule, but his wife, Graca Machel, the former first lady of Mozambique, will lead the family’s tour of the archives.

As in past trips, Obama will spend much of her time with children and young leaders, focusing her talks on education and wellness. Last year, in her first solo official visit overseas, Obama held a roundtable discussion with young adults in Mexico, hugged schoolchildren and visited earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Obama’s itinerary in South Africa similarly includes a visit to Soweto, the most populous black urban residential area in the country, where she will give a keynote address to 75 young women selected by U.S. officials for their leadership skills and lead them in a community service project.

During the latter part of the trip, Obama will visit Cape Town. She will meet with students at the University of Cape Town, visit an HIV/AIDS project that educates children about the virus, and travel to Robben Island, where Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists were held during the country’s years of racial oppression.

The family’s trip ends with a visit to Gabarone in Botswana and a safari in that country.

Both countries, which are democracies and have made progress on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, are well placed to be showcased with a visit by the first lady, said John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, who has also served in South Africa.

“If you want to showcase countries that are moving in a democratic direction with a track record of credible elections and with governments that are actively wrestling with real issues that impact on their citizens, Botswana and South Africa are the right ones,” Campbell said.

Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michelle-obama-heads-to-africa-next-week/2011/06/15/AGbmyMWH_story.html

Obama says U.S. freedom comes at 'dear cost'

The United States as a free people and free society remain thanks to the 'dear cost' of soldiers who have given their lives, President Barack Obama said on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery at a Memorial Day Service.

"We remember that the blessings we enjoy as Americans came at a dear cost; that our very presence here today, as free people in a free society, bears testimony to their enduring legacy," Obama said.

Obama was in Arlington, Virgina, where he attended a morning Memorial Day service. He also visited a section of the cemetery set aside for those soldiers who have died since September 11, 2001.

Earlier he visited the 'Tomb of the Unknowns' and presented a wreath of red and white flowers.

Obama said Americans can and must honor the sacrifice of fallen soldiers by "holding their memories close to our hearts, and heeding the example they set."

He said the U.S. would keep searching for missing soldiers and those held as prisoners of war, as well as serving them "as well as they serve us -- from the moment they enter the military, to the moment they leave it, to the moment they are laid to rest."

Obama recalled soldiers who fell in the Revolutionary War, Civil War and "battlefields of our times."

Citing members of a family who mailed him a story of their son, Obama quoted a verse from the biblical Book of Isaiah where the prophet says he has been called to deliver stern words to his people.

"When I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here I am Send me!"

"That's what we memorialize today. That spirit that says, send me, no matter the mission. Send me, no matter the risk. Send me, no matter how great the sacrifice I am called to make," Obama said.

"It's natural, when we lose someone we care about, to ask why it had to be them," he said.

"These are questions that cannot be answered by us. But on this day we remember that it is on our behalf that that they ... gave their lives."

Obama recalled a pair of friends that were more "like brothers" that met at the U.S. naval Academy. One was killed by a sniper in Iraq in 2007 while attempting to rescue his fellow Marines from danger. The other deployed to Afghanistan last year and "gave his own life, along with eight others" in a helicopter crash.

Their families decided to move one of the friends from his grave in Pennsylvania to lay him in a grave next to his friend at Arlington.

"Warriors for freedom," reads the epitaph, "brothers forever."

Their friendship "reflects the meaning of Memorial Day. Brotherhood. Sacrifice. Love of country. And it is my fervent prayer that we may honor the memory of the fallen by living out those ideals every day of our lives, in the military and beyond. May God bless the souls of the venerable warriors we've lost, and the country for which they died."

Source http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/155012/20110531/obama-freedom-dear-cost-memorial-day-arlington-national-cemetary.htm

Obama calls world 'safer' after bin Laden death

Calling it a "good day for America," President Barack Obama said Monday that the death of Osama bin Laden had made the world "a better place," as new details emerged about the daring overnight raid in Pakistan that killed him.

"The world is safer," Obama said as he appeared at a White House ceremony bestowing the Medal of Honor to two soldiers killed in the Korean War. "It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden."

Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida and the most hunted man in the world, was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a large compound in the city of Abbottabad, about an hour's drive north from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The compound, only about a third of a mile from a military academy of the Pakistani army, is at the end of a narrow dirt road and is roughly eight times the size of other homes in the area. It has no telephone or Internet connections. When American operatives converged on the residence early Monday morning, bin Laden "resisted the assault force" and was shot in the head and killed near the end of an intense 40-minute gunbattle, senior administration officials said.

Words of caution

The raid carried extraordinary risks -- and not just from bin Laden and those with him in the compound. As the sound of battle shook the night, Pakistan scrambled

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jets to respond to a military operation that its military had not been informed was taking place.

"They had no idea about who might have been on there, whether it be U.S. or somebody else," John Brennan, Obama's counterterrorism adviser, said in a briefing Monday. "So we were watching and making sure that our people and our aircraft were able to get out of the Pakistani airspace, and, thankfully, there was no engagement with Pakistani forces."

The reaction in Washington the day after was ebullient. Obama recalled the sense of unity and purpose that immediately followed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon nearly a decade ago. "Today we are reminded that as a nation there's nothing we can't do when we put our shoulders to the wheel, when we remember the sense of unity that defines us as Americans," he said.

There were words of caution, too. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton praised Pakistan for its cooperation in fighting al-Qaida, even as some analysts and officials voiced disbelief that bin Laden could have lived where he did without the knowledge of Pakistani officials.

"Continued cooperation will be just as important in the days ahead," she said, "because even as we mark this milestone, we should not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of bin Laden."

Bin Laden's demise is a defining moment in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. What remains to be seen, however, is whether it galvanizes bin Laden's followers by turning him into a martyr or serves as a turning of the page in the war in Afghanistan and gives further impetus to Obama to bring U.S. troops home.

How much bin Laden's death will affect al-Qaida itself remains unclear. For years, as they failed to find him, U.S. leaders have said he was more symbolically important than operationally significant because he was on the run and hindered in any meaningful leadership role. Yet he remained the most potent face of terrorism around the world, and some of those who played down his role in recent years nonetheless celebrated his death.

Tension in Pakistan

Given bin Laden's status among radicals, the U.S. government braced for possible retaliation. A senior Pentagon official said late Sunday that military bases in the U.S. and around the world were ordered to a higher state of readiness. The State Department issued a worldwide travel warning, urging Americans in volatile areas "to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations."

The strike could deepen tensions with Pakistan, which has periodically bristled at U.S. counterterrorism efforts even as bin Laden evidently found safe refuge on its territory for nearly a decade. Since taking office, Obama has ordered significantly more drone strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Pakistan, stirring public anger there and prompting the Pakistani government to protest.

Brennan, like Clinton, defended Pakistan, even as he acknowledged the tensions between the two countries over fighting terrorism.

"We've had differences of view with the Pakistani government on counterterrorism cooperation and areas of cooperation and what we think they should and shouldn't be doing," he said. "At the same time, I'll say that Pakistan has been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists inside of Pakistan than any country, and it's by a wide margin."

Source http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_17979283?source=rss&nclick_check=1