A 19-year old Chinese man is in police custody after allegedly hacking into a provincial seismological bureau's Web site to place a false earthquake warning, Chinese state media reported Monday.
The teenager, identified only by his surname Chen, altered the Web site of the Guangxi Seismological Bureau to warn residents in southwestern China to prepare for an impending earthquake expected to measure 9.0 on the Richter scale, according to a report on China Central Television's Web site.
Such a posting could have caused a panic. On May 12 an earthquake measuring 7.8 struck China's Sichuan province, killing over 70,000 people and leaving millions homeless. Following the quake, many people have fallen prey to rumors that earthquakes can now be predicted in a manner similar to weather forecasts, although there was no warning of the Sichuan quake.
Authorities did not say what impact the hacker's posting had.
An earthquake measuring approximately 9.0 was the cause of the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed about 250,000 around the Indian Ocean.
Chen was arrested in the Guangxi province city of Taicang on June 4, and was being held in the provincial capital of Nanning. The report did not indicate what the exact charges would be, nor when Chen might face trial or what type of punishment was possible if he is convicted.
Chen had confessed and said that he altered the Web site to demonstrate his technical skills, according to the report.
Other young people have been involved in untoward online events since the earthquake. In late May, Liaoning province resident Gao Qianhui caused an uproar when a webcam recording she made expressing apathy towards the quake's victims reached viewers of online video sites. Gao was later arrested on unspecified charges.
Last week, a young woman known only as "Xiaoyun" or "Little Cloud" and claiming to be a native of Sichuan posted lurid photos of herself online. "I am posting some photos to encourage contributions" to quake relief efforts, she claimed. The authenticity of the photos and claims remain unknown, but the pictures have been circulated widely on blogs and bulletin boards in China.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Former 'spam king' to pay MySpace $6 million
A Colorado man has been ordered to pay US$6 million in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users.
Scott Richter of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled on Thursday.
Richter, who was once accused of pumping out more than 100 million spam messages per day, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with an August 2006 campaign in which MySpace members were hit with unsolicited messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case.
The messages were sent to a MySpace community that was ill-equipped to deal with any security problems. At the time, "MySpace only employed two relatively junior staff employees to deal with these issues," Boesch wrote. The company's security staff has now grown to about 40, he added.
MySpace had been seeking a court ruling in the case, but in August 2007, U.S. District Judge George King of the Central District of California granted Richter's request to assign the matter to arbitration. Terms of the award were made public on Monday.
In a statement, Richter said that he and his company, Media Breakaway, were happy to have this matter behind them, noting that the arbitrator's award was 95 percent less than the amount sought by MySpace.
"We respect the decision of the arbitrator and we're not going to appeal it," said Steven Richter, the president and general counsel of Media Breakaway and father of Scott Richter. "We're going to pay the money he awarded."
This is not the first time a Scott Richter company has had to cough up millions of dollars to fight spam charges. In 2005, his previous company, Optinrealbig.com, paid $7 million to settle similar charges brought by Microsoft.
Scott Richter was removed from anti-spam organization Spamhaus' list of known spammers that same year.
Media Breakaway, which has no other spam cases pending, is doing everything it can to build a compliance team and make sure it is acting within the law, Steven Richter said.
MySpace said the Richter award was the latest in a series of steps it has taken to combat abuse on its Web site. In May, the company was awarded a $230 million antispam judgment against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines.
"This award reflects MySpace's continued momentum and holistic approach to ridding the site of spammers and phishers," MySpace said in a statement. "We will continue to do our part in cleansing the Internet of this invasive onslaught of spam."
Scott Richter of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees, a court-appointed arbitrator ruled on Thursday.
Richter, who was once accused of pumping out more than 100 million spam messages per day, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with an August 2006 campaign in which MySpace members were hit with unsolicited messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case.
The messages were sent to a MySpace community that was ill-equipped to deal with any security problems. At the time, "MySpace only employed two relatively junior staff employees to deal with these issues," Boesch wrote. The company's security staff has now grown to about 40, he added.
MySpace had been seeking a court ruling in the case, but in August 2007, U.S. District Judge George King of the Central District of California granted Richter's request to assign the matter to arbitration. Terms of the award were made public on Monday.
In a statement, Richter said that he and his company, Media Breakaway, were happy to have this matter behind them, noting that the arbitrator's award was 95 percent less than the amount sought by MySpace.
"We respect the decision of the arbitrator and we're not going to appeal it," said Steven Richter, the president and general counsel of Media Breakaway and father of Scott Richter. "We're going to pay the money he awarded."
This is not the first time a Scott Richter company has had to cough up millions of dollars to fight spam charges. In 2005, his previous company, Optinrealbig.com, paid $7 million to settle similar charges brought by Microsoft.
Scott Richter was removed from anti-spam organization Spamhaus' list of known spammers that same year.
Media Breakaway, which has no other spam cases pending, is doing everything it can to build a compliance team and make sure it is acting within the law, Steven Richter said.
MySpace said the Richter award was the latest in a series of steps it has taken to combat abuse on its Web site. In May, the company was awarded a $230 million antispam judgment against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines.
"This award reflects MySpace's continued momentum and holistic approach to ridding the site of spammers and phishers," MySpace said in a statement. "We will continue to do our part in cleansing the Internet of this invasive onslaught of spam."
Telecom industry focuses on video, fat pipes
Wired and wireless carriers will meet up with network equipment vendors this week in Las Vegas to figure out how to meet the changing and fast-growing demands of enterprises and consumers.
The NXTcomm trade show, the latest incarnation of an annual event that used to be called Supercomm, will bring together the heads of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel, plus other luminaries, and they will have plenty to talk about. Demand for bandwidth is rising, new wireless technologies are emerging, huge swaths of radio spectrum in the U.S. have recently been allocated to wireless data and carriers are redesigning their networks to deliver packages of IP (Internet Protocol) wired and mobile services.
Video, for consumers and increasingly for business, is a major driver in the growth of data traffic and is likely to be a big topic at the conference. Research company IDC predicted last December that video distribution would be the biggest driver for service providers to consolidate their networks around IP this year.
Tandberg will push video for enterprises with two types of products on display at the show. On employees' desks, it will make the video phone a reality with its E20 Video IP Phone. It's designed from the ground up for visual calls, with a 10.6-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) screen built in right over the phone keypad, and a 5 megapixel video camera on top. The screen will have 448 lines of resolution, near DVD quality of 480 lines, and will feature CD-quality audio, according to Tandberg. With a button on the phone, employees can switch from video to sharing an application running on their PCs. Picture-in-picture application-sharing will come later, said Peter Nutley, director of global product marketing.
The E20 will come with a handset and also work as a speakerphone. There is an RJ-11 jack for wired headsets and Bluetooth is built in, though it won't be activated until a software upgrade due in the first half of 2009, Nutley said. Priced at US$1,490, the E20 can take the place of an existing desk phone and can be hooked up to either a Tandberg infrastructure or an existing IP PBX (private branch exchange). It is designed to work with most other IP phones and videoconferencing systems using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and other standards. The E20 is set to ship in the first quarter of 2009.
Most video phones have been designed for consumers, and enterprise employees typically have PCs they could use for IP calls with video, said IDC analyst Nora Freedman. But a dedicated device such as the E20 is likely to offer better image and voice quality and may be easier to start up and use, she said.
"I don't want to have to call my IT guy so I can dial the phone," Freedman said.
Devices such as the E20 may appeal more to a niche market, said Robert Arnold of Current Analysis, though having the video calling capability up and available all the time would be an advantage over PC-based options.
Also at NXTcomm, Tandberg will show off the beginning of its next generation of telepresence systems, featuring 1080p high-definition video. It will demonstrate the Codec C90, a telepresence engine using Tandberg's latest codec. That engine will power the T1, a telepresence system with one 65-inch 1080p screen and a 1080p camera. The arrangement of the camera and display on the T1 can make it seem that participants are looking into each others' eyes, Nutley said. The C90 will cost $36,900 and the T1 will cost $69,900, and both are scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter.
Although Cisco Systems' telepresence products also have 1080p quality, Tandberg claims its system is more in line with standards and will deliver better quality when hooked up with other vendors' products.
However, with IP communications standards in the state they are today, it's unlikely anyone could make interoperability simple, Arnold said.
"It's probably going to take some sweat," Arnold said. "None of this stuff is straightforward."
Ericsson, one of the world's largest wired and wireless network infrastructure makers, will focus its NXTcomm push on IPTV with a Televisionary Pavilion in its booth. The company said it will show how it can help carriers deliver video on everything from big-screen TVs to handheld devices, whenever and wherever consumers want to watch and interact with it.
A service provider and a group of vendors are going to tackle the bandwidth problem head-on with a real-world demonstration of 100G bps (bit per second) Ethernet at NXTcomm, which they call the world's first.
Carriers are gradually converting their data networks to IP and Ethernet to take advantage of relative simplicity and low cost and to better deliver services to enterprises, which already use Ethernet internally. An emerging standard for the next generation of Ethernet, following the current 10G bps, allows for both 40G bps and 100G bps versions.
Equipment makers Infinera and Avago Technologies will set up gear for the demonstration, in which network testing company Ixia will send data over XO Communications' network from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and back. Using products now under development, they will achieve that speed by "mapping" the 100G bps of traffic onto 10 "lanes" of 10G bps, a type of connection widely available today. The technology is based on a standard under development by the IEEE 802.3ba task force, which Infinera expects to be agreed upon within 18 to 24 months. The 100G bps Ethernet technology also will be useful in the backbones of large enterprise networks as more 10-Gig Ethernet pipes are installed in data centers, said Errol Ginsberg, founder and chairman of Ixia.
Arbor Networks will use the show to unveil a system for protecting high-speed Ethernet links from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. Arbor's Threat Management System 3100 can detect and mitigate DDoS attacks on a 10G Ethernet connection, using deep packet inspection of more than 80 critical IP services and applications on the network, including VoIP (voice over IP), HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol), instant messaging and P-to-P (peer-to-peer). It can issue reports and surgically remove only attack traffic, according to the company. Arbor has integrated TMS 3100 into its Peakflow SP platform, which performs a variety of other protection functions.
The NXTcomm trade show, the latest incarnation of an annual event that used to be called Supercomm, will bring together the heads of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel, plus other luminaries, and they will have plenty to talk about. Demand for bandwidth is rising, new wireless technologies are emerging, huge swaths of radio spectrum in the U.S. have recently been allocated to wireless data and carriers are redesigning their networks to deliver packages of IP (Internet Protocol) wired and mobile services.
Video, for consumers and increasingly for business, is a major driver in the growth of data traffic and is likely to be a big topic at the conference. Research company IDC predicted last December that video distribution would be the biggest driver for service providers to consolidate their networks around IP this year.
Tandberg will push video for enterprises with two types of products on display at the show. On employees' desks, it will make the video phone a reality with its E20 Video IP Phone. It's designed from the ground up for visual calls, with a 10.6-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) screen built in right over the phone keypad, and a 5 megapixel video camera on top. The screen will have 448 lines of resolution, near DVD quality of 480 lines, and will feature CD-quality audio, according to Tandberg. With a button on the phone, employees can switch from video to sharing an application running on their PCs. Picture-in-picture application-sharing will come later, said Peter Nutley, director of global product marketing.
The E20 will come with a handset and also work as a speakerphone. There is an RJ-11 jack for wired headsets and Bluetooth is built in, though it won't be activated until a software upgrade due in the first half of 2009, Nutley said. Priced at US$1,490, the E20 can take the place of an existing desk phone and can be hooked up to either a Tandberg infrastructure or an existing IP PBX (private branch exchange). It is designed to work with most other IP phones and videoconferencing systems using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and other standards. The E20 is set to ship in the first quarter of 2009.
Most video phones have been designed for consumers, and enterprise employees typically have PCs they could use for IP calls with video, said IDC analyst Nora Freedman. But a dedicated device such as the E20 is likely to offer better image and voice quality and may be easier to start up and use, she said.
"I don't want to have to call my IT guy so I can dial the phone," Freedman said.
Devices such as the E20 may appeal more to a niche market, said Robert Arnold of Current Analysis, though having the video calling capability up and available all the time would be an advantage over PC-based options.
Also at NXTcomm, Tandberg will show off the beginning of its next generation of telepresence systems, featuring 1080p high-definition video. It will demonstrate the Codec C90, a telepresence engine using Tandberg's latest codec. That engine will power the T1, a telepresence system with one 65-inch 1080p screen and a 1080p camera. The arrangement of the camera and display on the T1 can make it seem that participants are looking into each others' eyes, Nutley said. The C90 will cost $36,900 and the T1 will cost $69,900, and both are scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter.
Although Cisco Systems' telepresence products also have 1080p quality, Tandberg claims its system is more in line with standards and will deliver better quality when hooked up with other vendors' products.
However, with IP communications standards in the state they are today, it's unlikely anyone could make interoperability simple, Arnold said.
"It's probably going to take some sweat," Arnold said. "None of this stuff is straightforward."
Ericsson, one of the world's largest wired and wireless network infrastructure makers, will focus its NXTcomm push on IPTV with a Televisionary Pavilion in its booth. The company said it will show how it can help carriers deliver video on everything from big-screen TVs to handheld devices, whenever and wherever consumers want to watch and interact with it.
A service provider and a group of vendors are going to tackle the bandwidth problem head-on with a real-world demonstration of 100G bps (bit per second) Ethernet at NXTcomm, which they call the world's first.
Carriers are gradually converting their data networks to IP and Ethernet to take advantage of relative simplicity and low cost and to better deliver services to enterprises, which already use Ethernet internally. An emerging standard for the next generation of Ethernet, following the current 10G bps, allows for both 40G bps and 100G bps versions.
Equipment makers Infinera and Avago Technologies will set up gear for the demonstration, in which network testing company Ixia will send data over XO Communications' network from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and back. Using products now under development, they will achieve that speed by "mapping" the 100G bps of traffic onto 10 "lanes" of 10G bps, a type of connection widely available today. The technology is based on a standard under development by the IEEE 802.3ba task force, which Infinera expects to be agreed upon within 18 to 24 months. The 100G bps Ethernet technology also will be useful in the backbones of large enterprise networks as more 10-Gig Ethernet pipes are installed in data centers, said Errol Ginsberg, founder and chairman of Ixia.
Arbor Networks will use the show to unveil a system for protecting high-speed Ethernet links from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. Arbor's Threat Management System 3100 can detect and mitigate DDoS attacks on a 10G Ethernet connection, using deep packet inspection of more than 80 critical IP services and applications on the network, including VoIP (voice over IP), HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol), instant messaging and P-to-P (peer-to-peer). It can issue reports and surgically remove only attack traffic, according to the company. Arbor has integrated TMS 3100 into its Peakflow SP platform, which performs a variety of other protection functions.
Novell patches Suse Linux kernel for VMware efficiency
Novell Monday released updates to its Suse Linux kernel designed to make the operating system more efficient when running on top of VMware environments.
The upgrade to the Suse Linux Enterprise kernel lets it take advantage of paravirtualization techniques so it runs more efficiently as a guest operating system. Specifically, Novell has built in support for VMware's Virtual Machine Interface (VMI)."The patch to the kernel provides increased performance and better interoperability," says Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for open platform solutions at Novell.
The kernel patch is available in Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 Service Pack 2, which can be downloaded.
In a paravirtualized environment the guest operating system is modified to work more closely with the underlying hardware and not just with the virtualized environment. It is one of a handful of variants for designing virtual machine environments.
In order to take advantage of paravirtualization, however, an operating system must be specifically ported to run on top of a host system. Novell and VMware have been working on the Suse upgrades for the past nine months.
Novell also has a kernel patch to support paravirtualization of SLES on the Xen hypervisor that SLES uses when it is serving as a host environment.
In addition, Novell has been working with Microsoft in a lab the two opened last September to ensure SLES runs in a paravirtualized mode on top of Windows Hyper-V, which is slated to ship later this summer. The two also are ensuring Windows Server 2008 runs in enlightened mode on top of Novell's Xen hypervisor. Enlightened mode is a Microsoft technology that allows the server to recognize when it is running on top of a hypervisor and then automatically take different avenues to access memory management and IO.
"Regardless of the different environments -- VMware or Hyper-V -- we want SLES to be the best supported, best performing guest operating system," Montero-Luque says."We expect to see mixed environments in the future for a number of reasons and interoperability has been a key part of our strategy."
The upgrade to the Suse Linux Enterprise kernel lets it take advantage of paravirtualization techniques so it runs more efficiently as a guest operating system. Specifically, Novell has built in support for VMware's Virtual Machine Interface (VMI)."The patch to the kernel provides increased performance and better interoperability," says Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for open platform solutions at Novell.
The kernel patch is available in Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 Service Pack 2, which can be downloaded.
In a paravirtualized environment the guest operating system is modified to work more closely with the underlying hardware and not just with the virtualized environment. It is one of a handful of variants for designing virtual machine environments.
In order to take advantage of paravirtualization, however, an operating system must be specifically ported to run on top of a host system. Novell and VMware have been working on the Suse upgrades for the past nine months.
Novell also has a kernel patch to support paravirtualization of SLES on the Xen hypervisor that SLES uses when it is serving as a host environment.
In addition, Novell has been working with Microsoft in a lab the two opened last September to ensure SLES runs in a paravirtualized mode on top of Windows Hyper-V, which is slated to ship later this summer. The two also are ensuring Windows Server 2008 runs in enlightened mode on top of Novell's Xen hypervisor. Enlightened mode is a Microsoft technology that allows the server to recognize when it is running on top of a hypervisor and then automatically take different avenues to access memory management and IO.
"Regardless of the different environments -- VMware or Hyper-V -- we want SLES to be the best supported, best performing guest operating system," Montero-Luque says."We expect to see mixed environments in the future for a number of reasons and interoperability has been a key part of our strategy."
State worker's child porn charges dropped; virus blamed
Prosecutors have dropped child pornography charges against a Massachusetts state employee after an investigation determined that his government-issued laptop was poorly configured and riddled with malicious software.
Michael Fiola, former investigator with the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA), had been facing two-and-a-half years in prison after being charged last year with possession of child pornography.
Those charges were dropped on June 10 after an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General's office found that the state could not prove that Fiola had downloaded the images. "We could not meet our burden of reasonable doubt," said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.
The case shows how easy it is for someone to be charged with illegal computer activity that they may know nothing about, said Fiola's attorney, Timothy Bradl. "This type of thing could have happened to anyone with a work-issued laptop," he said.
When the DIA issued Fiola his Dell Latitude laptop in November 2006, it was so badly configured that it may well have already been hacked, said Tami Loehrs, a forensics investigator hired by Fiola's defense team. The Microsoft Systems Management Server software on the laptop was misconfigured and was not receiving critical software updates, and the laptop's Symantec antivirus software was either misconfigured or not working properly, she said.
"He was handed a ticking time bomb," she said.
State IT staff examined Fiola's laptop in March 2007 after they noticed that his Verizon broadband wireless usage was four times above normal. He was fired the same month, after the pornography was discovered.
Fiola, a former firefighter with no criminal record, was ostracized by his community after being criminally charged in August 2007, Bradl said. "His life has been destroyed," he said. "His friends ran for the hills; his family mostly ran from him."
DIA spokeswoman Linnea Walsh was quoted in the Boston Herald on Monday saying, "we stand by our decision," but when reached by IDG News Service, she declined to comment on the matter, saying only "we don't want to go there right now," before abruptly hanging up the telephone.
Since his wife, Robin, was at one point hospitalized for a stress-related illness, Fiola is now facing health insurance payments in excess of his monthly mortgage. But he is unlikely to take his old job back, even if the DIA were to offer it, Bradl said. "I would think that theoretically he'd be entitled to his job back with back-pay, however he would never want to go back to work with such buffoons," he said.
Because of the heinous nature of child pornography, prosecutors and investigators often rush to conclusions while investigating this type of crime, Loehrs said. "Because the content is so disturbing, everybody just loses all sense of reality."
Take the case of Matt Bandy, who was 16 when police raided his house and charged him with possession of child pornography. The charges could have resulted in a 90-year jail sentence. Bandy eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges, but computer experts believe that he may have been the victim of a worm that turned his PC into a "zombie computer" that was used by others to store the child pornography.
According to Wark, an initial state attorney general investigation of Fiola's laptop concluded that he was likely responsible for downloading the pornography, while a second examination, conducted after Loehrs reported her findings, reached the opposite conclusion.
Michael Fiola, former investigator with the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA), had been facing two-and-a-half years in prison after being charged last year with possession of child pornography.
Those charges were dropped on June 10 after an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General's office found that the state could not prove that Fiola had downloaded the images. "We could not meet our burden of reasonable doubt," said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.
The case shows how easy it is for someone to be charged with illegal computer activity that they may know nothing about, said Fiola's attorney, Timothy Bradl. "This type of thing could have happened to anyone with a work-issued laptop," he said.
When the DIA issued Fiola his Dell Latitude laptop in November 2006, it was so badly configured that it may well have already been hacked, said Tami Loehrs, a forensics investigator hired by Fiola's defense team. The Microsoft Systems Management Server software on the laptop was misconfigured and was not receiving critical software updates, and the laptop's Symantec antivirus software was either misconfigured or not working properly, she said.
"He was handed a ticking time bomb," she said.
State IT staff examined Fiola's laptop in March 2007 after they noticed that his Verizon broadband wireless usage was four times above normal. He was fired the same month, after the pornography was discovered.
Fiola, a former firefighter with no criminal record, was ostracized by his community after being criminally charged in August 2007, Bradl said. "His life has been destroyed," he said. "His friends ran for the hills; his family mostly ran from him."
DIA spokeswoman Linnea Walsh was quoted in the Boston Herald on Monday saying, "we stand by our decision," but when reached by IDG News Service, she declined to comment on the matter, saying only "we don't want to go there right now," before abruptly hanging up the telephone.
Since his wife, Robin, was at one point hospitalized for a stress-related illness, Fiola is now facing health insurance payments in excess of his monthly mortgage. But he is unlikely to take his old job back, even if the DIA were to offer it, Bradl said. "I would think that theoretically he'd be entitled to his job back with back-pay, however he would never want to go back to work with such buffoons," he said.
Because of the heinous nature of child pornography, prosecutors and investigators often rush to conclusions while investigating this type of crime, Loehrs said. "Because the content is so disturbing, everybody just loses all sense of reality."
Take the case of Matt Bandy, who was 16 when police raided his house and charged him with possession of child pornography. The charges could have resulted in a 90-year jail sentence. Bandy eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges, but computer experts believe that he may have been the victim of a worm that turned his PC into a "zombie computer" that was used by others to store the child pornography.
According to Wark, an initial state attorney general investigation of Fiola's laptop concluded that he was likely responsible for downloading the pornography, while a second examination, conducted after Loehrs reported her findings, reached the opposite conclusion.
Judge: White House doesn't have to turn over e-mail records
The U.S. Executive Office of the President doesn't have to turn over information on an alleged 10 million missing e-mail messages to a government watchdog group seeking information on how the e-mails were lost, a judge ruled Monday.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had sought information on the missing e-mails through the 41-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the Office of Administration (OA) in the Executive Office of the President is not subject to the law that allows citizens to request that the U.S. government disclose the contents of previously unreleased documents.
President George Bush's administration sought to remove the OA from the information act's requirements in 2006 and 2007, Kollar-Kotelly noted. OA is also not the type of independent agency covered under FOIA, and the office generally exists to assist the U.S. president, she wrote in her ruling. A 1974 amendment to FOIA excepted branches of the Executive Office that existed only to advise and assist the president.
CREW had argued that the Bush White House may have been covering up links to a lobbying scandal, alleged political influence at the U.S. General Services Administration and other problems by deleting the e-mail. White House staffers sometimes used outside e-mail accounts to conduct official business, CREW said in an April 2007 report.
CREW had argued that the White House is required to keep e-mail messages under the Presidential Records Act.
CREW has appealed the judge's decision, said Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director.
"The Bush administration is using the legal system to prevent the American people from discovering the truth about the millions of missing White House e-mails," she said in a statement. "The fact is, until CREW asked for documents pertaining to this problem, the Office of Administration routinely processed FOIA requests. Only because the administration has so much to hide here, has the White House taken the unprecedented position that OA is not subject to the FOIA."
The White House didn't have an immediate comment on Kollar-Kotelly's ruling.
In February, Kollar-Kotelly issued a ruling allowing CREW to have limited access to OA records. The OA did deliver more than 1,300 pages of documents to CREW, but it said it was withholding thousands more.
CREW's allegations that there are more than 10 million missing White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005 has led to inquiries from Congress, as well. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, controlled by Democrats, has investigated the alleged missing e-mails. In April, three Democrats, including Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California introduced the Electronic Communications Preservation Act, which would require the U.S. archivist to establish standards for the preservation of White House e-mails.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had sought information on the missing e-mails through the 41-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the Office of Administration (OA) in the Executive Office of the President is not subject to the law that allows citizens to request that the U.S. government disclose the contents of previously unreleased documents.
President George Bush's administration sought to remove the OA from the information act's requirements in 2006 and 2007, Kollar-Kotelly noted. OA is also not the type of independent agency covered under FOIA, and the office generally exists to assist the U.S. president, she wrote in her ruling. A 1974 amendment to FOIA excepted branches of the Executive Office that existed only to advise and assist the president.
CREW had argued that the Bush White House may have been covering up links to a lobbying scandal, alleged political influence at the U.S. General Services Administration and other problems by deleting the e-mail. White House staffers sometimes used outside e-mail accounts to conduct official business, CREW said in an April 2007 report.
CREW had argued that the White House is required to keep e-mail messages under the Presidential Records Act.
CREW has appealed the judge's decision, said Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director.
"The Bush administration is using the legal system to prevent the American people from discovering the truth about the millions of missing White House e-mails," she said in a statement. "The fact is, until CREW asked for documents pertaining to this problem, the Office of Administration routinely processed FOIA requests. Only because the administration has so much to hide here, has the White House taken the unprecedented position that OA is not subject to the FOIA."
The White House didn't have an immediate comment on Kollar-Kotelly's ruling.
In February, Kollar-Kotelly issued a ruling allowing CREW to have limited access to OA records. The OA did deliver more than 1,300 pages of documents to CREW, but it said it was withholding thousands more.
CREW's allegations that there are more than 10 million missing White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005 has led to inquiries from Congress, as well. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, controlled by Democrats, has investigated the alleged missing e-mails. In April, three Democrats, including Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California introduced the Electronic Communications Preservation Act, which would require the U.S. archivist to establish standards for the preservation of White House e-mails.
New Nokia phones targeted at enterprises
Nokia has expanded its family of enterprise phones with the introduction of the E71 and E66, which come at a time when Apple, Research in Motion and Microsoft are trying their best to attract enterprise customers.
The specs are very similar; both phones are equipped with support for HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) at 3.6M bps (bits per second), WLAN, navigation using A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) and a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus.
They are optimized for personal and business e-mail, according to Nokia. Customers can choose among a wide variety of enterprise platforms, including Exchange and its own Intellisync, as well more consumer-focused services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail.
For Nokia the launch is a bit of a comeback in the enterprise market. It has been nine months since it launched the last model in the E family, said Leif-Olof Wallin, an analyst at Gartner.
"That is a long time in this business, and we believe Nokia was slowed down by a reorganization," said Wallin. He praised the latest additions to Nokia's portfolio, especially the E71, which will replace the E61i. "It has a really good keyboard, and is very slim," said Wallin.
But it's not the design which will be Nokia's greatest asset when competing for enterprise dollars. Instead, built-in hardware support for encryption and the ability to switch between personal and work e-mail at the push of a button will make it possible for the company to one up competitors, said Wallin.
"I would have liked to see Nokia taking the switching between personal and work even further, and including not only e-mail, but calendar and contacts as well. But what we are seeing now is only version 1.0," said Wallin.
The encryption of both the device memory and the memory card will help companies protect its phones without losing performance, and the built-in chip can also be used to store certificates and keys. In this field Nokia is years a head of the competition, according to Wallin.
Both phones are expected to start shipping in July and cost about €350 (US$538), before subsidies. The phones will cost about as much as an iPhone 3G when the subsidies are calculated in, according to Wallin.
The specs are very similar; both phones are equipped with support for HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) at 3.6M bps (bits per second), WLAN, navigation using A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) and a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus.
They are optimized for personal and business e-mail, according to Nokia. Customers can choose among a wide variety of enterprise platforms, including Exchange and its own Intellisync, as well more consumer-focused services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail.
For Nokia the launch is a bit of a comeback in the enterprise market. It has been nine months since it launched the last model in the E family, said Leif-Olof Wallin, an analyst at Gartner.
"That is a long time in this business, and we believe Nokia was slowed down by a reorganization," said Wallin. He praised the latest additions to Nokia's portfolio, especially the E71, which will replace the E61i. "It has a really good keyboard, and is very slim," said Wallin.
But it's not the design which will be Nokia's greatest asset when competing for enterprise dollars. Instead, built-in hardware support for encryption and the ability to switch between personal and work e-mail at the push of a button will make it possible for the company to one up competitors, said Wallin.
"I would have liked to see Nokia taking the switching between personal and work even further, and including not only e-mail, but calendar and contacts as well. But what we are seeing now is only version 1.0," said Wallin.
The encryption of both the device memory and the memory card will help companies protect its phones without losing performance, and the built-in chip can also be used to store certificates and keys. In this field Nokia is years a head of the competition, according to Wallin.
Both phones are expected to start shipping in July and cost about €350 (US$538), before subsidies. The phones will cost about as much as an iPhone 3G when the subsidies are calculated in, according to Wallin.
Nvidia dumps 240 cores in new graphics processor
Nvidia on Monday announced a new graphics processor with 240 computing cores, giving PCs the horsepower needed to run three-dimensional games and scientific applications.
The new GeForce GTX 280, the largest GPU ever built by Nvidia, includes 1.4 billion transistors and delivers 933 gigaflops of performance. It succeeds the GeForce 8800 GTX, which had 128 cores and delivered 518 gigaflops of performance.
The GPU will bring a new level of realism to gaming, with better character detail and more natural character motion, said Jason Paul, senior product manager at Nvidia.
Users can leave general purpose computing to the x86 CPU and unload advanced processing to the GeForce GTX 280, which will take care of applications like video transcoding and surfing the Web using three-dimensional Web tools, Paul said.
"What you have today are great three-dimensional games [and] high-definition video playback, but now you'll see the GPU becoming the heart of the optimized PC. It's going to provide the second processor of the PC," Paul said.
The chip includes support for PhysX, a hardware and software engine that adds physical reality to existing games, like smoke billowing from an object after an explosion, or the behavior of a rock after it hits a target.
New to the GeForce GTX 280 architecture is support for double-precision, 64-bit floating point computation that can deliver the horsepower necessary to perform high-end scientific applications, Paul said.
Nvidia may paint this as a more powerful alternative to the CPU, but this is a specialized processor designed for high-performance computing applications like weather predictions and, in some cases, CAD programs, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. "This is not a general-purpose replacement for x86 processors, this is a specialized processor to take apps originally running on an x86 and now they can run it on a GPU," he said.
People have had to run scientific applications on scalar processors like the x86 chip because they couldn't afford high-end vector processors like the ones found in IBM's supercomputers, Peddie said. With the new Nvidia chip, vector processors can now be built into a home PC, Peddie said.
"This is such an incredible technology. We can go out and buy a teraflop computer for under $1,000," Peddie said.
However, a vector processor should be limited to high-performance computing because x86 chips are capable of handling general-purpose computing, Peddie said. The GeForce GTX 280 GPU can be used as a high-end gaming machine chip or on workstations to process graphics-intensive applications.
Today's applications are mostly designed for x86 processors and will need to be recompiled to take advantage of GeForce GTX 280, Peddie said. Nvidia provides CUDA, a tool that allows programmers to design and port programs to run on the new GPU.
The GeForce GTX 280 is available for US$649.
The new GeForce GTX 280, the largest GPU ever built by Nvidia, includes 1.4 billion transistors and delivers 933 gigaflops of performance. It succeeds the GeForce 8800 GTX, which had 128 cores and delivered 518 gigaflops of performance.
The GPU will bring a new level of realism to gaming, with better character detail and more natural character motion, said Jason Paul, senior product manager at Nvidia.
Users can leave general purpose computing to the x86 CPU and unload advanced processing to the GeForce GTX 280, which will take care of applications like video transcoding and surfing the Web using three-dimensional Web tools, Paul said.
"What you have today are great three-dimensional games [and] high-definition video playback, but now you'll see the GPU becoming the heart of the optimized PC. It's going to provide the second processor of the PC," Paul said.
The chip includes support for PhysX, a hardware and software engine that adds physical reality to existing games, like smoke billowing from an object after an explosion, or the behavior of a rock after it hits a target.
New to the GeForce GTX 280 architecture is support for double-precision, 64-bit floating point computation that can deliver the horsepower necessary to perform high-end scientific applications, Paul said.
Nvidia may paint this as a more powerful alternative to the CPU, but this is a specialized processor designed for high-performance computing applications like weather predictions and, in some cases, CAD programs, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. "This is not a general-purpose replacement for x86 processors, this is a specialized processor to take apps originally running on an x86 and now they can run it on a GPU," he said.
People have had to run scientific applications on scalar processors like the x86 chip because they couldn't afford high-end vector processors like the ones found in IBM's supercomputers, Peddie said. With the new Nvidia chip, vector processors can now be built into a home PC, Peddie said.
"This is such an incredible technology. We can go out and buy a teraflop computer for under $1,000," Peddie said.
However, a vector processor should be limited to high-performance computing because x86 chips are capable of handling general-purpose computing, Peddie said. The GeForce GTX 280 GPU can be used as a high-end gaming machine chip or on workstations to process graphics-intensive applications.
Today's applications are mostly designed for x86 processors and will need to be recompiled to take advantage of GeForce GTX 280, Peddie said. Nvidia provides CUDA, a tool that allows programmers to design and port programs to run on the new GPU.
The GeForce GTX 280 is available for US$649.
Microsoft now sponsor of Open Source Census
Microsoft has become a sponsor of The Open Source Census, a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open-source software in enterprises worldwide, the group announced Monday.
The company's "customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments," so participation in projects such as the census is relevant to the "ecosystem" in which Microsoft operates, said Sam Ramji, Microsoft' senior director of platform strategy, in a prepared statement.
It is the latest gesture by the Redmond software giant toward the open-source community, which has long regarded it as a bogeyman due to actions like its claim last year that open-source software violated more than 200 of its patents.
Ramji, who could not be reached for comment, is seen as a major driver behind Microsoft's gradually warming attitude -- at least publicly -- toward open source and interoperability.
It is important to balance open-mindedness with skepticism when thinking about Microsoft's open-source strategy, according to one observer.
"I've met with Sam and there's no question those guys are smart with what they're doing with open source," said Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group. "They definitely have changed. Is it genuine? Some of it is and some of it may be less so."
Microsoft's involvement could help the census gain interest from larger enterprises, Lyman noted. But at the same time, it may also draw ire from Microsoft's many critics, he added.
In addition to Microsoft, ActiveState, EnterpriseDB, Oregon State University's Open Source Lab and OSAlalt.com have also joined the effort, which provides a tool, from vendor OpenLogic, which a company can use to scan computers and spot installed open-source code. The scan data can then be pushed in anonymous form to the OSC's database.
Contributors can get reports that summarize their own use, as well as comparative data based on similar companies' results. Aggregated data untraceable to any company is available publicly.
More than 220,000 open-source packages or installations have been found during the two months since the effort launched, according to the site. But as of June 12, only about 1,300 machines had been scanned.
Lyman's firm is watching the census' progress closely to see whether it turns up enough data to provide a useful representative sample. "The theme from all accounts is that open-source usage is wildly underestimated," he said. "Maybe we'll get a better sense of that."
The company's "customers, partners and developers are working in increasingly heterogeneous environments," so participation in projects such as the census is relevant to the "ecosystem" in which Microsoft operates, said Sam Ramji, Microsoft' senior director of platform strategy, in a prepared statement.
It is the latest gesture by the Redmond software giant toward the open-source community, which has long regarded it as a bogeyman due to actions like its claim last year that open-source software violated more than 200 of its patents.
Ramji, who could not be reached for comment, is seen as a major driver behind Microsoft's gradually warming attitude -- at least publicly -- toward open source and interoperability.
It is important to balance open-mindedness with skepticism when thinking about Microsoft's open-source strategy, according to one observer.
"I've met with Sam and there's no question those guys are smart with what they're doing with open source," said Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group. "They definitely have changed. Is it genuine? Some of it is and some of it may be less so."
Microsoft's involvement could help the census gain interest from larger enterprises, Lyman noted. But at the same time, it may also draw ire from Microsoft's many critics, he added.
In addition to Microsoft, ActiveState, EnterpriseDB, Oregon State University's Open Source Lab and OSAlalt.com have also joined the effort, which provides a tool, from vendor OpenLogic, which a company can use to scan computers and spot installed open-source code. The scan data can then be pushed in anonymous form to the OSC's database.
Contributors can get reports that summarize their own use, as well as comparative data based on similar companies' results. Aggregated data untraceable to any company is available publicly.
More than 220,000 open-source packages or installations have been found during the two months since the effort launched, according to the site. But as of June 12, only about 1,300 machines had been scanned.
Lyman's firm is watching the census' progress closely to see whether it turns up enough data to provide a useful representative sample. "The theme from all accounts is that open-source usage is wildly underestimated," he said. "Maybe we'll get a better sense of that."
Greenpeace says e-waste from US stopped in Hong Kong
Environmental group Greenpeace said it identified three containers of electronic waste as they were about to be unloaded in Hong Kong Port over the weekend.
The group said the three containers were on the "Yang Ming Success" that had sailed to Hong Kong from the U.S. port of Oakland and were destined for the Sanshui district in neighboring Guangdong province. That meant the shipment was illegal under Chinese law, Greenpeace said.
In a video distributed by the group to news organizations, Greenpeace supporters that had boarded the ship can be seen unfurling a banner along the side of containers that read in English and Chinese, "Toxic waste not welcomed here."
In response Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department has ordered the containers be held on the pier until the owner opens them for inspection, said Lo Sze Ping, a campaign director for Greenpeace. The Hong Kong authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.
Greenpeace said that Hong Kong is a major transit point for electronic waste because of several loopholes in the territory's environmental protection regulations. Among them, importers can easily claim the waste is for recycling or reuse to escape the controls, the group said. It also charged the Environmental Protection Department, which issues the import and export permits, with concentrating on waste like old batteries and paying little attention to printed-circuit boards.
The issue of e-waste is one that the Amsterdam-based group is fighting. Between 20 million and 50 million tons of electronic waste is produced each year but 75 percent of it disappears. That's a problem for the environment because if it is not properly disposed, the toxins found inside, including lead, beryllium, PVC, phthalates and brominated fire retardants can poison the environment and damage human health.
Of particular concern in the region is the Chinese city of Guiyu, which is also in Guangdong province. The city is one of the biggest electronic waste recycling centers on earth but the informal industry is centered around primitive, small-scale factories where products are dismantled by hand. The work is often done with little regard for health of the workers or the environment.
The group said the three containers were on the "Yang Ming Success" that had sailed to Hong Kong from the U.S. port of Oakland and were destined for the Sanshui district in neighboring Guangdong province. That meant the shipment was illegal under Chinese law, Greenpeace said.
In a video distributed by the group to news organizations, Greenpeace supporters that had boarded the ship can be seen unfurling a banner along the side of containers that read in English and Chinese, "Toxic waste not welcomed here."
In response Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department has ordered the containers be held on the pier until the owner opens them for inspection, said Lo Sze Ping, a campaign director for Greenpeace. The Hong Kong authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.
Greenpeace said that Hong Kong is a major transit point for electronic waste because of several loopholes in the territory's environmental protection regulations. Among them, importers can easily claim the waste is for recycling or reuse to escape the controls, the group said. It also charged the Environmental Protection Department, which issues the import and export permits, with concentrating on waste like old batteries and paying little attention to printed-circuit boards.
The issue of e-waste is one that the Amsterdam-based group is fighting. Between 20 million and 50 million tons of electronic waste is produced each year but 75 percent of it disappears. That's a problem for the environment because if it is not properly disposed, the toxins found inside, including lead, beryllium, PVC, phthalates and brominated fire retardants can poison the environment and damage human health.
Of particular concern in the region is the Chinese city of Guiyu, which is also in Guangdong province. The city is one of the biggest electronic waste recycling centers on earth but the informal industry is centered around primitive, small-scale factories where products are dismantled by hand. The work is often done with little regard for health of the workers or the environment.
AMD's latest FireStream processor hits 1 teraflop
Advanced Micro Devices previewed on Monday the latest version of its high-performance chip package, the FireStream 9250, which is due later this year.
Chips in the FireStream line offer much faster performance for mathematical calculations than other processors. FireStream can take a single instruction and execute it using multiple sources of data in parallel.
The processor, which AMD refers to as a "stream processor" or General-Purpose General-Processing Unit (GP GPU) is capable of up to hundreds of parallel calculations per clock cycle, whereas other more general-purpose processors can only do a handful, the company said.
The 9250 will be available by the end of September for US$1,999. Last November, AMD released the FireStream 9170, the first such chip in the line that is capable of up to 500 gigaflops of computing power. A gigaflop is 1 billion floating-point operations per second. For single-precision calculations, the 9250 tops 1 teraflop, or 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, AMD said.
The FireStream chips can also perform "double precision" floating-point calculations. AMD says that helps runs intensive tasks such financial analyses and seismic processing much faster.
The 9250 comes with 1 G byte of GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate 3) RAM memory on its PCI card, a type of memory that was designed by ATI, the graphics chip maker now owned by AMD.
The 9250 will fit in a single PCI slot, making it compatible with most desktop systems, workstations and servers. Power consumption is less than 150 watts, similar to the 9170. Performance is rated at eight gigaflops per watt.
AMD has a software development kit, the AMD Stream SDK, to help developers create applications that use the full abilities of the FireStream chips. AMD says the FireStream line is not only for high-performance computing but also more mainstream and consumer applications.
Chips in the FireStream line offer much faster performance for mathematical calculations than other processors. FireStream can take a single instruction and execute it using multiple sources of data in parallel.
The processor, which AMD refers to as a "stream processor" or General-Purpose General-Processing Unit (GP GPU) is capable of up to hundreds of parallel calculations per clock cycle, whereas other more general-purpose processors can only do a handful, the company said.
The 9250 will be available by the end of September for US$1,999. Last November, AMD released the FireStream 9170, the first such chip in the line that is capable of up to 500 gigaflops of computing power. A gigaflop is 1 billion floating-point operations per second. For single-precision calculations, the 9250 tops 1 teraflop, or 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, AMD said.
The FireStream chips can also perform "double precision" floating-point calculations. AMD says that helps runs intensive tasks such financial analyses and seismic processing much faster.
The 9250 comes with 1 G byte of GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate 3) RAM memory on its PCI card, a type of memory that was designed by ATI, the graphics chip maker now owned by AMD.
The 9250 will fit in a single PCI slot, making it compatible with most desktop systems, workstations and servers. Power consumption is less than 150 watts, similar to the 9170. Performance is rated at eight gigaflops per watt.
AMD has a software development kit, the AMD Stream SDK, to help developers create applications that use the full abilities of the FireStream chips. AMD says the FireStream line is not only for high-performance computing but also more mainstream and consumer applications.
New Samsung handsets made from corn
Samsung Electronics on Monday unveiled two new mobile phones made with plastic made from corn as it expands initiatives aimed at being more nature-friendly.
The W510 is the first mobile phone Samsung has ever made using the new corn-based plastic, the company said. Samsung did not use any heavy metals, such as lead, mercury or cadmium, in the handset either. The company has been working on the new plastic as a way to produce more environmentally-friendly materials.
Several companies have worked on corn-based plastics, including NEC and Fujitsu of Japan, to replace petroleum-based plastics in products such as laptop PCs and mobile phones. The idea of using corn-based plastics has been around for years, and has been reignited in recent years by the high price of oil.
In the 1990s, companies started putting corn-based plastics in a range of products, including plastic bags, water bottles and diapers, but companies avoided using them in heavier products because the plastic was weak. More recently, researchers have mixed corn-based plastics with petroleum-based plastics to create a stronger material suitable for laptops and handsets.
The second corn-based handset Samsung released Monday was the F268, which includes an alarm on the charger to alert users when the battery is fully-charged. They company also made sure accessories for the F268 did not contain PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or BFRs (brominated flame retardant), a chemical used to make it hard for products to catch fire but that may be contaminating the environment.
Samsung plans to expand its eco-friendly handset line-up, a company representative said without being specific. European users will see other environmental features on all Samsung handsets, including the charger-alarm as well as more nature-friendly packaging. Globally, Samsung plans to stop using PVC and BFRs by 2010 in all handsets.
The W510 will be launched in Korea in June, while the F268 will hit China at the same time.
Samsung has operated recycling schemes for its handsets in South Korea since 2004 and China since 2005, a company representative said. Owners of Samsung handsets need only turn old phones in at Samsung repair and service centers in both countries.
The W510 is the first mobile phone Samsung has ever made using the new corn-based plastic, the company said. Samsung did not use any heavy metals, such as lead, mercury or cadmium, in the handset either. The company has been working on the new plastic as a way to produce more environmentally-friendly materials.
Several companies have worked on corn-based plastics, including NEC and Fujitsu of Japan, to replace petroleum-based plastics in products such as laptop PCs and mobile phones. The idea of using corn-based plastics has been around for years, and has been reignited in recent years by the high price of oil.
In the 1990s, companies started putting corn-based plastics in a range of products, including plastic bags, water bottles and diapers, but companies avoided using them in heavier products because the plastic was weak. More recently, researchers have mixed corn-based plastics with petroleum-based plastics to create a stronger material suitable for laptops and handsets.
The second corn-based handset Samsung released Monday was the F268, which includes an alarm on the charger to alert users when the battery is fully-charged. They company also made sure accessories for the F268 did not contain PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or BFRs (brominated flame retardant), a chemical used to make it hard for products to catch fire but that may be contaminating the environment.
Samsung plans to expand its eco-friendly handset line-up, a company representative said without being specific. European users will see other environmental features on all Samsung handsets, including the charger-alarm as well as more nature-friendly packaging. Globally, Samsung plans to stop using PVC and BFRs by 2010 in all handsets.
The W510 will be launched in Korea in June, while the F268 will hit China at the same time.
Samsung has operated recycling schemes for its handsets in South Korea since 2004 and China since 2005, a company representative said. Owners of Samsung handsets need only turn old phones in at Samsung repair and service centers in both countries.
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