Vietnam

A customer looks at a Dell computer on display. (AFP/Joe Raedle)

NEW YORK: Dell said Monday it had acquired cloud software firm Enstratius as part of the computer maker’s efforts to diversify and reduce its dependence on the slow-growing PC segment.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The announcement comes with Dell seeking to go private in a buyout plan led by company founder Michael Dell. The Dell board is also considering an alternative plan led by corporate raider Carl Icahn.

Dell said in a statement that the acquisition of Enstratius “further enhances Dell’s end-to-end solutions strategy, bringing key capabilities to deliver cloud-management solutions to our customers.”

Enstratius helps companies manage more than 20 public and private cloud platforms, including OpenStack, VMware, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure, according to the statement.

“As enterprises increase their use of public, private and hybrid clouds, the need for controls, security, governance and automation becomes more critical,” said Tom Kendra, vice president and general manager for systems management at Dell Software.

“Dell, together with Enstratius, is uniquely positioned to deliver differentiated, complete cloud-management solutions to enterprise customers, large and small, empowering them with the efficiency and flexibility in the allocation and use of resources.”

The Dell board is still reviewing the buyout plan to take the firm private in a US$24.4 billion deal.

Icahn would inject an additional US$5 billion into Dell, paying $15 per share for up to 58 per cent of Dell shares.

Another offer from the Blackstone Group was withdrawn last month.

The tests were conducted at the testing range of the Space Technology Institute in Hoa Lac, Hanoi on Thursday.

Three prototypes are among the five UAVs that have been created by scientists at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, said Dr Pham Ngoc Lang, who chairs the project entitled “Studies and manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles for scientific research purposes.”

Scientists began their research in 2008 to create these prototypes and their study became one of the State-level research topics in 2011, Lang said.

These five UAVs include AV.UAV.MS1, AV.UAV.S1, AV.UAV.S2, AV.UAV.S3 and AV.UAV.S4. All of them are manufactured locally, with domestically produced materials.

With their weights ranging from 4 kg to 170 kg and their wingspans from 1.2 to 5 meters, these aircraft can take off on a runway, the top of a car, or a mobile launching platform, or by hand manipulation.

They are equipped with an automated flight system – Autopilot on Board, an advanced camera system, and devices and equipment for scientific research.

Of these aircraft, the smallest (4kg) can fly at 70kph within a radius of 2 km and at a maximum altitude of 200 m.

Meanwhile, the biggest (170 kg) can fly at 180 kph, within a radius of 100 km and at an elevation of 3,000 meters. It can continuously fly for 6 hours in both daytime and nighttime.

The flight ranges of AV.UAV.S3 and AV.UAV.S4 can be extended using guiding satellites or ground control stations.

The two remaining prototypes will be tested in the near future. Currently we are ready to manufacture unmanned aircraft en masse,” Dr Lang said.

The Motorola logo on its factory in Toulouse, France. (AFP/Remy Gabalda)

BRUSSELS: EU anti-trust officials said Monday that Google-owned Motorola was abusing its leading position in Germany’s mobile phones market by filing a patent injunction against Apple over certain core smartphone functions.

A statement said that the European Union had reached a “preliminary view” on a competition investigation opened in April 2012 and decided that Motorola Mobility’s action “amounts to an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by EU anti-trust rules.”

The Commission spelt out that “while recourse to injunctions is a possible remedy for patent infringements, such conduct may be abusive where standard-essential patents (SEPs) are concerned and the potential licensee is willing to enter into a licence on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (so-called “FRAND”) terms.”

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said: “The protection of intellectual property is a cornerstone of innovation and growth. But so is competition.

“I think that companies should spend their time innovating and competing on the merits of the products they offer — not misusing their intellectual property rights to hold up competitors to the detriment of innovation and consumer choice.”

In April 2013, the US International Trade Commission tossed out a Motorola Mobility patent claim that threatened to block the import of some Apple iPhone models into the United States.

Motorola had accused Apple of infringing on patented technology that makes touch screens ignore fingers when people are holding smartphones to their ears for calls.

Also in April 2013, Germany’s patent court invalidated a patent held by Apple — and contested by rivals Motorola and Samsung — on its “slide to unlock” function for smartphones, concluding that the horizontal swiping gesture was not a technical innovation in itself and therefore did not meet requirements of European patent law.

The aim of the function was to make it easier for users to unlock their smartphone and not solve a specific technical problem, the court said.

(AFP/Fred Dufour)

NEW YORK – IBM scientists Wednesday unveiled what they called “the world’s smallest movie,” which tracks the movement of atoms magnified 100 million times.

The film, “A Boy and His Atom”, depicts a character named Atom who befriends a single atom and follows him on a journey of dancing and bouncing that helps explain the science behind data storage.

“Capturing, positioning and shaping atoms to create an original motion picture on the atomic-level is a precise science and entirely novel,” said Andreas Heinrich, a scientist at IBM Research.

“At IBM, researchers don’t just read about science, we do it. This movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world while opening up a dialogue with students and others on the new frontiers of math and science.”

To make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunnelling microscope, a device which earned its inventors a Nobel Prize.

The tool “was the first device that enabled scientists to visualize the world all the way down to single atoms,” said IBM researcher Christopher Lutz.

“It weighs two tons, operates at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times. The ability to control the temperature, pressure and vibrations at exact levels makes our IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.”

The movie was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World’s Smallest Stop Motion Film”, IBM said.

The film used a microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to attract atoms and molecules and pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface.

IBM said this kind of science is needed to help improve computer data storage as tech firms run into into physical limitations using traditional techniques.

“Research means asking questions beyond those required to find good short-term engineering solutions to problems,” Heinrich said.

“As data creation and consumption continue to get bigger, data storage needs to get smaller, all the way down to the atomic level. We’re applying the same techniques used to come up with new computing architectures and alternative ways to store data to making this movie.”

Previously planned on 02:06 GMT, Saturday, the mission was postponed by the space firm Arianespace and another launch date will be decided depending on the evolution of the weather conditions in Kourou, ESA said in a statement.

The 115kg VNREDSat-1 of Vietnam is one of the three ‘passengers’ on the space vehicle, with the two others include a 140kg Proba-V satellite of ESA to map vegetation cover and a 1.3kg Estonian microsatellite, ESTCube-1, to test an electric solar sail.

The US$76 million VNREDSat-1 was designed as a climate-monitoring tool for Vietnam’s academy of science and technologies. With the size of 600 mm x 570 mm x 500 mm, it is to orbit at an altitude of nearly 670 km.

According to Bui Trong Tuyen, deputy dead of the Vietnam Institute of Space Technology, Vietnam has plans to exploit the satellite to its full capacity during its life span of five years.

Its economic value is to give Vietnam the active chance in time and areas around the earth to take images and so become less dependent on the only source of supply from foreign nations.

The high-resolution images taken by VNREDSat-1 will meet the demands of research and management agencies for social and economic development purposes, natural resources management, environmental protection, and natural disaster detection and control.

It is expected that the satellite can provide 100 images a day on average, at the size of 20cm x 20cm on different areas around the globe.