Microsoft Says It Backs Apple in Case Over Terrorist's Phone

Microsoft Corp. backs  Apple Inc. in its fight with the U.S. government over unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone, said President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith.
The company will file an amicus brief to support Apple next week, Smith said at a congressional hearing to discuss the need for new legislation to govern privacy, security and law enforcement in the age of Internet-based cloud services.
Apple is refusing to comply with a court order requiring it to create tools that will make it easier for FBI investigators to unlock the phone used by one of the attackers in the December massacre in San Bernardino, California.
Asked about Apple’s contention that the case is about more than one phone, Smith said “every case has implications for others.”
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said Thursday at a different hearing that the government isn’t looking to send a message, but acknowledged that the case may set a precedent.
Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has vowed to fight the order, saying the software required to access the phone’s contents doesn’t exist and creating it would potentially put billions of iPhones at risk of being hacked or spied on by governments. Apple’s response to the court is due Friday.
Microsoft has so far not commented on the case beyond participating in a statement last week from an industry group that said while it’s “extremely important” to deter crime and terrorism, no company should be required to build back doors to their own technology.
Microsoft itself is fighting the U.S. government over an order to turn over a suspected drug trafficker’s e-mails that are stored in one of the company’s data centers in Ireland. Apple has backed Microsoft in that case, which is waiting on the ruling of an appellate court in New York.
Earlier this week, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told Bloomberg Television he was "disappointed" by reports that he supports the U.S. government in this dispute, saying it doesn’t accurately reflect his opinion.
“That doesn’t state my view on this,” he said in an interview on “Bloomberg Go.” “The extreme view that government always gets everything, nobody supports that. Having the government be blind, people don’t support that.”
The Financial Times reported that Gates sided with the U.S. government, saying that the court order requiring Apple to help unlock the phone was a one-time request and “no different” from accessing bank and telephone records.

Google CEO Pichai Meets With EU's Vestager as Probes Mount

Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai came face to face with the European Union antitrust cop who has threatened the search-engine giant with hefty fines for squeezing out rivals.
Pichai and general counsel, Kent Walker, met with Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager for about an hour in Brussels amid growing scrutiny of the company’s business model and tax affairs. Pichai spoke earlier with the EU’s commissioner for digital issues, Guenther Oettinger, a skeptic of earlier EU efforts to settle an antitrust probe.
Neither side gave details of the content of the high-level talks beyond confirming they took place.
The EU is in the final stages of a probe into whether Google favors its own shopping-comparison service over rivals in its search results. Regulators are also investigating the Android mobile operating system for mobile phones, Google’s advertising contracts and are examining complaints over the tax arrangements of its parent company Alphabet Inc.
Pichai’s trip to Europe aimed to combat Google’s woes by flaunting its contribution to the European economy. He announced the company would spend 27 million euros ($29.8 million) to stimulate digital journalism. It also plans to teach digital skills to 2 million people in the region.

Data ‘New Oil’

He faces a tough audience as European executives and politicians raise fears over Internet companies like Google that collect and process large amounts of data. Publishers have been particularly outspoken as advertising revenue migrates online.
"Data is the new oil and you saw in the 1970s that a huge amount of wealth has been transferred to the countries where the oil was produced," Paul-Bernhard Kallen, chief executive officer of German publisher Hubert Burda Media Holding GmbH & Co. LP, said at a Brussels event on Wednesday.
Oettinger, Germany’s representative at the European Commission, echoed these concerns when he said earlier this week that EU regulators are exploring "concrete measures" to address the needs of European businesses, including "ways to mitigate the existing imbalance between data-rich and data-poor countries."

Set Limits

He cited creating personal data spaces where consumers could set limits on what companies could access and collaborative spaces for businesses to exchange data that may aid new innovation and services.
These wider issues add to the antitrust probe into Google’s search engine, which Vestager has said could be expanded into similar services such as local search, mapping or travel. She is yet to decide on ramping up her case against Android and Google’s advertising business, where officials are looking at arrangements that shut out rivals.
Vestager received a complaint over Alphabet’s tax deal with the U.K. after she said she would look at it if asked. She’s currently examining Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s tax agreements with Ireland and Luxembourg over concerns they got a much better deal than other companies.

Lean Research: Introducing a Movement for Change

As researchers in international development, we often hear colleagues describe 100- to 200-question surveys that take hours to administer. We have heard many stories in which a boss or donor says, “While we have the farmers in the room, why not ask a few more questions? We might use that data in the future.” We’ve also seen plenty of rigorous studies produce results that sit on the proverbial shelf and we’ve heard communities ask, “Why do you keep asking us the same questions every year, and what have you done with the data?”
These stories and others led us to begin reimagining the research process. What if research participants enjoyed the experience and found it valuable? What if we asked questions that were relevant to participants? What if the data were actually used to make decisions? And what if we reduced the burden and waste in the research process?
Lean research, led by MIT D-Lab, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Root Capital, is creating a space for researchers to address these questions and conduct research that is not only rigorous, but also respectful, relevant and right-sized. Lean research is a framework to guide field research in the contexts of international development and humanitarian work. Drawing from human-centered design, participatory research and lean production, it emphasizes the following principles, what we call “the four Rs”:

• Rigor: Follow good research practices for your discipline or field of practice
• Respect: Maximize the value of the experience and outputs for research subjects and stakeholders, including creating an opportunity for them to enjoy the experience, reject participation in the study and review and refute findings
• Relevance: Address priority issues for stakeholders, including research subjects, and produce results that are understandable, accessible and actionable
• Right-sizing: Use only the protocols, “human subjects” and resources necessary to collect data that informs decisions

When used as a guiding framework, these four principles have the potential to improve the quality and accuracy of the data gathered by social enterprises and other organizations, increase the usefulness of the data and enable the research process to generate benefits for communities, including improved relationships with local stakeholders and greater access to data for decision-making.

A shift in thinking and a movement underfoot

The case for lean research is supported by evidence from both the literature and practitioner experiences. The Lean Research Working Paper and the Root Capital working paper “A ‘Client-Centric’ Approach: Impact Evaluation that Creates Value for Participants” provide examples and a strong case for why this approach is necessary. There has also been a shift in the international development field to emphasize lean or right-fit monitoring, evaluation and research through Acumen’s Lean Data Initiative and Innovations for Poverty Action’s Goldilocks Project. Indeed, a lean research community of practice has been developing over the past two years. It includes over 120 researchers, practitioners, donors, monitoring and evaluation specialists, and policymakers, who are eager to collaborate and flesh out the details of the lean approach. They have seen or participated in too many three-hour-long interviews with farmers during harvest time, which produced results that were never used. They want to change the way research is conducted.

What about this is “lean”?

Although lean research is loosely related to other branches of lean, such as lean experimentation and lean start-up methodology, the practice of lean production is where we find our inspiration. Lean production, as pioneered by Toyota Motor Corp. in the 1950s and 1960s, organizes the production process around the knowledge and needs of the workers who are most directly involved in the process “on the floor.” Working in flexible teams with rotating and equally valued roles, workers are empowered to make decisions that improve their ability to do their work. Those closest to the issues resolve problems, while those at higher levels play a supporting role. This orientation enables insights from those in the production process to drive continual improvement—eliminating the unnecessary, reducing errors, and creating the “leanest” path towards production of a high-quality result.

 Applied toward the research process, a “lean” approach involves placing the people most directly involved in the production of new insights—the research participants, the enumerators, the field workers—at the center of the research design and decision-making. This approach values the contributions of stakeholders and creates a process that is flexible enough to respond to their insights on how the experience can be improved.

Isn’t this just good participatory research?

The concepts at the heart of lean research have been driving improvements in manufacturing, design, research and entrepreneurship for several decades. In development research, methods such as Participatory Rural Appraisal, which engage communities as co-producers of knowledge rather than research “subjects,” have been used since the 1970s. Social science also has a rich tradition of participatory action research, which emphasizes producing research outputs that are relevant to and used by communities. However, most mainstream development research continues to view research subjects as sources of data rather than true collaborators. Lean research draws on participatory research, human-centered design and lean production, which have operated in relative isolation, and brings them together into a simple and coherent framework that provides practical guidance on how to improve field research.

Are there examples of Lean Research in practice?

A growing number of our peers have been experimenting with applying these principles to their research. For example, Root Capital, a nonprofit social investor that lends to farmer cooperatives, includes research questions from their clients in the impact evaluations that staff members conduct. In this way, evaluations designed to generate performance data for staff also provide useful data to client businesses to help them to improve their operations. At MIT D-Lab, researchers examining the adoption of improved cookstoves are using sensors to track stove usage and indoor air pollution, which reduces survey length and frequency, thereby decreasing the burden on the research subjects. In another study, D-Lab researchers are incorporating activities such as a dinner or dancing and using market techniques like projective methods (projecting subconscious needs onto an image) to make the research experience more fun and engaging. These are just some of the examples we are gathering from the community of practice.

Are there examples of Lean Research in practice?

A growing number of our peers have been experimenting with applying these principles to their research. For example, Root Capital, a nonprofit social investor that lends to farmer cooperatives, includes research questions from their clients in the impact evaluations that staff members conduct. In this way, evaluations designed to generate performance data for staff also provide useful data to client businesses to help them to improve their operations. At MIT D-Lab, researchers examining the adoption of improved cookstoves are using sensors to track stove usage and indoor air pollution, which reduces survey length and frequency, thereby decreasing the burden on the research subjects. In another study, D-Lab researchers are incorporating activities such as a dinner or dancing and using market techniques like projective methods (projecting subconscious needs onto an image) to make the research experience more fun and engaging. These are just some of the examples we are gathering from the community of practice.

How can I participate?

There is still much work to be done to develop the lean research approach. To provide initial guidance, MIT and Tufts have created a Lean Research Framework and working paper. We are also collaborating with Root Capital, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment and the Sustainable Food Lab to create a practitioner’s field guide, which will include many examples of lean research in practice.
We invite you to contribute to this growing body of evidence in several ways. If you have examples that exemplify “lean” or “un-lean” research, share them with us in the comments section following this blog. If you haven’t started to apply lean research to your work but want to try, please take a look at the Guiding Questions in the Lean Research framework, pick one or two changes you want to make, try them out and share your experience with us. You can engage in the community of practice by emailing us at kofestotech@gmail.com

Who Was to Blame for the First World War?

By Seán Lang from First World War For Dummies

The finger-pointing about who caused the First World War began almost as soon as the war was over. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany accepted responsibility but the Germans angrily denied that the war was their fault. The French insisted that the treaty correctly apportioned blame, but the Americans were very wary of putting the whole blame for the war on one country, and within a few years the British had changed their tune too: David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, described the states of Europe as having somehow slid into war, with no one country more to blame than any of the others.
In the 1920s and 1930s, governments of the countries who’d fought in the war started publishing vast collections of official documents, all designed to ‘prove’ that ‘Whoever started this war, it wasn’t us!’ These collections certainly produced lots more work for historians to do, but they didn’t settle the question, especially once the Second World War had broken out. ‘Look at that’, some people said, ‘Germans cause wars’. But as the dust settled, and Germany was divided between East and West during the Cold War, many people took a more sympathetic view: the Second World War had been caused by the Nazis, they said, so Germany couldn’t have caused the First World War.
Then Professor Fritz Fischer came along with his theory and spoiled everything. In 1962, he published a book called Germany’s War Plans in the First World War which pointed out that, a month into the war, the German Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, had drawn up a list of all the territory Germany wanted to take over. ‘Look!’ said Fischer, ‘This shows that Germany wanted a war of expansion in 1914, just like Hitler.’ ‘Oh no it doesn’t,’ said his critics. ‘A list drawn up after the war started doesn’t count.’
So Professor Fischer delved further into the archives and came up with evidence that seemed to suggest Germany had been planning and hoping for war before 1914. Fischer’s theory didn’t win him many friends in Germany: German historians accused him of being a traitor to his country and they even tried to stop him going to America to talk about his work. But people in other countries were very interested.
The question of who, if anyone, was to blame for the war still generates enormous controversy today. Many historians think Fischer produced powerful evidence of German warmongering, even if he let some other guilty parties,
such as Austria-Hungary, off too lightly. But not everyone agrees: some people still think that blame should be spread fairly evenly across all the Great Powers of 1914 and that they stumbled blindly into war, like sleepwalkers, as the title of one such work puts it. And others argue that, because the European Great Powers all controlled large overseas empires, which they’d taken over by force, it hardly matters who set the war off: they were all as guilty as each other. The First World War may be long over, but the debate still goes on.

Honda to boost exports from Japan, Europe to North America

Honda Boss - Takahiro Hachigo

TOKYO -- Honda Motor will make more cars in Japan and increase shipments from Japan and Europe to the robust North American market to better utilize its global supply capacity, the company's chief said Wednesday.
     Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, President Takahiro Hachigo outlined plans to revamp operations in key regions to eliminate underutilized capacity by 2020, while also sharpening the company's focus on green and safety-related technologies.
Catching up with oversized capacity
Honda has established self-sufficient production and sales operations in each of its six key markets including Japan, China, North America and Europe. Hoping to ease dependence on North American earnings, the company in fiscal 2012 set a target to increase global sales 50% to 6 million vehicles by fiscal 2016.
     In line with this aggressive goal, the automaker sharply increased output capacity to 5.55 million units a year. But sales in 2015 totaled 4.67 million vehicles, leaving capacity underutilized by nearly 900,000 units. Last year, Honda's North American and Chinese sales rose to record levels, but sales in Japan shrank 14.4%, and Europe was also sluggish.
     For fiscal 2016, Honda plans to build 160,000 vehicles in Japan for export, nearly double on the year. It is considering producing once again the CR-V sport utility vehicle and the global flagship sedan Civic -- popular in North America -- here in 2017 and beyond.
     Honda stopped Japanese production of the Civic in 2010. But a revamped version designed for the U.S. market may be made and sold in Japan within two years. For shipments to Europe, Honda plans to add two SUV models to its current production lineup of compacts.
     The automaker plans to ramp up total Japanese output by roughly 200,000 vehicles over three to four years from 730,000 vehicles in 2015, Hachigo said.
     In Europe, Honda will focus on making the new Civic hatchback and start full-blown exports of the model to North America to raise operating rates of existing facilities.
     Through these steps, the company is scrambling to create a framework in which operations in Japan, the U.S. and Europe flexibly supply global key models to each other.

Christian Slater sued for $20m by own dad

CHRISTIAN Slater’s father has filed a defamation lawsuit against his son over remarks he made in a 2015 interview.

Thomas Knight Slater claims the Heathers star wrecked his acting career by alleging he is suffering from mental illness.
Slater, aka Michael Hawkins, insists his son was out of order when he suggested he was battling “manic-depressive schizophrenia”. Thomas insists his famous son had no right and no information to make the comments.
He filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
In the legal papers he claims his son’s comments resulted in him being “black-listed” in Hollywood.
The 80-year-old actor was married to Christian’s mum Mary Jo from 1966 to 1976.
He enjoyed acting success in soap operas like Ryan’s Hope and As the World Turns, and he also had small roles in films like The Amityville Horror, Midnight Run and Mommie Dearest.
Thomas Slater also acted under the name Michael Gainsborough. His last acting credit, according to IMDB.com, was Midnight Run in 1988.
He is suing his son for at least $US20 million ($A27.75 million).