Rihanna victorious in Topshop T-shirt court battle.

RIHANNA has won a High Court battle today against Topshop after they
used her image on T-shirts without permission.
The Russian Roulette singer accused the fashion chain of failing to
seek approval from her before going ahead with printing their stock.
At a hearing in London, Judge Mr Justice Birss ruled in the
25-year-old's favour, asserting that the British retailer was guilty
of "passing off".
Passing off is a common law tort which can be used to enforce
unregistered trademark rights.
The chart-topper had claimed that the "unendorsed" T-shirts could have
damaged her image if fans believed it was genuine merchandise.
However, the judge stressed the "mere sale" of a T-shirt bearing a
celebrity image did not necessarily equate to an act of passing off.
It was instead due to the fact that a "substantial number" of buyers
were likely to have been deceived into purchasing the product on
"false belief" that it had been authorised by the singer.
As a result, he said this was damaging to Rihanna's "goodwill" and
represented a loss of control over her reputation in the "fashion
sphere".
Topshop disputed the claim.
However, despite accusations from Rihanna, the retailer's lawyer
insisted her entourage had contacted Topshop up to 10 times to request
clothing for the starlet since the lawsuit was filed.


© CopyRight - http://www.dailystar.co.uk/

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Egad! Could Samsung be CHEATING in Galaxy benchmark tests

Samsung has reportedly been cheating in benchmark tests, artificially
boosting the scores of its latest and greatest system-on-chip, the
Exynos 5 Octa, on those performance-ranking number generators so
beloved by reviewers and product evaluators.

"Oh hell Samsung, shame on you!" wrote a Beyond3D forum member in a
posting on one of that site's forums last month.

The poster, a Luxembourger who goes by the handle Nebuchadnezzar, had
been testing a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa when he discovered that although
he thought he was running the chip's GPU at 532MHz, it only hit that
clock speed on two benchmarks he used for testing: AnTuTu and
GLBenchmark. For all other apps, it ran at 480MHz – a much better
speed for battery-life testing.

The Exynos 5 Octa, by the way, is so named because it has four
high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four low-power ARM Cortex-A7
cores, all baked into a single 28-nanometer die. It comes in two
versions: the 5410, which contains an Imagination Technologies PowerVR
SGX544MP3 GPU, and the 5420, which uses an ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPU.
Nebuchadnezzar was testing a 5410.

Anand Lal Shimpi and Brian Klug over at the ever-interesting deep-tech
site AnandTech were tipped to Nebuchadnezzar's discovery, and since
they are both proud owners of the international version of the Samsung
Galaxy S 4 powered by an Exynos 5410, they decided to see if they
could replicate his findings.

They could – and with a few additions and clarifications. For example,
the GLBenchmark v.2.5.1 did indeed run at 532MHz, but its latest
v.2.7.0 incarnation – GLBenchmark having been subsumed into GFXBench
along with DXBenchmark – was throttled to 480MHz.

Samsung hasn't published megahertzage for its GPU, but Shimpi and Klug
said that their sources tell them it runs at 480MHz – which in fact is
what they discovered its clock rate to be when running any games,
"even the most demanding titles." But when running GLBenchmark 2.5.1,
AnTuTu, or Quadrant – benchmarks that reviewers and product testers
might naturally use to rate a products – they ran at 532MHz.

Although Nebuchadnezzar had only reported on GPU behavior, Shimpi and
Klug checked out what the CPU was doing when running GLBenchmark
v.2.5.1 and GFXBench v.2.7.0. To their surprise, they discovered that
when running v.2.5.1, the four powerhouse Cortex-A15 cores were pinned
at their top speed of 1.2GHz no matter what load the benchmark put
upon them. When running v.2.7.0, however, the Exynos 5 Octa switched
over to its less-powerful Cortex-A7 cores.

"A quick check across AnTuTu, Linpack, Benchmark Pi, and Quadrant
reveals the same behavior," they write. The CPUs were gunned to their
highest possible power capabilities when the benchmarks were running.

Digging into the Galaxy S 4's operating system support files, they
came upon one with the name TwDVFSApp.apk, and since DVFS is short for
dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (and, The Reg opines, "Tw" might
be shorthand for "tweaking"), they opened it up in a hex editor and –
behold! – in it were a list of what appeared for all the world to be a
series of strings that allowed for top performance for some apps and
not others, and a group-identification string with a rather
incriminating name.

"The string 'BenchmarkBooster' is a particularly telling one," they write.

The gun may not be belching great clouds of damning smoke, but there's
more than a mere wisp emanating from its barrel. As the AnandTech duo
put it, "This seems to be purely an optimization to produce repeatable
(and high) results in CPU tests, and deliver the highest possible GPU
performance benchmarks."

If Nebuchadnezzar, Shimpi, and Klug are correct in their testing and
analysis – and we have no reason to believe that they're not – there's
only one possible conclusion: Samsung is cheating. And if they're
cheating, there's a fair chance that others are, as well. But Samsung
got caught.

Your Reg reporter has been around the technology-evaluation block
enough times to remember – as Shimpi and Klug discuss in the
conclusion to their article – when benchmark manipulation was rampant
in the PC industry. As the director of a product-testing lab in the
90s, such cheating was the bane of my 9-to-5 existence.

Well, here it comes again – both fairly blatantly, as in Samsung's CPU
and GPU rigging, or in a more slippery fashion, as in the use of an
Intel-specific compiler in a test that enabled Chipzilla's Clover
Trail+ platform to outperform ARM processors.

Today is different from the 90s, however. In those far-away days,
speeds and specs were important even to consumers, while in today's
shiny-shiny world, the average fandroid or fanboi couldn't care less
about gigatexels or TMUs. "Experience" rules the checkbooks of the
marketplace, not benchmark scores.

But deceit is still not right. Having experienced Samsung's chicanery
directly, let's give our cheater-finders the last word on this sorry
state of affairs.

Shimpi and Klug: "Just because we've seen things like this happen in
the past however doesn't mean they should happen now."

Nebuchadnezzar: "Oh hell Samsung, shame on you!" ®
Bootnote

Here's a li'l fairness v. bias test we suggest you might find
personally illuminating. Read the story above one more time, except
each time you see the word "Samsung", substitute "Apple".

Then ask yourself: "Is my response any different?"

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Office Mobile for Android smartphones looks great on the HTC One (Gallery)

Office Mobile comes to Android smartphones

Mary Jo already posted about the release of Office for Android
smartphones and Larry offered up his thoughts on the new software.
Since I previously posted a side-by-side gallery of Office Mobile for
the iPhone compared to the native Office Mobile client on Windows
Phone 8 I wanted to also give you a look at Office Mobile for Android
smartphones.

As you can see in this short screenshot gallery, Microsoft was able to
bring the same experience seen on Windows Phone 8 devices and the
iPhone to Android smartphones. Given that Android smartphones have the
largest displays of these three smartphone platforms, I think users
may find the Android version the most useful of all.

A key difference between what I have on my new Nokia Lumia 1020 and
what we get with the iPhone and Android phones is that an Office 365
subscription is required on iOS and Android while Windows Phone owners
get native Office without requiring the service.

I am running Office Mobile on my fantastic HTC One, I still believe it
is the best smartphone I have ever used, and it looks great. I felt
squeezed by the small iPhone display, but that is not the case on the
1080p 4.7 inch HTC One display. The layout for some editing tools and
menus are a bit different on each platform and I personally find that
iOS and Android are a bit more refined and user friendly.

Those of us who have been around the mobile world for a while will
remember paying upwards of $50 for applications that allowed us to
work with word documents and spreadsheets and I remember long
discussions and comparisons about getting chart support in those apps.
Office Mobile on today's modern smartphones functions well and is an
incredible value for those who need native Office support.

It is nice to have Office functionality on all my different
smartphones and while some people are happy with services like Google
Docs or even the new Quip word processor nothing beats having the
ability to jump in and edit native Office files. Microsoft is a
software company at its core and I think this is a smart move to
finally get Office on all mobile platforms.

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Zimbabweans head for polls amid rigging claims.

Zimbabweans head for polls amid rigging claims.
On Tuesday, incumbent Robert Mugabe said he would resign after 33
years in power if he loses.
His remarks came as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) party accused Zanu-PF of doctoring the
electoral roll. Zanu-PF denied the accusation.
Campaigning has been peaceful, with no reports of violence or intimidation.
The last presidential poll five years ago were overshadowed by myriad
problems, including violence.
Voting begins at 07:00 (05:00 GMT) and close at 19:00 (17:00 GMT),
with results expected within five days.
The situation has been relatively calm ahead of the poll, with most
bars in the capital Harare full on Tuesday night, given that Wednesday
was declared a holiday to allow for voting, the BBC's Brian Hungwe
reports from Harare.
Amongst the topics discussed by Harareans on the eve of the poll was
the conduct of parties before the elections, and the political
implications of victory or defeat for Mr Mugabe, our correspondent
adds.
A large turn out is expected, given the tens of thousands of people
who have gone to rallies staged by the candidates in recent weeks.
Jovial mood
Zanu-PF responded to the allegations surrounding the electoral roll by
saying it was the responsibility of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
(Zec), which released the roll only on the eve of polls.
A Zanu-PF spokesman pointed out that appointees from both parties are
on the commission and accused the MDC Finance Minister Tendai Biti of
not funding Zec properly.
Zec has not commented on the allegations.
A BBC correspondent who saw the electoral roll seen the document and
says it features the names of thousands of dead people.
Some names also appear twice or three times with variations to their
ID numbers or home address.
The two long-time rivals have been sharing power since 2009, under a
deal brokered by the regional bloc to end conflict that marred
elections in 2008.
At a press conference at State House in the capital, Harare, Mr Mugabe
told journalists that he and Mr Tsvangirai had learnt to work together
and could even share a pot of tea.
Responding to a question from the BBC, the president, who was in a
jovial mood, said he would step down if he lost and insisted that
there had been "no cheating".
But the MDC has said the electoral roll released on Tuesday by Zec
dates back to 1985 and is full of anomalies.
Three other candidates are also standing for president and voters will
also be electing news members of parliament.
Bulawayo-based journalist Thabo Kunene told the BBC that many
Zimbabweans have been returning home from South Africa to vote.
Taxis and buses carrying the exiles continued to arrive in the
southern city on Tuesday afternoon, he said.
In Bulawayo's oldest township of Makhokhoba, MDC and Zanu-PF campaign
teams met amicably at one house during their door-to-door campaign -
waving each other's flags - a sign that some Zimbabweans have matured
and no longer believed in violence, he added.
In 2008, Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of run-off vote, accusing pro-Mugabe
militias and the security forces of attacking his supporters after he
gained most votes in the first round.

© CopyRight- http://www.bbc.co.uk/

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Barclays Plans to Raise Up to $12 Billion in New Capital.

Updated, 8:40 p.m. | Nearly a year after taking over as chief
executive of Barclays, Antony P. Jenkins is still wrestling with the
bank's past wrongdoings.
Mr. Jenkins, 52, took another step on Tuesday to rebuild Barclays'
tarnished reputation when he announced that the bank planned to raise
up to £7.8 billion, or $12 billion, in new capital.
In doing so, Barclays bowed to pressure from British regulators, who
this year called for it to improve its so-called leverage ratio, a
measure of how much borrowed money a bank uses, after the figure was
deemed to be too low.
Barclays, the only major British institution regulators cited, had
objected to the tougher targets. Its announcement on Tuesday, analysts
said, was a sign that British authorities were now willing to require
the country's largest financial institutions to abide by stricter
regulation.
"The regulator has had a big say on how Barclays is raising its
capital," said Chirantan Barua, a banking analyst at Sanford C.
Bernstein in London. "Why would any C.E.O. want to dilute his
company's stock if he didn't have to?"
The regulatory demands are the latest of several run-ins between
Barclays and local authorities in the last two years and follow recent
scandals that have engulfed the bank.
Barclays reached a $450 million settlement with American and British
authorities in June 2012 over the manipulation of benchmark interest
rates, and has set aside billions of dollars for charges related to
inappropriate sales of insurance and other complex financial products
to consumers.
"We did get things wrong," Mr. Jenkins told reporters on Tuesday. "We
were too aggressive and too short-term. It's going to be a five- to
10-year journey to change the culture at Barclays."
And the bank may face more legal woes.
Barclays said on Tuesday that it was contesting undisclosed
preliminary findings from an investigation into the legality of
payments to Qatari investors as part of a rescue fund-raising deal for
the bank in the 2008 financial crisis.
The Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund Qatar Holding invested a
combined £5.3 billion in Barclays in two stages in 2008, and the
British investigation has focused on the role in the agreements of
four current and former senior employees, including the bank's finance
director, Christopher G. Lucas.
The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission also are
investigating the activity, which might have violated the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act. Barclays said it was cooperating with the
authorities.
"It's hard to say when all the regulatory problems for Barclays will
be over," Mr. Barua said. "I don't think you can call it an end for at
least two or three more years." Barclays also said on Tuesday that it
had set aside an additional £2 billion in the second quarter related
to what regulators have determined to be inappropriate sales of
insurance and complex financial hedging products to some of its
clients.
Barclays has now made provisions of almost £3 billion since the
beginning of 2012 to cover legal costs related to the sale of products
ruled out of bounds by regulators.
The legal costs weighed on Barclays' second-quarter results, as the
bank reported a £168 million loss, compared with a £746 million profit
in the second quarter of 2012. Barclays' second-quarter revenue fell
less than 1 percent, to £7.3 billion.
As part of the capital plans announced on Tuesday, Barclays said it
would raise £5.8 billion through a rights issue of stock that would
allow current investors to buy one share for every four shares they
own at a 40.1 percent discount to the bank's closing share price on
Monday.
The bank also plans to issue as much as to £2 billion of so-called
contingent capital, financial instruments that convert to equity if a
bank's capital falls below a certain threshold. Barclays also said it
would reduce assets on its balance sheet by as much as £80 billion and
use part of its profits to improve its leverage ratio to 3 percent by
June 2014.
Shares of Barclays tumbled 5.7 percent Tuesday in trading in London,
where the bank is based. Over the last three trading sessions, the
stock has fallen nearly 10 percent in anticipation of a capital
increase.
While Mr. Jenkins acknowledged that raising the capital might dilute
investors' stake in Barclays, he added that the plan would help
reassure shareholders about the bank's financial strength.
"It's about doing the right thing for the long term," he
said.Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill
Lynch and Citigroup are coordinating the planned £5.8 billion capital
offering by Barclays.


© CopyRight- http://dealbook.nytimes.com/

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Manning Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy.

Manning Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy.
A military judge on Tuesday rejected the Obama administration's quest
to equate the unlawful disclosure of documents with aid to America's
mortal enemies, including al Qaeda, in a ruling that acquitted Private
First Class Bradley Manning of the gravest criminal charge he faced.
But Pfc. Manning was convicted of a long list of other crimes,
including theft of government property and violations of the Espionage
Act, and faces a potential prison sentence far longer than any yet
given for leak-related crimes.
The outcome of the high-profile case, coming more than three years
after Pfc. Manning was arrested at a military base in Iraq for leaking
thousands of secret documents and videos to the WikiLeaks website, was
decidedly mixed for both the defendant and his prosecutors.
It showed that prosecutors had a strong case against Pfc. Manning for
taking and leaking government secrets, experts said, but that the
government may have overreached by taking the added step of
attributing his actions to an intent to harm the U.S. by aiding its
enemies.
"The judge reined in a clearly overzealous prosecution," said Mary
Rose Papandrea, a Boston College Law professor.
Nevertheless, the verdict gave the Obama administration a key first
success in a leak prosecution that relied on World War I-era laws
adopted to counter espionage. Several other cases relying on similar
charges are pending, and experts on law and civil liberties expect the
campaign against leaks to intensify.
"Whether the purpose is to inform the public or aid the enemy, the
message we have been getting is that the government is going to go
after you with everything they have," said Ms. Papandrea.
Pfc. Manning, facing 22 charges, pleaded guilty earlier this year to
lesser counts against him. With Tuesday's conviction, he could be
facing 136 years in prison under the maximum possible sentencing.
The trial now moves into a potentially lengthy sentencing phase
beginning Wednesday. As in all court-martial cases, the defendant is
entitled to an automatic appeal to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals.
A lot of Manning supporters are breathing a sigh of relief that he was
not convicted on the aiding-the-enemy charge, but it is important not
to lose sight that this is really unprecedented that someone could go
to jail for his life for disclosing information to the media," said
Elizabeth Goitein, a legal expert and co-director of the Liberty and
National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
The presiding judge, Col. Denise Lind, asked Pfc. Manning to stand
Tuesday as she announced her verdict. Pfc. Manning appeared calm and
briefly gave a restrained smile when she announced her ruling on the
charge of aiding the enemy.
The judge went on to announce convictions on charge after charge
related to taking information from government databases, bypassing
security mechanisms and using classified information for other than
its intended purpose.
Several analysts said Col. Lind's verdict on aiding the enemy could
ease public perceptions of Pfc. Manning. "It does take away the stigma
you are a traitor, that somehow you are aiding the enemies of your
country if you leak document," said Fred Cate, a professor of law at
Indiana University.
But with a long sentence likely, others said it was unlikely in time
to be seen as a victory for Pfc. Manning. "It is a little less mixed
than it might seem. They still have him on so many counts he is
looking at decades in prison," said Jim Lewis of the nonpartisan
Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Manning verdict holds potential implications for the case of
former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who is
still at a Moscow airport while seeking asylum after leaking details
of U.S. surveillance programs. Mr. Snowden faces criminal charges of
stealing and passing secret information, and is trying to avoid
returning to face trial in the
U.S., claiming he would be subject to possible torture or execution,
which U.S. officials have explicitly denied.
Though legal experts said there is no direct technical precedent for a
military verdict influencing a civilian prosecution, they said Col.
Lind's reasoning could well influence civilian prosecutors.
The administration's loss on the aiding-the-enemy charge in the
Manning case may mean it is less likely to level a similar charge
against Mr. Snowden, experts said. But with the fate of Mr. Snowden,
who remains in Moscow, resting in the hands of the Russian government,
there is unlikely to be a major immediate effect on Mr. Snowden.


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Ashes 2013: James Taylor says he is now ready to take England chance.

Ashes 2013: James Taylor says he is now ready to take England chance.
James Taylor said he believes he is in a much stronger position to
make the most of the opportunity if he is called into the England Test
side at Old Trafford this week than he was when making his debut
against South Africa last year.
The 23-year-old Nottinghamshire batsman, who is in the England squad
as cover for the injured Kevin Pietersen, completed an unbeaten 121 as
a guest player for Sussex in their match against the tourists.
It was not, Taylor admitted, the most fluent or accomplished of the 16
first-class hundreds he has scored in his career. He was very nearly
bowled by his first delivery and was dropped twice during his 253-ball
five-and-a-half-hour stay at the crease.
On the other hand his determination to keep going when "batting ugly",
as the professionals sometimes describe it, was a lesson in itself to
the Australia batsmen following their collapses at Trent Bridge and
Lord's.
"I'm definitely a better player mentally and technically than I was
when I played those two Tests against South Africa last year," said
Taylor.
"I felt comfortable at the crease [against South Africa] but I didn't
get the runs I wanted. I've been away and worked really hard. I've
piled on the runs like the selectors asked me to and now I feel in a
good place. This wasn't one of my best innings but it's about finding
a way when you're not feeling in the best touch, and I did that. It's
not how, it's how many.
"I was in a kind of no-win situation in this game but the purpose was
to spend time in the middle against the red ball after all the T20
cricket in recent weeks, and it was good to do that against a decent
attack.
"It was definitely a pressure situation – if I hadn't scored any runs
everybody would have commented on that – but luckily I did and got
what I needed out of the game."
The other England squad member playing in this match, the left-arm
spinner Monty Panesar, was optimistic about his chances of going back
up against Australia on Thursday.
"If the wicket's turning in Manchester we should definitely play two
spinners, and I'd love to play with 'Swanny' [Graeme Swann]; the spin
twins coming together and getting the win," he said with a smile.
"I have a good record at Old Trafford so hopefully the groundsman is
raking that wicket and producing a turning one."
Panesar did acknowledge his inclusion could be seen as a surprise
considering he has not enjoyed a hugely productive season in domestic
cricket. The 21 wickets he has taken in 10 County Championship matches
have come at an average of over 40.
"I kind of struggled early season," he said. "I was not getting the
[bowling] action I wanted to get, so I went away and did a bit of work
with [the England spin coach] Peter Such on a one-to-one basis to get
my action in the right order.
"If my action hadn't been great and my bowling wasn't great then maybe
the selectors wouldn't have taken the option [of picking him] but
they've obviously seen improvement in the last couple of games,
especially here against Australia. It was really important for me to
put them under pressure and show the selectors I was in a good place."
Panesar, who took three for 70 from 24.4 overs in the Australia first
innings and none for 40 from 14 in the second, said he felt he would
be a threat against the current Australian batting line-up.
"The Australia team is a very competitive team, they are always going
to come hard at us, but you always feel maybe against spin there is an
opportunity. You can't completely discard Australia – they are good
players, they're a competitive cricket team – but I do feel in this
game I was always in with a chance.
"As far as I am concerned everything is back in place now, so the
timing couldn't be better. If the opportunity does come on Thursday
I'm in a great place."

© CopyRight - http://www.theguardian.com/

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