Samsung VS Apple

   Three models of Samsung Galaxy smartphones will be banned from sale in europe. The court in The Hague has ordered the injunction.
   From mid-October, it'll be impossible to obtain the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II, and the Galaxy Ace in europe, says Saskia Panchoe, spokesman for the Dutch court in The Hague. Apple asked the court for interim measures to prohibit the sale of these models, and three Samsung tablets due to a violation of its patents.
   "The court found that there was much offense for the phones, but not for the tablets, which may be sold." said Saskia Pancho.
   The offences are related to the EP 2059868 in connection with how to scroll through the images or unlock the cell phone.
   "Patents are generally valid for several countries, which means that the prohibition applies to all countries where the patents are valid" said the court. The countries concerned should be in addition to the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Sweden and Switzerland. This injunction is valid until the case is judged on its merits, and it will not be before 2012. Many referrals are also underway on other models in the Samsung.
   Since April these two companies are at open court war, accusing each other of violating their patents. Recently, Samsung has even argued that the principle of tablet was not invented by Apple, but Stanley Kubrick's film 2001, A Space Odyssey. 

IBM aims to create "cognitive computers"

   U.S. computer group IBM announced, Thursday, Aug. 18, to have developed a chip duplicating the human brain function, which can be used to build computers capable of learning from their own experience.
   The "cognitive computers" built with these chips are not programmed the same way today's traditional computers are. These computers, instead, learn from their experiences, find correlations, develop assumptions, remember - and learn - results, thus imitating the plasticity of the human brain, IBM promises.
   Two prototype chips have been manufactured and are being tested, said the American group. Both were burned with an ultimate line of 45 nanometers on silicon on insulator, and contain the equivalent of 256 "neurons".
   IBM is testing two types of architectures for these chips: one with 262,144 synapses (zone of interaction between nerve cells) programmable, the other with 65,536 synapses for learning. The long term goal of IBM is to build a complex component which contains 10 million "neurons" but it's still very far from the human brain, which includes 100 billion. The goal is to get at creating 100,000 billion synapses in a space less than 2 liters, while using one kilowatt of electricity, said the American group.
   In terms of applications ,a "cognitive"computer is for example capable of triggering a tsunami alert by analyzing data from different types of marine sensors, compiling data on temperature, pressure and wave height, explains IBM. It could also help retailers manage their inventories fresh products through its sense of "smell".
   For the second phase of the project, called Synapse, IBM has enlisted the help of several renowned universities such as Columbia, Cornell, the University of California and that of Wisconsin. The project also benefits from a funding of $ 21 million (14.6 million) from Darpa, the agency that funds high-tech projects in the field of defense.
   IBM has already designed Watson, a computer with the ability to learn from mistakes, and a surge capacity of semantic analysis which makes it much more effective than traditional software in the association of ideas.

  Source: lemonde.fr

Large decrease in computer sales

   According to figures published by Gartner, PC sales have decreased by 19% between the second trimester of 2010 and the second trimester of 2011, including a 17.8% decrease only in france. Which means a decrease of 2.8 million units sold.
   Are Tablets to be blamed ?
   The decrease could be caused by the economic climate, aswell as the competition from touch pads(chich is not included in the study of Gartner) and to a lesser extent, smartphones. As for manufacturers, almost all of them show decreasing sales in the French market: HP -9%, -13% for Dell, -23% for Asus, and  to -40% for Acer. Apple pulls one out of the game, with sales rising by 6.4%.
   Aware that the development of touch pads is one of the causes for poor sales of laptop computers (-20.4% year on year), the different manufacturers should continue to release new tablet models in the weeks or months ahead.  They should also focus, like Dell, on products and services with high added value (computer services, data security, or cloud computing).