This 3D printer uses paper (regular old paper!) instead of filament or resin

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Microsoft Surface revenue awful on paper and in the pocketbook

Microsoft revealed Tuesday that its actual revenue for the Surface tablet for the 2013 fiscal year was $863 million, less than the $900 million charged against its profits for discounting the Surface tablet.

Technically, that means that the amount that Microsoft discounted the Surface by was more than its actual revenue for the product. The 8-K document that Microsoft filed with the SEC also reveals that Microsoft spent $898 million more in advertising for Surface and Windows 8 than it did in its previous fiscal year, when sales of the Windows division were $18.4 billion. (In 2011, Windows sales totaled $19.1 billion, when Microsoft was riding high on Windows 7.)

A writedown means that the company reports a change in the so-called "book value" of a particular piece of inventory, a tacit acknowledgement that the market value of a particular good ha decreased. One way of looking at it might be to say that a loaf of bread might be worth $5 the day it was baked, but only $3 a day later. The hope is that writing down or discounting the item in question will prompt sales, as customers perceive the item to be more in line with what they would expect to pay.

To give it an air of freshness, Microsoft cut the price of the Surface tablet by 30 percent, which apparently prompted buyers to buy up the available supply at Walmart.com. But while the site still reports the Surface RT with 32 GB of memory as out of stock, local stores reported having them on their shelves, indicating that Walmart may not be as selling as many as first thought.

It's actually hard to say how many Surface tablets Microsoft sold, given that prices varied widely between the Surface RT and Surface Pro, both before and after the discounts. However, they certainly haven't met expectations.

Geekwire and GigaOM, which reported the 8K disclosures on Tuesday, also noted that Windows chief Steven Sinofsky negotiated a $14 million exit package which prevents him from working at Microsoft's competitors, including Amazon, Apple, EMC, Facebook, Google, Oracle, and VMWare, until December 31, 2013.

After leaving Microsoft last October, Sinofsky now teaches at Harvard, where he's forbidden from disclosing secret information about the company. Instead, Sinofsky's blog has focused on the business processes that the company has used, including his take on Microsoft's reorganization by function, rather than by product or division. As such, he's been somewhat removed from Microsoft's day-to-day struggles, such as the Surface, which he once rode as a skateboard to demonstrate the toughness of its its VaporMg chassis. Now, after Microsoft's reorganization, the Surface is in the hands of Jule Larson-Green, the new head of the Devices and Studios Engineering Group.

Whether it's Sinofsky or Larson-Green running the show, one thing is clear: Surface may not spoil like bread or fruit, but it's apparently gone stale nevertheless.

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University condemns court ban of research paper on flaws in car lock system

A court ban on a research paper that analyzes flaws in a car-lock system should be overturned, according to the Dutch university that employs two of the three researchers who wrote the analysis.

The U.K. High Court of Justice banned the publication of the paper, “Dismantling Megamos Crypto: Wirelessly Lockpicking a Vehicle Immobilizer” on June 25, said the Radboud University Nijmegen in a news release on Monday. The ban came to the attention of the public when the U.K. newspaper The Guardian published a story about it over the weekend.

The U.K. court issued an interim block on the research paper, while considering a permanent ban on request of car manufacturer Volkswagen, the university added. French defense group Thales also requested the ban, according to a report by the BBC.

Roel Verdult and Baris Ege, of the Digital Security faculty at Radboud University, were planning to present their paper with Flavio Garcia a lecturer in Computer Science of the University of Birmingham during the USENIX Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., in August, the Dutch university said.

Verdult and Ege said in a joint email on Monday that they did not want to comment on the matter. Garcia did not return a request for comment.

“In their scientific article, they show that there is a fault in the security of the Megamos chip that is used in the immobilizer in different car brands,” the Radboud University said, adding that the chip was designed in the mid-90s and is outdated. “Nevertheless, it is still widely used in the automotive industry,” it said.

The research is based on publicly available information. In their paper, the researchers reveal the weakness of the chip in mathematical terms, the university said. The research “by no means reveals how to easily steal a car,” it said, adding that very different information is needed to do that.

Furthermore, the researchers informed the chip maker in November 2012, nine months before the intended publication of their paper, so that security measures could be taken, the university said. The researchers also urged the chip maker to inform their own customers from the outset, it added.

“The decision of the English court imposes severe restrictions on the freedom of academic research in a socially highly relevant field,” Radboud University said, adding that it nevertheless respects the decision of the court.

“The University of Birmingham is disappointed with the judgment which did not uphold the defence of academic freedom and public interest, but respects the decision,” a University of Birmingham spokesperson said in an email. It has decided to defer publication of the academic paper in any form while it obtains additional technical and legal advice.

Because the court is considering a final ruling, Radboud University spokeswoman Anja van Kessel declined to provide further comment, but said the university hopes the court will ultimately decide in favor of publication of the paper.

Volkswagen did not respond to a request for comment.

Loek Essers focuses on online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues.
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