Between April and June 2011, EMC spent $66 million handling the fallout from a March cyber attack against its systems, which resulted in the compromise of information relating to the SecurID two-factor authentication sold by EMC’s security division, RSA. That clean-up figure was disclosed last week during an EMC earnings call, by David Goulden, the company’s chief financial officer. It doesn’t include post-breach expenses from the first quarter, when EMC began investigating the... 

Nintendo’s stock nosedived after yesterday’s financial results, losing 21 per cent of its value in a single trading period – costing ex-president Hiroshi Yamauchi a huge amount of money. Yamauchi was president of Nintendo for 53 years and retained a ten per cent share in the company across 14.17 million shares, according to a March 31 posting. Those shares are thought to have lost a total of $540 million in a single day, reports Bloomberg. The fall was the result of a devastating... 

Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company. Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted. The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up... 

In a bold move, South Korea’s ministry of education recently announced plans to get rid of printed textbooks at Korea’s schools by the year 2015. Called “Smart Education”, the plan calls for the development of a dedicated cloud network – which will host digital copies of the students’ required reading and lessons – that can be accessed through “any” Internet-connected device, from low-power netbooks to tablets to (presumably) Android-powered... 

It appears that Star Wars-The Old Republic pre-orders are doing quite well. EA reported that the pre-order are breaking records that the company had. An EA spokesperson said “The number of pre-orders is way ahead of our expectations.” EA’s next closest game in pre-orders is Battlefield 3 and SWTOR is way ahead of that game. Many retailers are confirming that Star Wars is in high demand which is great for a PC title; and are comparing the demand to Word of Warcraft expansion.” Many hating... 

A supermassive black hole devouring hot gas in its vicinity has been seen clearly for the first time in a new X-ray view, according to a recent study. Black holes consume material around them and grow by using their intense gravity to pull in surrounding gases. This flow of hot gas, as it is being sucked toward the black hole, has been clearly seen for the first time in X-ray wavelengths, helping astronomers better understand how black holes gobble their surroundings and how matter behaves in this... 

Alibaba Group unveiled its first self-developed mobile operating system and smartphone on Thursday in a bid to capture a slice of China’s burgeoning mobile Internet market. The cloud computing-based operating system, Aliyun, will run the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone, to be launched at the end of July in 10 colors, said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, a unit of Alibaba Group. A tablet PC running the Aliyun OS, which is based on a customized Android system, will also be launched... 

Sony has revealed that the financial losses caused by the cyber attacks in April are less than originally predicted. In its official presentation of its Q1 earnings, executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato revealed “”the [total] cost may be smaller than the original cost estimate.” In May Sony predicted that the attacks would cost $171.2 million by the end of the 2012 fiscal year. “That was the May forecast,” said Kato. “The first quarter... 

Google has created a hosted service that analyzes Web pages, rewrites their code to make them perform better and serves them up from Google servers. To use the Page Speed Service, Web publishers must sign up and point their site’s DNS entry to Google. The service grabs the site’s content, optimizes it for speed and delivers the pages to end users. Visitors will continue to access a site in the same way as before but could see speed enhancements of 25% to 60%, according to Google. The... 

A group of 29 U.S. universities have joined forces in an effort to accelerate ultra-high-speed broadband deployment to their campuses and surrounding communities, organizers announced Wednesday. Within the next two months, Gig.U project will solicit information on new approaches for deploying super-fast broadband networks, with a longer-term goal of having private companies build the networks. The universities will look for new ideas from current broadband providers, potential providers and others... 

Intel’s Technology Planning of Atom’s SoC Development Group Bill Leszinske, claimed that future Atoms would be faster than AMD’s Phenom II. This transition will not happen overnight and is pegged to take place around 2015.  Leszinske was sharing Intel’s road map with It Portal, saying Intel is the hottest silicon property at present. What is perhaps interesting is that it is the first time that Intel has said Ultrabooks, which Intel hope to be the next hottest gadget, will be equipped... 

Astronomers probing the deepest mysteries of the universe are getting help from “zombie” stars, dead white dwarfs that come back to life in huge explosions. The cosmic zombies are officially known as Type Ia supernovas, and they’re helping scientists study dark energy— the mysterious stuff thought to make up three-quarters of the universe, and to be responsible for its accelerating expansion. “These stars are tools for measuring dark energy,” said Andy Howell, of the... 

AMD Trinity APU Advanced Micro Devices Thomas Seifert in a recent call said that their forthcoming Trinity APU will cut power consumption by half, despite the increase in performance over its current Llano APU. As with AMD’s present Llano APU, there will be a variety of Trinity APU’s.  Therefore, we do not know which specific chip they are talking about. AMD only said a version of Trinity will consume less than 50% of the power of today’s lowest consuming, 35W, Llano APU.  If this... 

Financial institutions are facing more trouble from SpyEye, a piece of malicious software that steals money from customers online bank accounts, according to new research from security vendor Trusteer. SpyEye is a dastardly piece of malicious software: it can harvest credentials for online accounts and also initiate transactions as a person is logged into their account, literally making it possible to watch their bank balance drop by the second. In its latest versions, SpyEye has been modified... 

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts has reported first quarter profits of $221 million, more than double the $96 million from the same period last year. Sales were up to $999 million, compared to $815 million, with 2 million sales of Valve’s Portal 2, Dead Space 2 and Dragon Age 2. Crytek’s Crysis 2 has now sold over three million units since release. “This was another solid quarter driven by both digital and packaged goods,” commented John Riccitiello, CEO. “We saw...