Google I/O is latest round in escalating high-tech arms race

Jon Swartz, Jessica Guynn and Marco della Cava
USA TODAY
May 28, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO — Google fired the latest salvos Thursday in an escalating arms race among tech’s Big 4 for the hearts, minds and coding of developers.

At the eighth annual I/O conference here, Google laid out a futuristic road map to throngs of 5,000 software developers, its infantry in the war against Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.

The tech titans are locked in a worldwide skirmish to make devices of all kinds smarter — whether smartphones and tablets, wearable devices, Internet-connected televisions, cars or virtual reality.

With most people on the planet within an arm’s length of an electronic device, the quartet is vying to become the primary vendor supplying technology underpinning five key battlefields — the Internet of Things, autos, virtual reality, mobile payments and wearable devices – worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Continue reading “Google I/O is latest round in escalating high-tech arms race”

Cabinet should be given adequate time for Ministers to understand and study the Save 1MDB roadmap before a Cabinet decision is taken while Najib should “tell all” about his 1MDB dealings in the past six years

The Second Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah announced yesterday that the Finance Ministry will present a roadmap for 1MDB to the Cabinet today to solve the problems plaguing the 1MDP and to counter negative perceptions on the strategic investment fund company.

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the second Finance Minister Husni should be fair to their ministerial colleagues in the 35-strong Cabinet, who should be given adequate time to understand and study the Save 1MDB Plan before a Cabinet decision is taken as all the Ministers have to bear collective responsibility for the success or failure of the Save 1MDB Plan once it is approved by the Cabinet.

The Cabinet should not repeat the farce of its March 4 meeting when the Ministers went through the motions of being briefed by 1MDB and its auditors Deloitte, with few Ministers understanding what was going on, but the Cabinet still prematurely and foolishly cleared the troubled fund of wrongdoing and issued 1MDB with a clean bill of health and integrity.

Without comprehensive Cabinet papers for the Ministers to understand the 1MDB scandal, without access to the thousands of 1MDB transactions and email which London’s Sunday Times and Sarawak Report said they had obtained access to, despite attempts by 1MDB at the end of last year to call in all of its computers, employee laptops and servers to wipe them clean of such transactions and emails, how could the Cabinet clear the 1MDB of any wrongdoing?

This has led to the shocking spectacle of the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, declaring after more than two months after the Cabinet meeting which cleared 1MDB of wrongdoing that the 1MDB Board should be sacked and the police called in to investigate 1MDB. Continue reading “Cabinet should be given adequate time for Ministers to understand and study the Save 1MDB roadmap before a Cabinet decision is taken while Najib should “tell all” about his 1MDB dealings in the past six years”