3Com Corp., the company that gave birth to Ethernet, has agreed to be acquired by Hewlett Packard Co. for a total of approximately $2.7 billion in cash, in a deal that already has approval from the boards of both companies.
Buying Marlborough-based 3Com gives HP a well-developed roster of Ethernet switching products, a much stronger corporate presence in China, and a leap into network security products through 3Com’s subsidiary, TippingPoint, which the company acquired for $400 million in 2005.
HP also gets access to 3Com’s large research and development team in China, which came about from 3Com’s partnership with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Officials at Calif.-based HP say that the purchase will allow it to boost its next-generation data center strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services.
The agreement calls for 3Com stockholders to receive $7.90 for each share of 3Com common stock that they hold at the closing of the merger, which is expected to happen in the first half of calendar 2010.
3Com, which has 5,800 employees globally, posted revenue of $290.5 million and $7.5 million in net profit in the third quarter, a year-over-year drop of 15 percent and 91 percent respectively. It held $200 million in long-term debt, including $46 million due this fiscal year and another $46 million due in its 2011 fiscal year. The company has a market cap of $2.23 billion.
Click here to watch HP’s webcast announcing the deal.
To mark the Internet’s 40th birthday yesterday, the Guardian traces the history of the Internet with a dense interactive timeline. Popular Science covers the same ground via text and photos.
Last week, Mass High Tech asked Leo Beranek, “the second B in BBN,” to sit down with MassTLC chair Steve O’Leary, in an exclusive dialogue about Beranek’s career in technology and entrepreneurship. The interview took place at the Harvard Club in Back Bay in anticipation of MassTLC giving Beranek its Commonwealth Award. In the clip above, Beranek talks about BBN’s role in developing the ARPANet, the forerunner of the Internet.
Keep an eye out for the more video of the interview and a complete transcript running on MHT soon.
Tonight is Game 1 of the Red Sox’ five-game divisional series against the Angels, which creates two near-certainties: Another Sox/Yankees ALCS; and “worker productivity” becoming an oxymoron at offices throughout New England tomorrow. This thing doesn’t start till 9:37 p.m., for Hendu’s sake, and postseason baseball tends to go well with alcohol.
But what baseball taketh away, it can also giveth, or whatever. The sport has inspired some nifty innovations in analytics, robotics and … let’s call it life sciences.
MIT News Office photo
• In spring training, the Sox, who even give their IT guy World Series rings, supplemented hitting coach Dave Magadan with the MIT Media Lab, naturally. For the last few years, researchers from the Media Lab’s Responsive Environments Group, has been strapping sensors to minor leagers while they’re batting at the Sox camp at Fort Myers. The info from accelerometers and gyroscopes could provide insight on differences in swing mechanics during a hot streak or a slump.
• Using an arm developed at MIT, University of Tokyo researchers have developed baseball-playing robots that could make the Fall Classic either more interesting, or entirely pointless, to watch. Think of all the time and money the Sox would save on scouting, not to mention free agency. And J.D. Drew would presumably be injured far less often if he were a robot. (more…)
So you’re set up to show off your tech product to the press and public at one of the greatest venues in New England — Patriot Place at Gillette Stadium — before the season opening game of the New England Patriots. Crowds are milling all about you in the plaza right in front of The Hall and interacting with your street team crew by the handfuls. What could possibly go wrong?
How about a deafeningly loud sound check by a rock band?
Lansdowne Photo by Rodney Brown
That was what the folks from Verizon had to face yesterday at the house the Krafts’ built, when the Boston band Lansdowne fired up their grinding emo-esque guitars on a balcony next to the CBS Scene restaurant — across the vast echoing canyon that is the main plaza of Patriot Place from Verizon’s leather couch-enabled, 60-inch flat screen-displaying FiOS booth.
In between power chords and mic checks, Phil Santoro, head of media relations for Verizon in New England, said, “We just found out about the band two hours ago.”
While Lansdowne tweaked its sound levels — seemingly trying to figure out how to both get more volume and more clarity — Santoro shouted out the schedule for the press demo of the latest FiOS features to the assembled reporters and bloggers. When Lansdowne finally appeared to get the perfect balance of deafness and sound quality, Santoro said, “OK, we’ve got until 5:15, which is when the band actually starts playing.” (more…)
Fu is a computer science professor doing research on preventing implanted medical devices from being hacked. At the 2008 Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas, Fu and his team of researchers showed it was possible to get information such as Social Security numbers and medical diagnoses from implanted devices. They also showed that by impersonating the computer a defibrillator communicates with and wirelessly changing the settings, a hacker could send a fatal shock to a patient’s heart.
At the time, MHT talked to Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center researcher William Maisel, a member of the research team, about the project. In the video above, Fu explains his research at another hacker conference, Black Hat 2008.
Other New Englanders selected:
José Gómez-Márquez, director of MIT’s Innovations in International Health
The AP is reporting a Skype virus making the rounds can record phone calls made over the service, save the audio as an MP3, and email it to other computers. The hack taps into the computer’s OS to record the computer’s audio before it’s encrypted by Skype.
Mudge
Former L0pht Heavy Industries hacker Mudge, aka Peiter Zatko, a security researcher at BBN Technologies, just got back from Italy to find BBN had been bought by Raytheon. Via email, he said the Skype virus tactic isn’t new, comparing it to hackers stealing banking information by recording keystrokes.
“The fact that this is relatively well known does not speak well for the progress that our consumer computer security has made over the years,” he said.
The issue stems from the multitasking we demand from our computers — different applications have different security needs, but the OS doesn’t serve them.
“Would you be happy if you could play video games and listen to online music at the ATM when you walk in to your bank? I wouldn’t. I want that system to be specific and dedicated to processing my bank requests,” Mudge said.
The AP report suggests the virus works better as a targeted attack, rather than a widespread virus. To defend against it, Mudge suggests disabling Javascript and similar programs in your browser; disabling HTML and content rendering in e-mail programs; being savvy about e-mail attachments and links and Internet sites; and running each application on a separate virtual machine, then reverting to a clean install state. And he said all that is just a start.
“Once your computer is compromised, it doesn’t matter if you are using encrypted network communications … you’ve lost,” he said.
The “fence” will use sensors and S-band radars to track small objects in low earth orbit for situational awareness in space. The first radar system is expected to be delivered in 2015.
DirectoryM Inc.’s 12 founding employees have ponied up another $2 million to expand the online database centralization startup globally — after buying it out from its investors in March 2007 for $6 million.
GreenRay develops solar AC modules with fewer parts and simplified installation as a means of lowering cost. The funding will be applied to the manufacturing, distribution and commercial launch of GreenRay’s solar AC module.
Matthew “L’il Hacker” Weigman got 11 years for, among other things, hacking phone carriers, and arranging for a SWAT team to visit his landlord’s house. Universal Hub has the details about the 19-year-old hacker from Revere:
Weigman was sentenced in federal district court in Dallas, where he’d been tried because a key part of the charges against him involved his cracking of a Verizon data center in Texas, which let him obtain numerous fake phone numbers and IDs, listen in on phone calls and cancel the phone service of his enemies. The government began investigating Weigman when he was 15 – he was formally charged when he turned 18.
Aura Biosciences, a Cambridge-based biotechnology company focused on new drug delivery methods, has added three Boston-area advisors to its leadership team.
Shares of Biogen Idec Inc. sank Monday after the biotechnology giant confirmed that another patient taking the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal brain infection called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML.
Former SolidWorks Corp. CEO John McEleney will join the company along with the round of funding, which was led by new investors Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and increase the total amount invested in Cloudswitch to $15.4 million. (more…)
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So you’re set up to show off your tech product to the press and public at one of the greatest venues in New England — Patriot Place at Gillette Stadium — before the season opening game of the New England Patriots. Crowds are milling all about you in the plaza right in front of The Hall and interacting with your street team crew by the handfuls. What could possibly go wrong?
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