White House says Healthcare.gov fixes made

Summary: The administration has announced that they have met their self-imposed deadline for making the health care marketplace site usable.

A "HealthCare.gov Progress and Performance Report" released by the Center for Mediare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declares that the end-of-month deadline for fixes to the healthcare.gov web site has been met.

The report was released at a press briefing Sunday morning with Jeffrey Zients, the man President Obama tasked to oversee the fixes. Zients announced that:

...the average system response time is under 1 second; the error rate is "consistently well below 1 percent"; the online system is stable — not crashing — more than 90 percent of the time; as many as 50,000 shoppers can use the site at the same time, or up to 800,000 visits a day.

The report concludes:

As the metrics detailed in this report reveal, dramatic progress has been made on improving HealthCare.gov. There is more work to be done to continue to improve and enhance the website and continue to improve the consumer experience in the weeks and months ahead. The new management system and instrumentation have helped improve site stability, lower the error rating below 1%, increase capacity to allow 50,000 concurrent users to simultaneously use the site and will help drive continuous improvement on the site. While we strive to innovate and improve our outreach and systems for reaching consumers, we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.

Hat tip to the Washington Post.

Larry Seltzer has long been a recognized expert in technology, with a focus on mobile technology and security in recent years

Samsung waves white flag in the patent wars

(Image: CNET)

Samsung said that it will not now bring certain cases of infringement of patent against rivals for the next five years, ending a long-lasting conflict with the European Commission about the alleged abuse of the patent system.

The company, which has a major rivalry in course with Apple, be cast back as it faces a significant EU fine, since he was accused of use patent claims to ahead of its arch-rival.

The Commission said in a statement on Thursday hoped the move "will bring clarity" to the industry.

Under the terms of the deal, Samsung said that it will not seek measures precautionary based on "essential standards patent - necessary for interoperability between devices and necessary for the industry - against a company that is committed to a framework licensed under terms (FRAND) fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory."

A license agreement fails for more than 12 months, the courts may be involved to referee the dispute.

But still it is far from a done deal. The move is part of the latest round of concessions offered by Samsung in an attempt to finally a huge competition well in block 28 State members.

Rivals and competitors in the smartphone space will give their comments, and based on that, the Committee is the best course of action in the future.

Korean smartphone manufacturer seeks to lawsuits and measures interim sales in several European countries in 2011 against the use of Apple's patents. But because patents are considered vital for the technology industry, the EU hit back claiming that the move was anti-competitive.

Samsung faces a fine of up to $18.3 billion - or 10 percent of its global turnover in 2012.

"To enforce the patents through measures precautionary can be perfectly legitimate", said EU competition Commission Joaquin Almunia in observations. "However, when standard essential patents, abuse should prevent this legislation it is working properly and consumers do not have to suffer the negative consequences of the so-called patent wars."