The iPhone 3.0, iPhone 4G, or whatever Apple decides to call it, will finally make the leap into that select group of mobile phones (i.e. about 90% of the decent ones) that can record moving pictures with its very own video camera, says an anonymous source.
The iPhone’s lack of video recording was one of the more serious let-downs when Apple launched the device, and one that Apple stubbornly refused to correct with the release of the iPhone 3G. Apple may have had its reasons, but ‘lesser’ mobiles have been recording video clips for years and not being able to do the same on such a premium phone seems, well, a bit silly - particularly when the iPhone prototype apparently did come with at least video calling.
Apple Insider recently received word from a trusted - if anonymous - source that this sorry state of affairs is about to change when Apple releases the next generation of iPhone handsets. Apple are apparently planning to include a video camera function on at least one new iPhone.
Now, this obviously points to there being more than one new iPhone coming soon, which tallies with other rumours about iPhone Nanos, etc. Also supporting the video camera rumours is the ‘publish video’ button spotted in the iPhone OS 3.0 beta that has been doing the rounds - although there was a suspicion that ‘publish video’ was a typo as it appeared on a ‘publish image’ app.
Apple Insider describe their source as ‘extremely reliable’ and as someone who has provided solid intel on previous Apple launches. They also speculate that Apple may include support for faster mobile internet (probably HSPA) in order to facilitate streaming video over the airwaves.
Along with the introduction of the iPhone in January 2007, Apple also announced the iPhone Bluetooth Headset, a small, sleek-looking wireless earpiece that cost $129 and featured automatic paring with the iPhone. It originally shipped with a travel cable and dual dock, both of which allowed it to be simultaneously charged along with your iPhone.
In July last year, Apple stopped bundling the dual dock with the headset and dropped the price to $99, perhaps in an attempt to bolster disappointing sales. It didn’t seem to have helped, though, since the product has now been discontinued.
Given the amount of negative criticism it garnered in its short life, that's not exactly surprising. The Apple Store listing for the product has hundreds of average and below-average ratings and our own Dan Frakes said in his review that the headset “doesn't provide the best performance on the market, nor does it offer an extensive set of features.” Not to mention there's an extensive market of third-party headsets with better performance, cheaper price tags, more features, or some combination of all three.
As someone who’d considered purchasing the headset when I’d bought my iPhone, I’m a little disappointed by this move and hope that Apple will come up with a replacement for it, unlikely though that may be. Sure, it was utterly lacking in the performance department, but Apple did have the integration angle down pat, what with the automatic iPhone pairing and ability to display the unit's charging status on the iPhone’s screen.
Although the headset has been discontinued, it can still be added to your cart and purchased off the Apple Store, so if you want to do so, now is as good a time as any. I’m pretty certain it isn’t going to be around much longer.
Microsoft is in the process of building out a marketplace for open-source applications that could work like an equivalent to an app store for applications, services and support for open-source technology that runs on the Windows platform. At MIX09, Microsoft released several components of the Microsoft Web Platform, an integrated set of tools, servers and frameworks that work seamlessly together and interoperate with popular open-source applications and products that are used in the community. Microsoft is looking at Windows Azure as a potential distribution platform for these applications.
LAS VEGAS—Microsoft is in the process of building out a marketplace for open-source applications that could work like an equivalent to an app store for applications, services and support for open-source technology that runs on the Windows platform.
At the Microsoft MIX09 conference here, Lauren Cooney, group product manager for Web Platform and Standards at Microsoft, said there is a new movement at Microsoft under way and she is part of the new blood leading the way toward that brave new world, particularly on the Web. Cooney, who came to Microsoft after stints at both IBM and BEA Systems, where she worked with Java and open-source Web and emerging technologies, said a key slogan with her group is, "Make Web not war."
As such, at MIX09, Microsoft released several components of the Microsoft Web Platform, an integrated set of tools, servers and frameworks that work seamlessly together and interoperate with popular open-source applications and products that are used in the community.
Included in the Microsoft Web Platform vision is the Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta, a tool that simplifies the installation and update of Microsoft’s free Web products and other free Web components. This release allows users to download both PHP and the final release of ASP.NET MVC 1.0. Microsoft also launched the Windows Web Application Gallery, which allows developers to discover, explore and download applications and components that will help them build Web applications. Developers can submit free applications into the Gallery, offering communities, partners and independent software vendors access to millions of Windows developers worldwide for promoting their Web solutions. The Gallery includes links to popular applications such as Acquia Drupal, DotNetNuke and WordPress.
The Microsoft Web Platform is a powerful set of tools, servers and technologies optimized for building and hosting next-generation Web applications, including PHP applications, Cooney said. To prepare for the added support for PHP, Cooney said her team met with 25 of the top PHP developers around to get advice on how to work with the PHP community.
She said the team is looking for three overall themes with its strategy: simplicity, interoperability and integration. And the company's vision for the Microsoft Web Platform features four pillars: community, applications, a marketplace and a one-stop shop. The community includes developers working on applications, and the application pillar features applications and technologies developers can use—or reuse—to avoid having to build everything from scratch.
The marketplace is a place where "developers and partners who build and/or customize applications want a custom distribution pipeline, so they don't have to exert their efforts on marketing," Cooney said.
"A thriving marketplace ... when I talk about a marketplace I want to talk about a couple of different things," Cooney said. "I want to talk about marketing and distribution specifically. We have developers and partners who want to build or customize their apps. Before, these developers never had a customer distribution pipeline. They weren't able to market these applications. Essentially, what we have launched with Windows Web Application Gallery is this marketing and distribution pipeline. So if a developer has a great app they want to include in the Web Application Gallery, we will market that worldwide—so they have the reach that they never had before."
In terms of a one-stop shop, Cooney said it is a "full end-to-end solution for the Microsoft Web Platform—this is the cornerstone of the vision. We think developers come in and they want one location where they can do everything. So we want to provide developers with a location where they can build, sell, download and deploy their applications, all in one secure environment with many different options for tooling languages and growth."
Indeed, a thriving marketing and distribution element is extremely important to any Web platform, particularly Microsoft's, Cooney said.
"What we're also looking at is monetization, and we need to create a back-end system for this," she said. "We can do this with the application gallery on Windows Azure—a location to build, buy and sell these applications. I'll be looking at the infrastructure and also at Windows Azure on several different levels."
Cooney saidMicrosoft wants developers and its customers to be successful. "That's a No. 1 goal of us in general," she said. "At the end of the day if I can look at where we're going and I can say the stuff I'm doing is moving the boat in the right direction, then I'm happy. Working with these [developers] is my passion."
SEATTLE — Can Microsoft's (MSFT) Internet Explorer Web browser reclaim chunks of market share swiped by upstart Firefox?
The arrival last week of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), just two years after Microsoft's last major browser upgrade, IE7, should help answer that question.
IE8, which can be downloaded free, has cool new features: "Web slices" let you quickly call up selected content from a Web page — such as updates from an eBay auction page — via the IE8 favorites bar; "accelerators" make it easier to cut and paste text from one page and insert it on another.
Beyond that, IE8 has restored some of Microsoft's lost bravado. Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, insists IE8 is uniformly faster at loading Web pages than Firefox 3, despite debate in tech circles about this claim.
"I feel very good that IE8 will be a reason to keep using IE," Nash said in an interview. "And for our previous customers, who may not be using IE today, IE8 will be a compelling reason to come back."
Web browsers were once so mundane that Microsoft took five years to upgrade IE6, introduced with Windows XP in 2001, to IE7. Millions still use IE6. Meanwhile, Firefox, introduced in late 2004, has racked up significant market share and popularized features, such as tab browsing, which lets you quickly click back to several open Web pages.
As of last month, Firefox commanded a 22% global market share vs. 68% for IE, according to Net Applications. Meanwhile, Opera, Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome are staking out potentially huge new turf for browsers on computing devices other than laptops and desktop PCs.
Web browsers have emerged as the doorway to an interactive Internet, which people are increasingly accessing on mobile devices, cars, TV recorders, even video gaming consoles. "We're really happy to see Microsoft isn't standing still anymore," says Mike Beltzner, Firefox director of development. "But we're not standing still, either."
Firefox 3.5, due this summer, will up the ante by supporting HTML 5, a new Web standard that makes it easier to embed videos on Web pages, and "canvas," which lets artists hand draw images on Web pages.
Apple and Google are moving aggressively in browsing on cellphones, while Opera is gaining a foothold with its Opera Mini, a free cellphone browser popular with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile users. And Opera is the browser that connects Nintendo's Wii gaming console to the Web. "Our browser runs on any platform or device," says Rod Hamlin, Opera senior vice president.
Microsoft supplies a version of IE for Windows Mobile devices, and a separate Web interface for Xbox 360.
IE8 could help the software giant regain ground in these browser wars. "So long as IE8 delivers as advertised, I believe it could help slow or even largely halt Windows users moving to alternative browsers," says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "Whether that will be enough to draw back customers who have already migrated remains to be seen."
CUPERTINO, Calif. — In a shot across the bow of other mobile phone makers that are rushing to emulate aspects of its popular iPhone, Apple on Tuesday previewed some features that are due out in the next version of the phone’s software.
IPhone OS 3.0, as Apple calls it, will allow developers to create multiplayer games that work over a local wireless connection, better integrate the maps that Apple and Google have developed for the device, and “push” messages to users through their programs.
That last improvement could unleash a new wave of creativity on the iPhone. Companies like ESPN.com can send score updates to sports fans, and instant messaging can now become far more practical on the device.
Programs can solicit the attention of users with either a pinging sound or a text message. Apple said it was late developing such “push notifications” because of the challenge of preserving battery life and processing power.
Apple said the new operating system would be available to current iPhone users at no charge sometime this summer. It will sell for $9.95 to owners of the iPod Touch.
The new software will also give developers new ways to make money on the device, allowing them to sell monthly subscriptions, new levels in a game or items in an online store without asking users to leave the application. So for example a seller of electronic books on the iPhone can sell digital texts right within its application, instead of directing iPhone users to their Web sites.
Representatives of the game developer Ngmoco were at Apple’s event and demonstrated how players of its virtual pet game can buy clothes for their digital animals, and how users of its shoot-em-up games can pay small amounts of money to upgrade their arsenals.
Purchases are tied into the iTunes store, where users have already stored their credit card information.
Scott Forstall, an Apple senior vice president, added that developers who make free applications available on the iPhone will not be able to later charge within their program, saying that “free apps remain free.”
Apple demonstrated a long-awaited “cut, copy and paste” function, so users can select a piece of information in one program — say, a FedEx tracking number in an e-mail message — and then paste it elsewhere — on FedEx’s site in the Web browser, for example. Other mobile phone platforms, like Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, have long had their own versions of that feature.
Apple also said it was adding support for MMS, a way to send and receive multimedia files like photos and audio files over the mobile phone network, and is extending Spotlight, a feature of its desktop operating system that allows users to conduct searches through all information on the device.
At a similar event last March, Apple first introduced the App Store, which has become a significant source of revenue for Apple and the central focus of its advertising for the iPhone. More than 25,000 applications have been created for the device, and they have been downloaded more than 800 million times over the last eight months.
But the iPhone itself could use a boost. Though Apple exceeded its public sales goals for the device, it sold 6.9 million phones during its fall quarter, then only 4.4 million units over the holiday months.
Many Apple watchers believe the company is preparing to unveil new hardware updates to the iPhone over the summer, and they speculate that they might include a less expensive version.
“The numbers indicate there is some leveling off of excitement,” said Chetan Sharma, an independent wireless industry analyst. “Sometime later this year they have to introduce something different or the competition from the Palm Pre, Google’s Android, RIM or other device makers will be significant.”
Get the latest features of iPhone firmware 3.0 here.
As promised, Apple just debuted its upcoming iPhone OS 3.0. Much of the news seemed developer-centric, but there are certainly plenty of consumer implications down the road, along with long-awaited functions like copy and paste, A2DP, MMS and universal Spotlight search. Improvements include:
App and developer functionality
Peer-to-peer connectivity over Bluetooth for gaming and other info-swapping.
Paid apps will have the potential to be subscription fee-based, and can include optional paid content that can be bought from right inside the app.
Developers can now build apps that call out to Google Maps, and can also finally bring Apple-blessed turn-by-turn to the phone.
Devs can also connect with hardware accessories over in their apps now, such as a blood pressure monitor -- or perhaps a keyboard? Connectivity works through the dock connector or over Bluetooth.
Long-promised push functionality will at last be included, but apps won't run in the background.
Developers can add streaming video and audio to their apps, along with in-game voice use.
General functionality
Cut, copy and paste. At last! You can shake the phone to undo and redo the action, and it works with both text and photos, allowing Mail to send multiple photos at a time.
MMS, along with forward and delete for multiple messages.
A2DP stereo Bluetooth.
Unlocked Bluetooth functionality on 2G iPod touch.
Spotlight has been added to a new home screen page to the left of existing pages, allowing for universal search on the phone.
Tethering is built into 3.0, and Apple will work with carriers on that -- who will have the last say on its implementation, most likely.
App Store will be available in 77 countries.
Parental controls for TV shows, movies and App Store apps.
Auto-login for WiFi hotspots.
Apple apps
A new app called Voice Memos which lets you record notes and reminders.
A revised Stocks app, with news stories and a landscape view.
Landscape view available for Mail, Text and Notes.
CalDAV support has been added to Calendar, along with subscriptions support in the .ics format.
Apple's major apps have all been expanded with search functionality.
Note syncing to Mac and PC.
YouTube account support.
Form auto-fill.
Phishing protection.
Shake the shuffle iPod playback.
A developer beta of OS 3.0 is available today, and the 3.0 update will be coming to consumers this summer as a free update to all iPhone 3G customers. It'll also work for 1st gen iPhone owners, though they won't receive A2DP or MMS due to hardware limitations. iPod touch owners will be able to update for $9.95, just like last time.
Did you know Microsoft trimmed down sound files so your computer can boot up faster in the Windows 7 release candidate? Here are a few changes we found amongst the over 70+ obvious UI changes.
Desktop and User Interface:
• Gadget view options
In the Windows 7 beta it was impossible to separate desktop icons from gadgets under the View setting available by right-clicking on the desktop. Now there is the option to hide just your gadgets or just your desktop icons.
Keyboard Shortcuts:
• Windows Flip (ALT + TAB) with Aero Peek
Aero Peek is now enabled for Windows Flip (or more commonly known as ALT + TAB).
• Improved Windows Logo + # keyboard shortcut
Pressing Windows Logo + # (where # corresponds to an item's order in the taskbar) in the beta would only launch the program in Windows 7. In the release candidate, it can both launch and switch between Windows. For example, if IE wasn't running and the second item on the taskbar, Windows Logo + 2 will launch the program. If IE is running with a single window, the same shortcut will now switch to the program. When IE is running with several windows or tabs, holding down the Windows Logo and tapping the 2 key repeatedly will actually cycle through the open IE items off the taskbar (with Aero Peek). Letting go simply switches to the corresponding window. It works really similarly to the ALT +TAB shortcut.
Multitouch:
• Aero Peek for touch
First, the taskbar's thumbnails now support a gesture so you can drag your finger across the taskbar and it will trigger Aero Peek. The Show Desktop button is improved so a press-and-hold will allow the customer to peek at the desktop. A regular tap still allows you to switch over.
• Windows Explorer
Multi-touch zoom is now enabled for Windows Explorer.
Power Options:
• Faster access to High Performance power plan
Clicking on the battery icon in the taskbar notification area offers two different power plans: Balanced and Power saver. Windows 7 laptops are configured to use the Balanced by default. Now in the popout menu, you can see all three options.
Taskbar:
• Increased taskbar space
There is even more increased space on the taskbar now. The release candidate will feature 24-39% more icons before the taskbar scrolls (depending upon resolution, icon size and the default notification area).
• Increased flexibility and changes to Jump Lists
When there are too many things pinned to Jump Lists, it defeats the whole purpose of easy access. Jump Lists now only automatically suggest the first 10 items (there is still the option to customize the length of the list).
Now you can also pin files and folders to programs that are not handle that file type. Pinning the item in most cases will create a new registration so that launching it from the Jump List will always open the file with that specific program (ex. a pinned HTML file to Notepad will always open the file in Notepad).
The Control Panel jump list will now list your most recent items.
• Newly installed programs
When a program is installed, it automatically and temporarily surfaces at the bottom of the Start Menu. It lets the user see it, giving them the option to launch it or drag it to the taskbar.
User Account Control:
• Increased security
There will be two changes to the release candidate to UAC settings. The first change is that the UAC control panel will run in a "high integrity" process (thus requiring elevation). The second change will now prompt for a confirmation when you are changing the level of UAC.
A mother has legally alleged 'Apple' after her son sustained a second degree burns when the company's iPod touch music player exploded in his pocket. Lynette Antrobus, from Cincinnati has accused the multinational corporation for "gross negligence and recklessness" and behaving "maliciously and fraudulently". She has also claimed dollars 75,000 for the damage caused.
The Legal papers, filed with Ohio Southern District Court, states that while the boy was at school on 4th December last year, he heard a surprising pop from the instrument that was switched off. He had a burning sensation and later realised that his pants were on fire.
The telegraph quoted the document as saying: "Plaintiff A.V instantly ran to the bathroom and took off his burning pants with the help of his friend". It was also added that the iPod pop had burned through the boy's pants pocket and melted through his nylon/spandex underwear, burning his leg.
However, the company (Apple) is yet to issue a statement regarding the case. It's been assumed that that device's battery should have caused the alleged explosion. Long back in 2008 when a man suffered burns when his Mac laptop battery caught fire, the consumer electronic and software giant paid an undisclosed amount as a compensation.
Microsoft Corp. last week said that three Windows security updates, including one rated "critical," will be released tomorrow.
The company acknowledged, however, that it will not deliver a fix for an Excel flaw that attackers are now exploiting.
Microsoft didn't disclose details of the patches, other than to say which versions of Windows will be affected.
"It's pretty nebulous," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. "They could be any number of things."
The critical update will affect all still-supported editions of the operating system, including Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008. Unpatched "critical" bugs allow PCs to be hijacked by hackers without any action by users. The other updates, labeled "important," fix so-called spoofing bugs, which typically are used to trick users into divulging confidential information.
Microsoft Corp. has said marketing teams were hard at work fixing the company's Web search image. As a brand, Live Search wasn't working.
But Kumo? What?
Microsoft's search team posted a screen shot of a redesigned search site, called Kumo, on its blog last week. A leaked memo from the team's technical leader, Satya Nadella, described Kumo.com as a test program that can only be accessed from computers on Microsoft's network. The company confirmed the memo's authenticity after it appeared on Cnet News.
Online dictionaries reveal kumo to mean "spider" or "cloud" in Japanese (but it is also the Swedish word for a Finnish town). Kumo.com, as depicted in the screen shot, offers few hints as to the definition Microsoft has in mind.
The Kumo logo, which Microsoft has not confirmed as its final choice, is blue, lowercase and not immediately recognizable as a Microsoft brand. The screen-shot version does provide links to MSN and Windows Live, though.
Kumo appears to set itself apart from today's Live Search by giving Web surfers clearer clues about the kinds of results that exist. A search for a country music star yields results separated into such categories as Web, songs, lyrics, music and biography. Buttons on the left let users quickly pick just one of those categories to peruse.
Microsoft has struggled for years to compete with Google Inc., the leader in Web search traffic and related advertising revenue. Despite its best efforts, which include a failed attempt to buy No. 2 Yahoo Inc. and to engineer an improved search site of its own, Microsoft has remained firmly stuck in third place.
Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said Kumo is a better name than Live.
"I think Live meant too many things," he said. "At least Kumo is weird."
He also pointed out that the Web address for Live Search was a matter of confusion for many users. While some knew to go to live.com, others would type windowslive.com or go to the MSN home page. Microsoft doesn't own the livesearch.com address, and typing live.search.com instead of search.live.com takes you to another non-Microsoft site.
But there's not enough in a name to get Microsoft out of its search pit, Rosoff said.
"It's necessary, but not sufficient," Rosoff said, adding that the softwaremaker must also come up with an interface that is significantly different from Google.
The controversy about Apple's sometimes-odd decisions to exclude certain iPhone programs from its App Store is likely to get a renewed airing soon, as it has emerged that disgruntled programmers are setting up their own unofficial App Store in response to being shut out.
US developer Jay Freeman plans to build on his existing Cydia installer program by opening an alternative iPhone software store offering programs that require the iPhone to be jailbroken.
Apple dead against it
The move is sure to be controversial, as Apple is vehemently against users jailbreaking their handsets to allow unofficial applications to run.
It most recently filed legal opposition in February to proposed US legislation that would confirm the legality of iPhone jailbreaking.
Piracy issue
Apple says it needs to control the iPhone platform to prevent piracy of third-party applications, thus protecting developers' revenues.
Many iPhone users, on the other hand, would like a little freedom to put what they like on their own phones. We haven't heard the last of this.
The California woman suing Microsoft Corp. over Windows Vista's downgrade rights revised her lawsuit yesterday to focus her charges on the requirement that users buy the most expensive versions of Vista if they want to replace that operating system with Windows XP.
Originally filed Feb. 11 in a Seattle federal court by Los Angeles resident Emma Alvarado, the lawsuit was re-submitted Thursday. In the amended complaint, Alvarado repeated her charges that Microsoft violated Washington state's unfair business practices and consumer protection laws by restricting computer makers' ability to offer XP on new PCs after Vista's early 2007 launch.
"Downgrade" describes the Windows licensing rights that allow users in some circumstances to replace newer versions of Windows with an older edition without having to pay for another license. In effect, the license for the newer Windows is transferred to the older edition.
The revised lawsuit spells out in much greater detail how Microsoft allegedly profits from its Vista downgrade practices. In particular, the complaint now highlights the rules that limit downgrades to Windows XP Professional, and then, only from PCs that have Vista Business or Vista Ultimate pre-installed.
"Although many consumers would prefer to purchase a new PC pre-installed with the Windows XP operating system or at least not pre-installed with the Vista operating system, Microsoft has used its market power to take advantage of consumer demand for the Windows XP operating system by requiring consumers to purchase a PC that includes a license for the use of the Vista operating system and to pay money (as part of the overall purchase price of the PC) to downgrade to the Windows XP Professional operating system," the suit stated.
"To make matters worse, Microsoft requires consumers to purchase a PC that includes a license to either Vista Business or Vista Ultimate -- versions of the Vista operating system that: (a) are premium, more expensive versions of the home versions of the Vista operating system, and (b) include specialized applications that are neither needed nor wanted by an ordinary consumer seeking to purchase a PC primarily for personal, non-business use," the filing continued.
The suit also noted that Windows XP Professional, the only version of that line that users are allowed to downgrade to, is a premium edition with a higher price tag.
Alvarado claimed that Microsoft dreamed up those rules to boost Vista sales figures and profits.
"Microsoft appears to have conceived and implemented the 'right' for consumers to 'downgrade' to the Windows XP Professional operating system in order to: (a) maintain and/or inflate its sales figures for the Vista operating systems (particularly the Vista Business and Vista Ultimate versions ... and (b) recoup its substantial investment in the development and production of the Vista operating system by forcing consumers to purchase the premium, more expensive versions of the Vista operating system (Vista Business or Vista Ultimate) in order to 'downgrade' to the Windows XP operating system," the lawsuit read.
She also accused Microsoft of gouging consumers with its downgrade practices. "Prior to permitting the consumer to 'downgrade' to Windows XP Professional, Microsoft first mandates that the consumer 'upgrade' from Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium to either Vista Business or Vista Ultimate -- thereby forcing the consumer to incur an unnecessary expense of $130, perhaps more or less, depending on the retail outlet, and creating revenue for Microsoft in the same amount," her revised lawsuit said.
The $130 figure cited by Alvarado was the same as noted by Dell Inc. last year when it responded to reports that it was charging customers $150 to downgrade a new computer to XP. Dell countered that while it did charge $20 to install XP on the machine and cover the cost of the additional media, $130 was the price of upgrading the PC from the standard Home Premium to the more expensive Business edition.
"Microsoft mandates that customers who want to downgrade to XP must purchase the license to Vista Business or Vista Ultimate," said Dell spokesman David Frink last December. "[That's] typically about a $130 premium, though some retail outlets charge more."
When Alvarado's suit was first filed last month, Microsoft denied it made money on downgrades.
"Microsoft does not charge or receive any additional royalty if a customer exercises those [downgrade] rights," said Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster in a February e-mail.
Bowermaster repeated that today. "Microsoft does not charge for downgrades," he said in an e-mail Friday. "Some Windows Vista licenses, including Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, include downgrade rights to various versions of Windows XP. If a customer exercises those rights, Microsoft does not charge or receive any additional royalty."
Alvarado is seeking compensatory damages and wants the case granted class-action status.
Rights groups called on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft on Friday not to censor their Web search engines one day next week to help protest cyber censorship.
"World Day Against Cyber Censorship is a day to advance and celebrate a free Internet as an open window to the world and denounce the attacks made on the free flow of information online," Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International said in a letter to the tech giants.
"In the spirit of fostering freedom of expression, we are asking that you do not censor any of your search engines or blog platforms anywhere around the world on this day," they said.
"We urge you, on March 12th, to champion the vision of the Internet as a free space for everyone, regardless of nationality or geographic location, and fulfill the idea of a truly worldwide Web -- even if just for one day.
"This would send a strong message to all "netizens" - individuals, organizations and states alike - that censorship online is not the only way forward," they said.
RSF and Amnesty said that currently, "there are more than two dozen countries restricting Internet access on a regular basis."
They said they "understand the challenges of operating in countries that restrict Internet access; these countries are trying to pressure you to obey local laws that do not comport with international law and standards that protect freedom of expression.
"But complying with local demands that violate international law does not justify your actions," they said.
"Your assistance allows states, such as China, to out-right ban access to information on 'human rights,' 'dalai lama,' 'Charter 08' or 'democracy,' as well as to respected human rights websites."
China exercises strict control over the Internet, blocking sites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and those with information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
A number of US companies, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, have been hauled before the US Congress in recent years and accused of complicity in building what has been called the "Great Firewall of China."
Google has been criticized for complying with Chinese government's demands to filter Internet searches to eliminate query results regarding topics such as democracy or Tiananmen Square.
RSF staged the first "World Day Against Cyber Censorship" last year and plans to mark the day with a report on the state of Internet freedom worldwide.
Yahoo Inc. won a judge’s approval of a settlement mandating changes to the company’s severance plan that investors contend will make it easier for Microsoft Corp. or other potential suitors to buy the owner of the second most- popular U.S. Internet search engine.
Delaware Chancery Court Judge William B. Chandler III today said he would approve the accord, which resolves investor lawsuits over Yahoo executives’ decision last year to rebuff Microsoft’s buyout offers.
Shareholders sued after ex-Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang rejected a bid by the world’s largest software company. Microsoft dropped a final offer of as much as $33 a share, or $47.5 billion, in June.
The settlement amounted to “an extraordinary victory” for investors seeking to remove stumbling blocks to an acquisition, said Joel Friedlander, a lawyer for two Detroit pension funds that sued over Yahoo’s handling of the Microsoft offers.
“We are very pleased that the settlement was approved because we believe it is in the best interests of the company and our shareholders,” Kim Rubey, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement.
Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo rose 52 cents, or 4.2 percent, to $13.05 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.
Search Alliance Eyed
Yahoo executives said last month they are open to an Internet-search alliance with Microsoft to compete with industry leader Google Inc. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer signaled Feb. 24 he’d be willing to work with Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s new CEO, to reach an agreement.
Ballmer and Bartz are under pressure to shore up their Internet search engines and online advertising businesses, which combined generated less than half of Google’s revenue in the fourth quarter.
Ballmer has said for the past several months and repeated as recently as last week that he’s no longer interested in purchasing all of Yahoo. Microsoft is interested in some kind of Internet search agreement with Yahoo, he said.
Shareholders who expect today’s developments to alter Ballmer’s thinking will be disappointed, said Brent Williams, an analyst with Benchmark Co. in New York, who rates Microsoft shares “hold.”
‘Minor Issue’
“I can’t imagine this would change their mind,” he said. This doesn’t even come close to fixing the big issues Microsoft has with buying Yahoo. This has always been a minor issue.”
The day after Ballmer’s most recent comment, Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgenson said his company is open to a search deal. Yahoo has since announced Jorgenson will leave the company.
Google controls the Internet-search market in the U.S. with 63 percent of queries, according to ComScore Inc. of Reston, Virginia. Yahoo’s profit has dropped in 10 of the past 11 quarters.
The Detroit pension funds argued in the Delaware suits that Yang used Yahoo’s severance plan to thwart Microsoft by giving employees incentives to quit rather than work for a buyer.
The plan, approved by Yahoo’s board in the wake of Microsoft’s bid, served as a “quasi-poison pill,” investor advisory firm Glass Lewis Inc. said. A poison pill is a type of corporate-takeover defense.
The severance plan required that workers be paid if their jobs were eliminated or altered after a change in control of Yahoo. The company said the policy was aimed at retaining employees. Investors complained that it made Yahoo more expensive to acquire.
$1 Billion Severance
At a hearing in Georgetown, Delaware, today, Friedlander told Chandler that the plan would have forced Yahoo to pay as much as $1 billion in severance if Microsoft’s bid had been accepted.
Friedlander also noted that Microsoft officials saw Yahoo’s revised severance plan as creating “bad retention,” according to court papers unsealed in the case.
“The plan was an attempt to gum up an acquisition by Microsoft,” he said. The accord “makes a search-engine deal more likely.”
Under the settlement, Yahoo will alter the plan to allow investors to launch proxy fights without triggering severance payments to employees, according to court papers. It also changed the terms of the plan to make it harder for workers to claim severance benefits if the company receives an offer.
Edward Welch, a lawyer representing Yahoo in the case, told Chandler the company agreed to the settlement so it could “move forward and run its business.”
While he said he’d approve the settlement today, Chandler said he’d rule later on Friedlander’s request for $12 million in legal fees and expenses in the case.
The case is Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit v. Yahoo, CA3561, Delaware Chancery Court (Georgetown).
For the second time in a week, Apple has denied rumors that it has laid off workers.
On Friday, Valleywag reported that a tipster informed it of layoffs in the Mac Hardware and Pro Applications group, describing Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters as having "lots of security around" and saying "it seems like a lot" of employees were affected. Earlier in the week Valleywag published a similar report that 50 sales employees were laid off from Apple.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling denied both reports Friday. "It's not true," he said, referring to the rumors involving both rounds of supposed job cuts.
Apple's ability to ride out the worst economic period since Ronald Reagan's first term has been questioned over the last several weeks, with reports that Mac sales are on the decline and a substantial drop in its stock price Friday amid rising unemployment and falling consumer confidence. But the company has a cash position that most of its competitors can't match, and was not expected to have to resort to layoffs at this point.
Over 32,000 people now work for Apple. The company went on a hiring binge last year, adding workers mostly in its retail division. Part-time workers in that group have reportedly endured some cuts, but no full-time employees have stepped forward this week to confirm they've been laid off, as happened at IBM earlier this year.
Rumor has it that Nokia is working on a new touch-screen device for Verizon Wireless's new 4G wireless network set to go live in 2010.
TheStreet.com reported this week that the two companies are working together to create a touch-screen device that will operate on Verizon's soon-to-be-built superfast wireless network. Verizon Wireless, which is jointly owned by European carrier Vodafone and Verizon Communications, announced last month at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it will test its new 4G network that uses a technology called Long Term Evolution, or LTE, this year and will begin aggressive rollouts in 2010.
The Street.com has cited unnamed sources who say the deal between Nokia and Verizon is exclusive. But a Nokia spokesman denied the company has entered into an exclusive deal with Verizon. Still, he didn't deny that the companies are working together.
"It is well documented and publicly known that Verizon intends to deploy an LTE network throughout the USA during the next five years and that Nokia has certainly endorsed their decision," he said in an e-mail. "While we have not entered into any exclusive 4G touch-screen device development as is being reported, we will continue to follow and pursue developments as a normal course of business."
Verizon declined to comment for the story.
Nokia has recently been touting LTE over the competing 4G standard WiMax. At a conference in Texas this week, a Nokia executive said the company plans to have LTE devices ready in 2010, according to the GigaOm blog.
If Nokia were to create a device exclusively for the Verizon network it could help both companies gain ground on Apple and AT&T. Apple's popular iPhone is sold exclusively in the U.S. for AT&T networks. The popularity of the iPhone has hurt Nokia's marketshare in the smartphone category. What's more, Nokia has also had little presence in the U.S. market for past few years, so a major partnership to push a new mobile device in the U.S. could help the company regain ground at the high end of the market.
And speaking of its lackluster presence in the U.S. market, Nokia recently experienced a hiccup here when it had to halt sales of its newly released Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Nokia stopped selling the device shortly after it went on sale last week at its flagship stores in New York and Chicago when consumers complained of problems connecting to the 3G network. Nokia now says the problem, which only affected devices in North America, has been fixed and the phone should be back on store shelves shortly.
"We have concluded this was an isolated situation related to a configuration change in the North American variant," the company said in a statement. "We have now adjusted the configuration and will resume sales shortly. Those few customers of the 5800 who experience a 3G signal issue are advised to contact Nokia Customer Care. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience."
The new mobile iphone has created all new opportunities and new streams of incomes for developers. One way is to make applications for the iphone and sell it on the app store so if you have the skills, you are in demand. this is really working well for many people.
But if you don’t want to make an application there are other ways to get money including the PWN2OWN competition sponsored by TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) team. All you have to do is to participate in the competition and exploit a vulnerability and get $10,000 for each vulnerability.
And it is not even necessarily an iphone there are other phones including fully patched BlackBerry, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones in their default configurations all waiting for you to hack them. And don’t worry you aren’t doing anything illegal and you aren’t allowed to share the vulnerabilities with anyone.
Well even if you don’t know anything about mobile phones you can also win half the price i.e. $5,000 to find out a vulnerability in web browser and some are putting their money on Apple's Safari.
Apple Inc.'s Safari is the juiciest target in the upcoming PWN2OWN hacking contest, last year's winner predicted today.
"It's an easy target," said Charlie Miller, the vulnerability researcher who last year walked off with a $10,000 cash prize for breaking into an Apple laptop just a few minutes into the contest. PWN2OWN is slated for its third appearance at the CanSecWest security conference later this month in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"It might be because I'm biased about the things I'm good at, but it's the easiest browser [to hack]," Miller said.
PWN2OWN's sponsor, 3Com Inc.'s TippingPoint unit, will pay $5,000 for each new bug successfully exploited in Safari, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox or Google Inc.'s Chrome. IE8, Firefox and Chrome will be running on a Sony notebook powered by Windows 7, Microsoft's still-under-construction operating system, while Safari and Firefox will be available on a MacBook.
"Apple's products are really friendly to users, and Safari is designed to handle anything, including all kinds of file formats," said Miller. "With a lot of functionality comes the increased chance of bugs. The more complex software is, the less secure it is."
Another factor making Safari easy pickings, said Miller, is Apple's Mac OS X, which lacks the workable defenses found in Windows Vista and Windows 7, including address space randomization -- which Microsoft calls "address space layout randomization," or ASLR.
Put Safari atop Mac OS X, and the target's too good to pass up, said Miller.
IE8 and Firefox will escape unscathed, Miller predicted, adding that a quick cost-benefit analysis tells him they'll be safe. "They make it so hard that, for me, $5,000 isn't motivation enough to try to break one of those guys," he said. As for Chrome, he pleaded ignorance, saying that he didn't know enough about the browser to even provide a prediction. His gut instinct, however, is that Google's browser will also survive.
Miller has also been sharpening his mobile device vulnerability and exploit skills -- he was the first researcher to uncover a security bug in Google's Android operating system -- and therefore will take a stab at the second PWN2OWN contest. That challenge will pit researchers against five smartphone operating systems, including Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, and the operating systems used by the iPhone and BlackBerry.
TippingPoint will pay double, or $10,000, for each bug exploited at the contest.
"I'll be trying to break Safari," said Miller. "If I say it's easy, I have to try, right? But I also want to show my stuff on mobile."
He declined to say which smartphone he will target. It's likely, however, that he'll be looking at the iPhone; Miller was one of three researchers who found the first iPhone vulnerability, just weeks after the device's mid-2007 debut.
Nor would Miller get specific about the vulnerabilities he has in mind or is investigating. "You pretty much have to show up [with a vulnerability and exploit] and be ready to go," said Miller. "The great thing about PWN2OWN is that it's not just about finding bugs, but about finding bugs that can be exploited, and then coming up with an exploit."
Miller works as a principal analyst at Independent Security Evaluators LLC, a security consulting firm, and said he is looking forward to the contest, which kicks off March 18. "I have to defend my championship, don't I?"
Analysts at Informa are predicting that sales of phones using Google’s Android operating system will outpace Apple by 2012.
In a review of the state of the mobile phone operating system market the company predicts that open source will be key to the growth of mobile platforms, both in terms of opening up users to new applications but also keeping costs down for manufacturers.
“The smartphone segment is no longer as simple as it was a few years ago”, says Gavin Byrne, Research Analyst at Informa.
“In 2008, there were almost 162 million smartphones sold, surpassing notebook sales for the first time. The decision to move the Symbian platform to open source is crucial in maintaining its leadership over Android, Linux and Microsoft”
He points out that Symbian’s market share has dropped from nearly two thirds of the market a few years ago to less than half today. This is primarily because of Nokia’s poor performance in the sector but also in the growth of competing platforms.
Overall the coming year will be a tough one for manufacturers he said, with sales volumes likely to drop by over 10 per cent in 2009.
“While demand in the mid tier will fall away during 2009, sales of new smartphones will grow over 30 per cent to 211.2 million units, driven by innovative new devices and operator subsidies designed to promote mobile data consumption, so that by 2013 almost four in every ten handsets sold worldwide will be a smartphone.”
These kinds of figures are attracting interest from non-traditional manufacturer to get into the market. Acer has already announced that it will be producing a smartphone model and Dell is rumoured to be working on its own device.
Just today we heard that the European Union is easing up on Microsoft a little but, but don't forget that there's still one big battle going on. The EU is still concerned that Microsoft's inclusion of its Internet Explorer web browser as an integral part of the Windows operating system isn't fair to consumers who want other options or the companies that are cooking those options up.
After years of questions about Microsoft's policies regarding Internet Explorer, it looks like the company might be taking a step back to reconsider. Internet Explorer 8 is actually completely and safely removable in a recent test version of the yet-to-be-released Windows 7.
You can remove it like you remove any other component in Windows: go to "Programs and Features" in the Control Panel, click "Turn Windows Features On or Off" and then uncheck "
Note, however, that this is not exactly what the EU is asking for. In the current case, Microsoft may have to do more than just make its browser removable; it might have to provide alternative browsers with its operating system as well.
This is the first time that Microsoft Corp. has offered the option since it integrated the browser with Windows in 1997. The 7048 build of Windows 7 -- a version that has not been released to the public but is available as a pirated copy on file-sharing sites -- includes [the] option ... Windows 7 Build 7048 first began appearing on ... BitTorrent tracking sites, on Monday. Traffic has been substantial since then, with Mininova reporting more than 21,000 downloads.
Facebook has been the victim of five different security problems in the past week, says Trend Micro.
According to the security firm, four hoax applications have become available on the social network along with a new variation of the Koobface virus, which was first detected at the end of last year, and directs users to a fake YouTube page where they are encouraged to install malware.
Two of the hoax applications that have been downloaded by Facebook users include 'F a c e b o o k - closing down!!!' and 'Error Check System'. By downloading the app, users are giving hackers access to their profile and personal information, and also unwittingly forwarding fake messages to their friends, also encouraging them to download the programs.
Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro told the BBC:"It's been a pretty bad week for social networking in general".
"It's almost as if the applications we have seen this week are a proof of concept," he said. "It would be much better for them to generate rogue applications that did not look like rogue applications."
Ferguson also revealed that he believes hackers are currently working on creating apps that don't initially appear to be malicious. He predicts these apps will appear on social networking sites very soon.
"One of the problems is that Facebook allows anybody to write an application and third party applications are not vetted before they are released to the public. Even as Facebook stamps out one malignant application, it can pop up in another place," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos
However, it appears Facebook is still refusing to vet apps before they are made available on the social network.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg told Radio One last month: "Our philosophy is that having an open system anyone can participate in is generally better".
In the last few years, there has been a surge of renewed interest in using Linux, in both the server and desktop spaces. Several factors are contributing to this surge, all happening at once. First, there is the trend from powerful desktops to smaller, but less powerful, notebooks — and now, netbooks. In addition, more user (and media) friendly Linux
distributions, such as Ubuntu, have hit the scene. Finally, here comes the OS everybody loves to hate: Windows Vista — significantly more resource hungry than XP and perhaps released a little too soon. The confluence of these factors has led many users to give Linux a shot.
Largely, however, Linux has still been found wanting. Whether because of some inherent weakness of Linux, a preconceived advantage that doesn’t pan out, or the fact that users simply miss their familiar Windows functions, there are a number of reasons why Linux isn’t triumphing over Windows. I’m going to look at 10 of these reasons, some that apply primarily to servers, some to desktops, and some to both.
Servers
1: Cost comparisons are often misleading
Let’s get what may be the most controversial point out of the way early. First, in the server space especially, we should try to compare apples to apples. This means comparing Windows Server to paid Linux. By far the most dominant flavor is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), with about a two-thirds share of the paid enterprise Linux market, so this seems the most logical comparison. While there are plenty of free options out there, such as CentOS, for a business running mission-critical workloads, an unsupported operating system is a hard pill to swallow.
There are a couple of ways we can look at cost, neither of which is nearly as flattering to Linux as one might expect. First, we can look at the costs directly related to the acquisition of the platform. RHEL is a subscription-based license, meaning that rather than pay for the software itself, you pay for support. This doesn’t mean just phone tech support or troubleshooting (although that is included too, whether you want it or not) but also includes standard patches and bug fixes. Standard support for RHEL 5 Advanced Platform is $1,499 per year per server, or $4,047 for three years. Compare this with $3,999 for Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition with free patching and bug fixes, and you can basically call it a wash unless you use a ton of phone support. And there are also features that aren’t included and must be purchased separately, such as Red Hat Directory Server — thousands more per year.
The other way of looking at cost is total cost of ownership (TCO) of the platform, and this leads into our next issue.
2: Expert talent is more readily available
When looking at TCO, we’re not just looking at the software costs but also at staffing and administration costs, costs due to downtime, hardware costs, etc. Of these, staffing is the largest, accounting for more than half of the TCO. Here, Windows wins out because IT pros experienced with Windows are much more plentiful and generally cheaper to hire than Linux experts and because they can often be more productive.
With Linux, efficient management over many machines usually means going to the command line and pounding out a script to automate a process — which is cool. However, with Windows Server 2008, PowerShell is now built in, which means the Windows guys can do that too, arguably better. Add that to the System Center family of tools, where virtually all management tasks are available at the click of a button (and which really have no peer on the Linux side), and Windows is simply easier to manage.
3: Linux isn’t actually trying to compete head-to-head
The last reason Linux isn’t triumphing over Windows in the server space is that it’s not really the primary focus. Right now, both Linux and Windows are gaining in server market share. How is that possible? Old granddaddy UNIX is being thrown under the bus to make it happen. Today, companies are dumping their old mainframe or proprietary UNIX servers for cheaper x86-based commodity hardware. It’s easy for a Linux sales guy to come in and make the value proposition: “It’s essentially the UNIX you know and love, but it runs on hardware a fraction of the cost.”
Unfortunately, the market for UNIX conversions and mainframe modernization is drying up. When those deals are gone, Linux will have to compete head-to-head with Windows to continue its growth, and this is a much harder proposition to make. Why should an organization already using Windows change platforms and have to build whole new skill sets around Linux?
Desktop
4: Windows offers familiarity and ease of use
Let’s face it: Whatever else you might say about Windows, it is easier to use. We love our Start menu and our Task Manager and our system tray. Some of us are even starting to love our Vista Sidebar and gadgets.
Young adults today never had to use MS-DOS, even if they started using computers at an early age, so they aren’t going to be comfortable at a Linux command line.
Don’t get me wrong — Linux has come a long way. But remember how far back it has had to come from — where just managing to install the operating system for a non-expert (and sometimes experts too) was considered a major triumph. There are still too many things in the Linux world that are expected to be done manually, like program installation. A majority of users will say, “I might have to compile something myself? No thanks.”
5: More software is available
Here’s another one that’s a pretty clear edge for Windows. It isn’t about being able to play the newest games, even if that is one of the most often raised issues against using Linux. Simply because Windows is the dominant operating system, there is much more (and usually higher quality) software available for it than for Linux. Much of it comes from evil Microsoft itself.
A good example goes straight to one of open source’s greatest recent successes: OpenOffice. OpenOffice is great software… considering it’s free. I use it when I’m in a pinch on somebody else’s computer. It’s almost certainly adequate for a light user or a student typing up a couple of essays. As a writer, however, I can’t imagine being stuck without Microsoft Office for long. When it comes to features like SmartArt, quick table generation, editing and review functions, and inserting basically any kind of object into a document, there is no comparison. When you go beyond the word processor to the presentation software or spreadsheets, the gap grows even wider.
Now of course much of our favorite Windows software can be run using an emulator such as Wine, or on a virtual machine running Windows — but if we find ourselves doing that all the time, why use Linux in the first place?
6: Windows Vista is just a bump in the road
This had to come somewhere. Vista has become the proverbial red-headed stepchild of the operating system world — everybody loves to beat on it, and not completely without reason. Vista hogs resources like no OS before, and initially, at least, there were plenty of issues with both software and hardware compatibility.
Without going too far in singing the virtues of Windows 7, however, I think it is reasonable to say that there is no reason to expect Vista’s shortcomings to be repeated in the next generation.
Windows Vista was like the growing pains experienced by a teenager when he starts to, well, grow. Too many things were happening at once, and there was bound to be some pain involved. We combined security changes such as UAC and how applications were handled fundamentally by the operating system with lots of nifty but resource-intensive gadgets at a time when so many users were switching away from their powerful desktops, and we got a sluggish OS where things don’t always work quite right.
However, Windows 7 is faster. Software vendors and Microsoft have had time to update their code, so now applications are compatible. Before much longer, Vista will be behind us.
7: Hardware continues to advance
Now, while Windows 7 is significantly faster than Vista, I won’t try to claim that it will be as friendly to the lowest end hardware as Linux. Fortunately, time marches on — and hardware improves. We can now get a quad-core processor and 8 gigs of RAM in our laptops. Intel has a dual-core Atom processor out, and even if it is made for nettops rather than netbooks, it’s a safe bet that a dual-core Atom with netbook-friendly power consumption levels is right around the corner. In any case, as hardware continues to advance, that aspect of the Linux argument will become more and more irrelevant.
Also, while we’re on the topic of netbooks, let’s not forget that while these may seemingly be the perfect candidate for conversion from Windows to Linux, according to a Laptop Magazine interview of MSI’s director of U.S. sales, Andy Tung, the return rate of netbooks running Linux is much greater than the rate of those running Windows.
“They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks”
Both servers and desktops
8: Claims about open source don’t stand up to scrutiny
Much of the hype about Linux is really more about open source development in general. The buzzwords all sound good: Open source is about sharing. Collaboration. Proliferation of knowledge. For certain, there is nothing wrong with the open source model, and its use surely helps advance new ideas in software development. As a business model and a model for end-user products, though, it’s less reasonable. Here, it causes a lack of standardization. Egos among the different developers collide, and the final product suffers. Let’s not forget the old adage “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
Another claim is that Linux and open source software are more secure than Windows and Microsoft software. This is largely based on problems with legacy versions of Windows. Back in the NT and Windows 2000 days, there were valid points to be made, but this is far less true today. The last several years have seen a massive emphasis on security across the industry. And now, with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and the whole Forefront line of products, Microsoft is running a pretty tight ship — enough so that major competitors such as Red Hat are not really bringing up the security argument against Windows anymore.
9: Linux is still too bleeding edge
Since a Linux advocate will be quick to bring up the problems associated with Vista’s perhaps premature release, it seems only fair to bring up similar issues with Linux. Though not as high profile as the problems with Vista, the inclusion of KDE 4 with Fedora 9 was perhaps just as much of a flop.
This is no big deal as an isolated incident. But the problem is that it was merely a symptom of a larger issue in the Linux world: Much more emphasis is placed on technological innovation than usability, and often a technology will be dropped or juggled with something new at a moment’s notice. Look at Red Hat’s hypervisor history. At the end of 2004, Red Hat announced support for Xen — first with Fedora and to be included later in RHEL. Then, fast-forward a year and a half to summer 2006 and it announces that Xen isn’t ready and that Novell was irresponsible in including it with SUSE. Less than a year later, in spring of 2007, RHEL 5 was released and Xen was a major feature. And last summer, in 2008, at the Red Hat Summit, it announced the shift from Xen to KVM.
Whether Xen or KVM is better isn’t the issue. The issue is that an emphasis on the newest but perhaps untested technology leads to rapid and inconsistent changes in direction that leave users scrambling to keep up.
10: The Linux culture isn’t always responsive to the common user
This all brings us to the last reason Linux isn’t triumphing over Windows: the Linux community and the users and advocates themselves. Linux is a geek’s OS. I don’t mean geek in a derogatory way and certainly include myself in the term: a very technically skilled user who derives pleasure from the technology itself.
The problem is that geeks are not the majority. We don’t drive the market, the Average Joes of the world do, and Linux geeks in particular don’t seem to be receptive to that. In an already unfamiliar and more difficult environment, when people using Linux for the first time encounter a problem and turn to the community for help, too often they’re met with ridicule. They don’t want to hear, “All you had to do was recompile the kernel.”
Of course, this is not the case for all users, and there are plenty of dedicated individuals providing free support in the forums around the world. But until Linux users as an entire community can accept that all users are not programmers or even power users, there is no chance that their operating system of choice will come out on top.
Who could blame you for not wanting to buy a new PC right now? With Windows 7 mere months away (some rumors even claim it will ship as early as September 2009), why would you want to get stuck with Windows Vista, then have to shell out hundreds again for a Win7 upgrade later in the year?
Unless you buy a system within weeks of Windows 7's arrival (one source says the planned cutoff date is July 1, but that's a rumor right now), Microsoft is unlikely to offer free or discounted upgrade coupons, and that means computer sales are likely to stagnate for the time being as buyers take a "wait and see" approach.
At least one company has other ideas, though, and wants to keep sales going. Seattle-area PC builder Puget Sound Systems says it is launching a program this week to give new computer buyers a free copy of Windows 7, "completely independent of any Microsoft program."
There are a few catches: You have to buy a machine that costs at least $1,000. And you have to equip it with Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit edition. Your free upgrade will be to Windows 7 Ultimate, also 64-bit.
(Update: The company says Home Premium will also be supported.) You don't simply get a disk to do the upgrade yourself, sadly: You'll have to bring or ship your computer back to Puget Sound, so they can install the upgrade themselves, "to make sure that the upgrades go smoothly." You pay for shipping both ways.
Maybe not a great deal, but at least a good sign and a really good idea -- and it makes me wonder if any of the big PC players will follow up and offer a similar program. No sense losing sales while Microsoft figures out what people want, right?
In what may be the second-most ridiculous current tech-related intellectual property case—after, of course, The Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm—Apple and clone-maker Psystar continue to battle it out. A trial has been set for November, and there's already been more than enough legal maneuvering to make Solomon call for his sword.
Cupertino argues that making clones is in violation of its license agreement; Psystar says no way and continues to flagrantly sell its OpenMac.
However, just last week, the two companies filed a "Joint Motion for Protective Order," an 18-page document that allows both companies to establish "confidential" material, as well as other material that "would affect [each company's] competitive position...or technological developments in an adverse manner."
Confidential information would only be allowed to be seen by attorneys and no more than two full-time employees selected by each company. Members of the court, including jurors and expert witnesses, would also be bound by confidentiality.
Once the judge rules on this motion, reports Ars Technica, the discovery process is likely to quickly get underway.
Assuming this thing doesn't get settled, and the November trial date sticks, we could be in for a long haul before this whole case is resolved.
When it comes to the ability to do damage to a company, few employees have more power than sysadmins. Deep system access and inside knowledge is a necessary part of their job, but when things go bad between employee and employer, some very sensitive situations can arise.
Here are six real-world cases of “sysadmins gone wild” that all ended up in court.
I want more money… oh, and excellent job references
Not happy with his severance package after having been let go from a finance company (with $15 billion in assets), a sysadmin threatened to hack into the company’s servers and cause extensive damage unless he received more money, extended medical coverage and “excellent” job references. He also threatened to alert the media after he had caused the damage. This happened back in November 2008. (Source)
Get your incompetent hands off my network!
Terry Childs, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco was the creator of a network that handled 60% of the city’s information (including payrolls and law enforcement). There is no doubt that Childs loved “his” network (he applied for, and was granted, a copyright for the network design as technical artistry). He was so skeptical of his colleagues’ abilities that he ended up being the sole administrator of the entire network.
In the summer of 2008, when his employer finally asked him to share the passwords to switches and routers necessary to administrate the network, he refused. The police got involved and arrested him. He still refused to share the passwords. It was only when the mayor visited him in jail that he finally repented and gave away the passwords (to the mayor). (Source 1and 2)
You revoked my system access? Oh, yeah? Blackout!
Back in April 2007 a contract UNIX sysadmin at a Californa power grid data center got his system access privileges revoked after a dispute with the company. His reaction was to enter the facility and shut it down by pressing the emergency power shut-down button. Luckily (or unluckily, for him) he did this on a Sunday evening, when power demands were low, so no blackouts happened as a result of the incident. Had he done the same thing at a more critical hour, he would have disrupted much of the power grid in the western United States. (Source)
And as if that wasn’t enough, the day after he emailed a bomb threat to one of his colleagues.
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again
Yung-Hsun Lin was a sysadmin at a big medical company. When he thought he was going to get fired in 2003, he decided to plant a little revenge script on the company servers that would delete the company’s databases on the date of his birthday the following year, April 24, 2004.
It turned out that Lin had jumped the gun a bit. He wasn’t let go. But for some reason he didn’t remove the script. Instead, he made sure it wouldn’t trigger as planned. That didn’t go so well, because the code ended up executing on April 24 anyway. However, due to a bug in his code, it failed.
That should have been the end of it (he was still undiscovered), but no… He fixed the bug and set the date one year forward, just in case. Another sysadmin at the company finally discovered the malicious code and Lin was caught. (Source)
Can anyone say “epic fail”?
Smaller bonus than expected triggers network attack
A former sysadmin at UBS launched an attack on the company network that took it down and deleted files on up to 2,000 servers. UBS was hit on March 4, 2002, in the morning just as the stock market opened for the day. The company never revealed the cost of lost business, but it cost it more than $3.1 million to get the system back up and running.
The attack came a few weeks after the former sysadmin had quit the company, apparently angry because had received a smaller annual bonus than he had expected. Code for the malicious attack was found on his home computers, and there was even a printout sitting on his bedroom dresser. (Source)
Sysadmin parting gift: a server graveyard
When Rajendrasinh Babubahai Makwana was fired from his position as sysadmin at mortgage giant Fannie Mae back in October 2008, he didn’t take it well. The very same day, he hid a script on the administrative server that was set to, three months later, lock out all administrators (showing them only a message saying “Server Graveyard”) and then systematically go through the company’s 4,000 servers and replace all data with zeros. The script was thorough, even set to do a second pass from a different server just in case it missed anything in the first pass. It was also set to disable any monitoring software that could alert administrators.
Another sysadmin found the script by accident before it could deploy, and it was traced back to Makwana (he had used his own company-issued laptop to access the network when he planted it). He had also emailed relatives in India, warning them not to return to the US. (Source)
Conclusion
If you haven’t figured it out yet, be nice to sysadmins. You don’t want someone with root access as a disgruntled employee!
And before any rogue sysadmins out there get any ideas, we’d like to point out that the cases above were all federal cases, with big fines and prison sentences involved. All got caught.
If nothing else, some of these cases show how dangerous it can be for a company to rely too heavily on any one single person, as sometimes happens in IT departments. It’s also another reason to work with people you know well.
Microsoft Expression Media 2 Service Pack 1 was released in October 2008, and now, just under four months later, SP2 is out via Microsoft Update and the Mac AutoUpdate. You can also download SP2 via the Microsoft Download Center: Windows (3.4 MB) and Mac (62.5 MB). For Windows, the service pack is available in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, while on Mac it is available for Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. Expression Media 2 SP1 must be installed before installing Expression Media 2 SP2.
According to KB Article 962902, the service pack fixes the following issues:
Windows and Mac
It takes a long time to import many large images.
The XML export and import operations may scramble custom fields.
Catalogs that are saved from a Macintosh lose their paths to the original media. This issue occurs if the catalogs are opened from a server on a Windows-based computer.
Original file paths are used instead of new file paths when you are copying items to a new catalog.
Silverlight 2.0 is not detected correctly by Mozilla Firefox browsers when you are viewing Silverlight HTML galleries.
Thumbnails cannot honor a file's embedded color profile. Note: Thumbnails should be rebuilt after you install this service pack.
Windows
User preference for rendering engine is not used.
When you right-click to open a file in the default application, the wrong file opens after you sort the files in list view.
When you move hierarchical keywords, flat keywords may be applied incorrectly to images.
Scripting annotations garble text that has Unicode characters.
File paths are broken if the imported folder contains more than 1,024 subfolders.
When you set a path to the root of a drive, you cannot reset paths.
Expression Media 2 crashes when you import a file from a folder that was removed from the Organize panel.
Expression Media 2 crashes when an import is canceled and then files are imported from the root of a drive.
You cannot rename a folder on a network share. Additionally, the folder disappears from the Organize panel.
Files whose names have more than 64 characters are always imported again when you update folders in the organize panel.
Additional folders are not added in the organize panel for saved catalogs when the disk volume name is the system default. Typically, the system default is "Local Disk."
The file size of TIFF RAW files from Phase One Digital Backs seems to be large in a catalog.
Random numbers may be displayed on catalog folders if the disk does not have a volume name.
HTML gallery links show question marks when the gallery is viewed in Mozilla Firefox browsers.
Mac
You cannot import PPT and XLS files.
"Contact sheet out of range" errors are improved, and the experience for making contact sheets is improved.
The Batch Rename feature changes Cyrillic characters into question mark characters when you are using the "Strip Diacriticals" function.
When you use the "Update Folders Now" function, duplicate folders may be shown, and file links may be broken.
In May 2008, Microsoft released Microsoft Expression Studio 2, a set of five professional design tools and technologies aimed specifically at Web and multimedia developers and designers. Expression Media is a robust digital asset management solution for photographers and other creative professionals. We'll keep you posted about updates to the other four applications that are part of the suite.
Update
Microsoft has pulled the Macintosh Dutch and French versions of the service pack temporarily while it fixes a bug in Rendering Preferences. The updated versions should be up soon.
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The iPhone’s lack of video recording was one of the more serious let-downs when Apple launched the device, and one that Apple stubbornly refused to correct with the release of the iPhone 3G. Apple may have had its reasons, but ‘lesser’ mobiles have been recording video clips for years and not being able to do the same on such a premium phone seems, well, a bit silly - particularly when the iPhone prototype apparently did come with at least video calling.
You don’t want someone with root access as a disgruntled employee!
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