06.25.10
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 4:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Children targeted by sexual predators using Windows crackers; Central Ambulance Service downed by Windows viruses
• Sexual assault by Internet
Now, this is different. A computer cracker, Luis Mijangos of Santa Ana, CA has been arrested by the FBI for taking over more than 100 Windows PCs and using what he found on them to extort sexually explicit videos from women and teenage girls by threatening to release their personal data.
• Save the Women and Children From That Other OS
A predator distributed malware to PCs through digital music files. He used the malware to gather information and control PCs which escalated to demanding explicit images and video from the ladies.
• Malicious code on Lenovo driver download page – Update
The driver download portal of hardware manufacturer Lenovo temporarily deployed malicious code. Various virus scanners issued alerts about a Java-based Trojan downloader or dropper. The iframe injected by attackers points to the volgo-marun.cn server and can still be found on several pages of the download.lenovo.com server.
• Anti-Virus Elite 2010 Looking for a Way to Hijack your PC
Be sure not to trust this soft! Remove it as soon as you notice it on your PC! These are just several warnings flying around the web these days.
Cyber criminals have created a new rogueware, named Anti-Virus Elite 2010. Usually installed from malicious websites, or during the process of downloading video codecs or updates for your computer, the fake application starts its activities as soon as it gets to your PC.
• BIS helped uncover computer attack on G20 meeting
The Czech counter-intelligence service (BIS), along with other secret services, last year participated in the investigation into the attack on the information systems of the delegates to the G20 summit in Seoul, BIS says in its report for 2009, released on its website.
Last June, the BIS as an intelligence service of the EU presiding country uncovered a “sophisticated attempt at cybernetic espionage.”
According to the BIS annual report, the contact persons at the finance ministries of the participating countries received forged electronic post in the form of an attachment to an e-mail with a special pdf file containing “a harmful code.”
• OU Reports Virus, Security Breach
The University of Oklahoma is warning students about a security breach that may put their personal information at risk.
The university said its Information Technology department noticed unusual Internet activity on a laptop computer associated with its network. It said it determined the computer belonged to an employee and was infected with a virus known as Zeus or Z-Bod.
• South Central Ambulance Service hit by computer virus
A virus has hit parts of the computer system used by South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS).
The problem first occurred on Tuesday but has not affected the parts used to deal with 999 calls, the trust said.
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Posted in Apple at 4:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Serious problems upon launch of the latest hypePhone, which was released in a rush to compete with Linux (Android)
• “Hold different.” [IMG]
• Apple responds to iPhone 4 reception issues: you’re holding the phone the wrong way
So, we just spoke with Apple and got the straight dirt on the reception issues that have been plaguing users today… and it’s a little surprising. In essence, Apple cops to the fact there are reception issues with the new iPhone — namely, that if you cover the bottom-left corner of the phone and bridge the gap between the notch there with your naked flesh, you could see some signal degradation. Yes, you read that right: it’s not a software or production issue, simply a matter of the physical location of your hand in regards to the phone’s antenna. The company’s suggested fix? Move your hand position, or get a case which covers that part of the phone, thus breaking contact. As you can see in the email above which just arrived in our tip box, this is a sentiment which runs pretty high at the company.
• Apple issues advice to avoid iPhone flaw
Apple has released official advice for iPhone 4 owners to overcome the problem of the device losing signal when held by the lower left corner.
• Lefties: beware iPhone 4 reception problem
• The Closed Community of Apple Produces a Lemon
The wonderful ithingy we here about has a major bug. If you hold it in a fairly natural way the 3G signal strength drops greatly. A poorly designed antenna is the problem. Holding the phone loosely seems not to show the problem but if you were stressed in an emergency or while parachuting, you might squeeze it a bit, I figure.
• Full Analysis of iPhone Economics – it is bad news. And then it gets worse
Today if you decide to develop a free app, you pay your $35,000 development cost, then you find your free app competing against just a modest set of 60,750 rival free apps on the iPhone.
• Privacy Change: Apple Knows Where Your Phone Is And Is Telling People
Apple updated its privacy policy today, with an important, and dare we say creepy new paragraph about location information. If you agree to the changes, (which you must do in order to download anything via the iTunes store) you agree to let Apple collect store and share “precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device.”
• Mac mini disappoints
So the Mac mini finally got a long overdue refresh and frankly i’m disappointed. This machine could make a really nice home theater PC (HTPC) or sever except it is crippled in one important respect for each of these uses: no blu-ray drive for HTPC use, no e-SATA for server use. Sigh.
The review at PC Mag conveniently glosses over both these issues. No guys its not okay to say no blu-ray is to be expected because Apple wants you buy their HD contact or stream it using itunes. the standard for consumer HD content is still very much blu-ray and will be for some considerable time, probably until the majority of consumers have connectivity greater than 10Mbps. It is just plain unacceptable that Apple is still not supporting blu-ray and Steve’s lame excuse that blu-ray doesn’t work well enough is well, lame. Blu-ray has been running just fine on Windows for at a couple of years not so Steve, here is hint – CATCH UP. Let’s hope that Apple users don’t have to wait as long as it took for the iPhone to get mult-tasking.
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 1:35 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“We’ve always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
–Steve Jobs
Summary: Microsoft claims ownership of a software-implemented ‘invention’ in Internet Explorer; Google is attacked by software patents from Apple and Frontier Communications
Microsoft has always been shameless about ‘stealing’ great ideas from competitors. After copying many companies’ Internet-related products (Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, etc.) they are patenting Web browser functionality. Yes, the company which was late in embracing the Web wants to block others from access to ideas like the ones Microsoft ‘stole’ from competitors. From the pro-Microsoft Web site called Neowin:
According to a software patent, the Quick Tabs feature in Internet Explorer is likely to be enhanced with better functionality and greater tab management options.
Microsoft and Apple are both just copying and sometimes taking other people's browser code. How come they see it improper for other companies to participate in this area? If anything, Apple and Microsoft owe a lot to Free software when it comes to Internet/Web technology. Apple's new lawsuit against Free software was mentioned here very recently. Apple still uses — offensively — software patents that it never deserved in the first place (there’s a lot more in terms of articles about it as Apple gets covered a lot in the press these days). Wildeboer from Red Hat writes about this Apple patent sarcastically: ‘”slide to unlock” – patented by Apple. How inventive.’
Here is another new Google lawsuit, which will potentially work against Android/Linux (although very indirectly):
Frontier Communications Corp. has sued Google Inc., claiming infringement of a patent for enhanced telephone services. Frontier said in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Delaware, that Google is violating patent rights with products such as the Google Voice system.
Google intends to use such software also in its phones. The best thing to happen right now is for all software patents to just become void. In Re Bilski is definitely due on Monday. We’ll write some more about it during the weekend. There are early signs that Bilski will lose again. █
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Posted in Patents at 1:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: New articles that shed light on the sad (and at time mortally-dependent) consequences of the patents frenzy
• Human Genome Project leader warns against attempts to patent genes (gene patents have been the subject of heated debate recently [1, 2])
Human genetic information must be kept in the public domain to allow researchers to analyse it and to give members of the public fair access to medical treatments, the Nobel prizewinning scientist who led the British contribution to the Human Genome Project said today.
Speaking at a briefing at the Science Museum in London to mark the 10th anniversary of the first draft of the human genome, biologist John Sulston said scientists and lawmakers must resist attempts by corporations and individuals to patent human genes.
In the US, for example, it costs a woman between $3,000 and $4,000 to be tested for familial breast cancer because a corporation owns the patent for the two genes involved. “The fact of the matter is that many human genes have patent rights on them and this is going to get in the way of treatment unless you have a lot of money,” said Sulston. “And it’s going to get in the way of research.”
• Patents seen as low priority for software firms
Biotech, medical device and hardware startups almost always use patents to protect their prospects, but young software companies generally do not, according to the first quantitative study of how small firms use intellectual property protections.
• Dot Hill Bolsters Technology Portfolio With the Addition of New Patents (bragging about software patents in a press release)
• Survey challenges popular beliefs about high-tech startup patents (we mentioned and remarked on the corresponding press release the other day)
• Nibi Software’s collaborative learning products offer education, training — anywhere, any time
What makes Nibi unique — and led to its application for patents — is the idea of adding comments to video or voice recordings so they can be searched and shared.
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Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Patents at 1:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Remarks, analysis, and developments as told mostly by FFII and its affiliates in Europe (who also care deeply about what happened in New Zealand this week)
As indicated earlier this month, the European UPLS seemingly collapsed [1, 2], taking down with it the possibility of software patents expansion in Europe — for now. According to this long post, the zombie is not dead yet.
Then, in the early morning hours of the very last day of the summit, after endless hours of toughest negotiations, a bunch of bleary-eyed Heads of State, deprieved of sleep, will somehow find the final compromise on the EU patent reform project.
Let’s hope not.
Benjamin Henrion, the president of the FFII, remarked on it by saying that it shows the “Financial crisis of Spain as a bargaining chip for getting rid of Spanish resistance in EU patent” and Florian Müller declined to comment about it on the record (it’s kept private at his request). He did, however, make public information he has been gathering for a while by contacting MPEG-LA and other parties like Google.
One might assume that MPEG LA’s obvious desire to maximize its royalty income would practically guarantee that all significant companies infringing its patents would be pursued. But the worldwide market is huge and if you have a country that’s only medium-sized, then MPEG LA may decide for efficiency reasons to collect royalties only from the market leader. That one would face a risk of litigation if refusing to pay, but if that licensee’s competitors don’t pay because MPEG LA doesn’t go after them for the time being, then that’s an awkward situation for the licensee.
As a reminder, MPEG-LA is an NPE (patent troll) headed by a patent troll. We wrote about this subject in posts such as:
“If you saw my posting of yesterday on MPEG LA’s licensing terms,” wrote Florian Müller to us, “I guess it is an area where we may not be able to agree. We can’t agree on the DPL for now (like the DPL, although I really think you should give it a fair chance and look at it when it’s done because it could really pave the way toward abolition over the course of several years. That’s normal. But concerning codecs, PJ grossly misrepresents the facts by claiming I prefer MPEG’s stuff to WebM. I pointed out different aspects of them in different blog postings without ever saying I advocate one or the other. I left no doubt about my preference for a patent-free format but I have a “show me, I’m from Missouri” attitude about that one and indemnification would change the situation in a very positive way for me as I wrote on my blog. I don’t say MPEG LA isn’t a problem, but looking at what they charge vs. the business that licensees do it’s clearly a small problem in the field of patent licensing. Those who don’t offer licenses at all or only on unreasonable terms are far more problematic. Doing away with software patents would be the right thing to do and it would determine that there’s no cost for any codec. In the meantime I for my part do make a distinction between somewhat acceptable licensing terms and anticompetitive practices.”
Müller also pointed out that “the IDG News story on NEON’s impending EU antitrust complaint against IBM shows the usual patent holder rhetoric of “copycat” and investment in innovation. Unlike MPEG LA, that’s a patent holder who simply wants to shut out competition and nothing else.” We wrote about NEON in [1, 2].
Müller’s interests do not intersect with those of GNU/Linux, just as an important reminder. Regarding Canonical joining the Open Invention Network (OIN), Dana Blankenhorn shows Groklaw’s take on Müller but also Müller’s take on OIN [1, 2]. To quote an insightful portion:
The Founding Members direct policy, licensees can agree to put down their legal briefs, while Associate Members pay an unspecified fee and will exist somewhere in the middle.
“In mobile and in desktop we’re bringing in relationships where people provide a financial commitment, which we’re not announcing the amount, to support the evolution of OIN’s activities into these new areas,” said Bergelt.
In other words, expect a select few other companies to be invited. Perhaps as many as a half-dozen. They and the Founding Members will keep Bergelt’s 22-member staff employed.
That’s one of the issues with the OIN. There is danger that it will serve its own interests rather than just eliminate some of its own software patents. LiMo has a patents pool too by the way. It’s not necessarily helping in a world which is overwhelmingly against software patents. It feeds the software patents proponents. “Anti-free software lobbyists discuss patents on standards, all videos on Youtube,” writes Benjamin Henrion in order to show what they are doing in Europe these days. It’s quite similar to what they do in New Zealand — a subject that we covered many times this year, even in this latest post about the sad outcome. Benjamin Henrion writes to Free software advocates in New Zealand:
Hi,
You have to be aware what is the strategy of IBM and Microsoft when they try to push for the infamous “as such” provision.
A German court has recently made Microsoft FAT patentable, despite the exclusion of computer programs “as such” from the law (the EPC).
Patent judges tends to interpret this provision as “a computer program as such is a computer program on a piece of paper” and this is what is excluded. On the other side, when the program runs on the computer, it becomes patentable.
If you are interested in clarifications to bring in New Zealand, you can take inspiration from the FFII´s 10 core clarifications:
http://consultation.ffii.org/Clarifications
Separately, it’s worth highlighting this new story about non-practicing entity (NPEs). Again, NPEs are patent trolls. “ASP (anti-patent troll company) will resell patents to trolls after 12 months,” remarks on it FFII’s president. Here are some quotes:
I’ve just sat through the IPBC session titled “Getting to Grips with NPEs”. Now that was a session which generated real emotion in me, and showed how amazing us humans are at spending time and effort on things that are ultimately meaningless.
I went through a large range of emotions. I started out neutral . Here we go, just another session about trolls, trolls justifying why even trolls do social good (we help small inventors make money from their IP!-well done, good for you), lawyers arguing over technicalities (rule 11, blah, blah blah), the anti-troll lobby screaming about how unfair the system is to allow this abuse and Dan McCurdy (we’ll come back to him later) giving his troll stats.
I quickly got into irritated. Mainly as the session was dominated by American accents justifying their respective positions. Mild anger soon followed. More American accents, more justification, more self-justifying arguments.
Soon followed by seething. Vigorous agreement with Nokia (great speech, really great speech Dr Schneider) and Technicolor (ex Thomson, good “I hate trolls” speech Beatrice de Russé). I found myself wanting to applaud. C’mon the anti-troll lobby!!!There was little room for middle ground in the room. And, for me, the anti-troll camp has my lifetime vote.
[...]
Dan McCurdy is a legend in the IP world. An IBMer under Marshall Phelps, a licensing expert/jobbing consultant in Thinkfire (I’m sure I recall his profile with a dollar amount against his face for his lifetime licensing dollars generated), now AST. But how can these two statements be reconciled? Statement 1, timed at about 46 minutes in “I would be delighted to close down AST tomorrow if the NPE problem went away!!” (hooray!!), and then, at around 58 minutes in “When we buy patents in for our AST members, we commit to sell them within 12 months, and we sell them to the highest bidder, we sell to operating companies, aggregators, and….to NPEs”.
Excuse me, come again….WHAT!!! You perpetuate the problem by selling on patents, to NPE’s, who can then sue those who don’t have licenses as they aren’t your members.
Notice the presence of Marshall Phelps. That’s one heck of a troll (he builds or assembles patent portfolios, not products) who recently helped Microsoft fight against GNU/Linux and Free software, having previously helped IBM. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Interoperability, Marketing, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Servers, Virtualisation at 12:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model…”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
Summary: Red Hat still insists on not paying Microsoft anything for distribution of GNU/Linux; Novell and Microsoft use Forrester as their advertisers in suits
LAST YEAR we wrote about the agreement between Red Hat and Microsoft. It wasn’t as sinister as it may sound and we provided explanations in:
- Novell the Biggest Loser in New Red Hat-Microsoft Virtual Agreement
- Red Hat-Microsoft Agreement Not Malicious, But Was It Smart?
- Red Hat-Microsoft: Take III
- Summary of the Red Hat-Microsoft Story
As it’s put in reference to Red Hat’s event this week:
To this day, as far as I know and have been informed, Red Hat still has no intention of engaging in any kind of patent deal with Microsoft. Yet the two can and do work together.
Red Hat did something without discriminating and harming fellow distributions of GNU/Linux, unlike Novell (but Microsoft goes directly to large Red Hat customers like Amazon, which it then extorts). As Matt Asay — a former Novell employee — put it, Novell is still all about software patents now that 'new' Novell is dying.
Either way, I suspect we’ll see some significantly improved bids for Novell. Its patent portfolio, coupled with its maintenance revenue and technology portfolio, offer too much strategic value to pass up.
Novell’s unhealthy obsession with software patents has led it to a bad deal with Microsoft. Now that the Free software community is upset with Novell, the company turns back to proprietary software for identity management [1, 2] and proprietary software for Fog Computing, with new examples like ‘cloud’ manager. These are just 3 examples from the past 2 days.
“The staff at Novell which cares about software freedom sometimes just leaves as a result of that atrocious deal (sometimes to be replaced by ex-Softies).”Novell was never truly focused on software freedom, but before signing the Microsoft patent deal it at least tried. The staff at Novell which cares about software freedom sometimes just leaves as a result of that atrocious deal (sometimes to be replaced by ex-Softies).
What makes it impossible to forgive Novell is the fact that it continues to brag about that deal. It never expresses regrets. Using a joint press release Novell bragged about the Microsoft deal yet again (that was on Monday). It turns out that they apparently also paid for propaganda from Forrester, which is now promoting software patents deals with Microsoft because it was bribed paid to say so. Here is some preliminary coverage:
Two newly published customer studies by independent research firms, Forrester Consulting and Oliver Wyman Group, further quantify and detail benefits of Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc.’s joint business and technical collaboration, and detail the significant return on investment (ROI) customers have realized by investing in the partnership.
It says right there that the “study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft and Novell” and we are never surprised to see propaganda from Forrester (example from last week), which Microsoft also pays to belittle/smear GNU/Linux.
Watch how this paid-for propaganda is being used in mainstream media and also promoted by Microsoft boosters like Marius Oiaga. On top of this, the ‘Microsoft press’ still promotes this patent extortion because it’s good for Microsoft; this time it’s Lee Pender taking his turn after similar ‘Microsoft press’ coverage from the same company. His colleague did this earlier too (Monday or Tuesday, i.e. a day after the press release, almost as though he had been briefed).
Microsoft is clearly desperate to convince customers and vendors to pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux. The fact that it manufactures some propaganda and then uses its bogus press to push this agenda is what makes it so shameless. Novell is clearly an accomplice here because it stands to benefit from it. █
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Posted in Courtroom, Novell at 11:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The marchFirst case carries on, with Novell on the defensive side
FOR details about the MarchFirst case, see this new page:
This matter is before the court for ruling on the motion of plaintiff Andrew J. Maxwell, chapter 7 trustee, for judgment on the pleadings on Count I of his adversary complaint against defendant Novell, Inc. In that count, Maxwell alleges that Novell’s Claim No. 4524 is a claim for damages arising from the purchase or sale of a security of debtor marchFirst, Inc. and therefore must be subordinated to all senior or equal claims pursuant to section 510(b) of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 510(b). For the reasons that follow, Maxwell’s motion will be granted.
It does not look like a particularly new case. Groklaw has mentioned it for several years. It just comes to show how slow justice can be (like the SCO debacle). █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 11:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Illustration of Microsoft as stern advocate of Windows, porting to it Free/libre applications that wish to run on a Free platform
WE HAVE JUST been informed that a Microsoft employee called Bruno Barba Venturi wants to port Ardour to Windows. For reasons that Ardour explained some months ago, it wishes not to support Microsoft Windows, just GNU/Linux and Mac OS X (maybe because of its UNIX slant).
Microsoft is a Windows company. It only supports Free software when it serves its proprietary stack. That, for example, is what CodePlex is all about. Sam Dean wrote about CodePlex in response to Moody’s report which we mentioned yesterday. People ought to realise that CodePlex advocates proprietary software such as Windows, SQL Server, SharePoint, Office, and so on. It does not deserve coverage from Open Source-oriented Web sites (at least those which are true to their focus). █
“I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
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