Showing headlines posted by BernardSwiss

Use of the drives is now severely restricted throughout the military. But the base at Creech was one of the exceptions, until the virus hit. Predator and Reaper crews use removable hard drives to load map updates and transport mission videos from one computer to another. The virus is believed to have spread through these removable drives. Drone units at other Air Force bases worldwide have now been ordered to stop their use.

In the meantime, technicians at Creech are trying to get the virus off the GCS machines. It has not been easy. At first, they followed removal instructions posted on the website of the Kaspersky security firm. “But the virus kept coming back,” a source familiar with the infection says. Eventually, the technicians had to use a software tool called BCWipe to completely erase the GCS’ internal hard drives. “That meant rebuilding them from scratch” — a time-consuming effort.

When the Federal Communications Commission last week issued its final network neutrality rules and said they would go into effect at the end of November, lawsuits against the policy could finally begin. Verizon and Metro PCS, both wireless carriers, had already made clear their intention to sue and were widely expected to be the first to do so. Instead, they were beaten to court by the activist group Free Press—one of the strongest supporters of network neutrality.

In the last few weeks, the smartphone industry appeared to produce more lawsuits than phones. Apple briefly managed to stop the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in all of Europe, and is now going after the whole Galaxy line. Back Stateside, Google first complained that Microsoft and Apple were using "bogus patents" to target Android, then spent $12 billion for Motorola and its patent arsenal. These are big, high-stakes fights—and the last company left standing may walk away with control over nothing less than the smartphone market itself.

In the flood of stories about tactical filings and counter-filings, it's easy to get lost in the details. But step back and it's clear that the Smartphone Wars aren't just a war of all against all; there's an underlying logic to these disputes. Most companies are fighting to control one part of the hardware-software stack, then use that control to pry money free from the layers above them.

But the really big players—the Apples and Googles of the world—are fighting over the stack itself. Their combat arena: the global legal system.

... We were troubled to learn that the Federal Government, in the form of Homeland Security's ICE division, had also started using the same videos, never once mentioning that they were NBC Universal's videos. That's troubling enough, but it's even worse to find out that New York City has ratcheted up the campaign, still using the same NBC Universal video with false claims in it, and going into city high schools and colleges, asking students to create their own bogus propaganda video that repeats NBC Universal and the MPAA's debunked talking points.

So just what are the benefits of paying Microsoft a licensing fee for free software, especially when said software was not developed by Microsoft? If these quiet settlements are any indication, the sole benefit would be to avoid being dragged through the courts by one of the largest software developers in the world.

The quality of patent filings has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, claims a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).­ The rush to protect even minor improvements in products or services is overburdening patent offices, which in turn slows the time to market for true innovations and reduces the potential for breakthrough inventions they claim. The Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011 finds that patent quality has declined by an average of around 20 per cent between the 1990s and 2000s, a pattern seen in nearly all countries studied.

In Pando's ranking of nations in general, South Korea not surprisingly prevails with an average download speed of 2,202KBps. But Romania "unexpectedly" came in second at 1,909KBps, followed by Bulgaria at 1,611KBps. "In fact, eastern European nations dominated the top of the list with Lithuania in fourth at 1,462KBps, Latvia in fifth at 1,377KBps and Ukraine in eighth at 1,190KBps," Pando observes. These countries are leaving the United States and the Western European nations in the dust when it comes to average high speed Internet rates...

The Business Software Alliance, that concerned body in the US which bangs the drum for victims of crime — Microsoft, Adobe et al — has produced another fine survey setting out the sheer scale of global anarchy in the software industry.

Verizon has begun blocking customers who use workarounds to tether their mobile devices without a Verizon-approved tethering plan, Boy Genius Report reported Monday. The move comes days after AT&T announced it will start forcing tetherers onto approved tethering plans, and just as the debate ramps up on whether curtailing tethering apps violates certain rules Verizon agreed to when it licensed a chunk of 700MHz spectrum for 4G use.

Microsoft isn't exactly dumping Windows for Linux, but it has become one of the busiest contributors to the Linux kernel. Microsoft's attempt to get Hyper-V drivers into the Linux kernel has taken longer than expected, having begun in July 2009, so Microsoft is apparently trying to speed up the process.

How standards proliferate...

The N9 is the first truly modern smartphone that Nokia has unveiled since the start of finger-friendly interface revolution. Although it's a significant technical achievement, it's sadly a pyrrhic victory for Nokia—the device has arrived a year too late. The Finnish phone giant has already abandoned its Linux platform in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Good documentation matters...

A major new independent report to the UK Prime Minister on his country's intellectual property laws is out. Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth could hardly make its position clearer: the UK has lost its way when it comes to copyright policy.

But, of course, by Wednesday morning it really was dead, and basically everyone who had been working hard on it pointed their finger at one person: Harry Reid. Within minutes of Leahy announcing that patent reform was dead, a whole bunch of people reached out to all say it was Reid's fault. And, that story got out fast. Basically everyone is saying that Harry Reid called Leahy and told him to kill the bill after trial lawyers and the pharmaceutical industry complained to Reid. Reid, fearing a loss in donations from those groups that often support Democrats in an election year, killed the bill.