Showing headlines posted by BernardSwiss

Many network administrators know OpenSSL as a tool that implements Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) cryptographic protocols to secure your web surfing and email. But as we learned earlier this month, OpenSSL can do far more. With OpenSSL you can encrypt and decrypt files, verify file integrity, and see which encryption protocols and ciphers any server supports.

You'll frequently hear references to a "software ecosystem" on various platforms, but it's relatively rare to see someone take that sort of terminology seriously. A group of evolutionary biologists, however, has now used the tools of ecosystem analysis to look at the evolution of Debian releases, examining things like package dependencies and software incompatibility.

Been there; done that!

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Barnes & Noble has done the world a tremendous favor, by pulling aside the curtain and revealing Microsoft's patent campaign tactics against Android in lurid detail. It reveals the assertion of "trivial" and "invalid" patents against Barnes & Noble and some shocking details about an "oppressive" license agreement that would have controlled hardware and software design features that Microsoft presented, thus limiting to what degree Barnes & Noble could offer upgrades and improved features to its customers if it had signed it, features it says none of Microsoft's patents cover. Microsoft worked so hard to keep it all secret, and I think you'll see why. It's ugly behind that curtain.

According to Barnes and Noble, Microsoft claims to have over 60,000 patents. Fewer than 20,000 of those were granted by the patent office; Microsoft presumably purchased the other 40,000 from other firms. The result is one of the world's largest "patent thickets." Microsoft has so many patents that it's difficult to build a software product as complex as a mobile operating system without infringing dozens, maybe even hundreds, of them.

Yes, this is (a little) off-topic. But it does concern "Intellectual Property", and bears on other "IP" concerns. And besides, it's from Nina Paley, and it's a comic, on a Friday. So I figured I'd suggest posting this anyways, just for fun.

Is this PowerPoint’s Revenge? A 29-page slide deck – made public this week in Microsoft’s patent lawsuit against Barnes & Noble — outlines, in great detail, the bookseller’s objections to the software company’s campaign to collect patent licensing fees from Android device makers.

The book retailer claims also that the fees Microsoft was demanding were equal to or greater than those it demanded for an entire operating system, Windows Phone, even though the patents covered only "trivial and non-essential design elements" of the Android user interface. It also noted that there is only one patent common to the the five patents it is being sued over and the six that Microsoft was offering to license.

"You want your cousin to send you a file? Easy. He can email it to -... Oh. It's 25 MB? Hmmm... (Just because I missed this one the first time around (a couple of months ago)... And don't forget the mouse-over text.)

But, to be honest, what bothers me most, what saddens me the most, is that I’ve always held onto the myth that Linux was the last, best hope for those of us who like to do it ourselves and like to run software we’ve built ourselves. And here’s where my mea culpa comes in. It was, ultimately, my fault that I believed in Linux as much as I did. Those of you working with Linux on a daily basis aren’t at fault for doing what you do or loving your environment.

The FSF have released a statement on UEFI secure boot. It explains the fundamental issue here, which isn't something as simple as "will OEMs let me install Linux". It's "Does the end user have the ability to manage their own keys".

Secure boot is a valuable feature. It does neatly deal with the growing threat of pre-OS malware. There is an incentive for it to be supported under Linux. I discussed the technical aspects of implementing support for it here - it's not a huge deal of work, and it is being worked on. So let's not worry about that side of things. The problem is with the keys.

Red Hat, Canonical and the Linux Foundation have laid out a set of recommendations for hardware vendors in hopes of preserving the ability to install Linux on Windows 8 machines. Windows 8 machines should ship in a setup mode giving users more control right off the bat, the groups argue.

As we reported last month, Windows 8 computers that ship with UEFI secure booting enabled could make the task of replacing Windows with Linux or dual-booting the two operating systems more difficult. In order to get a “Designed for Windows 8” logo, PCs must ship with secure boot enabled, preventing the booting of operating systems that aren’t signed by a trusted Certificate Authority.

Hardware vendors can give users the option of disabling the secure boot feature—but they could also decline to do so, making it impossible to run a non-Windows operating system. In practice, it seems unlikely that dual-boot scenarios will be prevented entirely, but Linux vendors and the Linux Foundation are worried about how UEFI secure booting will be implemented.

According to an early report from ZDNet, Shuttleworth will announce plans to bring Ubuntu to smartphones and tablet computing devices. The company says that it has been discussing the plan with hardware partners for the past 18 months. No specific hardware vendors have been named yet and there is presently no concrete timeline for product availability.

Apple and Microsoft are involved in a new patent race over touchless gesture-controls.

The lengths we go to, to guard against mistakes...

Microsoft has announced that if computer makers wish to distribute machines with the Windows 8 compatibility logo, they will have to implement a measure called "Secure Boot." However, it is currently up for grabs whether this technology will live up to its name, or will instead earn the name Restricted Boot.

Microsoft has already scored two big time Android IP licensing deals, one with HTC and the other more recently with Samsung. The boys in Redmond have now secured one more epic deal, this time with Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc. Wait, who? You might not recognize Quanta — they’re not exactly a household name, after all. But they are a Taiwanese OEM that produces tablets, laptops, and other electronic gadgets for names you do know — folks like RIM, for whom Quanta designed and built the BlackBerry PlayBook. Starting to put the pieces together?

The new Start screen is definitely a big shock, and many PC users were deeply concerned that it represented a substantial step backwards. Though near-universally acknowledged as a good interface for tablet users, traditional desktop users who don't want or need tablets worried that they were going to be forced to use something designed solely for tablet users—something that really wouldn't work well with mice and keyboards.

Linus Torvalds once said, in reference to the development of Linux, that he “had hoisted [himself] up on the shoulders of giants.” Among those giants, Dennis Ritchie (aka dmr) was likely the tallest. Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system passed away on October 8 at the age of 70, leaving a legacy that casts a very long shadow.

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