First Test of GPL in US as BusyBox Developers Sue Monsoon
In what their lawyers are characterizing as the first test of the legal mettle of the General Public License in the US, the developers of a multipurpose UNIX-style utilities package have sued Monsoon Multimedia - which makes a competitive product to SlingBox called Hava. Their claim is that Monsoon redistributes their BusyBox utilities as part of Hava's software, without also distributing the source code along with it as the GPL mandates.
It is an extremely simple case, at least as laid out by the Software Freedom Law Center, which is pursuing the case on the BusyBox team's behalf.
Profile: HP's Blackbird 002 and the Ideal of the PC
It seems an eon has passed since the PC could be considered a thing of beauty. Even two decades ago, during the rise of Macintosh and the highly animated duel between the artful Commodore Amiga and the 8 MHz Atari ST, the computer itself, sitting there on the desk turned off, wasn't expected to be something of awe. Its beauty was in its function. Back then, "PC" was a brand whose very meaning was practicality, frugality, conservativeness. The personal computer may or may not be an art medium, but it has rarely in its history been an art form.
Still today, the computer is not universally recognized as something that elicits emotion, like a sports car or a tailored suit or even a simple sculpture. Even Apple restricts an iMac's beauty to its "interface," and hides its central components behind its widescreen monitor. When we emote about computing, more often than not, it's about how it aggravates us - or rather, how its manufacturers and software publishers aggravate us. Our feelings remind us constantly not of what the computer has evolved into but what we wish it could be.
Firefox Update Addresses QuickTime-triggered Vulnerability
Users of Firefox yesterday began receiving notices of the availability of version 2.0.0.7, which the Mozilla organization said addresses a vulnerability involving Apple's QuickTime plug-in. In BetaNews tests of the new version this afternoon, the vulnerability in question appears to have been fully patched.
In a recent permutation of what might have been a very old, very open hole, a malicious Web page was capable of spawning a new running copy of the default Web browser, and then - if that browser was Firefox - trigger it to try to load QuickTime by pointing it to a file whose type QuickTime is known to handle (typically .MOV files). Whether or not that file actually existed, the trigger could be crafted to contain JavaScript code that ran unchecked, possibly enabling the execution of any kind of binary code.
HDi Logo to Appear on Toshiba HD DVD Players
Staking its claim to a chunk of HD DVD technology, Microsoft announced today its HDi logo - representing its version of the interactivity layer of the HD DVD format - will appear on all Toshiba brand HD DVD players made from this point on, as well as on selected Universal and Paramount high-definition discs.
"Given some confusion over what qualifies as true interactivity," a Microsoft spokesperson stated today, "Microsoft wanted to officially logo the technology as a quality assurance."
SCO Warns SEC It Might Not Survive Novell Payoff
In its quarterly 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, UNIX provider SCO Group expressed its fears that, if it were faced with a judgment ordering it to pay Novell for several years of using UNIX trademarks recently found to have been owned by Novell all this time, it may not be able to continue business.
"As a result of both the Court's August 10, 2007 ruling and the Company's entry into Chapter 11, there is substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern," the company stated in its SEC filing Tuesday. "Absent a significant cash payment to Novell for this matter, management believes it is remote that the undiscounted future cash flows generated by the Company would not be sufficient to recover the carrying values of the long-lived assets over their expected remaining useful lives. However, if a significant cash payment is required, or significant assets are put under a constructive trust, the carrying amount of the Company's long-lived assets may not be recovered."
US Antitrust Chief, EU Competition Chief Spar Over Microsoft
In an unusual move, US Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Thomas Barnett issued a statement earlier this week, following the European Court of First Instance (CFI) decision in the Microsoft matter, politely but clearly dissenting from the Court's decision and implying the American antitrust system is more evolved.
"It will...be some time before the full impact of today's decision on antitrust policy in Europe will be apparent," wrote Barnett last Monday. "We are, however, concerned that the standard applied to unilateral conduct by the CFI, rather than helping consumers, may have the unfortunate consequence of harming consumers by chilling innovation and discouraging competition."
FCC Adopts Compromise on 'Must-Carry' Provisions for Cable TV
On September 11, the US Federal Communications Commission approved a plan that would continue to mandate cable TV carriers within an area make available all the broadcast signals receivable in that area. Both cable operators and broadcasters applaud the plan, but perhaps it's because it has not only been scaled back but also has an expiration date.
That date is three years following the February 17, 2009 transition date for terrestrial broadcasting from analog to digital format. After that time, the FCC will review the plan...though it would appear commissioners are betting that it will be a different FCC by that time.
.NET Micro Framework 2.0 SP1 Now Available
Service Pack 1 for the developers' toolkit for the second edition of Microsoft's just-in-time high-level language interpreter for embedded equipment was released yesterday.
.NET Micro Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 tackles an interesting issue for embedded systems: code signing. A device vendor may have any number of reasons why it would prefer for its binary code to be signed and authenticated: perhaps to serve the authenticated user, perhaps to help authenticate the firmware code, but most often to ensure that users can't change the code. Up until Windows XP Embedded, embedded systems developers looking to produce signed code had to encode their security catalogs in their program's binaries.
Teardown Reveals 41.6% Markup for New iPod Nano
While the top-of-the-line 8 GB Apple iPod nano still retails for $199, the completely revised new model costs Apple about $7 less to build than the previous edition, based on a preliminary teardown analysis by iSuppli. With a bill-of-materials at $82.85 per unit, according to iSuppli's estimate, Apple enjoys a nearly 42% markup in retail price.
Of course, that's not the company's wholesale margins for its resellers, though a great many units are sold through Apple Store outlets and through Apple.com - where it can feel the full benefit.
IBM Revives 'Lotus Symphony,' Supports ODF Format
In a clever marketing move that had some of us fooled, IBM revealed today it was doing much more than beginning the process of rebuilding its own applications suite. In fact, Beta 1 of the new Lotus Symphony is already under way.
It's not so much a symphony, I wrote in a 1984 review of Lotus Symphony, but a cacophony. Lotus, I said, fails to make the value proposition about why users should invest nearly a thousand dollars in software whose components collectively sell for less than that, and whose best in class includes the best spreadsheet at that time, Lotus 1-2-3.
Intel: Penryn 45 nm Processors On Track for November
Based on the initial word we're receiving from the Fall Intel Developers' Forum in San Francisco this afternoon, there are no major surprises other than the lack of surprises. There is no delay in the company's plans to roll out the first commercial 45 nm processors, code-named Penryn, this November as scheduled.
During his keynote speech at IDF, CEO Paul Otellini turned up the volume in his efforts to psych out his competitor, using a verbal image we've already seen get under AMD's skin. Intel is now actually calling its roadmap, by name, "tick-tock."
Sony Reportedly Selling Cell BE Chip Fab to Toshiba
Just days after two Sony spokespersons flatly told Bloomberg News that no such deal had been reached, Asian press sources are saying today the company has agreed to sell its Kyushu Semiconductor facility - which produces the Cell BE CPU for Sony's PlayStation 3 - to its STI partner Toshiba for about 100 billion yen (about $863.5 million).
The deal would help scale down Sony's ongoing investment in semiconductor technology, while at the same time keeping the Cell chip in the family. Sony, Toshiba, and IBM have been partnering in the Cell's development since its inception.
Interview: AMD's Simon Solotko and the Third Core
It actually didn't seem mathematically possible. Three is not a multiple of two, and the computer industry rarely does anything that can't be bundled as a power of two. But AMD's Triple-Core Phenom processor, which will hit desktops at the beginning of next year, may be the oddball that the CPU market never expected.
Even folks inside of AMD will admit Intel has stepped up to the plate in the last 16 months, and that AMD has ground to make up in several departments. When Intel was planning its comeback two years ago, it introduced a controversial technique called hyperthreading that enabled a single-core processor to run two threads concurrently. But after tests revealed minimal performance gains - and in some categories, performance losses - many perceived Intel's move as a kind of stopgap, to buy it some time before it could launch its first dual-core series with Core Microarchitecture.
AMD Makes Wildcard Play with Triple-Core Phenom
In a move that was successfully kept secret, for the most part, until late last week when the first rumor whispers were widely repeated, AMD is making an unprecedented, near-term adjustment to its technology roadmap. As soon as the first half of next year, the company now plans to introduce into the desktop CPU market a new line of Phenom triple-core processors, whose architecture was christened with the code-name Toliman just hours ago.
The existence of Triple-Core Phenom was revealed to members of the press this evening at a special West Coast press briefing late today. "Normally we do not make a press announcement or do analyst's briefings on a roadmap update," AMD's Desktop Division brand manager Simon Solotko told BetaNews, "but this roadmap update includes a change which we have withheld from the market primarily due to competitive reasons. AMD had an opportunity which we've known about for some time to provide an exciting product in the market, and we have decided at this point to come forward with our plan to release that product."
SpiralFrog Finally Emerges from Death Spiral, Launches Today
After a ten-month delay which saw the company's own high-profile organizers ousted in a management coup that to this day remains mysterious, the ad-supported music service SpiralFrog finally emerged from beta today. It's being billed as the first free music download service to provide fully licensed, DRM-enabled music for MP3 players (though not iPods). Its catch is that it compels you to first sit through a word or two from their sponsors.
Like commercial radio, SpiralFrog is supported through advertising, though it compels users to pay attention to ads during the download process. For advertisers, the value proposition is to enable the site to target ads directly to specific listener segments; for users, it's the option to keep the songs or the videos.
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