New FCC chief draws a line in the sand on net neutrality
On the eve of easily the most important Federal Communications Commission open hearing since being sworn in as its chairman, Julius Genachowski is taking the strong personal stand he was expected to take, in favor of equal and open access to Internet services. Returning to the heart of the original debate from which the term "net neutrality" was coined, Genachowski told the Capitol Hill daily The Hill yesterday that he remains committed to enforcing net neutrality principles, assuming they actually become law.
"One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles," the FCC Chairman told The Hill.
Windows 7: Don't upgrade, says FSF, your civil rights are in jeopardy
If you're collecting reasons people have given for avoiding Windows 7 purchases and upgrades, add this one in a little shelf all to itself: It is a threat to your civil liberties, according to the Free Software Foundation.
Today is the official launch day of an FSF fundraising campaign whose stated goal is to bombard employees of 499 of the world's Fortune 500 companies (the one they left out probably wouldn't make any difference) with letters claiming, among other assertions, that Microsoft is engaging in a clandestine spy operation, masquerading under euphemistic names such as "Windows Genuine Advantage" (one example the FSF lists), invading homes, offices, and even schools.
Without the fastest JavaScript, can Opera 10 RC still lay claim to speed?
Download Opera 10 for Windows Release Candidate Build 1733 from Fileforum now.
"At Opera, we love speed," reads the beginning of a March 2009 blog post from Opera Software Product Analyst Roberto Mateu. "We work hard to make our browser faster with features that speeds you up."
Mozilla credited with discovering exploitable Google Chrome 2 flaw
Google is not saying much today about a flaw discovered in the V8 JavaScript engine of its Chrome 2 stable Web browser, one which triggered an update that is being rolled out to Chrome users today. Amid what it is sharing today, however, is a surprising fact: Mozilla Security is being credited with the discovery.
Malicious JavaScript, Google says, can cause the Chrome browser to run arbitrary code, although that code may still be protected by the browser's "sandbox" -- its protected area of memory where running code has no access to system resources. However, it's conceivable that code running within the sandbox could provoke the user (by social means, perhaps by feigning a crash or system bug) to perform an action that may trigger a more damaging process delivered through a different payload, so Google treated the issue with a "High" severity rating.
Open source project makes ADO.NET data accessible with PHP
Microsoft's most recent Web-driven database technology is ADO.NET, although only the first three letters of its name have been a throwback to its predecessor: There's nothing "ActiveX" about ADO.NET whatsoever. Up to now, its purpose has been to expose data through HTTP Web services that can be utilized by JavaScript clients (read: common Web pages) as well as by .NET applications including Silverlight.
But that fact has kept the pairings of ADO.NET with ASP.NET, and PHP with MySQL, separate and distinct from one another.
The dead shall rise: Appeals victory sends SCO/Linux trial back to square one
For the last two years, there really hasn't been much of an SCO Group left, although the company remains in business. The biggest question facing the continued existence of that company in recent days has been whether to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (it filed for Chapter 11 in October 2007), after which its remaining assets could be sold off.
But while many think the company is on its last breath, a possible reprieve has come in the form of a reversal of what many felt was the only truly scoring blow in its interminable Linux copyright deathmatch against Novell, the company that sold its Unix and Unixware properties to SCO's predecessor Santa Cruz Operation in 1995. SCO accused Novell of sullying the value of the Unix intellectual property it was sold, by becoming a vendor of Linux. Two years ago, the judge in the case -- who, by that time, may have wished he'd taken up a safer, quieter job managing an ammunition testing facility -- ruled that Novell could do anything it wanted because it never ceded control of its Unix copyrights.
Yahoo promises it will still innovate search
In a conference call yesterday live-blogged by Search Engine Land, representatives from Yahoo gave a live demonstration to reporters and analysts of new features of their principal Web applications that they believe will attract new users. Included on their list were ways that Yahoo plans to improve search.
This after Yahoo signed away its search infrastructure to Microsoft in an historic deal late last month, which many perceive as Yahoo opening its floodgates to Bing. In an effort to minimize the appearance of the deal having any impact on Yahoo's search strategy, the company's senior vice president for search, Prabhakar Raghaven, told reporters Yahoo can still innovate with regard to the experience users receive from search. Maintaining the search engine itself, however, was a battle Yahoo could no longer afford to fight.
RIM acquires WebKit browser maker Torch Mobile, shuts down WM version
A little over one month after one of the most promising WebKit-based Web browsers for Windows Mobile introduced what its manufacturer called, "a whole new level of Internet capabilities to mobile devices," the manufacturer of IrisBrowser has found itself suddenly acquired by BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. The announcement was made this morning on Torch Mobile's blog:
"Our team of developers will join RIM's global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry platform," the latest blog post reads.
If you're wondering whether that means the end of the line for Iris Browser for Windows Mobile -- one of the two platforms Torch supports, the other being the Linux-based Qtopia -- apparently the answer is yes. Links to the latest downloads for the Windows Mobile version of Iris, including several that still appear on Torch Mobile's company blog, take the user now to a notice which includes the above excerpt.
Windows 7 upgrades, Family Pack will come to Europe after all
On September 1, Microsoft announced this morning, it will be making upgrade editions of Windows 7 available to European customers, as originally planned, apparently with Internet Explorer 8 included. These editions will be publicly available on the originally planned global availability date of October 22, although pre-orders will begin September 1.
This leaves a one-week window in which European customers may continue to pre-order full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium at the upgrade price, which is currently €119.99 for most European customers, £79.99 in the UK.
While we do know that €119.99 will be the upgrade price for Home Premium from September 1, and that the full version price will be somewhat higher, we do not know as of yet the specific breakdown for the upgrade prices for the Professional and Ultimate SKUs. These prices did not yet appear on Microsoft's online retail sites in foreign countries, as of 12:15 pm EDT Monday afternoon.
San Francisco city computer hijacker faces fewer charges
It was last February when Terry Childs, a former employee of the City of San Francisco's IT department, sat down with InfoWorld's Paul Venezia in a jailhouse interview about his bizarre case. He was a high-level administrator of his division's computers, but after learning in July 2008 he would be reassigned to a different department, he sent those systems into a state of lockdown that only he could undo.
There's no doubt it was Childs who held city services in a virtual cryogenic state. Upon his surrender to authorities, he gave the Mayor the keys needed to unlock city systems. Childs faced four counts of tampering with city property and shutting down access. But last Friday, a judge tossed out the three tampering charges, reported the San Francisco Chronicle, leaving only the single count pertaining to the lockdown.
DMCA-based appeal fails, Yahoo's Launchcast prevails in royalties row
In a summary judgment this morning, a three-judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Yahoo's Launchcast music service does not have to pay performance royalties in addition to licensing fees, on account of the fact that like terrestrial radio, the service is not interactive.
Today's finding may set precedent for both online and broadcast radio, for having affirmed the legal notion that in order for a presentation of music to count as a performance, it must be directly requested by the listener. While Congress remains split over whether conventional broadcast stations should be responsible for performance royalties to the same degree as Internet providers such as Last.fm and Pandora, US law presently states that the distinction between the two classes deals specifically with interactivity -- the degree to which the listener has explicit control over what she's hearing. If no such control exists, the judges affirmed today, then there's no "performance," thus no royalties for performance apply.
Yahoo, Microsoft team with rival trustbuster against Google Books settlement
An attorney who was at the heart of the US Dept. of Justice's original 1994 antitrust case against Microsoft, arising from its proposed takeover of Quicken manufacturer Intuit, will find himself spearheading a coalition against Google's book scanning policies that includes both Microsoft and Yahoo, spokespersons from both companies confirmed to Betanews this morning.
It was attorney Gary Reback who first called Microsoft to task for using its "embrace and extend" policy in an abusive fashion against competitors, often representing those competitors in legal action, as was the case with Borland International and Sybase in the mid '90s. Currently, he is the author of a book called Free the Market! Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive. His latest confrontation is against Google, whose proposed settlement with book authors and publishers would give Google "non-exclusive" rights to scan their books contents and reproduce them online in the Google Books service. Already, Google has been scanning books that are available in public libraries, and making excerpts of those books available to users -- excerpts, as opposed to the books in their entirety.
Facebook phishing app plague may be getting out of control
In the Internet equivalent of the old "whack-a-mole" game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson -- who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on -- has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users' passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word "sex" is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again.
The innocuous names lead users to think they point to real Facebook functions like "inbox," rather than third-party apps. When a user clicks on one of them thinking he's using a part of Facebook, the malicious app takes the user to a Facebook login screen, while in the meantime collecting the user's password.
Mozilla chief: Microsoft ballot screen leaves IE 'uniquely privileged'
In the first comprehensive statement representing Mozilla's viewpoint on the issue of Microsoft's compliance with the European Commission's recent Statement of Objections, Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker wrote earlier this week that a "ballot screen" giving Windows 7 installers the option of setting up Firefox or another browser instead, is not enough to level the playing field. Internet Explorer, Baker fears, will continue to received favored placement elsewhere in the system, including on the desktop and the taskbar.
"Choosing another browser as a 'default' does not mean that the other browser takes the place of IE," Baker writes. "For example, the IE logo ('shortcut') still remains unchanged on the desktop. The shortcut / logo of the browser the user has selected does not replace this, it is added elsewhere. As a result, the familiar location remains IE, not the user's choice."
Windows 7 is coming: You should upgrade
I'll begin by saying that Carmi Levy is my very good friend, and I do admit that most of the time, he and I think along the very same wavelength. I met him through our mutual friend Wolfgang Gruener at TG Daily, and we've carried on a very fruitful dialogue about the IT industry ever since. That, and he has this way of making Winnie-the-Pooh berets look really cool.
We do disagree on one point today, and I think the nature of that disagreement would be beneficial to folks who are wrestling with the question Carmi brought up this morning: "To upgrade or not to upgrade." His article is worth reading, so rather than summarize it here, I'll let Carmi speak for himself.
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