Federal cybersecurity authority awaits break in Senate logjam
One of President Obama's first priorities upon taking office was a comprehensive review, then considered urgent, of federal policies for maintaining Internet security. The report on that review, released last May, recommended further empowering the role of what was then being called the "cybersecurity czar," including the delegation of authority to lead emergency responses in case of an attack on Internet resources that threatened the national security.
Inactivity in enacting those recommendations was blamed for the resignation of Mr. Obama's first czar, Melissa Hathaway, last August. In December, a former security advisor to Pres. George W. Bush, Howard Schmidt, was confirmed to fill Hathaway's post.
PGP security gets Linux and Win7 support, plus more encryption
After rolling out the first Linux edition of its desktop encryption security software last month -- together with new support for the latest versions of Windows and Mac -- PGP Corp. on Monday announced major server updates that will let PGP be managed alongside myriad other approaches to encryption.
Released on January 19, the new PGP Desktop 10.0 product brings new support for Windows 7, MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and two flavors of Linux: Ubuntu and Red Hat. The software also works on Windows Vista, XP, and 2000, earlier editions of Mac OS, and Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones, said Karthik Krishnan, senior director of product management, in a briefing for Betanews.
What does Google gain from having purchased On2?
At the end of business last Friday, Google announced it had completed the transaction to acquire On2 Technologies, the maker of Web video encoding software and codecs, for a deal that was finally valued at $124.6 million. On2 was a small company that was, in recent quarters, losing small amounts of money. It was attempting to become lucrative at some point through the licensing of a new generation of its VPx codec platform, called VP8 announced way back in the fall of 2008. Customers were supposed to have included Move Networks and Skype.
It's the type of business model that only a small startup company could profit from to any significant degree; and it's the type of model that normally a huge company the size of Google would only purchase in order to shut down, perhaps to disable a competitor. But none of the usually suspected motives for a major player acquiring a minor provider make immediate sense when applied to Google and On2.
Overcast, or, How I learned to stop whining and embrace the cloud
It's one of the most predictable responses in all of tech: Every time there's a blowup over some online service's privacy or data security lapses, if you stick your head out the window and focus yourself just so, you can hear the rumble in the distance as naysayers happily share their told-you-so stories of woe.
Without your even asking, they'll go into excruciating detail over how cloud-based services aren't ready for prime time and probably never will be. They'll tell you how distrustful Web services vendors are, how they view our confidential data as means to a profitable end, and how only an idiot would move off of conventional network-controlled infrastructure and throw every shred of personally identifiable data into the nebulous clutches of an unseen service provider.
Email phishes for Windows Live IDs and passwords
The flu pretty much wiped out most of last week, which is just a blur to me. This morning, I started catching up on email and found a real frakker in my Windows Live Hotmail inbox. Someone wants to steal my Windows Live ID and password -- and probably yours, too. The message is dated Feb. 22, 2010.
The email caught my attention for several reasons: 1) Windows Live Hotmail didn't flag the message as junk or suspicious; 2) The apparent originating address -- "[email protected]" -- seems legit enough; 3) Sender is "Windows Live Team"; 4) The email effectively uses threats and cajoling.
Technologist accused of spreading Vista, Win7 FUD wasn't a real person
Normally, Betanews doesn't like to do "inside baseball" stories, that deal with the individuals in the technology journalism business and all the insights as to "how the sausage is made." I'll try to make this one as painless as possible, but it needs to be done, because the individual involved had been cited by me in Betanews stories in the past.
Yesterday morning, ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan revealed the results of research showing that a blogger for IDG publications, and the CTO of a testing and research firm cited by that blogger, were actually the same person. Blogger Randall C. Kennedy, a trusted InfoWorld contributor up until yesterday, was Devil Mountain Software Chief Technology Officer "Craig Barth," the author of reports over the years claiming that Windows Vista performance was slower than Windows XP, and recently that Windows 7 performance was slower than Windows Vista.
If Wal-Mart buys Vudu, will the adult content go away?
Wal-Mart is in the process of acquiring streaming video service Vudu, The New York Times reports today. An unnamed source said the two companies have begun telling Hollywood studios about the deal. No details have yet been disclosed to the public.
Vudu has had its own streaming HD video products available for a little more than two and a half years, and has gradually moved away from a hardware-centric service to something more akin to Netflix, where its platform is the core of the business.
IE6 isn't on the ballot: Will March 1 Windows update kick IE6 out for good?
One of the more obvious, but little mentioned, facts about the upcoming Windows Web browser "choice screen," to be rolled out to European users via Windows Update March 1, is the absence of one very important choice: sticking with the old version of Microsoft Internet Explorer they may currently be using.
The "choice screen," as the European Commission now refers to it, will only be displayed for users who have IE7 or IE6 as their default Web browser. While they may choose Internet Explorer from this ballot, it explicitly offers version the latest version 8. The only upgrade procrastination option the ballot gives, based on snapshots of the first public beta, is a button in the lower left corner marked, "Select Later." The next time the user boots her computer, the choice screen reappears.
Apple's problem with Flash is mobile applications competition
Apple CEO Steve Jobs wants publishers to support iPad, but not with Adobe Flash. Jobs' anti-Flash campaign has grown bolder since the company announced iPad last month and during this week's Mobile World Congress, where Flash 10.1 inched a little close to widespread mobile device availability. What's Apple's problem with Flash? Simply put: Competition.
Apple wants to control the entire mobile applications stack. The App Store/iPhone/iPod touch platform, which will soon include iPad, is a closed stack that Apple tightly controls. For developers, it's Apple's way or no way. But Apple could conceivably lose control of the stack -- most importantly the applications and their user experience -- should Flash run free and unfettered on iPhone OS devices.
PleaseRobMe wants to turn its Foursquare jab into a real security operation
This week, Dutch group Forthehack launched PleaseRobMe, a site meant to expose the danger of location-based social networks such as Foursquare, BrightKite, Gowalla, and Google Buzz. Basically, PleaseRobMe says that every time someone posts his location in a location-based social network, that person is publicly announcing that he is not home, which could be taken to mean, no one is home.
To illustrate the point, PleaseRobMe rephrases public Foursquare posts to say, "@Username left home and checked in X minutes ago..." and then presents that person's current map location in a Twitter alert.
Settlement in benchmark case means FOSS licenses can be enforced
There will be no further legal action in a case whose outcome was already upheld in August 2008 by a US appeals court. As a result, legal precedent has now been made permanent for the right of open source software developers to seek monetary damages for infringement of their copyrights, even if their products were being distributed freely.
Settlement documents in the case of Jacobsen v. Katzer were filed early this morning in US District Court in Northern California, as Linux Foundation attorney Andrew Updegrove informed Betanews just hours later. A pending appeal of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling last August is now terminated. In the judgment that was being appealed, the Circuit panel ruled that the right to declare software free, could be given monetary value: "There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties," that court ruled. "For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge. Similarly, a programmer or company may increase its national or international reputation by incubating open source projects. Improvement to a product can come rapidly and free of charge from an expert not even known to the copyright holder."
Microsoft to begin deploying final EU browser ballot March 1
In an early morning blog post Friday, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner announced that final field testing of the company's Web browser ballot screen for European Windows customers (XP, Vista, and Windows 7) is under way now. The goal is to have a fully operational ballot screen by March 1 -- a week from Monday.
"External testing of the choice screen will begin next week in three countries: the United Kingdom, Belgium and France," Heiner reported. "Anyone in those countries who wishes to test it can download the browser choice screen software update from Windows Update. We plan to begin a phased roll-out of the update across Europe the week of March 1."
Public schools to open doors for after-hours Internet access
One of the "national priorities" in the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan is to use high-speed connectivity to "provide more educational opportunities and improve outcomes" for those in rural areas and inner cities.
The FCC said today that 97% percent of public elementary and secondary schools do have Internet access, but speeds are insufficient, and services are being wasted.
How long can Unix hang on? What three high-end platform launches tell us
Recent IT industry events have created a field day for those who think the news tend to come in "threes":
During a five-hour-plus long event highlighting the conclusion of its Sun Microsystems deal, Oracle discussed plans for the company's hardware division, and said it would continue investing in Sun's Sparc- and X64-based systems and storage hardware. The company provided a Sparc road map and said it was planning upgrades for systems based on both the Sparc T series (now made by Oracle) and the Sparc64 chips made by Sun partner Fujitsu. However, there was no discussion of the status of UltraSparc-RK "Rock" processors and related "Supernova" systems, which are rumored to have been discontinued.
Microsoft's mobile dreams aren't dead yet
I read "Windows Phone 7 Series is a lost cause" with great interest. In it, my Betanews colleague Joe Wilcox lays out the reasoning behind his apocalyptic conclusion that Microsoft has used up its ninth life in trying to extend its desktop OS dominance into the mobile OS space.
He makes a number of rational, indeed valid, points about why Microsoft won't be a top-tier mobile OS vendor now, anytime soon, or ever. Microsoft's Windows Mobile franchise has been in freefall for years, thanks largely to a legacy OS that was completely out of tune with today's market, and a product development roadmap marked by countless delays and occasional lipstick-on-a-pig refreshes of the increasingly creaky product. So since it's hard to argue with the facts, with the numbers, and with history, it's also hard to take exception to his thesis.
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