From The Blog

2001In the recent patent wars between Apple and, well just about everyone else you hear a lot about Prior Art.  This is when someone can point to something that was created or in use before the item in question was patented. For example, if I tried to patent a circular disk intended to hold data, video or music I would not get it because of the CD-ROM, the DVD-RROM etc. So what about Apple’s recent legal action against Samsung? They claimed that the Tab 10.1 was a copy of the iPad and violated their patent.  However, there is plenty or prior art to invalidate the concept design patent for the iPad.

One of the funniest that Samsung has brought to bear in the case is a screen shot taken from the Stanley Kubrick Movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” where two of the astronauts are sitting watching a video feed on a tablet device.  Now Apple fans will say that Apple is allowed to patent this because Mr Kubrick did not! So since they (Apple) spent their hard earned money to take this concept and make it real they deserve the patent.  Well there are two problems with that argument. First of all there were real tablets in existence before the iPad was even put to paper. But the second and one that I find the most ironic is that every movie is by its nature copyrighted. So images, concepts and ideas are considered the property of the copyright holder. This means that Apple violated Copyright when they designed the iPad.
Something to think about while we all wait for more interesting news.

Source CNET

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Not that long ago Microsoft was the victim of an incorrectly assigned certificate. This was issued to more than just Microsoft and caused some havoc with a few firewalls (like Microsoft’s ISA) that check for security certificate validity. Because of the malformed Cert people were not able to get to Hotmail and other secure Microsoft sites or they received an error saying the certificate could not be trusted. Microsoft quickly remedied the issue, but it had an impact.  

certNow we see something similar has happened to Google. A Dutch certificate service by the name of DigiNotar issued a certificate for Google.com to a company that is certainly not Google. The response has been immediate with companies stating that they are going to release patches that will revoke the DigiNotar trust (which is not found in many US systems but is big in Europe apparently.

Some are attributing this attack to the Iranian Government or others inside Iran. This is mostly due to the Comodo issue that happened a few months ago that was claimed by an Iranian Patriot. However, there is no evidence that this was the case this time this could be the work of others, but it does illustrate a fundamental flaw with Security Certificates.  You see as it stands right now a third party is responsible for verification and issuance of the certificate that proves that a website is how it claims it is. It is not all that hard to intercept the confirmation notices in reality. It is also possible that some companies (there are well over 600 Certificate Authorities now) are unscrupulous enough that they might sell off the master keys to a site so that someone could produce their own certificates.

In short there needs to be a serious overhaul of this system to protect against the increasingly sophisticated attacks that are happening on the web.

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Sunday, 28 August 2011 23:19

EDIMAX BR-6258n Nano Wireless Router Impresses us in the Lab Featured

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edm02Wireless networking is one of those things that we all have come to rely on. We tend to expect to be able to connect just about anywhere now. I mean, even McDonalds has wireless now so why shouldn’t we? But what do you do when you come across one of those places that either does not have it, has poor quality (like many hotels) or you are just concerned about your security when on those open networks? Well there are a few companies that have a solution to this and we are going to take a look at one from EDIMAX today. It is one of the world’s smallest 802.11n wireless routers the EDIMAX BR-6258n.

Friday, 26 August 2011 23:27

New Protocl may help to Secure Wireless

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broken-lockSecurity is the bane of every network in the world. It is the reason why so many IT technicians end up burnt out or (in the case of men) bald. We all know that the only secure system is one that does not allow anything (and I mean ANYTHING) to connect, or input to the system. As soon as you connect a system to any type of input device or medium (say a network/the Internet) you open up vulnerabilities.

Even the most sophisticated firewall can be gotten around with time, effort and some creativity. This is all just the wired networks; we have not even begun to talk about wireless networks. These handy security holes create a whole new level stress for the IT technician. After all with not much more than a laptop and the right Lunix ISO you can grab packets out of the air and find out the WEP, WPA and if you are patient enough even WPA2 keys. True you can add RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) and certificates into the mix if you have the budget, but what about the home user? Or even better… what about our cellular networks?

For a long time it was thought that wireless could be secured with simple encryption and trusted networks. Then we found that these data packets can be intercepted in route and either spoofed or blocked creating a security breach. This, in extremely simplistic terms, is a Man-in-the-Middle attack and it is a very dangerous one.

Fortunately some researchers at MIT have developed a protocol that can potentially prevent these be encoding a specific transmission sequence in the originating packet. The sequence is a series of ones and zeros (data and silence) that when put together indicate to the receiving party that this is the correct sender.  It does this in multiple ways to prevent, blocking, Collision, and spoofing of packets which are used by the most common Man-in-the-Middle attacks.  The nice thing about this new protocol is that it can be applied to almost any network including both 4G network types.

Source NetworkWorld

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Friday, 26 August 2011 22:30

IBM builds largest disk array ever

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Hard-Disk-Drive-1There is RAID and then there is RAID!. Well IBM has the latter that is a conglomerate of 200,000 disk drives combined together to make up a 120 Petabyte (not to be confused with Pedabite which has to do with chewing on feet) drive array. IBM built this to accumulate data for weather simulations. We imagine that these would be more than answering what the temp will be on Monday but will likely be for long-term forecast models and of course everyone favorite; global warming.

The array is going to an as yet unnamed client of IBM’s but IBM did say that one day (in the far far future maybe) cloud systems would all have similar storage arrays. For those interested this is not a giant JBOD or even RAID 50 array. This is something new called GPFS that allows the system to almost self-heal. If a single disk begins to fail the system can move the data slowly to a ready spare without the normal rebuild times you expect from other arrays. It can also spread files across multiple disks allow extremely fast read/write/index times.

I wonder if I can put something like this together in the garage…

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screenshot-page-28Apple’s legacy of patent lawsuits might be coming unraveled in the EU. Although the California based company did get an injunction on Samsung selling the Galaxy S, Galaxy S II and Ace it only barely managed that one. The issue that got Samsung caught was the “way” you scroll through the Photo Application on the listed phones. Oddly enough the application in question is not a Samsung app but the default photo app that is released with Android 2.3 (which is the default OS on the phones in question).

Not affected by the ruling were the Galaxy Tab and Tab 10.1 which come with a different flavor of Android. The Judge also appear to have rejected the claim that Samsung copied Apple in the design of the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy S. More than likely this decision was influenced by the fact that the evidence used to support this fantasy of Apple’s was falsified intentionally or not.

Apple also took a blow in that the Judge ruled that Patent No. 1,964,022 is now null and void in the EU. This means that Apple can no longer use it in any legal actions. Patent 1,964,022 cover the “slide to unlock” feature that Apple uses on the iPhone.  Samsung has said that they will replace the software that is in violation of Apple’s patent and then begin selling the phones in the EU again. Apparently investors feel that Samsung will do just fine as Samsung’s stock went up after the verdict while Apple’s fell on the announcement of Steve Jobs’ resignation.

The fact that Samsung is conceding and changing the one application (that is not even theirs) could be an indication that they may have some counter suits of their own planned for Apple and want to remove any bargaining chips from the table before they fire back. Things could get messy for Apple in the next few months especially if the courts in the EU decide to do anything about all that falsified evidence, maybe at Samsung’s request…

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Thursday, 25 August 2011 19:58

EA's Origin may be a little too intrusive

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originWow, file this one under both stupid and scary. It would seem that EA is seriously pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Someone read the full EULA for this new service and has found a clause that is incredibly frightening. We went ahead and downloaded the installer and read and printed the EULA
Under a section marked “2. Consent to Collection and Use of Data”  we found the following;

“You agree that EA may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer (including the Internet Protocol Address), operating system, Application usage (including but not limited to successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online services. EA may also use this information combined with personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and services.  We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a form that does not personally identify you.  IF YOU DO NOT WANT EA TO COLLECT, USE, STORE, TRANSMIT OR DISPLAY THE DATA DESCRIBED IN THIS SECTION, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE APPLICATION.
This and all other data provided to EA and/or collected by EA in connection with your installation and use of this Application is collected, used, stored and transmitted in accordance with EA’s Privacy Policy located at www.ea.com.  To the extent that anything in this section conflicts with the terms of EA’s Privacy Policy, the terms of the Privacy Policy shall control. “

Now, many companies collect hardware and peripheral data along with the installed version of the OS for a customer, but to actually say that a user’s personal information can be used for marketing is a little bit much. We could not find anything that limited this use to EA alone. In fact in EA’s Privacy Policy  (section 5. On Third Party Ad Serving Technology) it says;

“We or third parties operating the advertisement serving technology may use demographic information such as age and gender as well as information logged from your hardware or device to ensure that appropriate advertising is presented within the site, online or mobile product or service and to calculate or control the number of unique and repeat views of a given ad, and/or deliver ads that relate to your interests and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. We or third parties may log data for this purpose including IP address (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), unique device I.D., information about your software, applications and hardware, browser information (and/or information passed via your browser), hardware, machine or device make and model, advertisement(s) served, in game location, length of time an advertisement was visible, other Internet and website usage information, web pages and mobile internet sites which have been viewed by you (as well as date and time), domain type, size of the advertisement, advertisement response (if any), and angle of view. The foregoing data may be used and disclosed per this policy and the privacy policy of the company providing the ad serving technology and to other third parties in a form that does not personally identify you.”


EA then goes on to say “EA will never share your personal information with third parties without your consent. We may, however, share anonymous, non-personal, aggregated and/or public information with third parties. There may be circumstances where you may share information on your own. Please see section XI for more details about your rights to information you share publicly on EA and other third party sites and forums. You may also opt in to allow EA to share your personal information with companies and organizations that provide products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. To opt out of further communications from a marketing partner or sponsor with whom your information has been shared, please contact that partner or sponsor directly.”

The hitch here is that by clicking on the “I agree” check box you are giving your consent.  We wonder how many people will be ok with this once they take a look at all of the facts. We will also be looking at EULA’s from other software distribution companies to see if theirs are any better in the next few days and will let you know what we find. For now we would advise people to take caution with Origin, it is not only the online content distribution application, but the replacement for the EA Downloader for patches and updates… This makes me consider removing some of the EA games that I have.  

The Whole EULA can be seen on our forum in PDF format

Thursday, 25 August 2011 18:39

AMD finally has a new CEO

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Rory-01AMD finally has a new CEO, after multiple ups and downs and more than a few replacements we find former Lenovo President and Chief Operating Officer Rory Read as the number one guy.  According to IBM Rory has an impressive resume that includes 23-year at IBM holding a number of management positions.

AMD’s CEO history has been somewhat murky since Hector Ruiz (the man most people loved to hate) transferred (for lack of a better word) from AMD proper to Global Foundries under the Asset Lite program and AMD put together to lower overhead costs. After Ruiz left Dirk Meyer (one of the men responsible for the Athlon CPU) took over. It was felt that AMD needed to return to its winning roots and that perhaps Myer would be the one to do it. However, legal bills and the after effects of the ATi acquisition hurt AMD who did not return to having a profitable quarter until after Meyer worked out a $1.25 Billion settlement with Intel over their extended Anti-Trust litigation. Meyer left the company in January of this year. Since that time Thomas Seifert has been the acting CEO. Thomas will return to the post of Chief Financial Officer.

We wish Mr. Read well and luck in brining AMD around and hope that he does have the skills to make headway. Still when we see him we will always remember Lenovo’s LePhone…
Rory-02

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viewMicrosoft is looking to pull off a reverse of the way Vista was killed. For those of you that remember Vista (and that should be most of you) you will know that Vista was pretty much dead before it hit the market due to several very negative statements that ended up running around the internet like crazy. It created a phenomenon that we call the repeated truth.  What happened was that these statements were linked and sourced by so many blogs that even though some of the original writers had never even seen the OS it became “fact” that it was flawed. I am not saying that Vista did not have more than its fair share of problems but it was not all bad.

To combat this Microsoft has put a much more visible blog online called “Building Windows 8”. This blog has articles about some of the key features and improvements coming in Windows 8. We have already told you about the improved USB 3.0 stack and the accompanying power management layer. Now we are going to talk about improvements to file management system.

According to Microsoft moving, copying, renaming and deleting data accounts for 50% of the commands used by consumers. This data is really not a shock as it only makes sense when you think about the number of songs downloaded, digital images moved and e-mailed, pictures grabbed from sites like Grumpy Rabbit and others. Because they finally noticed this (and because the smaller and move portable tablets and ultra-thins will have limited space) the Windows 8 Engineers decided to revamp the way that files are manipulated. What they did was make your file management look more like the download manager in IE or FireFox with a few nice extras thrown in.

throughput

The basic view still looks like the typical copy or move window with the exception of the fact that as you add more files to the queue you do not get another window. Instead the new file shows up in the same window making it easier to monitor. The “More details” option has also gotten a face lift. Now when you click on this you get a real-time throughput graph of each pending job which is pretty cool.The last thing the Windows 8 team did was to revamp the copy and replace window. Instead of the boring single thumbnail you now get a complete listing of conflicts and the option to choose what you want to do with each.

replace

This may seem like a little thing on the surface, but in terms of usability and user experience it is huge. I hope that the improvements keep coming and all are like this one.

Source Building Windows 8

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Wednesday, 24 August 2011 20:16

Steve Jobs Resigns from Apple Featured

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News_3d_Apple_Logo_102In a shocking story Steve Jobs announced that he is resigning and will be replaced by Tim Cook (former COO (Chief Operating Officer).  However, while Jobs is leaving the top job at Apple he will remain as Chairman for the company.

Although this is surprising the writing has been on the wall for some time. Jobs has had more than his share of health concerns this last year and he even alluded to it in his resignation letter.

The announcement resulted in a 5% drop in stock when trading picked up after the announcement.The Apple board and staff praised Jobs saying that he has been the guiding force behind their rise to prominence in the tech market. During Jobs’ second reign as CEO he has helped create such iconic devices as the iPad, iPhone and even the whole iDevice Eco System. Critics have called him arrogant and short sighted in his hatred of Adobe’s Flash and in the way he sometimes pushes for products (and patents) that are often questionable.

Although he is staying on as chairman it is important to note that since Tim Cook has been running the company while Jobs is out on Medical Leave Apple has entered more lawsuits and found itself under the legal microscope for potential falsification of evidence.

Source CNN

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