ozmanjusri - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft security vulnerabilities are being leaked, leaving users vulnerable. (technologyspectator.com.au)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Monday March 19, 2012 @02:18AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Proof-of-concept code for exploiting a recently discovered flaw has appeared on a hacking website after it was shared with Microsoft Active Protections Program partners. The code for the Remote Desktop Protocol vulnerability appears to have leaked from one of the security companies that get advance warnings about security holes in Windows.

The incident brings into question Microsoft's program, which is intended to alert security partners before the patches themselves are released. The idea is to give them time to prioritise and test the fixes, however in this instance, it left their customers vulnerable."

Submission + - US Justice Dept threatens to sue Apple for colluding to inflate eBook prices. (wsj.com)

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ozmanjusri

on Monday March 12, 2012 @12:25AM

ozmanjusri writes: "The US Justice Department has warned Apple that it intends to sue them for colluding with several large publishers to inflate the price of eBooks, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While all parties concerned declined to comment, it appears the lawsuit results from Apple's push to move eBook sales to an "agency model," where Apple would take 30% of the publishers set price. Crucially, Apple also stipulated that publishers could not allow rival retailers to undercut them.

Steve Jobs was quoted as saying of the agreement "You set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway"."

Submission + - Apple takes on Google. (chosun.com)

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ozmanjusri

on Wednesday January 25, 2012 @02:23AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Apple is suing Samsung again. The litigious computer giant is claiming the Galaxy Nexus, co-produced by Samsung Electronics and Google, violates it's slide-to-unlock patent.

While Apple suing an Android vendor is no surprise to anyone, this is the first time they've gone after a core feature of Android 4 itself, and on the strictly stock Nexus line of phones. Apple has filed the claim in the same Mannheim Regional Court Regional Court, which recently ruled Apple was not infringing one of the seven 3G standard-related patents owned by Samsung."

Submission + - Android ICS will require 16GB RAM to compile (tabletroms.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday October 23, 2011 @07:12PM

ozmanjusri writes: "New smartphones may be lightweight, compact objects, but their OSs are anything but.

Ice Cream Sandwich will need workstations with no less than 16 GB RAM to build the source code, twice the amount GingerBread needed. It will take 5 hours to compile on a dual quad-core 2+GHz workstation, and need 80GB disk space for all AOSP configs.

Android developers are also being warned to be cautious of undocumented APIs

In almost every case, there’s only one reason for leaving APIs undocumented: We’re not sure that what we have now is the best solution, and we think we might have to improve it, and we’re not prepared to make those commitments to testing and preservation.
We’re not claiming that they’re “Private” or “Secret” — How could they be, when anyone in the world can discover them? We’re also not claiming they’re forbidden: If you use them, your code will compile and probably run.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/10/ics-and-non-public-apis.html"

Submission + - The Stealthy Fifth Core (nvidia.com)

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ozmanjusri

on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @09:54AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Nvidia's next-generation quad core Tegra processor, codenamed “Project Kal-El,” has fifth core that runs at a lower frequency and operates at exceptionally low power. Kal-El completely powers down its four performance-tuned cores for less power-hungry tasks like web reading, music playback and video playback. As computing needs increase, the CPU progressively turns on each of the high performance cores.

The Variable SMP architecture is also completely OS transparent, which means that operating systems and applications don’t need to be redesigned to take advantage of the fifth core"

Submission + - Will Microsoft's Secured Boot prevent Linux use? (softpedia.com) 4

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ozmanjusri

on Monday September 19, 2011 @01:08AM

ozmanjusri writes: "A new feature in the latest W8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 looks likely to prevent dual booting.

With Secured Boot, according to Microsoft;
“Windows will authenticate boot components to prevent any attempt to start malware before the operating system is up and running, If the component isn’t correctly signed by Microsoft, Windows will begin remediation and start the Windows Recovery Environment, which will automatically try to x your operating system. Measured boot Windows can further validate the boot process beyond Secured Boot. The startup processes are now signed, protected, and measured. They’re then stored in the TPM chip to prevent rootkit or malware infection”

This could mean that unless Linux distros are signed by Microsoft, they will not be permitted to boot."

Submission + - NASA Balloon crashes on take-off (ninemsn.com.au)

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ozmanjusri

on Thursday April 29, 2010 @01:05AM

ozmanjusri writes: "A NASA-sponsored balloon was caught by wind gusts as it was being prepared for launch at the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre (in Australia) at 8am this morning. The balloon was blown away from the launch area before it hit a spectator's car and collapsed.

Most of the equipment on board, worth millions of dollars, was destroyed in the crash."

Submission + - Followup: CSIRO reinvests patent earnings. (theage.com.au)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Wednesday October 21, 2009 @03:41AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Will all the Slashdotters who called the recent CSIRO win a triumph for patent trolls please step forward.

The Australian government research agency has announced it will reinvest the windfall back into wireless research.

"It's very important that when you have a success like this, you re-invest it back into the wellspring," CSIRO boss Megan Clark said."

Submission + - Sidekick data loss: Sabotage or dogfooding? (visualstudiomagazine.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday October 18, 2009 @12:52AM

" rel="nofollow">ozmanjusri writes: "Questions are being asked about a dramatic disconnect between Microsoft's management and engineering teams.

A somewhat inflammatory article by Appleinsider points makes claims that longstanding management issues and a culture of "dogfooding" could have been to blame for Microsoft's recent catastrophic client data loss. Interestingly, they also claim that there may be evidence that could suggest the failure was the result of a deliberate act of sabotage.

According to the article, an un-named source has stated that a pre-existing project group called "Pink" was operating independently inside Microsoft designing a Zune-phone. The Pink team took over the Danger acquisition, with disastrous results.

"When Danger was acquired, Pink was already a going concern but had no engineering staff. Microsoft discovered that Danger had unbreakable contractual obligations that meant they couldn't turn us into warm bodies working on Pink, so they staffed up internally," the source reported. "By the time Danger engineering became available to work on Pink a year later, innumerable bad decisions had already been made by clueless idiots."

The source also claims the Pink project was failing because of a management decision to include UMTS and CDMA phones in the same form factor, a technical nightmare."

Submission + - Microsoft's GPL code because of breach. (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Thursday July 23, 2009 @04:36AM

ozmanjusri writes: "While Microsoft presented its recent embrace of the GPL as "a break from the ordinary", and the press spoke of them as going "to great lengths to engage the open source community", as is often the case with Microsoft, it turns out they had an ulterior motive.

According to Stephen Hemminger, an engineer with Vyatta, Microsoft's Hyper-V used open-source components in a network driver and the company released the code to avoid legal action over a GPL violation.

Microsoft's decision to embrace the GPL was welcomed by many in the open source community, but their failure to honestly explain the reason behind the release will have squandered this opportunity to build trust, something which is sadly lacking in most people's dealings with Microsoft."

Submission + - Ubuntu forces woman to drop out of college (wkowtv.com) 2

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @09:37PM

ozmanjusri writes: "A woman who paid more than $1,100 for a Dell laptop with Ubuntu installed has dropped out of online classes at MATC because her new OS doesn't act like Windows.

She was unable to load her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD, and can't install Microsoft Word, which meant she wasn't able to meet the requirements for MATC's online classes. As a result, she had to drop out of the fall and spring semesters.

"I'm extremely frustrated," said Schubert. "I wanted to get back to school, but I needed a computer to be able to do that."
"

Submission + - Dell helps Microsoft: Vista to XP upgrade now $150 (pcworld.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Sunday December 14, 2008 @01:23AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Dell has tripled the charge to upgrade Vista PCs to XP.

Under current licensing "downgrade" agreements, system builders can install XP Pro instead of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, however Dell has opted for a surcharge of $150 over the price of Vista for the older but more popular XP Professional operating system.

Rob Enderle says the downgrade fees could potentially be disastrous for Microsoft;

The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," says Enderle. "Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop.
"

Submission + - Microsoft's "Softwear", a new clothing ran (boygeniusreport.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Monday December 08, 2008 @10:52PM

ozmanjusri writes: "Microsoft will be launching a new clothing range on December 15. The T shirts, which feature the MS-DOS logo in a unique font, photos of Bill Gates, a BSOD-coloured T with the word "Microsoft" printed on the front, and more Microsoft nostalgia, are being marketed by Crispin Porter & Borgusky, MS's new advertising agency.

Many of the shirts are designed by artist and rapper Common and are intended to add some street cred to Microsoft's somewhat jaded image. Pricing is yet to be announced."

Submission + - Windows drops below 90% market share. (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @09:07AM

ozmanjusri writes: "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90% market share, according to Net Applications Inc.

Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. The stats show that while some customers are "upgrading" from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground.

Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing, Vince Vizzaccarro, suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use; "The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up," he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the U.S, a result which emphasises the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft Inc."

Submission + - iPhone 3G glitch blamed on secrecy (smh.com.au)

Submitted by

ozmanjusri

on Tuesday August 12, 2008 @11:56PM

ozmanjusri writes: "Apple iPhone 3G users in Australia, Europe and the US have flocked to tech forums with stories of slow connection speeds and dropped calls.

An anonymous source at an Australian telco said a flaw in the device may have been fixed if not for Apple's culture of secrecy, which meant that meant telcos were only provided with iPhone 3Gs the day before it went to market. That left them with no time to test it thoroughly on their networks.

Others believe the telcos will not be able to solve the problem, which may be due to issues with the chipset.
Nomura Securities analyst Richard Windsor writes:

"We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier."

According to Windsor, the problem most likely won't be solved with firmware updates, which means Apple might have to replace the chips to meet performance promises."

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