Kitsuneymg - Slashdot User

Apple Settles With Burst For $10 Million

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 26, 2007 @04:00PM from the patent-troll-still-doesn't-look-good-on-the-old-resume dept.

Techdirt is reporting that Apple has settled their video streaming patent problems with Burst.com for the low low price of $10 million (USD). This comes in addition to the $60 million they wrestled away from Microsoft. "Burst's secret sauce is that there is no secret sauce. Burst's patent describes 'faster than real time' streaming. There's simply nothing novel or innovative about this; it's perfectly obvious that if you've got a fat enough pipe, you can download video faster than you play it, buffering the difference. Buffering isn't a new 'technology,' it's a common-sense programming technique that has been used for decades. In a sensible patent system, Burst would have been laughed out of the patent office for claiming they invented such an obvious concept. But in the upside-down world of the USPTO, filing patents on incredibly obvious concepts can net you tens of millions of dollars."

Submission + - Wolves in IT Admin's Clothing (darkreading.com)

Submitted by Kitsuneymg on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @12:02PM

Kitsuneymg writes: Dark Reading takes a look at how companies seek to protect themselves (and their data) from their own IT staff. From the article, it seems they have a long way to go.

But Diodati notes that there is a whole range of administrative passwords built into many scripts and applications that still need to be addressed by access control technologies and practices. "At some point, there's going to be a need to rip embedded passwords out of programs and restrict them," he says. "That will probably come later, after the basic administrative checkout issues are addressed."

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