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Submission + - Eola's Web Patent Claim Invalidated by US Court

Submitted by Ajay Anand
Ajay Anand writes: A US court has upheld a decision to invalidate a tech firm's claim to own technologies underpinning the web.

Eolas's claims revolved around a series of patents it had been using to extract licence fees from hi-tech firms such as Microsoft and Oracle.

However, Eolas's claims were disputed by many others including web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

The ruling will also mean an end to many other lawsuits Eolas mounted against hi-tech firms.

Comment Re:Marketing not cutting edge (Score 5, Informative) 74

Packaging in this sense is referring to grouping the built binaries and other files into a set of installable files that you can install (i.e. the rpm files in Fedora, deb files in Debian and msi files on Windows). These take care of specifying the dependencies and upgrades.

The discussion in TFA is how to group those packages so they are more manageable. For example, a core layer is critical for running the OS (containing the kernel and other essential software), like the projects built in the Linux From Scratch manual.

This then allows those groups to update and release independently of each other. These updates ensure that the packages in the group work well together. That is, you usually need to make sure that gcc, binutils and glibc all work well and update together so they would be in a group together.

Submission + - All pornography in the United Kingdom to be censored by default (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Arguing that pornography is "corroding childhood", British Prime Minister David Cameron is to announce that UK Internet Service Providers must filter all online pornography unless users decide to opt-in to receiving it. In addition, pornography depicting rape will be outlawed, and a database of "banned child porn images" will be constructed to identify anyone viewing these images. Cameron also wants search engines to pop up warning messages when people appear to be searching for prohibited content. He concludes, "This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence."

This is not an April Fool.

Submission + - Apple Developer Website "hacked"

Submitted by RdeCourtney
RdeCourtney writes: Apple has just sent out an email to all developers:

Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.

In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.

Submission + - PayPal doesn't like virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin. (litetree.com)

Submitted by LiteTree
LiteTree writes: We received a call from Paypal today, a very friendly young lady named Amy called to inform us that we would no long be allowed on the Paypal network. The reason she gave was that they no longer allowed MSB (money service business). Makes me wonder if they are feeling the heat from or crushing the competition from Litecoins and Bitcoins

Submission + - HP are STILL regionalising their printers 2

Submitted by norite
norite writes: I recently moved from the UK to Canada, and took my HP3050 printer with me. The removals firm told me to discard any printer cartridges as they could leak, and would not ship our things.

After our move, I started looking for cartridges, but bizarrely, I couldn't find the correct numbered ones, although I did find equivalent ones that would fit our model of printer. Some further research revealed that these would not work in our UK purchased printer, because like DVD players, the printer was region coded. I would have to contact HP and hope I found a representative who would understand the situation, (undoubtedly spending ages on the phone) as not many of them do and get it reset to the new region. Unfortunately, I had already discarded the cartridges so I could not print off any initial printer config pages for them to use to give me a new region code.

Fortunately, I've avoided the headache that this person went through 3 years ago I've ended up ordering much cheaper cartridges from the UK and several refill kits. I had no idea HP did this sort of sneaky, underhand tactic, and all it has achieved is that I'll probably never buy another HP product again. It seems there's no obvious benefit to consumers in HP doing this, other than it prevents them buying cheaper inks and therefore maximising profits, so what do the Slashdot community think of printer regionalisation?

Submission + - Microsoft's share suffered biggest crash since 2000 ! (fool.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Microsoft shares hit by biggest sell-off since 2000, $30 billion market cap wiped out

Shares of Microsoft dropped 11.4 percent today, representing the biggest single-day drop in over 13 years. The last time it occurred was on April 24, 2000, when shares plunged 15.6 percent as the world's largest software company locked itself in an antitrust dispute with the U.S. government. Since then, Microsoft has never experienced such a shelling, until today that is. This came after the software company posted dismal quarterly results due to weak demand for its latest Windows system and poor sales of its Surface tablet.

A lot of links available, below is only a very limited list

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/19/us-microsoft-research-idUSBRE96I0MO20130719

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/07/19/why-microsoft-shares-got-totally-crushed.aspx

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/it-opinion/steve-ballmers-eternal-quest-to-rescue-microsoft-20130719-hv11h.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/07/19/microsoft-doesnt-fear-the-post-pc-world-bank-on-77b-in-cash-and-ballmers-shift-to-devices-and-cloud/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/07/18/microsoft-quarterly-earnings/2553649/

https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2892284

Submission + - Microsoft Bug Bounties Flow To Googlers (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: Lucre from Microsoft's newly minted bug bounty program is lining the pockets of Google researchers. The Security Ledger reports that two Google employees earned the distinction of receiving some of the first (official) monetary rewards under the company’s bounty program.

Fermín Serna, a researcher in Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters, told The Security Ledger that he received a bounty issued by Microsoft this week for information on an Internet Explorer information leak that could allow a malicious hacker to bypass Microsoft’s Address Space Layout Randomization (or ASLR) technology.

His bounty followed the first ever (officially) paid to a researcher by Microsoft (https://securityledger.com/2013/07/microsoft-set-to-pay-first-bug-bounty-for-ie-hole/): a bounty that went to Serna’s colleague, Ivan Fratic, a Google engineer based in Zurich, Switzerland, for information about a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 11 Preview. Fratic (@ifsecure) acknowledged the honor in a July 11 post on his Twitter account.

In an e-mail exchange with The Security Ledger, Serna declined to discuss the details of his discovery until Microsoft had a patch ready to release. But he said that any weakness in ASLR warranted attention. “Mainly all security mitigations in place depend on ASLR. So bringing that one down, weakens the system a lot and makes it easy the exploitation of other vulnerabilities,” he said.

Microsoft announced its first bounty on July 10 and said it had many more submissions that were likely to earn pay-outs. Serna said that other bounties had been issued in addition to the one he received. Microsoft told The Security Ledger that it has, in accordance with the program, "notified some researchers that they will receive bounties."

As for his bounty, Serna (whose resume includes work for Microsoft on the MSRC Engineering team) said it was “way less” than the maximum $11,000 bounty for a full, working exploit that bypasses all the Windows 8 mitigations (which includes ASLR as well as the Data Execution Prevention or DEP technology). “But stillnice!” He plans to donate his windfall to a local animal shelter in Seattle. Awwww!!!!

Submission + - Yahoo Censors Tumblr Porn (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by coolnumbr12
coolnumbr12 writes: When Yahoo purchased Tumblr in May, Tumblr founder David Karp said Tumblr wouldn’t be changing, and Yahoo CEOMarissa Mayer said, “Part of our strategy here is to let Tumblr be Tumblr.” But a new search policy went into effect Thursday that excludes all adult blogs from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines by disabling indexing of anything it tags as “adult.” The policy effectively makes the content and 10 percent of Tumblr users completely invisible.

Submission + - How Microsoft's Lack of Innovation is Killing Nokia (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Nokia is struggling, and not because it is making bad smartphones, but because it made a bad choice two-and-a-half years ago. It is stuck with Windows Phone and according to Ian Fogg from IHS Screen Digest Microsoft is to blame for the failure of the platform: "[Windows Phone] has changed fairly little since Windows Phone 7 launched back in August 2010, and the difference between Windows Phone and Android, or Windows Phone and the iPhone in [terms of] software has widened in that period, not narrowed. One of Nokia's biggest challenges is that Microsoft is not innovating quickly enough." Worrying times for the Finnish company...

Submission + - Microsoft is sitting on six million unsold Surface tablets (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Microsoft took everyone by surprise last year with the Surface tablet. It was something completely new from the company everyone knew as a software company. However nine months later and the sheen has worn off the Surface tablet and Microsoft's financial results on Thursday revealed it has taken a $900 million write down on the Surface RT tablets, leading David Gilbert in IBTimes to estimate it is sitting on a stockpile of six million unsold tablets.

Submission + - FairSearch attacks Open Source/GPL (groklaw.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google achieved its dominance in the smartphone operating system market by giving Android to device-makers for ‘free.’ But in reality, Android phone makers who want to include must-have Google apps such as Maps, YouTube or Play are required to pre-load an entire suite of Google mobile services and to give them prominent default placement on the phone, the complaint says. This disadvantages other providers, and puts Google’s Android in control of consumer data on a majority of smartphones shipped today.

Google’s predatory distribution of Android at below-cost makes it difficult for other providers of operating systems to recoup investments in competing with Google’s dominant mobile platform, the complaint says.

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