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Microsoft

Submission + - Samba lead dev calls Microsoft dangerous elephant (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: At the annual Linux.conf.au event being held in Wellington, NZ, one of the lead developers for the Samba Team and Google employee, Jeremy Allison, described Microsoft as "an elephant that needs to be turned to stop it trampling the open source community"

Allison has been an outspoken critic of the vendor since he quit Novell over a deal it did with Microsoft that he saw as dangerous to open source intentions. And now he has evolved his argument to incorporate new case studies to explain why Microsoft's use of patents and its general tactics on free software are harmful.

"Microsoft is often compared to the Star Trek icon 'The Borg'. You have this wonderful little Patrick Stewart icon with his Borg headgear on whenever you have Microsoft on a Slashdot story," he is quoted as saying. "I actually think that is completely wrong. We are the Borg — we really are. We integrate anyone's code, we can absorb code, we can take it, modify it, put it out there, re-purpose it — we are wonderful integrators of everyone's technology. But we are much friendlier."

His three case studies which show how the vendor poses a threat to the GPL license are: The OOXML standard; attempts to "corrupt" the open Internet; and the Tom Tom lawsuit.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/333351/illuminating_elephant_open_source_room/
Security

Submission + - Doom-like video surveillance in dev for ports (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: A research and development group down under is working to develop an advanced video surveillance system for ports around the world that uses video superimposed onto a 3D map. With 16 megapixel high definition cameras on a distributed (cabled) network and a proprietary system written in a variety of languages (C++, Python, SQL, etc) the group from NICTA is aiming to allow security teams at the Port of Brisbane — which is 110km long — to monitor shipping movements, cargo and people. By scrolling along a 3D map the security teams can click on a location and then get a real time video feed superimposed onto the map. Authorities from around the world with the right permissions can then access the same system. The main difference from regular surveillance systems is the ability to switch views without having know camera numbers/locations and the one screen view.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/330081/nicta_gets_1_01m_advanced_video_surveillance_system_port_brisbane?fp=16&fpid=1

Submission + - Obama scratching down under for broadband (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: The Obama administration is looking to the southern hemisphere for tips on how to improve the broadband situation in the US. The key telco advisor to the president, Sarah Crawford, has met with Australian telco analysts recently to find out how the Aussies are rolling out their $40 billion+ national broadband network. It is also rumoured that the Obama administration is looking to the Dutch and New Zealand situations for inspiration too.

The article quotes an Aussie analyst as saying: "There needs to be a multiplier effect in the investment you make in telecoms — it should not just be limited to high-speed Internet. That is pretty new and in the US it is nearly communism, that sort of thinking. They are not used to that level of sharing and going away from free-market politics to a situation whereby you are looking at the national interest. In all my 30 years in the industry, this is the first time America is interested in listening to people like myself from outside."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/324041/obama_telecommunications_advisor_keen_nbn_detail?fp=16&fpid=1

Submission + - Canonical's Ubuntu 9.10 RC available (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: Computerworld is reporting Canonical has made available the Release Candidate of its latest Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu 9.10, on the same day Microsoft launched the long-awaited Windows 7.

The article says: "The upcoming Canonical release, which is code-named Karmic Koala, is the latest version of the popular flavor of the Linux OS. The development release on Thursday pushed the OS one step closer to final release, which is due on Oct. 29, according to the company's release schedule Web page.

An image of the OS is available for download on Ubuntu's Web site. Test versions of Karmic Koala RC available for download include the server, desktop and netbook versions"

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/323448/canonical_takes_win_7_ubuntu_9_10_rc?fp=16&fpid=1
Security

Submission + - Wal-mart Hacked in 2006, Details in Wired

Submitted by plover
plover writes: Kim Zetter of Wired documents an extensive hack of Wal-Mart that took place in 2005-2006. She goes into great detail about the investigation and what the investigators found, including that the hackers made copies of their point-of-sale source code, and that they ran l0phtCrack on a Wal-Mart server.

Wal-Mart uncovered the breach in November 2006, after a fortuitous server crash led administrators to a password-cracking tool that had been surreptitiously installed on one of its servers. Wal-Mart’s initial probe traced the intrusion to a compromised VPN account, and from there to a computer in Minsk, Belarus.

Wal-mart has long since fixed the flaws that allowed the compromise, and confirmed that no customer data was lost in the hack.

Programming

Submission + - Interview with Brian Kernighan of AWK/AMPL fame (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: In this interview, Brian Kernighan — who helped popularise C with his book (co-written with the creator Dennis Ritchie) The C Programming Language and contributed to the development of AWK and AMPL — talks about his tips for up and coming programmers, who he thinks are the icons of the programming world, and what his thoughts on Ruby, Perl and Java are.

He also discusses whether the classic book The Practice of Programming, co-written with Rob Pike needs an update. Plus he highlights Bill and Melinda Gates as two people doing great things through computer sciences for the world and says "a typical programmer today spends a lot of time just trying to figure out what methods to call from some giant package and probably needs some kind of IDE like Eclipse or XCode to fill in the gaps. There are more languages in regular use and programs are often distributed combinations of multiple languages. All of these facts complicate life, though it's possible to build quite amazing systems quickly when everything goes right."

Another good quote for programmers is: "Every language teaches you something, so learning a language is never wasted, especially if it's different in more than just syntactic trivia."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/321082/an_inteview_brian_kernighan_co-developer_awk_ampl?cache=4

Submission + - COBOL celebrates 50 years (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
oranghutan
oranghutan writes: "The language used to power most of the world's ATMs, COBOL, is turning 50. It also runs about 75 per cent of the world's business applications, so COBOL should be celebrated for making it to half a century. In cricketing terms, that's a good knock.
The author says:
"COBOLâ(TM)s fate was decided during a meeting of the Short Range Committee, the organisation responsible for submitting the first version of the language in 1959. The meeting was convened after a meeting at the Pentagon first laid down the guidelines for the language.

"Half a century later, Micro Focus published research which showed people still use COBOL at least 10 times throughout the course of an average working day in Australia. Only 18 per cent of those surveyed, however, had ever actually heard of COBOL."

Happy birthday COBOL.

  http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/319269/cobol_turns_50"
IBM

Submission + - SKA telescope to provide a billion PCs worth of pr (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
Sharky2009
Sharky2009 writes: "IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day)."
Programming

Submission + - Martin Odersky: Scala could be the web 2.0 darling (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
inkslinger77
inkslinger77 writes: "Scala looks like it is becoming the web 2.0 darling, popular with Twitter and LinkedIn developers but also heavily utilized in the corporate space. Martin Odersky speaks in detail about the language in this interview. He talks about why it could become the language of choice for social networking platforms, particularly after doing well in the acid test of being used by sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. "Twitter has been able to sustain phenomenal growth, and it seems with more stability than what they had before the switch, so I think that's a good testament to Scala," he said."
Microsoft

Submission + - US court tells Microsoft told to stop selling Word (arnnet.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: A judge in a court in Texas has given Microsoft 60 days to comply with an order to stop selling Word products in their existing state after a patent infringement suit filed by i4i. According to the injunction Microsoft is forbidden from selling Word products that let people create XML documents, which both the 2003 and 2007 versions let you do. An analyst quoted in the article — Michael Cherry from Directions — said: "It's going to take a long time for this kind of thing to get sorted out." Basically, most don't believe the injunction will stop Word being sold as there are ways of getting around it. However, in early 2009 a jury in the Texas court ordered Microsoft to pay i4i US$200 million for infringing the patent. http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/314620/injunction_microsoft_word_unlikely_halt_sales
Programming

Submission + - Android applications on MIPS32 chips (arnnet.com.au)

Submitted by OrangHutan
OrangHutan writes: Google's Android software source code has been offered up for those looking to create applications on MIPS32 chips, which are different from Intel's x86 architecture and used by companies such as Cisco (in its Linksys devices), Motorola (set-top boxes) and Sony (Dvd players). MIPS Technologies made the announcement on Monday and is giving "software developers an early access program for customers, which will give them access to MIPS engineers and specific hardware and software optimizations". The article goes on to say that MIPS made waves at the "Computex electronics exhibition in Taipei by showing off a home media player and a 10.4-inch LCD display with a built-in computer both running Android. They were among the first non-phones to be seen running the Google-developed OS." http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/313655/android_moves_into_home_entertainment?fp=4194304&fpid=1

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