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Microsoft

Microsoft Responds to 'Save XP' Petition 440

Posted by samzenpus from the we-like-the-old-ways dept.
DaMassive writes "Computerworld Australia is running a story with a response from Microsoft to Infoworld's SAVE XP petition Web site, which has gathered over 75,000 signatures so far. Apparently Microsoft is aware of the petition, but says it is "listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs, that's what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us" — a somewhat strange response given that the vast majority of people signing the petition ARE Microsoft customers! The Save XP movement has attracted the attention of the software giant, despite its claims that Vista has sold more than 100 million copies and its adoption rate is in line with the company's expectations. "We're seeing positive indicators that we're already starting to move from the early adoption phase into the mainstream and that more and more businesses are beginning their planning and deployment of Windows Vista," the company said. Nevertheless vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and more recently NEC, all offer the opportunity to downgrade to XP Pro."
Linux Business

Submission + - Wal-Mart's $200 Linux PC Sells Out (ecogeek.org)

Submitted by
hankmt
hankmt writes: "About a week ago Wal-Mart began selling a $200 linux machine running on a 1.5 ghz Via C7 processor and 512 megs of RAM. While the specs are useless for vista, it works blazingly fast on Ubuntu with the Enlightenment Window Manager. The machine is now officially sold out of their online warehouses, and the product sales page at WalMart.com is full of glowing reviews from new and old linux users alike."
Security

RealPlayer Zero-Day Flaw Under Attack 150

Posted by Zonk from the my-kingdom-for-a-patch dept.
openOption writes "ZDNet is reporting that hackers are actively exploiting a zero-day hole in RealNetworks' RealPlayer media player, a software program installed on tens of millions of Windows computers worldwide. The in-the-wild attacks targets a previously unknown and unpatched ActiveX vulnerability in the way RealPlayer interacts with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. The flaw is causing drive-by malware downloads when an IE user simply browsers to a maliciously rigged Web page."
The Internet

Submission + - Will Web TV be the death of the Internet? 1

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Analyst groups and Cisco have come out saying that the internet is heading for a crash unless it increases its bandwidth capabilities which are being strangled by the increased use of Web TV.

Stan Schatt, research director at ABI said: "Uploading bandwidth is going to have to increase, and the cable providers are going to get killed on bandwidth as HD programming becomes more commonplace." He added that the solution to the problem is to change to digital switching and move to IPTV. "They will be brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century," he said.

Cisco weighed into the argument, adding that it had found American video websites currently transmit more data per month than the entire amount of traffic sent over the internet in 2000.
Education

Submission + - Internet no longer dangerous, school boards decide (blorge.com) 1

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Good news. The National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members, just released a report declaring fears of the internet are overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, "the researchers found exactly one student who reported they'd actually met a stranger from the internet without their parents' permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent of all students.") The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was. Now instead they're urging schools to include social networks in their curriculum!"

Feed Techdirt: Broadband Speeds Averaging About 1/3 Of The Speed On The Box (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
By this point, everyone should know that broadband providers always provide "up to" speeds with the connections they sell. By "up to" they usually mean under perfect conditions that you will never, ever see. But just what kinds of speeds should you actually expect? A new study in the UK found that broadband speeds tend to be about a third of the "up to" speed. The worst speeds were about one-eighth of the promoted speed. As the article linked here notes, is it really any surprise that only 30% of people claim they're satisfied with their broadband? While it still seems like this should be false advertising, so far various regulatory bodies have said that the "up to" language is perfectly legal, no matter how misleading it may be. How hard would it be for an ISP to advertise expected speeds? I would imagine it would have happier, more loyal customers who know that the ISP is actually being honest, rather than hyping up speeds that will never be delivered.
Software

EU Approves New Stricter Anti-Piracy Directive 163

Posted by CowboyNeal from the don't-even-think-about-piracy dept.
A Pirate writes "The European Parliament has voted for the new report submitted by Italian parliament member Nicola Zingaretti that criminalize even attempts to infringe on copyrights. Even if the new directive excludes end-users from the law it will still criminalize sites like YouTube and practically all P2P services, and even the developers of these services. The exceptions beside the end-users' personal use, includes studies and research. While the European Parliament apparently describes the new directive as a an attempt to harmonize the copyright laws of the European Countries others have been describing it as a lobby directive."
Linux

Beryl User Interface for Linux Reviewed 271

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yo-ho-ho-and-a-beryl-of-rum dept.
techie writes "OSWeekly.com has published a review of Beryl, a very cool looking UI for Linux. Matt Hartley writes, "This release, in my opinion, was the most over-hyped and bug-filled to date. You will have to really hit Technorati to see more of what I'm talking about, but Feisty is as buggy as the beta I tested a short time ago. After completely tossing into the wilds of the ubber-buggy "network-manager," anything running with Edgy supported RT2500 driver shows up, but it will not connect without a special script. Those of you who are on Feisty and need help with your RT2500 cards are welcome to e-mail me for the bash script."

25th Anniversary of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 310

Posted by CmdrTaco from the never-even-seen-one dept.
Alioth writes "Twenty five years ago today, Sinclair Research launched Britain's most popular home computer of the 1980s — the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Costing about one third of the price of its rivals such as the Commodore 64 while having a faster CPU and a better BASIC interpreter, the machine sold well in many guises throughout the 1980s and had more than a staggering 9,000 software titles. The machine may well have done well in the US too, had Timex — the company building the machine under license in the US — not already been in financial trouble and about to fold. The machine was also extremely successful in Russia, although not for Sinclair Research — because the Russians made dozens of different clones of the machine, and did so right into the mid 1990s. The machine still has a healthy retro scene, including the development of new commercial software by Cronosoft, and new hardware such as the DivIDE, which allows a standard PC hard disc or compact flash card to be connected to the machine."
The Courts

Couple Who Catch Cop Speeding Could Face Charges 876

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the turnabout-isn't-fair-play dept.
a_nonamiss writes "A Georgia couple, apparently tired of people speeding past their house, installed a camera and radar gun on their property. After it was installed, they caught a police office going 17MPH over the posted limit. They brought this to the attention of the local police department, and are now being forced to appear in front of a judge to answer to charges of stalking."
Security

Solaris Telnet 0-day vulnerability 342

Posted by Hemos from the frantically-trying-to-fix dept.
philos writes "According to SANS ISC, there's a vulnerability in Solaris 10 and 11 telnet that allows anyone to remotely connect as any account, including root, without authentication. Remote access can be gained with nothing more than a telnet client. More information and a Snort signature can be found at riosec.com. Worse, this is almost identical to a bug in AIX and Linux rlogin from way back in 1994."
Patents

Microsoft Getting Paid for Patents in Linux? 377

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
kripkenstein noted an Interview with Jeremy Allison where the interviewer asks 'One of the persistent rumors that's going around is that certain large IT customers have already been paying Microsoft for patent licensing to cover their use of Linux, Samba and other free software projects.' and Jeremy responds "Yes, that's true, actually. I mean I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using [...] But they're not telling anyone about it. They're completely doing it off the record."
Operating Systems

Gentoo On Server Considered Harmful 372

Posted by kdawson from the not-a-desktop dept.
Siker writes in to point out his blog post — Why Gentoo Shouldn't Be On Your Server — which seems to have stirred up a lot of discussion, including a thread on the Gentoo forums. From the post: "I firmly believe in updating server software only when you need to. If you don't need new features, and things are working, why change anything? If you update anything you will undoubtedly need to update configuration files. You will need to fix things that break in the upgrade process... This is hard with Gentoo. Gentoo wants you to change a lot of stuff. It wants to be bleeding edge."
The Courts

Apple Sues Over iPhone Smartphone Skins 197

Posted by Zonk from the don't-talk-about-that-thing-we-don't-like dept.
ghostcorps writes "Australian Newspaper 'The Age' reports that developers of iPhone skins (skins for smartphones that resemble the iPhone) have been legally attacked by Apple. Beyond that, bloggers who have reported on the skins have been threatened with legal action as well. From the article: 'Ironically, Apple's attempts to have the files removed from the web have only given the skins greater publicity, and they have already begun spreading to other websites. The issue marks a distinct change in tone for many bloggers and journalists, who just last week praised Apple for its 'revolutionary' and 'game-changing' phone despite being unable to conduct a proper hands-on test of the product.'"

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