Archive for August, 2007
« Previous EntriesMicrosoft Settles Patent Spat with Eolas (NewsFactor)
Friday, August 31st, 2007Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
An eight-year court battle between Microsoft and Eolas Technologies has come to an end. The software giant settled with Eolas for an undisclosed amount to put the case in the annals of intellectual property war history. ADVERTISEMENT
The drama began in February 1999, when the University of California spin-off filed suit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Eolas claimed that Microsoft trespassed on its plug-in and applet technologies. Specifically, the company accused Microsoft of using its patented technologies in Windows 98, Windows 95, and Internet Explorer, and said it wanted royalties on the sales of the products.
Although the companies aren't publicizing details of the settlement, a letter Eolas COO Mark Swords wrote to the company's shareholders offers some dollars and cents information. Shareholders will gain a $50 to $72 per share dividend thanks to the Microsoft payout. "We hope that you will understand we simply cannot now or in the future provide any confidential details regarding the terms of the settlement," Swords' letter stated.
Endangering the Internet?
Eolas shareholders will likely welcome the dividend, and Microsoft seems relieved to have the suit behind it. "We're pleased to be able to reach an amicable resolution in this long-running dispute with Eolas and the University of California," Microsoft said in a statement. "Microsoft values intellectual property and believes that the proper protection and licensing of IP enables companies and individuals to obtain a return on investment, sustain business, and encourages future innovations and investment in the I.T. industry."
Despite the settlement, Microsoft maintained throughout the battle that the Eolas patent is not valid. In Microsoft's view, the potential enforcement of the Eolas patent created confusion that could have impacted the use of the Web. Microsoft claimed that this concern was shared by others in the industry — including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) — and requested a reexamination by the U.S. Patent Office. Microsoft, in the meantime, did make changes to Internet Explorer in 2005 to avoid the infringement allegations.
It is not clear whether the settlement is less or greater than the $521 million verdict against Microsoft in 2003. A federal appeals court overturned part of that verdict, offering Microsoft another opportunity to argue its case that Eolas' patent was invalid because others had developed the invention. The retrial was scheduled to begin in June, but was postponed to continue negotiations.
A Win-Win?
Charles Baker, a partner with the law firm of Porter & Hedges, LLP, said he was not surprised that the case settled. Most do, he said, because it's often easier to resolve a patent dispute through a business transaction than a lawsuit.
"We see more patent lawsuits filed and for a variety of reasons," Baker said. "There are a lot of small companies or inventors out there who hope to get a settlement from these suits. Big companies, at times, are willing to pay some sort of nuisance value for these suits to go away."
Baker is not saying that Eolas is what is known as a patent troll — a company that holds patents and waits for opportunities to sue firms that have bulging corporate purses. Nevertheless, after an eight-year battle that included a defeat in court, Microsoft might have been willing to settle rather than pay royalties on all the copies of Windows it has sold since 1999 if it lost the appeal.
Germany wants to spy on suspects via Web (AP)
Friday, August 31st, 2007By MELISSA EDDY, Associated Press Writer 33 minutes ago
BERLIN - German officials on Friday defended a proposal to use “Trojan horse” software to secretly monitor potential terror suspects’ hard drives, amid fierce debate over whether the measures violate civil liberties. ADVERTISEMENT
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to include the measure in a broader security law being considered by conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government.
Schaeuble defended the tactic in an interview with n-tv television Friday, calling the ongoing debate “completely exaggerated,” underlining that judicial approval would be required before the measures could be used. “It’s about a few isolated cases.”
Carried in e-mails that appear to come from other government offices, the software would allow authorities to investigate suspects’ Internet use and the data stored on their hard drives without their knowledge.
Use of the government-produced technology for spying on terror suspects “will cover a serious and scandalous hole in our information that has arisen through technical changes in recent years,” Stefan Kaller, a spokesman for Schaeuble told reporters.
The proposal stems from a Federal Court decision earlier this year to block clandestine remote searches of suspect computers until there was a law governing the practice.
It has met with strong criticism from opposition parties and civil liberties groups.
Max Stadler, a security expert with the opposition Free Democrats, insists such practices would weaken citizens’ trust in government.
“It is an invasion into the private sphere,” Stadler told ZDF television.
Schaeuble’s office has not yet released a copy of the bill, but elements of it that were leaked to German media include allowing investigators to send e-mail messages that appear to be from the Finance Ministry or the Youth Services Office, but which actually carry the Trojan horse software.
Thomas Steg, a spokesman for Merkel, said the chancellor supports the broader bill, but expects “a difficult and intensive discussion with the ministries, the coalition and the experts” on it before it is passed into law.
Hartmut Pohl, an expert with Germany’s Association for Computer Technology, expressed doubt that the measure would succeed, pointing out that most suspects are technologically savvy enough to recognize and remove the Trojans from their hard drives.
The government has not released any details of exactly how the software would operate.
In February, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice rejected federal prosecutors’ attempts to search hard drives through the Internet. Prosecutors had argued that the legal reasoning used to allow telephone surveillance and other electronic eavesdropping techniques should also be applied to evidence gathering over the Internet.
Germany, unlike Britain or Spain, has been spared a major terrorist attack, but German and U.S. officials have warned recently of increased dangers, prompting tighter security measures.
In recent weeks, German troops and others working in Afghanistan have been targeted by Islamic radicals in suicide bombings and kidnappings aimed at forcing the withdrawal of the nation’s 3,000 troops deployed with the international security force there.
The heightened threat level only makes the matter more urgent, Kaller said, insisting that, “Any delay can mean a security risk.”
(me-dm)
Registry Medics 2.0
Friday, August 31st, 2007Registry Medics 2.0
2007/8/31 16:19:13 (7 downloads)
RegistryMedics is the software of reference when it comes to fixing Windows Errors. After over three years of R&D, Registry Medics has developed a tool that will solve errors that come from corrupted installations, incomplete registry entries, internet browsing, sudden shutdowns among many others.
Software License: Shareware
Operating Systems Support: Microsoft Windows
Download Link: Registry Medics 2.0
Homepage: Registry Medics
Version ChangeLog:
Not Available
WindowsRescue Gamers Edition 1.0
Friday, August 31st, 2007WindowsRescue Gamers Edition 1.0
2007/8/31 16:05:28 (7 downloads)
WindowsRescue Gamers Edition (WRGE) is a versatile and powerful reinstallation tool that enables the user to reload all his games, updates, patches, settings and saved games onto a new Windows installation in a ready-to-run state.
Software License: Shareware
Operating Systems Support: Microsoft Windows
Download Link: WindowsRescue Gamers Edition 1.0
Homepage: WindowsRescue Gamers Edition
Version ChangeLog:
Not Available
Movavi Flash Converter 2.0
Friday, August 31st, 2007Movavi Flash Converter 2.0
2007/8/31 16:02:30 (18 downloads)
Movavi Flash Converter is a great tool allowing to download and save video in the Flash (.flv) format from YouTube and other popular video sharing websites! With Movavi Flash Converter in just several minutes you will save online flash video to your iPod, PSP, brand-new iPhone or any other cellphone,computer, the list goes on. You can even save whole collections of your favorite viral flash videos and convert them to the format best for burning on DVDs.
Software License: Shareware
Operating Systems Support: Microsoft Windows
Download Link: Movavi Flash Converter 2.0
Homepage: Movavi Flash Converter
Version ChangeLog:
Download Flash video from YouTube and other popular video-sharing websites (the list is growing almost every day!)
Save online Flash video to all popular video formats: AVI, MPEG, MP4, H.264, MOV, WMV, RM, FLV.
Convert FLV video files held on your computer.
Store video on any mobile device - iPod, Apple TV, PSP, Zune, laptop, PDA, iPhone, any other cellphone.
Extract audio tracks and save them as MP3, WMA or WAV files.
Handy preview mode.
Batch conversion.
Ready-made presets for all major output formats.
Automatic URL insertion.
Vista compatible
Sun: Coders key to Solaris' rise (InfoWorld)
Friday, August 31st, 2007China Martens 2 hours, 53 minutes ago
San Francisco (IDGNS) - Sun has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java. To come close to reaching that goal, Sun needs to reach out more to developers and endeavor to overcome some long-held prejudices against the OS. ADVERTISEMENT
Sun's Java programming language, which debuted in 1995, is present in most of today's PCs, mobile devices, and embedded systems. The vendor is now seeking that same kind of omnipresence for Solaris, its flavor of Unix. Sun intends to take the operating system into markets where it hasn't traditionally been a force, such as desktop and embedded systems, according to Marc Hamilton, vice president of Solaris marketing at Sun. The vendor is also keen to position OpenSolaris as a real alternative to Linux.
"There's an enormous momentum building behind Solaris," said Ian Murdock, chief operating platforms officer at Sun. He joined Sun in March after serving as the CTO of the Linux Foundation. Murdock's also the creator of the Debian Linux distribution and is keen to take the lessons he's learned in the Linux community and apply them to Solaris.
Sun is preparing to release OpenSolaris binaries early next year in a distribution code-named "Project Indiana" that will be similar to Linux distributions. The work, which is getting under way in the OpenSolaris community, is aimed at creating a single CD installation of the basic OS and desktop environment, giving developers the option to install additional software from network repositories. Developers also will be able to create limited releases of the distribution targeted at attendees of a particular event.
The whole idea behind Indiana is to build more of a developer community around Solaris, Murdock said. "How can we lower the barriers to programmers and run OpenSolaris as an ideal open-source operating system not originating from Sun?" he asked. Indiana will also enable faster release cycles with a new version appearing every six months.
With Indiana in place, Sun will adopt a two-tier development model, Murdock said, establishing a clear path from Indiana and OpenSolaris — for developers and early adopters — to Solaris, which will be largely used by more conservative enterprise users. The challenge will be delivering what's effectively a single Solaris platform to two very different communities, he added.
Sun has already managed various versions of Java, including mobile, standard, and enterprise editions of the software. But whereas with Java the challenge was getting developers interested in a new technology, with Solaris, Sun needs to appeal to people who may have had previous negative experiences with the OS.
Founded in 2004, online messaging security provider DigiTar begun life as an all-Linux shop using Suse Linux, according to Jason Williams, CTO and COO of the Boise, Idaho, company.
"We had a very anti-Sun bias," he said, dating back to the frustration he and a colleague experienced in college trying to use Solaris 8, which they quickly abandoned in favor of Suse. However, DigiTar ran into problems with the way Linux handled a storage subsystem in 2005. With OpenSolaris freely available, they tried out the OS and it worked well. "Solaris has resolved a lot of issues that Linux is just getting hit by," Williams said.
Over time, DigiTar has made use of new Solaris features such as DTrace and ZFS (Zettabyte File System), which have helped the company quickly pin down the locations of performance bottlenecks and better optimize the system. "Our experience with Solaris has been very evolutionary," Williams said. "We came for one thing, then other benefits emerged."
"We very much want to move to Indiana," Williams said, because it will fix two immediate issues DigiTar has with OpenSolaris: Ease of use and ease of installation.
The company's keen to migrate all its software to Solaris, but compiling applications on Solaris has always been a little different from compiling on a GNU Linux distribution. Today, about 60 percent of its software runs on Gentoo Linux, versus 40 percent on OpenSolaris. Indiana will support GNU userland, the part of an application that requests system activities from the operating system kernel, making it easier to move Linux applications to Solaris. The other feature Indiana offers over previous versions of OpenSolaris is its packaging so it can be more easily installed.
Williams is impressed by the community that's already grown up around OpenSolaris. "It's the most productive community I've ever been a part of," he said, with a posted query drawing 4 to 5 informed responses within an hour from both third parties and Sun engineers. Sun's approach to open source is "very mature and adult," Williams added, largely because Sun engineers are used to fielding customers' questions and know it's important to respond rapidly.
In order to win other converts, Williams recommends that Sun go back to school. "The key thing they need to do is get back into the colleges," he said. "That's where we formed our opinion of Sun." Making Solaris easy to use and highlighting useful tools such as DTrace could go a long way toward wooing developers, Williams added.
Sun is encouraging more use of OpenSolaris in universities with plans to add 500 more Campus Ambassadors around the world to the several hundred that were already in academia, Hamilton said. The Ambassadors are students who receive free training and support from Sun and then establish open-source developer communities in their colleges and evangelize OpenSolaris and Java to their peers and teachers.
Williams also recommends letting Indiana "splinter" so that developers can freely create their own distributions and further spread the Solaris technology. Sun hopes that if it establishes Indiana as a reference platform for OpenSolaris, people are less likely to seek out or develop other distributions, Hamilton said.
"With Linux, what happened was there was a void and people filled it," Murdock said, referring to the large number of Linux distributions in the market. "Everything we do here is to allow for flexibility, so there is the possibility of multiple distributions."
Going after developers is only one of several strategies Sun is pursuing to raise the profile of Solaris. The vendor's also keen to increase the number of hardware platforms on which the OS is available on. Earlier this month, in a deal that would have been unthinkable a few years back, IBM, one of Sun's main hardware rivals, agreed to redistribute Solaris OS and Solaris Subscriptions for some of its System x and BladeCenter servers.
From IBM's perspective, the move is in line with its pledge to offer users a range of operating systems and also will enable the vendor to make money on support calls involving Solaris running on IBM hardware. Hamilton said Sun's in discussions with about 40 original equipment manufacturers to make the OS available on their hardware. The companies include smaller hardware vendors that operate in particular geographies, but he's also interested in having IBM-like relationships with HP and Dell.
Rumors multiply of 'Google Phone' launch (AFP)
Friday, August 31st, 2007by Laurence Benhamou Fri Aug 31, 4:54 AM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - Specialized blogs are all abuzz this week with rumors that Internet giant Google will soon launch the "Google Phone" or "GPhone," a cheap mobile phone equipped with a Google operating system. ADVERTISEMENT
High-tech product specialist Engadget said a Google announcement would come next week, adding that a Google operating system would be tailor-made for the new cell phone.
According to another blog, CrunchGear, "Google is currently assessing over twenty (of Taiwan's) HTC models" and plans to launch its cell phone between January amd March of 2008.
Photographs of Google's touch-screen handset are already on the Internet, and according to Rizzn.com, it will cost a mere 100 dollars.
CrunchGear said the HTC/Google phone would have Google Talk enabled, allowing users to make free Internet phone calls.
The blog said the Google phone will not only be able to surf the net but also will include "a special version of Google Maps, compatible with built-in GPS, and compatibility with Gmail," Google's email service.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has already shown its prototype to US companies AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, making it seem clear the Google Phone's launch will definitely take place in the United States.
Indian blog Rediff said the GPhone will be launched in two weeks simultaneously in the United States and Europe, adding that Google was talking with Indian telephone operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, and that Bharat Sanchar Nigam could be one of the manufacturers.
Google has refused to make any comment on the rumors.
The company, at any rate, is interested in telecommunications. It recently announced it would participate in an "open" frequencies auction next January in the United States that could cost it billions of dollars.
The owner of open frequencies could create a mobile phone network across the country accessible to any cell phone, and not restricted to models chosen by US operators, as is now the case.
The Wall Street Journal quoted sources familiar with the dealings who said Google has invested several hundred million dollars in the project and that a phone will be launched in early 2008.
Google also intends to develop special applications for mobile phones, such as a search engine for ringtones, and offer free telephone subscriptions that would be financed through advertising.
The persistent rumors about a GPhone reflect gadget fans' enormous interest for the iPhone Apple launched in late June, which has since generated a lot of buzz on the internet.
The idea of a cheap, touch-screen, internet-adaptible GPhone promoted by a company that advocates "open" frequencies seems to be in direct competition with Apple's iPhone.
Greatly valued for its design, the iPhone has its high price (500-600 dollars) going against it, as well as its exclusive contract with AT&T.
Several hackers have recently boasted of having found the way to "unblock" the iPhone and make it work with other telephone operators, and some have promised to put their unblocking software up for sale on the internet soon.
AMD Teams up with Virtual Desktop Pioneer (PC World)
Friday, August 31st, 2007Bryan Betts, Techworld.com Thu Aug 30, 8:00 PM ET
Hosted desktop pioneer Nivio has taken an undisclosed investment from AMD to help it work on its ambition of making virtual Windows XP desktops and software accessible from any connected device– even a Linux PC or a smartphone.
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The Nivio service uses virtualization to provide users with a virtual PC, which they can configure and even synchronize with their own PC, if they have one. The virtual PCs are hosted on AMD servers at data centers in Geneva and New Delhi, and streamed out over broadband.
Nivio says it can stream a Windows XP desktop, complete with applications, to any device with a compatible web browser. Software– including Adobe and Microsoft applications– can be rented by the month, so users don't have to purchase a package that's only needed for the duration of a short project, said the company's founder Sachin Duggal.
Like virtual desktop approaches such as Citrix and VDI, it means users can get access to the latest applications on a device that can't run that software itself, but can act as a kind of VDU or thin client. That could mean a PC running Linux or an older version of Windows, or perhaps a lightweight device such as OLPC– the One Laptop Per Child project.
The Nivio service is currently in private beta-testing mode, but has already proven popular with Indian students who don't own PCs but do have access to Internet cafes, Duggal said. He added that the AMD investment should help it go public within the next few months.
"We've already received significant positive feedback following the private beta and feel that this announcement is testament to the hard work the team has put in over the last 18 months," he said. "Nivio is a simple idea in theory, yet we believe its impact could be huge."
Giuseppe Amato, AMD's European technical sales and marketing director, said that the investment was part of his company's 50×15 Initiative, which aims to bring Internet & IT access to 50 percent of the world's population by 2015.
"That initiative needs enabling technology, and we see Nivio helping by moving the complexity from the user back to the server," he added.
Duggal said that Nivio is also developing a simplified user interface which could be overlaid for use on small client devices. "The aim is for our UI to be as easy to use as a mobile phone, but you can also click out of it to the standard XP desktop," he added.
India's Infosys, Wipro in race to buy US analytics firm: report (AFP)
Friday, August 31st, 2007Fri Aug 31, 2:33 AM ET
BANGALORE, India (AFP) - Infosys Technologies and Wipro, India's second and third-biggest software firms, are competing to purchase a US analytics firm in a deal valued at up to 160 million dollars, a report said Friday. ADVERTISEMENT
The Bangalore-based firms have shown early interest in buying New Jersey-headquartered MarketRX — the first time they are both targeting the same acquisition, the Economic Times cited unnamed sources as saying.
About five suitors have expressed interest in buying the company, which at 160 million dollars would be worth about five times annual revenue, the business daily said.
The eventual purchaser would be able to tap MarketRX's established and potentially lucrative practice in analytics, including people trained in diverse branches such as mathematics, statistics and accountancy.
Both Indian companies declined to comment on a possible transaction. Infosys and Wipro typically do not comment on reports about their takeover targets until a deal is sealed.
Wipro this month paid 600 million dollars to buy US-based outsourcing firm Infocrossing, pursing what it calls a "string of pearls" strategy that calls for making acquisitions at a steady pace to build its global presence.
Wipro is evaluating potential acquisitions in Germany and Canada, chairman Azim Premji said last month, without giving details.
Infosys Technologies also said last month it was exploring possible acquisitions.
The company has declined to comment on a report carried by The Times of India in late June that Infosys will use its cash pile of 1.5 billion dollars to mount a takeover bid for Paris-based Capgemini.
States seek more oversight of Microsoft (AP)
Friday, August 31st, 2007By JESSICA MINTZ, AP Technology Writer 54 minutes ago
SEATTLE - Ending court oversight of Microsoft’s business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of the new Windows Vista operating system, a group of states led by California said in a filing Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who oversees Microsoft Corp.’s adherence to the terms of a 2002 antitrust settlement, asked the software maker, the Justice Department and the group of states to submit reports by Thursday on the effectiveness of the consent decree.
The oversight aimed to make it possible for Microsoft’s middleware competitors — who build software that links the operating system with everyday programs — to compete fairly, even if Microsoft’s operating system monopoly persisted.
“Microsoft has not directly contravened these provisions,” said the states’ report, which was submitted by the office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown.
But the California group said the consent decree has not led to any more competition. The report cites Microsoft’s continued dominance in the operating system market and the fact that few, if any, PC makers have sold computers with non-Microsoft Web browsers set as the default, among other examples.
One of the casualties of Microsoft’s business practices was Netscape. Its Web browser led the field until Microsoft started bundling its own Internet Explorer with Windows and restricting how PC makers installed competing products. It was eventually bought by AOL.
Antitrust concerns about Microsoft began surfacing with news of a Federal Trade Commission investigation in 1991, and in 1994 the software maker agreed to modify its contracts with PC makers to ease restrictions, which ended renewed U.S. and European antitrust investigations.
Another round of investigations led to a federal lawsuit that ended with a court declaration that Microsoft was using its operating system monopoly to squash middleware competition, and led to a settlement and the consent decree in 2002.
The California group said the January launch of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista, changes the game.
“As a practical matter, termination of the Final Judgment means … plaintiffs will not be able fully to assess the impact in the marketplace of Microsoft’s recent introduction of Vista,” the group wrote.
In its report, the Justice Department said it appeared the consent decree was working. Web browsers like Mozilla’s FireFox and Apple Inc.’s Safari present “renewed competition,” as do the increasing popularity of programs available through a Web browser.
“The final judgments have been successful in protecting the development and distribution of middleware products and in preventing Microsoft from continuing the type of exclusionary behavior that led to the original lawsuit,” Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a statement.
The Justice Department said in its report that while Microsoft’s operating system market share hasn’t dropped because of the consent decree, “it would misapprehend the purpose of the Final Judgments to rely on these facts to argue that the Final Judgments have been ineffective. Microsoft was never found to have acquired or increased its monopoly market share unlawfully.”
In its own report, Microsoft directly countered California’s claims, saying, “The Final Judgments were never designed to reduce Microsoft’s share in any putative market.”
The Justice Department is expected to release a status report on Microsoft’s compliance with the consent decree Friday.
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