Published by Robert Pogson October 29th, 2010
in technology.
M$ made IE6 to be “different” so that their customers would not want to stray to other browsers and other operating systems. While in the short term that worked and propped up market share it is now working against M$ as those same customers cannot move to “7″ and IE8.
“Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won’t run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.”
Good. After going to the expense of rewriting all those custom apps, businesses will be able to use any OS and get out of the trap M$ set. Look at it this way. If you just got yourself out of a bear-trap, are you going to step into another close by? Not likely. People and organizations learn from their mistakes.
Think of that the next time you build an application or buy a licence for one.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson October 29th, 2010
in technology.
Last summer, Oracle sued Google vaguely about infringement of copyright and patents in Java by Google. Google took its time but eventually replied to the court that Oracle’s claims were vague and not worthy of their time. Oracle promptly replied with an amended claim with an “example” of copying. Within hours Groklaw has an update that shows the “example” is from OpenJDK and was released under the GPL. Further, the “example” is not a copy but a derived work. This is like SCOG v World in fast motion. SCOG took years to get to this state of embarassment. Perhaps now the court will be able to resolve matters more quickly. Expect a third amended complaint shortly… Chuckle.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson October 29th, 2010
in Linux in Education and technology.
Google is in an embarrassing situation. Their Google Docs service is broken. Folks with multiple accounts are having problems connecting. They get into redirect-loops. It’s good to see Google are human and make mistakes. That will keep them honest…
Normally this kind of error is caused by something simple like referring to one part of the site from another with the wrong URL, particularly assuming something is the same for both. e.g. (in the extreme) The guy controlling the server might see his server at http://localhost while the end-user somewhere on the web will not get far with a URL like that. Of course, Google’s problem is more complex. They have a million servers and a bunch of domain-names. They have been struggling with the issue for a week. I will bet they are trying desperately to see what they changed a week ago…
This tail is poignant for me. I have been working on a relatively trivial web-site for our LAN. It’s simple. It keeps attendance. Well, I have been the beta tester. I had two major bugs and a significant lack of functionality. I fixed the first bug, buffer over-run, and got the thing working. Then I increased the functionality by permitting the user to enter the data for any date (allowing back-dating to September). It all came together. Then, to my horror, I found the last class of the day had some spurious course numbers… The last digit was repeated. How Hallowe’enish is that? The problem occurred only on the last student in the last class so I hunted around for another over-run and found it. I was scanning a number-field off the end of a record. By coincidence it always happened that the last correct digit was found in that place. Fortunately, I only had to repair the database in three places. Imagine what would have happened if I had turned all the high school teachers loose on that one? Dodged a bullet…
Google is not so lucky. They missed something and it will be damaging their businesses. M$’s salesmen will get overtime this week.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson October 29th, 2010
in Linux in Education and technology.
It had to happen sooner or later. The write-once-run-everywhere platform, Java, is being used to install malware on GNU/Linux, MacOS and that other OS all at the same time.
see http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/10/28/cross-platform-worm-targets-facebook-users/
Time to ban Facebook.com and install DansGuardian+clamav on the router.
In /etc/hosts , I can put a line like
127.0.0.1 facebook.com facebook
Instead of 127.0.0.1. I can also put the IP address of my friendly, neighbourhood server. I can also block facebook.com at the firewall. For those enterprising kids who know IP addresses, I can block
facebook.com. 758 IN A 69.63.189.16
facebook.com. 758 IN A 69.63.181.12
facebook.com. 758 IN A 69.63.189.11
69.63…
66.220…
Dansguardian serves as a kid-filter application that runs on a web-proxy like Squid to filter all URLs and content. It has blacklists, whitelists, and the ability to steer everything to Clamav to detect malware. Sigh. I expect protests from users…
UPDATE Adobe is at it too…
see http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa10-05.html
All recent versions of Flashplayer and Reader are involved for that other OS, MacOS AND GNU/Linux. Sigh…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson October 29th, 2010
in technology.
ASUS has announced the release of new tablet PCs for Christmas and 1Q 2011. One of the models will be 9 inch with ARM and Android. Competition is back at ASUS.
“As for the 9-inch models, Asustek will have one model adopt the ARM-based Nvidia Tegra 2 platform with Google’s Android operating system and the other the Wintel platform. The two 9-inch models will have a price gap of about US$100, Shen noted.”
$100. That is a reasonable difference for ARM+Android v x86+that other OS. Let the market decide. ASUS would not produce the ARMed version if it did not hear that the market wanted small cheap computers. ASUS is still small in notebooks, shipping only about 1 million per month, but in netbooks they shipped 0.5 million per month. They see the advantages of small and cheap in the market and they have good margins with x86. They will have much better margins with GNU/Linux. M$ will try to reduce those margins by taxing Android, but they will fail ultimately.
Other OEMs watch ASUS. 2010 will finish well and 2011 looks to be even better for GNU/Linux.
- Robert Pogson
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