August 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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Vancouver, British Columbia—During his question and answer session at the Linux Foundation’s LinuxCon, Linus Torvalds, founder of Linux, revealed that while mainstream Linux and its popular smartphone and tablet son Google’s Android still aren’t as close as they should be, they’re slowly—ever so slowly—coming back together.
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August 16, 2011
by sjvn01
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Don’t start the celebration yet, but Samsung, in a technical ruling over Apple, can once more sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the European Union (EU). The battle over Samsung’s Galaxy Tab violating Apple’s design for the iPad is far from done though.
As reported in the Dutch technology news sites Webwereld, Samsung had filed an emergency complaint that the German court overstepped its power to impose a ban on Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales in other EU countries (Dutch site). Samsung argued that the German court can not decide whether the Korean company had the right to prohibit sales in, say, Italy. The judge, for the time being, has agreed to update the ex parte injunction so that the Galaxy Tab can once more be sold in the EU except for in Germany.
Personally, I never thought Apple’s suit against Samsung on the design resemblances between the two tablets had a leg to stand on. That is a matter that will be finally decided by a higher court.
August 15, 2011
by sjvn01
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My compadre Ed Bott does a fine job of digging under the surface of Microsoft’s annual report to find that Microsoft no longer considers Linux a serious threat. Who does Microsoft think they’re kidding?
Sure, on the desktop, it’s a Windows world, but guess what Sherlock; the desktop is declining in importance. The mobile, server, Web and cloud worlds are where the twenty-teens’ billionaires will come from, not the desktop. And, guess, who’s already in all those spaces large and in charge? Yes, that’s right, Linux.
Let’s start from the top on where Linux beats Microsoft.
August 15, 2011
by sjvn01
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I can’t prove it, because I didn’t write about it, but I’ve thought for a long time now that Google buying Motorola Mobility made a lot of sense. It wasn’t my idea though. I give full credit to billionaire investor Carl Icahn. In July, Icahn said that Motorola should shop around its patent portfolio, in particular Motorola Mobility, to wireless technology companies such as Google. His proposal made sense to me, and, what’s important, it made sense to Google as well.
As Icahn said at the time, with 17,000 approved patents and another 7,500 in the pipeline, Motorola Mobility “has one of the strongest and most respected patent portfolios in the industry.” Sure, Google can build its own Android phones now, but so what? The real value here for Google is in those patents.
August 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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The rumors began in the midd le of last week: Facebook was snatching your phone numbers from your mobile phone address book and were publishing them for everyone to see. You may have seen a message like this yourself:
Friends! “ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now PUBLISHED on Facebook! Go to the top right of the screen, click on Account, then click on Edit Friends, go left on the screen and click on Contacts. Then go to the right hand side and click on “visit page” to remove this display option. Please repost this on your Status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse if they do not want them published.”
It wasn’t true and it wasn’t really new, but there’s enough truth in it that even without the sensationalism I, for one, am concerned.
August 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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I’ve been using cryptic passwords since I cut my computing teeth on an IBM 370. I never liked using passwords like xkcd1234EMC2. They may have been more “secure,” but they were hellish to remember. I still use them today, but the brilliant Internet cartoon xkcd by Randall Munroe has just shown me that I, and many security experts, have been idiots for years. Read the cartoon below and you’ll see what I mean.