Daily News : Computer Software

A judge in San Francisco ruled that Psystar, the Florida-based company that installs OS X on its custom Mac-clone computers, infringed on Apple's right to exclusively create derivative works of its software. Psystar's summary judgment against Apple, which argued Apple misused its copyright, was denied. The two companies are expected to go to court in January.

In addition, Psystar was found to be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing Apple's protection barrier that prevents installation of its operating system on third-party hardware.

A researcher has discovered a zero-day flaw in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 that could be exploited to remotely crash a computer. Microsoft is aware of the hole and is currently working on a patch. The recommended quick-fix is to disable TCP ports 139 and 445.

"Microsoft is concerned that this new report of a vulnerability was not responsibly disclosed, potentially putting computer users at risk," the advisory said. "We continue to encourage responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities."

Rumor has been circulating the web about a possible release of Google's Chrome OS within the coming week. Chrome OS is an open source operating system built on top of a Linux kernel that focuses on web-driven applications. It is believed that the OS will initially be geared towards netbooks with full desktop and laptop support coming shortly.

Launching the OS as soon as possible makes sense, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. "I would expect the Chrome OS will show up shortly because they need the ecosystem ready by the end of 2010," he told TechNewsWorld.

Yesterday, an employee of Microsoft was quoted as saying that the Windows 7 design team tried to match the graphical beauty of Apple's OS X software in the Redmond, Washington company's latest operating system release. It now appears that one of the design team's members has come in to bat cleanup and dispel any rumors that have surfaced as a result of the quote.

[...] the post, written by Brandon LeBlanc, continued, "Unfortunately, this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed."

A new zero-day flaw discovered in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 does not affect Windows 7 as previously reported. While the vulnerability is present in Windows 7's Release Candidate, the issue has been fixed for the final version of the software. Microsoft has yet to report when it will release a patch for Vista and Server 2008.

The flaw could allow an attacker to gain control of a system, although Microsoft said that "most attempts to exploit this vulnerability will cause an affected system to stop responding and restart."

The Open Invention Network has purchased twenty-two patents in order to protect Linux from potential lawsuits in the future. Such litigation could potentially threaten the open source kernel.

The group purchased the patents from Allied Security Trust - a consortium of companies, including Verizon, HP and Cisco, created to buy up patents in a self-defensive move.

A regulator in Russia is dropping its investigation of Microsoft's decision to stop selling the eight year old Windows XP operating system. The issue arose over Microsoft killing off the OS despite demand. But fear not, Microsoft still faces investigation over shady dealings with Russian laptop makers.

Microsoft is obviously keen to move customers on to its newest operating systems not just to increase licensing payments but also to reduce support costs.

Psystar, the company that sells computers that can run OS X, has announced that it is now able to install Apple's new Snow Leopard on its computers. You must have at least OS X 10.5 installed before you can upgrade, and at this time the company does not want users to upgrade unless it's a new machine due to possible loss of data. Apple isn't too pleased, and the company is already requesting that a judge grant them access to the Snow Leopard-modified source code Psystar uses.

Psystar has confirmed that it will support Snow Leopard on all new Mac clones. The controversial manufacturer explained that it had developed "new virtualization technologies" to allow its computers to interface with OS X like "never before."

Apparently the company that makes software under the brands Sentry and FamilySafe, which are products that let parents spy on their children's online activities, is selling the information they collect to third party advertisers. That doesn't sound very ethical if you ask me.

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids' information at risk, since the program does not record children's names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Ah, you gotta love patent cases. Microsoft was sued by a company for infringing on a patent that allowed for the processing of custom XML in Word documents. A jury awarded the plaintiff $200 million and required Microsoft to stop selling Word until the offending code could be removed. Since such changes would take months to complete, Microsoft filed an appeal requesting time to rework the Word program. The court has now granted Microsoft's request.

In the lawsuit, i4i alleges Microsoft willingly infringed its patent on processing custom XML when Microsoft included the technology in Word 2003. i4i, which sells software add-ons to Word for using custom XML, has said its business shrank significantly when Microsoft added custom-XML support to Word.

Red Hat has released version 5.4 of its Enterprise Linux which brings its virtualization offerings up-to-date with the best competitors in the field. If computer processing and information storage shifts to the cloud as much as expected, Red Hat could be one of the biggest players in the game.

The strategy is similar to what Microsoft is doing with its proprietary Hyper-V technology that is built into the Windows operating system, but markedly different from VMware, which offers a hypervisor with a connected set of management tools. With RHEL 5.4 and KVM now released, Red Hat plans to add to the mix by year-end a standalone hypervisor called Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor and a cache of open source management tools.

As someone who has worked both in technical support and as a software developer, I know firsthand how a disconnect between those who do the work and those who dictate the work can cause serious problems. It looks like Snow Leopard's early release is causing problems for some IT departments.

Consequently, some engineers decided not to install Snow Leopard right after its release because they knew certain critical, third-party software wouldn't be able to run on it. Now they're bracing for the backlash from executives who may demand Snow Leopard on their Mac machines.

The other day I was thinking how GMail hasn't had any real problems lately. A day later and the popular web app was outage galore. As we shift more towards the clouds and remote hosting, we will need multiple backup options should one of these services fail.

This latest outage --Gmail's last large-scale failure didn't garner as many headlines because it happened when most folks were asleep-- raises valid questions about the viability of cloud computing, and the vulnerabilities we take on as we shift applications and data from their traditional homes on client PCs and servers to unseen resources on the Web.

BusinessWeek reports that Microsoft's new OS might not have the economic impact its predecessors once had. While many feel Windows 7 trounces Vista, the sagging economy could dampen any prospective surge in sales.

Before Vista, a new Windows release could set off a corporate and consumer buying binge--not only for PCs, but also printers, mice, and software. Some analysts have pointed out that the Windows pop this time could be especially pronounced, since many people never bothered to buy Vista and some 600 million PCs are running the nine-year-old Windows XP.