The Inquirer

Microsoft lures the poor with cut-price XP

Stewart Meagher — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:33:46 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 13:30:00

But only for cut-down PCs

VOLISH PLANS ARE AFOOT to make sure that, even the poorest people on the planet will also have to bow in supplication to the Mighty Bill and his Microsoft Megacorp. Obviously alarmed by the fact that someone came up with an altruistic way to get computers into the hands of the world's downtrodden and needy, and that those computers would not be running any Microsoft products at all, the Redmond Massive has thrown a spanner into the works by offering a chopped up version of Windows XP at 26 bucks a pop. No doubt on the basis that making one or two dollars of profit from billions of poorly educated, subsistence-level peasants is better than some Open Source upstart giving them stuff for free....

BSD UNIX finally fixes a 25-year old software bug

Egan Orion — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:01:58 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 08:44:00

Lurking in there forever

A DEVELOPER of OpenBSD has squashed a software bug that's been lurking in all flavours of Berkeley UNIX systems for nigh on all of these last 25 years. Marc Balmer got an email complaining that Samba crashed while serving an MS-DOS filesystem. Since he's a heavy Samba user, he investigated the issue. Samba developers told him that the code to read file directories was flawed in all versions of BSD. He didn't believe them initially, but comments on a snippet of workaround code in Samba convinced him to look further. "This is needed because the existing directory handling in FreeBSD and OpenBSD (and possibly NetBSD) doesn't correctly handle unlink() on files in a directory where telldir() has been used....

Gates offers free software in Asia

Mark Ballard — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:43:41 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 17:31:00

Pulls Intel trump card for digital have-nots

BILL GATES HAS OFFERED free software for a million PCs the Indonesian government is trying to acquire for students, according to the Jakarta Post today. Gates met Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, yesterday to talk about how the country was also the fourth amongst 'piracy offenders' in Asia. He was also there to renew Microsoft's 2006 deal to supply software to the government and to add another University to its growing international network of proprietary training centres. The newspaper reported that Gates promised free software, "if Indonesia could make a deal with Intel chairman Craig Barrett, who will meet Yudhoyono in Jakarta next week"....

Sun open sources Mac OS X virtualisation tool

Sylvie Barak — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:44:13 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 14:04:00

Sun, see and open sauce

SUN MICROSYSTEMS HAS unveiled a useful little update to its xVM VirtualBox, open sauce desktop virtualisation, which now has support for both Solaris and Mac OS X. The update means that Sun is now officially the first firm to have launched open source virtualisation for those particular two operating systems. Sun is seeking a niche in the big-business virtualisation market. Its Virtual Box, which was developed by German company Innotek, bought by Sun this February, can run as an application on a host operating system, allowing several guest OSs to run on top of it. The software comes in a free, open sauce version as well as in a licensed version sporting advanced features, which is also free, but only for individual use....

XP SP3 crashes AMD machines

Stewart Meagher — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:39:37 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 11:23:00

Here we go loop de loo

THE LONG-AWAITED and much-delayed update to Windows XP, Service Pack 3, is giving owners of machines with AMD hardware headaches aplenty it seems. The problems, which first arose just one day after the push, have been causing lots of noise on Microsoft support sites and angry user bogs. One user reported, "I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to load the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again." Angry users have also reported that, after the installation, it is not even possible to boot in safe mode, usually the last resort before setting up a repeated forehead/screen interface....

XP SP3, Vista SP1 finally arrive

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:19:47 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 12:05:00

Life in the old dogs yet

MICROSOFT has finally unleashed Windows XP Service Pack 3 as well us pumping up its delivery of Vista SP1. The firm put the software on its Windows Update and Download Centre sites, having sorted out a fix for its Microsoft's Dynamics RMS retail management package. Microsoft told Vnunet it will filter out users that have the Dynamics RMS software installed until a patch can be deployed. µ See Also XP SP3 delayed by retailer glitch Windows XP SP3 is released

Gates signs ICE deal with car maker

Stewart Meagher — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:00:49 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 11:58:00

Hyundai and Microsoft collaborate on in car entertainment

NOT CONTENT WITH leeching into everything you ever do at the office, or at home, Bill Gates has decided he wants to join you in the car as well. Geek Overlord of all he Surveys, Gates is expected to ink an agreement with Korean car giant Hyundai later today, which will see Microsoft in-car entertainment systems installed in both the Hyundai range and cars made by affiliated company Kia. The new systems which will get investments of $166 million from the car maker and $113 million from the pocket of Bill's other trousers , the ones he left in the laundry basket....

MySQL remains Open Sauce

Nick Farrell — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:09:07 GMT

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 08:38:00

Puts off closed source plans

MYSQL has decided to abandon its plans to take some of its database software out of the open source community's paws. According to VP Kaj Arno's bog here MySQL is forgoing close sourcing portions of the MySQL Server. There were dark rumours that the company was preparing to close source the server's backup, encryption, and storage engines. Kaj said that everything will remain fully functional and open source, as will the MySQL Connectors. This does not mean that it will be always so. But there have been slightly stronger messages emerging from Sun over its commitment to Open Sauce. µ See Also Sun makes MySQL theirs

Darl McBride remains clueless

Egan Orion — Sat, 03 May 2008 11:31:35 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Saturday 3 May 2008. 12:22:00

Wrong lawsuit, same judge

SCO GROUP CEO Darl McBride again said that UNIX "System V is in Linux" when he testified in the Novell v. SCO lawsuit on Wednesday. McBride's statement contradicted the just prior testimony of SCO SVP Chris Sontag, as well as the company's internal memos from 2002, which concluded that SCO's own software examinations had not found any UNIX code in Linux. Perhaps McBride was confused about which lawsuit he was in court testifying about. Whether or not there is any UNIX SVRX source code in Linux is an issue in the SCO v. IBM lawsuit, which remains stayed due to SCO's bankruptcy, but that particular issue doesn't bear whatsoever on SCO's legal spat with Novell....

Adobe opens screen project

Stewart Meagher — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:17:58 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Thursday 1 May 2008. 14:25:00

Wants Flash everywhere

PHOTO AND VIDEO specialists Adobe has today announced The Open Screen Project, in an attempt to unify the way content is delivered via the internet to a variety of devices including computers, TVs and mobile phones. The project - which is supported by a group of industry leaders, including ARM, Cisco, Intel, LG, Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizona - aims to provide a consistent runtime environment to developers using Flash Player for online media and Adobe AIR for desktop applications. Client-side support comes from the likes of the BBC, MTV, and NBC Universal....

Unix beardies sue BSI over OOXML

Mark Ballard — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:17:58 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Thursday 1 May 2008. 14:50:00

Dump the Vole or be damned

A BAND OF BRITISH Unix beardies has issued a High Court challenge over the national approval of Microsoft's OOXML document standard. The UK Unix User Group has demanded a judicial review over the British Standard's Institute's backing of Microsoft's document standard in its application for fast-track approval by the International Standards Organisation. The UKUUG has demanded the BSI withdraw its vote in support of Microsoft, and revisit its own decision again to back the software giant's standard. The beardies maintain that the procedure by which the BSI decided to support Microsoft's standard was flawed, and that the ISO vote to fast-track OOXML was void....

SAP slump blamed on US market

Sylvie Barak — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:25:35 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Thursday 1 May 2008. 13:58:00

It's all your fault

IT LOOKS LIKE SAP, the business management software company, has taken a hit from the faltering US economy, seeing its Q1 profit plummet 22 per cent from the previous year. On Wednesday, the company reported on its first quarter flop, blaming the weak dollar, delayed investments on new software and costs incurred from acquisitions. Dropping from 340 million euros in Q1 2007, to just 242 million euros in Q1 of 2008, the reported profits fell well short of all analyst predictions. SAP is probably now deeply regretting splashing out 4.8 billion-euros for the company Business Objects, which incurred 130 million Euros in charges alone this quarter....

MS board mulls Yahoo options

Andrew Thomas — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:32:02 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Thursday 1 May 2008. 09:07:00

D-Day looms for Yahvole deal

MICROSOFT'S BOARD met yesterday (Wednesday) to examine the company's options in the never-ending saga of its bid for Yahoo, says the New York Times. The paper quotes an unnamed MS source who claims one possibility discussed is an increased offer of up to $33 a share, despite long, loud protestations from CEO Steve Ballmer that not now, not ever, never, would the Vole's original offer be raised from its current value of around $29. Although Yahoo is on record as saying it is not fundamentally opposed to a sale to MS, it has always maintained that the offer price was too low....

Bloke stabbed while queuing for GTA IV

Andrew Thomas — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:21:39 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Wednesday 30 April 2008. 11:27:00

Blimey, I knew it was realistic, but…

LITTLE DID I KNOW when I wrote yesterday that gamers would never experience the violence of GTA IV for real unless they were very unlucky, that a very unlucky geezer was about to be stabbed while standing in line to buy a copy and another had his jaw broken. Queues formed outside many games shops when the much-hyped game went on sale and around a hundred punters had gathered at Gamestation in Croydon, South London, when a 23-year-old gameist was stabbed several times by a hooded passer by while standing in the queue. The real cops were summoned and took him to a real hospital, where he was later discharged....

Microsoft gets into Linux management

Andrew Thomas — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:21:38 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Wednesday 30 April 2008. 12:48:00

Novole collaboration continues

MICROSOFT'S Moreinterop collaboration with Novell is being fleshed out with the announcement of the snappily-named System Centre Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, enabling mixed Windows and Linux environments to be managed. At the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, the companies said they planned to produce a common systems management platform. "Microsoft is pleased to extend our System Centre suite to offer management for Linux distributions, like SUSE Linux Enterprise," said Brad Anderson, general manager of the Management and Services Division at Microsoft. "Microsoft is both using and intending to contribute enhancements to the Open Pegasus Project's Common Information Model Object Manager and delivering to the open source community interoperable providers, which collect management data and make it accessible to management services." Novell will work with the Vole to enhance Operations Manager 2007 using WS-Management and open source software to deliver Linux and UNIX management and plans to use open source interoperability products to extend the Linux management capabilities of its Zenworks systems management tools....

XP SP3 delayed by retailer glitch

Stewart Meagher — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:33:06 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Wednesday 30 April 2008. 09:56:00

Early birds may get a worm

MICROSOFT has pulled the plug on the expected release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 because of a glitch in the way it works with MS Retail Management Systems (RMS). Anyone who jumped the gun and downloaded the update from any one of the non-official sources bouncing around the Wibble for the last couple of days should think twice before hitting the install button. Volish minions won't say when a proper version of the update will be available, but it won't be pushed out through normal channels until Redmond has worked out how to filter downloads from RMS customers. µ

Indian government extends tax holiday for software companies

Sylvie Barak — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:33:06 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 30 April 2008. 10:46:00

Share prices soar

EASING SOME OF THE worry and uncertainty for export driven software companies in India, Indian Finance Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, announced yesterday that the government would extend a tax holiday scheme by another year. The tax holiday, which was set to expire in March 2009, allows software firms in technology parks to only pay taxes on the business they conduct within India, meaning that revenues from exports are tax exempt. This means a company could get away with paying between 12-15 per cent tax as opposed to about 22 per cent tax. The move was a definite relief for the industry, which is already having to tighten it's belt due to the faltering US economy....

Microsoft distances itself from SQL attack

Nick Farrell — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:07:31 GMT

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Wednesday 30 April 2008. 08:28:00

Buck passed to developers

SOFTWARE GIANT Microsoft claims that the latest SQL injection attack, which has so far walloped nearly 500,000 web pages, is nothing to do with its glorious IIS webserver. The attack injects some dodgy JavaScript into every text field in a database and involves downloading an external script that can compromise a user's PC. A SpokesVole has rushed to distance Redmond from responsibility for the flaw which it places at the feet of developers who failed to follow security practices for handling database input. Vole said that there was going to be no patch to fix the problem, it was just up to developers to be a tad more careful....

Grand Theft Auto IV out tomorrow

Nick Farrell in a Lada — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:29:19 GMT

Nick Farrell in a Lada the Inquirer, Monday 28 April 2008. 08:22:00

Critics sharpen knives, chainsaws and axes

VIOLENT GAME Grand Theft Auto IV will be in the shops on Tuesday and the press seems ready to stick the knife in at the earliest opportunity. Rockstar Games is planning to flog six million copies of the game in a week and most analysts are saying it will be the game of the year, whatever rumpus comes about. Already there is some potential for problems. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has banned the sale of the game to anyone under 17. This will make it a must-have to every pre-teen on the planet and every one who gets a copy will be a potential lawsuit....

Ballmer hints at XP reprieve

Andrew Thomas — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:45:49 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 25 April 2008. 10:04:00

MS in listening to customers shocka

MICROSOFT CEO Steve Ballmer says he doesn't rule out a U-turn over the demise of Windows XP. While stopping far short of announcing a major rethink over the venerable old OS' June 30th death warrant, he certainly appears to have his hand hovering over the lever in preparation for a bit of handbrake turn action. "XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one," he told Reuters yesterday. "If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments." Ballmer is still putting on a brave face over the somewhat tepid response to Vista, maintaining that many customers are choosing to buy the OS. While this is true, it's mainly down to punters getting Vista pre-installed on new PCs rather than people going out to buy an upgrade. It is, however, encouraging to see that the company is at least entertaining the possibility of actually listening to its customers. µ MICROSOFT CEO Steve Ballmer says he doesn't rule out a U-turn over the demise of Windows XP. While stopping far short of announcing a major rethink over the venerable old OS' June 30th death warrant, he certainly appears to have his hand hovering over the lever in preparation for a bit of handbrake turn action. "XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one," he told Reuters yesterday. "If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments." Ballmer is still putting on a brave face over the somewhat tepid response to Vista, maintaining that many customers are choosing to buy the OS....

Sandisk touts virtual desktop on a stick

Paul Hales — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:56:45 GMT

Paul Hales the Inquirer, Wednesday 23 April 2008. 16:30:00

Infosec London 2008 Checkpoint Charlie

FLASH STORAGE specialist Sandisk has teamed up with interweb security giant Check Point to deliver a secure, virtual machine on a USB stick. Securing the corporate workplace is the theme being tossed around the Olympian halls of Infosec this week. If there are two buzzwords fighting off thoughts of recession in the midst of tech firms looking for margin, they are security and virtualisation. If you can serve up both, you're swaggering into the bull-pit, lining up against established adversaries and all manner of new and colourful partnerships. Take Sandisk, perhaps the biggest brand in Flash, and Checkpoint, probably the most sophisticated snoops on the internet. These two new best friends have cooked up a way of running a whole corporate network that puts a virtual desktop on a USB stick. Remote users are updated and monitored automatically, with no sensitive data stored locally. Sandisk is echoing a common call here - that all network data be stored on remote servers. If you haven't got it you can't lose it and no-one can nick it off you. Sandisk reckons it takes the virtual concept a bit further by putting what it calls the secure virtual workspace on a secure flash stick. Virtual networks that can securely put an access point on any device are going to be big in 2008. µ FLASH STORAGE specialist Sandisk has teamed up with interweb security giant Check Point to deliver a secure, virtual machine on a USB stick. Securing the corporate workplace is the theme being tossed around the Olympian halls of Infosec this week. If there are two buzzwords fighting off thoughts of recession in the midst of tech firms looking for margin, they are security and virtualisation. If you can serve up both, you're swaggering into the bull-pit, lining up against established adversaries and all manner of new and colourful partnerships. Take Sandisk, perhaps the biggest brand in Flash, and Checkpoint, probably the most sophisticated snoops on the internet....

Eurocrats study Microsoft OOXML under procurement rules

Mark Ballard — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:43:49 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Thursday 24 April 2008. 12:15:00

Stale Danish gets new glaze

THE EUROPEAN Commission has started investigating Microsoft's OOXML standard under procurement rules instead of the old competition statute with which they usually bash the software giant. The Danish Unix User Group (DKUUG) complained to the EC's competition regulators in February about a Danish government mandate on the use of software standards. But the Competition lot didn't want to know about it. The European Commission confirmed today that its Internal Market people had taken up the complaint. They were examining it to see if it constituted an infringement of procurement rules. An EC spokeswoman said the EC was not ready to say any more on the matter: " The complaint is still under examination by DG MARKT services." The DKUUG complaint had asserted that the Danish government put Microsoft competitors at disadvantage....

Sandisk touts virtual network on a stick

Paul Hales — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:09:27 GMT

Paul Hales the Inquirer, Wednesday 23 April 2008. 16:30:00

Infosec London 2008 Checkpoint Charlie

FLASH STORAGE specialist Sandisk has teamed up with interweb security giant Centrepoint to deliver a secure, virtual machine on a USB stick. Securing the corporate workplace is the theme being tossed around the Olympian halls of Infosec this week. If there are two buzzwords fighting off thoughts of recession in the midst of tech firms looking for margin, they are security and virtualisation. If you can serve up both, you're swaggering into the bull-pit, lining up against established adversaries and all manner of new and colourful partnerships. Take Sandisk, perhaps the biggest brand in Flash, and Checkpoint, probably the most sophisticated snoops on the internet. These two new best friends have cooked up a way of running a whole corporate network that puts a virtual desktop on a USB stick. Remote users are updated and monitored automatically, with no data stored locally. Sandisk is echoing a common call here - that all network data be stored on remote servers. If you haven't got it you can't lose it and no-one can nick it off you. Sandisk reckons it takes the virtual concept a bit further by putting what it calls the secure virtual workspace on a secure flash stick. Virtual networks that can securely put an access point on any device are going to be big in 2008. µ FLASH STORAGE specialist Sandisk has teamed up with interweb security giant Centrepoint to deliver a secure, virtual machine on a USB stick. Securing the corporate workplace is the theme being tossed around the Olympian halls of Infosec this week. If there are two buzzwords fighting off thoughts of recession in the midst of tech firms looking for margin, they are security and virtualisation. If you can serve up both, you're swaggering into the bull-pit, lining up against established adversaries and all manner of new and colourful partnerships. Take Sandisk, perhaps the biggest brand in Flash, and Checkpoint, probably the most sophisticated snoops on the internet....

VMware virtually busts own expectations

Sylvie Barak — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:09:25 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 23 April 2008. 13:59:00

We don't suck quite as badly as we thought

WITH ITS BETTER THAN expected first quarter results, Vmware seems to be back in favour with Wall Street and its fickle investors, after pulling off an unexpected 69 per cent revenue hike, when the company itself had only been predicting 50 per cent. Share holders couldn't get rid of stock quick enough back in January when Vmware slashed its growth prediction by half, but it seems that (mostly) all is now forgiven, with the company's net income being reported as $43 million, which translates into 11 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting revenues of only $421.3 million. This hasn't made Vmware any more bold in its future predictions though....

Vole stuns with Ultimate Extras

Wily Ferret — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:34:32 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Wednesday 23 April 2008. 13:15:00

For those who've always wanted to get Vista in Czech

WHEN THE ALL HALLOWED update to Windows was released last year and dubbed Vista, thusly was it suffixed with a number of modifiers with which to denote variation in terms of cost and featureset. Uppermost amongst the derivations counted was 'Ultimate', which Microsoft claimed offered all the features of all the other versions as well as 'Ultimate Extras', a series of applications that would be delivered both on release and on a continuing basis over the lifetime of the product. Skip forward the best part of 18 months, and the Ultimate Extras on which the Vole was so keen to sell customers have been little short of an absolute joke....