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Free Software Foundation Launches Campaign Against Windows 7

gnu.pngThe Free Software Foundation has sent letters to Fortune 500 companies claiming that they will suffer from a “lack of privacy, freedom, and security” should they choose to upgrade to Windows 7 and instead encouraging them to adopt the GNU/Linux operating system and to adopt OpenOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office. The executive director of the FSF, Peter Brown, has stated that

“Free software is about freedom, not price. Our growing dependence on computers and software requires our society to reevaluate its obsession with proprietary software that spies on citizens’ activities and limits their freedom to be in control of their computing. There is free software available right now for any activity you or your business needs, and it is better in the most important aspect — it respects your freedom.”

The FSF explains its position on the campaign’s website, windows7sins.org.

They claim the following:

  • The use of Microsoft products at school teaches students to use Microsoft’s products, assisting Microsoft in creating a monopoly.
  • Windows Genuine Advantage scans users’ hard drives and users must agree to this when using Windows.
  • Microsoft has used its power to have Windows pre-installed on all computers.
  • Users are forced to upgrade when they would otherwise not need to because new versions of Windows have increased hardware requirements and support for older versions of Windows and Microsoft Office ends.
  • Microsoft does not implement open source formats, such as the OpenDocument Format, instead preferring closed-source formats such as the Microsoft Office Word format. They also claim that Microsoft has “engaged in underhanded behavior, including bribing officials, in an attempt to stop [the standardization of document formats].”
  • DRM is used to restrict what media users are able to copy and play.
  • Windows is plagued by viruses due to security vulnerabilities. Because Windows is closed source, users are dependent on Microsoft to fix these vulnerabilities.

[Image from gnu.org]

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By Antoniu – August 28, 2009

First Registered Domain Name Bought by XF.com

The first registered domain name, symbolics.com, has been bought by XF.com, a company that invests in premium domain names, for an undisclosed sum. Symbolics.com was registered on 15 March 1985 and has the distinction of being the first registered domain name, the second domain name having being registered on 24 April 1985. It is this fact that makes symbolics.com a highly sought-after domain name and this marks the first time that the domain name has been transfered to a different owner.

Looking at the last version of symbolics.com that is archived at archive.org, which dates back to 20 August 2007, the website consisted of one page that had a brief history of the company and contact information. XF.com has since put up a new website at the domain which emphasizes the historic importance of it and which promotes XF.com’s other domains. XF.com CEO Aron Meystedt has told DNJournal that they have plans for the domain’s 25th anniversary on 15 March 2010.

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By Antoniu – August 27, 2009

Dell Posts Earnings Early

dellstock.pngThe Silicon Alley Insider reports that part of Dell’s earnings report was accidentally posted early today, before the end of the trading day, allowing traders to react to the news. On the news that Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) had surpassed expectations, the stock price rose from $14.62 to $15.65 a share, with the stock now trading at $16.02 in after hours trading. Soon after, Dell posted its full earnings report.

[Image from finance.google.com]

Update: Dell closed at $16.13 in after hours trading.

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By Antoniu – August 27, 2009

Vonage Stock Recieves Bump after iPhone App Announcement

vonagestock.pngBloomberg reports that Vonage’s stock rose 36% over the course of three days, the biggest rally in the company’s history, after it announced that it had submitted an iPhone app for Apple’s approval. While the app has yet to be approved, this is due to a technical problem that will soon be fixed and Vonage seems to be confident that it will be approved soon. Vonage hopes an iPhone app will help it to increase its subscriber numbers, something that the company desperately needs to do. At its IPO, Vonage was worth $17 per share, but had since fallen to below one dollar. This put it at risk of being delist from the New York Stock Exchange, which requires that stocks have a minimum value of one dollar. Since the announcement of the iPhone app, Vonage’s stock prices have jumped as high as $2.58, though they have since fallen to $2.17 as of the end of the trading day on 26 August 2009.

Despite all of the recent complaints about Apple’s handling of the App Store, investors obviously still believe that an app on the Store can bring great revenue to a company. With the large amount of iPhones sold, developing apps for the platform will continue to be a profitable business, although it still remains to be seen how much of an impact Vonage’s app will have on the number of subscribers to its service.

[Image from finance.google.com]

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By Antoniu – August 27, 2009

Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard?

When Adobe stated that only its Creative Suite 4 products would be supported on Mac OS X Snow Leopard many people who were still using Creative Suite 3 were displeased; they would now either be forced not to update to Snow Leopard or pay for the newer Creative Suite 4.

John Nack of Adobe has now posted more information about the situation on his blog. He explains that while it is Adobe’s policy not to update products that they are no longer shipping, citing limited resources as the reason for this, they have been testing Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard and it is working well with the exception of two trivial bugs, one that only affects the Japanese version of Snow Leopard. Nack justifies Adobe’s lack of official support for CS3 on Snow Leopard by stating that Adobe has not performed enough testing to feel comfortable supporting it.

Nack’s post does not address the compatibility of the other programs that are part of Adobe Creative Suite 3.

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By Antoniu – August 27, 2009

Microsoft Drops Price of Xbox 360

Effective tomorrow, 28 August 2009, Microsoft has dropped the price of the Xbox 360 Elite and the Xbox 360 Pro. The Xbox 360 Elite’s price has been dropped from $399 to $299 and the Xbox 360 Pro, which has now been discontinued, will have its price dropped from $299 to $249 while supplies last.

Just like in the last console era (Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2), Microsoft is stuck in the second place in terms of the number of sales. Sony’s PlayStation 3 is 6.4 million units sold behind the Xbox 360, while Nintendo’s Wii is ahead by a distant 22.42 million units sold. While the Xbox 360 Elite’s price drop may increase sales for the Xbox 360, it is too late in this era of consoles for it to catch up to the Wii’s sales and the chances of it being outsold by the PlayStation 3 are slim.

Before August 2009 the Xbox 360 Elite came with an ethernet cable, an HDMI cord and HD component cables, but it now comes without any of these. The only benefit of buying an Xbox 360 Elite over an Xbox 360 Pro now is the larger 120GB hard drive, as opposed to the Xbox 360 Pro’s 20GB or 60GB hard drive. What Microsoft has basically done is to offer a larger hard drive in their $299 Xbox 360 model.

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By Antoniu – August 27, 2009

Facebook Attempts to Patent Translation Method

Facebook has been translated into many different languages not by professionals, but rather by its members, who volunteer their time to help translate the website. When doing this, a user is shown a phrase used somewhere within Facebook in one language and then shown some possible options for translating that phrase into a second language. The user can then vote for the translation that he thinks is best.

TechCrunch reports that Facebook is now attempting to patent this method, which is now being employed by other websites after having seen how well it worked for Facebook. Should Facebook obtain this patent, other websites would no longer be allowed to use this method. An obstacle standing in Facebook’s way is that other sites, such as Meebo, had been using a similar method to have members assist in the translation of their webpages before Facebook’s program.

The patent application can be viewed here.

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By Antoniu – August 26, 2009

Google to Host a Series of Webcasts

Google will be hosting a series of webcasts targeted at investors and financial analysts during autumn and winter 2009 and 2010, the stated goal of which is to better inform investors about Google and its operations.

The first webcast will be on 9 September 2009 at 10AM PDT and will focus on search and monetization. The webcasts will be streamed live at http://investor.google.com.

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By Antoniu – August 26, 2009

New Twitter Vulnerability

David Naylor has discovered a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Twitter and Twitter’s efforts to patch the exploit have not been ineffective thus far. Twitter recently added rel=nofollow (meaning that Google would ignore these links for its indexing purposes) to the links that take you to a third-party Twitter application’s website.

exploittweet.png
In the tweet above you will see the text “about 17 hours ago from twitterfeed” below the actual content of the tweet. The text “twitterfeed” is a link to the page twitterfeed.com and it is these links that now have rel=nofollow on them.

Naylor stumbled upon a this vulnerability when he was trying to remove the nofollow from an application’s link and found out that, not only was this possible, he could also inject javascript into the link, meaning that it could potentially be exploited for malicious purposes, such a stealing login information. This exploit is particularly dangerous because it is executed as soon as a person visits the page of a Twitter user employing this vulnerability, it does not require the person to click on the link itself. The Twitter accounts @apifail and @apifail2 were set up to demonstrate this exploit by launching a pop-up window but not doing anything malicious, but both accounts have now been suspended.

Twitter attempted to patch this exploit by prohibiting the use of spaces in the link to an application’s website, but this patch was easily circumvented and the exploit continues to work.

The best way to protect yourself from this exploit is to use a third-party Twitter client, such as TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop, and not to visit the Twitter pages of people you do not know and trust until this vulnerability is correctly patched. If you use Firefox, you could also install the NoScript add-on which would stop the exploit from executing if you were to visit an infected Twitter page.

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By Antoniu – August 26, 2009

Schwarzenegger Looks to Twitter for Ideas

What started from one tweet in which the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger (@Schwarzenegger on Twitter), asked for Twitter users to tweet their ideas to solve California’s budget problem and to append the hashtag #myidea4CA to these tweets, has launched into a full site.

The website MyIdea4CA.com now tracks mentions of the hashtags and posts those tweets to the frontpage of the website where users can then vote them up or down and comment on them. Ideas with a score of -3 and below will be collapsed and only shown if a user manually clicks on them. The website also allows you to order the tweets by how many positive votes they have received and you can choose to view ideas only about specific topics, such as education, health care, and legislation. Mashable has an interview with Schwarzenegger about MyIdea4CA.com and social media on their website.

So go to the site and vote on the ideas you like and dislike or tweet an original idea using the #myidea4CA hashtag.

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By Antoniu – August 25, 2009