Black Hat: Apple does well but Microsoft does better with enterprise security
While still not great, the operating systems behind Apple desktops, laptops, and phones are getting more secure, researchers at Black Hat say. While not recommended for corporate use unless it’s in islands within larger networks, the OSX operating system has made strides, says Alex Stamos, who lead a team of researchers from iSec Partners that researched the OSX and Windows 7 operating systems.
Their conclusion is that Apple does pretty well, but Microsoft wins. Even so, earlier versions of Apple’s software were more vulnerable to initial exploitation than Win 7, but the latest Apple version known as Lion makes up ground. Read more...
Google Street View trike hits historic Bletchley Park
Google has added images of the historic computing site Bletchley Park to its Street View mapping service.
Bletchley Park was used during World War II as a codebreaking centre, housing the men, women and machines who worked on cracking Nazi codes.
A Google trike equipped with a 360-degree camera made its way around the site yesterday to capture images of Bletchley House and the many huts that once housed the codebreakers. A trike was used in order to access some of the places a car wouldn't be able to go on the site.
The images taken will eventually appear in the Google Street View Special Collect gallery dedicated to famous landmarks, sport stadiums, historic buildings, city centres and more off-the-beaten-track locations around the world. Read more...
Google fights to hide incriminating emails
Google is fighting to hide an email in which it seems to admit to knowingly infringing the Java patents, but with the text already public it will be a hard fight to win.
Both companies have filed their arguments, with Oracle putting the case for exposing the email, while Google argues that it is privileged communication. The letter detailing both sides has been helpfully uploaded by Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, but basically Google argues that the text was a client-attorney communication, while Oracle claims that's bollocks. Read more...
BBC testing fix for iPlayer on iPad … 6 months later
The BBC is testing a fix for problems experienced by iPad users when using the iPlayer app. The fix is eagerly awaited by many iPad users, some of whom reported not being able to watch programmes when the app was launched back in February.
Problems reported include: programmes playing for a few minutes only; programmes playing via the web but not via the app; only "live" programmes playing in the app; being told to switch to Wi-Fi even when already connected to it for the app and website (this author included); and programmes not playing in the app or via the website.
The most common error message within the app is: "Failed to load programme, please try again later". Some users report being able to watch programmes before the app was introduced, but unable to now either using the app or via the Web. Read more...
Talent wars: Are your IT staffers being poached?
Dan Herrington says his first inkling of a brewing IT talent war came early this spring, when he noticed that "college kids weren't accepting our offers on the spot."
This was a first for Herrington, who is executive sponsor of college recruiting for IT at USAA, a San Antonio-based Fortune 200 insurer and financial services company that has been No. 1 on Computerworld's Best Places to Work in IT list for two years in a row.
Herrington adds that another disturbing new trend is a "marked increase" in the number of college hires who accept job offers but then later change their minds. "We've seen college students reneging on internships as well," he notes. Read more...
Start-up to release ‘stone-like’ optical disc that lasts forever
Start-up Millenniata and LG plan to soon release a new optical disc and read/write player that will store movies, photos or any other data forever. The data can be accessed using on any current DVD or Blu-ray player.
Millenniata calls the product the M-Disc, and the company claims you can dip it in liquid nitrogen and then boiling water without harming it. It also has a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) study backing up the resiliency of its product compared to other leading optical disc competitors.
Shumway would not disclose what material is used to produce the optical discs, referring to it only as a "natural" substance that is "stone-like."
Like DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the M-Disc platters are made up of multiple layers of material. But unlike the former, there is no reflective or die layer. Instead, during the recording process a laser "etches" pits onto the substrate material. Read more...
Rise of the planet of the tablets
The Planet of the Apes series of sci-fi thrillers in the late 1960s and early '70s depicted a world in which intelligent apes are the dominant species and humans have been subordinated.
But it wasn't until the most recent movie in the series, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where the transition was explained. (The movie opens this weekend.)
Predictions about the future of touch tablet computing have been rolled out in similar fashion. We've been hearing for years that in the future, everything including desktops would be controlled not by a mouse, but by direct touch, just like the iPad. Read more...
Lost programming skills
Today's coders may know how to whip up a PHP script or a Drupal extension, create a mobile app for both the iPhone and Android, and run DOOM on their car's GPS (which has been done, it turns out). But there's a lot that their predecessors knew that today's programmers don't.
Some of these skills aren't likely to be needed again, any more than most of us need to know how to ride a horse or (sigh) drive a manual-transmission vehicle. But other skills and "lessons learned" may still or again prove relevant, whether developers are banging their heads against legacy systems, coding for new mobile and embedded devices... or other devices and applications we haven't yet thought of. Read more...
AntiSec hackers dump data after hacking police websites
The war between law enforcement and the Anonymous hacking collective continued this weekend as hackers dumped a 10GB database that included private emails and information sent by confidential informants. Hackers say they stole information during an attack on more than 70 small-town law enforcement agencies.
The hackers, an Anonymous-affiliated group known as AntiSec, say that they hope to "embarrass, discredit and incriminate police officers across the US," in retaliation for ongoing arrests of Anonymous members.
AntiSec said that it had compromised servers at Brooks-Jeffrey, a Mountain Home, Arkansas, company that runs a computer store and online marketing firm. Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing builds websites for sheriffs' agencies throughout the southern United States. "It took less than 24 hours to root BJM's server and copy all their data to our private servers," AntiSec said in a statement, posted Saturday. Read more...
The senseless panic over Microsoft Office 15
Once again, the blogosphere is atwitter over something stupid. Early last week it was over the "report" that Internet Explorer users had lower IQs than users of other browsers -- which turned out to be a hoax that produced endless pontificating. Then as the week progressed it was the shocking "news" that Microsoft Office 15 will switch to HTML5 and JavaScript, making all your line-of-business applications obsolete.
Wrong again!
Old news shocks the blogosphere
First, Microsoft's plans to include HTML5 and JavaScript in Office 15 isn't news. Way back in May -- back before Steve Sinofsky and Julie Larson-Green announced that HTML5 and JavaScript would become the favorite sons of Windows 8 development -- a couple of folks on MSDN Channel 9 had already sussed out that Microsoft intended to bring HTML5 and JavaScript into the next Office release. Citing three separate help-wanted ads on the Microsoft Careers website seeking developers who could help make HTML5 and JavaScript development platforms for Office 15, they surmised that Office 15 add-ins could be written with HTML5 and/or JavaScript.
Microsoft was hardly hiding anything: "In Office 15," one of Microsoft's ads said, "we are focusing on building a modern application model centered around Web technologies like HTML and JavaScript, as we adapt to trends in the industry." Again, that was back in May. Read more...