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IBM

Coder Accuses IBM of Patenting His Work 249

Posted by samzenpus from the do-your-own-work dept.
ttsiod writes "Back in 2001, I coded HeapCheck, a GPL library for Windows (inspired by ElectricFence) that detected invalid read/write accesses on any heap allocations at runtime — thus greatly helping my debugging sessions. I published it on my site, and got a few users who were kind enough to thank me — a Serbian programmer even sent me $250 as a thank you (I still have his mails). After a few years, Microsoft included very similar technology in the operating system itself, calling it PageHeap. I had more or less forgotten this stuff, since for the last 7 years I've been coding for UNIX/Linux, where valgrind superseded Efence/dmalloc/etc. Imagine my surprise when yesterday, Googling for references to my site, I found out that the technology I implemented, of runtime detection of invalid heap accesses, has been patented in the States, and to add insult to injury, even mentions my site (via a non-working link to an old version of my page) in the patent references! After the necessary 'WTFs' and 'bloody hells' I thought this merits (a) a Slashdotting, and (b) a set of honest questions: what should I do about this? I am not an American citizen, but the 'inventors' of this technology (see their names in the top of the patent) have apparently succeeded in passing this ludicrous patent in the States. If my code doesn't count as prior art, Bruce Perens's Efence (which I clearly state my code was inspired from) is at least 12 years prior! Suggestions/cursing patent trolls most welcome."
Microsoft

Attachmate To Retain Novell Unix Copyrights 77

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-now-I-keep-it dept.
angry tapir writes "Novell's copyrights for the Unix operating system will remain under Attachmate's control as part of the companies' pending merger, a Novell spokesman has revealed. The confirmation, which came in a terse message posted to Novell's website, seems to rule out questions of whether Unix assets are part of some 882 patents being sold to a Microsoft-led consortium, CPTN Holdings, as part of the deal."
Businesses

Microsoft (Probably) Didn't Just Buy Unix 289

Posted by Soulskill from the how's-that-for-definitive dept.
jfruhlinger writes "Word came down this morning that when Attachmate bought Novell, certain intellectual property rights were sold to a Microsoft-led consortium as part of the deal. Since Unix is the most valuable piece of IP Novell owns, there was a certain amount of panic that suddenly Redmond is in charge of this foundational technology for Linux and a number of other open source projects. But, while MS is being cagey, Brian Proffitt doubts that Unix was part of the IP package that was sold — and believes that Linux would be safe even if it were."
Books

The Linux Programming Interface 73

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Muad writes "Michael Kerrisk has been the maintainer of the Linux Man Pages collection (man 7) for more than five years now, and it is safe to say that he has contributed to the Linux documentation available in the online manual more than any other author before. For this reason he has been the recipient a few years back of a Linux Foundation fellowship meant to allow him to devote his full time to the furthering this endeavor. His book is entirely focused on the system interface and environment Linux (and, to some extent, any *NIX system) provides to a programmer. My most obvious choice for a comparison of the same caliber is Michael K. Johnson and Eric W. Troan's venerable Linux Application Development, the second edition of which was released in 2004 and is somewhat in need of a refresh, lamentably because it is an awesome book that belongs on any programmer's shelf. While Johnson and Troan have introduced a whole lot of programmers to the pleasure of coding to Linux's APIs, their approach is that of a nicely flowing tutorial, not necessarily complete, but unusually captivating and very suitable to academic use. Michael's book is a different kind of beast: while the older tome selects exquisite material, it is nowhere as complete as his — everything relating to the subject that I could reasonably think of is in the book, in a very thorough and maniacally complete yet enjoyably readable way — I did find one humorous exception, more on that later. Keep reading for the rest of Federico's review.
Books

OpenGL SuperBible 5th ed. 98

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
asgard4 writes "OpenGL SuperBible in its fifth edition is almost a complete rewrite. The authors threw out the discussion of old-style, fixed-function programming and replaced it with an introduction to OpenGL that is exclusively focused on using shaders from the very beginning. All the things that got deprecated with the advent of OpenGL 3 got removed, making it a more relevant and up-to-date book than the previous editions. The OpenGL SuperBible still strives to be the 'world's best introduction to OpenGL' according to the authors. Let's see if it can keep that promise." Read on for the rest of Martin's review.
Businesses

Taco Bell Programming 394

Posted by timothy from the how-dare-you-insult-the-code-monkeys dept.
theodp writes "Think outside the box? Nah, think outside the bun. Ted Dziuba argues there's a programming lesson to be learned from observing how Taco Bell manages to pull down $1.9 billion by mixing-and-matching roughly eight ingredients: 'The more I write code and design systems, the more I understand that many times, you can achieve the desired functionality simply with clever reconfigurations of the basic Unix tool set. After all, functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. This is the opposite of a trend of nonsense called DevOps, where system administrators start writing unit tests and other things to help the developers warm up to them — Taco Bell Programming is about developers knowing enough about Ops (and Unix in general) so that they don't overthink things, and arrive at simple, scalable solutions.'"
Businesses

Linux To Take Over Microsoft In Enterprises 237

Posted by samzenpus from the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race dept.
shougyin writes "For years, Linux has enjoyed much of its success as a replacement for Unix. Companies turned to Linux to replace Unix servers, or for new deployments within a Unix-heavy environment. Linux is still king there, but it's starting to encroach on Microsoft as well. Big companies are planning overwhelmingly (76.4%) to add more Linux servers in the next year, and less than half (41.2%) of the companies are planning to add Windows servers in the next year. Even more interesting, nearly half (43.6%) are actively planning to decrease use of Windows servers in the next year."
Software

Word Processors — One Writer's Further Retreat 391

Posted by timothy from the flipping-toggles-is-next dept.
ch-dickinson writes "In 2003, I posted an essay ('Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat') here about my writing experience — professional and personal — that led to a novel draft in vi(m), and I outlined reasons I chose a simple non-WYSIWYG text editor rather than a more full-featured word processor. A few novels later, in 2010 now, I decided to try a text editor that predates even vi: ed. I'd run across ed about 20 years ago, working at a software company and vaguely recalled navigation of a text file meant mentally mapping such commands as +3 and -2: ed didn't click with me then. But writing a novel draft is mule work, one sentence after another, straight ahead — no navigating the text file. The writer must get the story down and my goal is 1,000 words a day, every day, until I'm done. I have an hour to 90 minutes for this. So when I returned after two decades, I was impressed with how efficiently ed generates plain text files." Read on for the author's brief account of why he looked a few decades back in the software universe to find the right tool for the job.
Unix

SCO Puts Unix Assets On the Block 217

Posted by timothy from the neck-is-slender-executioner-very-skilled dept.
itwbennett writes "SCO Group announced Thursday that it plans to auction off most of its Unix assets, including 'certain UNIX system V software products and related services,' ITworld reports. 'This asset sale is an important step forward in ensuring business continuity for our customers around the world,' said Ken Nielsen, SCO chief financial officer, in a statement. 'Our goal is to ensure continued viability for SCO, its customers, employees and the Unix technology.' Interested parties must submit a bid for the assets by Oct. 5."

Best Way To Archive Emails For Later Searching? 385

Posted by timothy from the shrink-wrap-them-and-use-sandwich-bags dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I have kept every email I have ever sent or received since 1990, with the exception of junk mail (though I kept a lot of that as well). I have migrated my emails faithfully from Unix mail, to Eudora, to Outlook, to Thunderbird and Entourage, though I have left much of the older stuff in Outlook PST files. To make my life easier I would now like to merge all the emails back into a single searchable archive — just because I can. But there are a few problems: a) Moving them between email systems is SLOW; while the data is only a few GB, it is hundred of thousands of emails and all of the email systems I have tried take forever to process the data. b) Some email systems (i.e. Outlook) become very sluggish when their database goes over a certain size. c) I don't want to leave them in a proprietary database, as within a few years the format becomes unsupported by the current generation of the software. d) I would like to be able to search the full text, keep the attachments, view HTML emails correctly and follow email chains. e) Because I use multiple operating systems, I would prefer platform independence. f) Since I hope to maintain and add emails for the foreseeable future, I would like to use some form of open standard. So, what would you recommend?"
Unix

New Sandbox Framework For Chromium Released 109

Posted by Soulskill from the spicy-security dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "As applications have become more and more complex in recent years and Web browsers have evolved into operating systems unto themselves, the task of securing desktop environments has become increasingly difficult. And while there's been quite a bit of innovation on Windows security, advances in Unix security have been less common of late. But now, a group of researchers from Google and the University of Cambridge in England have developed a new sandboxing framework called Capsicum, designed specifically to provide better security capabilities on Unix and Unix-derived systems (PDF). Capsicum is the work of four researchers at Cambridge and the framework extends the POSIX API and introduces a number of new Unix primitives that are meant to isolate applications and users and handle rights delegation in a better way. The research, done by Robert N.M. Watson, Ben Laurie, Kris Kennaway and Jonathan Anderson, was supported by Google, and the researchers have added some of the new Capsicum features to a version of Google's Chromium browser in order to demonstrate the functionality."
Microsoft

The Great Operating System Games 145

Posted by CmdrTaco from the remember-.bas-files dept.
harrymcc writes "For decades, the simple little games that come with operating systems have been some of the most-used software on the planet. Legendary geeks such as Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Andy Herzfeld have tried their hands at writing them. And yet they get no respect — or, actually, attention of any kind. Technologizer's Benj Edwards aimed to rectify that with a look at forty years' worth of bundled OS games, from 1971 Unix text-based ones to Woz's Little Brick Out to such Windows mainstays as Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Reversi." Article is an annoyingly long slide show (would it kill people to put a reasonable amount of content on pages?) but there's some fun stuff in there.
Image

R In a Nutshell Screenshot-sm 91

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
joel.neely writes "R is a statistical computing environment that is fully-compliant with state-of-the-art buzzwords: free, open-source, cross-platform, interactive, graphics, objects, closures, higher-order functions, and more. It is supported by an impressive collection of user-supplied modules through CRAN, the 'Comprehensive R Archive Network.' And now it has its own O'Reilly Nutshell book, R in a Nutshell, written by Joseph Adler. I am pleased to report that Adler has risen to the challenge of the highly-regarded 'Nutshell' franchise. As is traditional for the series, this title mixes introduction, tutorial, and reference material in a style that is well suited to a reader who already has a background in programming, but is a new or occasional user of R." Read on for the rest of Joel's review.
Wine

Wine 1.2 Released 427

Posted by Soulskill from the pop-the-cork dept.
David Gerard writes "Stuck with that one Windows app you can't get rid of? Rejoice — Wine 1.2 is officially released! Apart from running pretty much any Windows application on Unix better than 1.0 (from 2008), major new features include 64-bit support, bi-directional text, and translation into thirty languages. And, of course, DirectX 9 is well-supported and DirectX 10 is getting better. Packages should hit the distros over the weekend, or you can get the source now."
Caldera

Claimed Proof That UNIX Code Was Copied Into Linux 578

Posted by kdawson from the copied-by-a-spider-on-lsd dept.
walterbyrd writes "SCO's ex-CEO's brother, a lawyer named Kevin McBride, has finally revealed some of the UNIX code that SCO claimed was copied into Linux. Scroll down to the comments where it reads: 'SCO submitted a very material amount of literal copying from UNIX to Linux in the SCO v. IBM case. For example, see the following excerpts from SCO's evidence submission in Dec. 2005 in the SCO v. IBM case:' There are a number of links to PDF files containing UNIX code that SCO claimed was copied into Linux (until they lost the battle by losing ownership of UNIX)." Many of the snippets I looked at are pretty generic. Others, like this one (PDF), would require an extremely liberal view of the term "copy and paste."
Security

Adobe Finally Fixes Remote Launch 0-Day 82

Posted by kdawson from the stay-safe-out-there dept.
Trailrunner7 sends in this excerpt from Threatpost (Adobe announcement here): "Adobe today shipped a critical Reader/Acrobat patch to cover a total of 17 documented vulnerabilities that expose Windows, Mac, and Unix users to malicious hacker attacks. The update, which affects Adobe Reader/Acrobat 9.3.2 and earlier versions, includes a fix for the outstanding PDF '/Launch' functionality social engineering attack vector that was disclosed by researcher Didier Stevens. As previously reported, Didier created a proof-of-concept PDF file that executes an embedded executable without exploiting any security vulnerabilities. The PDF hack, when combined with clever social engineering techniques, could potentially allow code execution attacks if a user simply opens a rigged PDF file." Relatedly, Brian Krebs blogs about the downsides of Adobe's increasingly Byzantine update process.
Unix

Judge Rejects SCO's Motion For a New Trial 168

Posted by timothy from the civil-procedure's-too-good-for-'em dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A judge has rejected SCO's motion for a new trial in the company's dispute over UNIX intellectual property ownership. The ruling validates a verdict that was issued in April by a jury who determined that Novell, and not SCO, is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This means SCO cannot continue to pursue its litigation against IBM and other Linux users. 'There was substantial evidence that Novell made an intentional decision to retain ownership of the copyrights,' the judge wrote in his decision. 'The Court finds that the verdict is not clearly, decidedly, or overwhelmingly against the weight of the evidence. Therefore, SCO is not entitled to a new trial.'"
Security

Adobe Warns of Flash, PDF Zero-Day Attacks 216

Posted by Soulskill from the who-even-uses-that-stuff-anyway dept.
InfosecWarrior writes "Adobe issued an alert late Friday night to warn about zero-day attacks against an unpatched vulnerability in its Reader and Flash Player software products. The vulnerability, described as critical, affects Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris operating systems. It also affects the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh, and Unix operating systems."
Caldera

SCO Asks Judge To Give Them the Unix Copyright 286

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-promise-to-walk-it-every-day dept.
Raul654 writes "In March, the jury in the Novell/SCO case found that Novell owns the copyright to Unix. Now, SCO's lawyers have asked judge Ted Stewart to order Novell to turn over the Unix copyright to them. 'SCO contends the jury did not answer the specific issue before Stewart that involves a legal principle called "specific performance," under which a party can ask a court to order another party to fulfill an aspect of an agreement.'" Over at Groklaw, PJ is deep into a community project to annotate SCO's filing. It's for the benefit of future historians, but it makes amusing reading now.

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