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November 20, 2009

Google laughs off the 'Osborne Effect'

I’m guessing not many folks at Google are old enough to remember Adam Osborne (though CEO Eric Schmidt is one). Back in the ’80s Osborne’s namesake Osborne Computer Corp. introduced the first popular portable computer.

In those days, a 25-pound luggable qualified as portable and the Osborne sold like hotcakes.

But It was also one of the great early flameouts of the PC era. Osborne made the mistake of pre-announcing a successor machine months before it could be delivered and sales of its existing line dried up sending the company into a tailspin it never recovered from. The preannouncement, while according to some accounts wasn’t the main cause of Osborne’s demise, became known as the “Osborne Effect,” a cautionary tale for any company considering pre-announcing products before they’re available.

But there have been many significance pre-announcements of new tech products. The famously secretive Apple previewed the iPhone six months ahead of delivery. The company said the details would have come out in its FCC filing so it figured better to spill the beans on its own terms. More importantly, Apple didn’t have to worry about dampening sales since the iPhone was its first foray in the phone market.

Continue reading "Google laughs off the 'Osborne Effect'"

Posted by David Needle at 5:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

Blue Coat securing local networks with the Cloud
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From the 'Faster' files:

A big emerging trend in enterprise IT this year has been the move to the Cloud, for almost everything. One particular area where I'm seeing a strong use of a hybrid cloud/on-premise model is for security and one of the chief proponents of that model is enterprise IT vendor Blue Coat (NASDAQ: BCSI).

This week Blue Coat announced the release of new ProxySG and ProxyAV web gateway appliances and the Web Pulse cloud service that complements them both. 

The Blue Coat ProxySG network gateway appliances now support up to 60,000 users in a single appliance which is a whole lot of power and overall they're claiming a 5x performance gain over their previous generation. The bulk of the improvements in speed come by way of multi-core related threading and optimizations.

I spoke with Blue Coat's Chief Scientist Mikko Valimaki about the new releases and he was keen on pointing out how important the cloud element is to the overall solution.

Blue Coat has a cloud security service called WebPulse which does some interesting real time threat analysis. In addition to being part of Blue Coat's enterprise products, it's is also freely accessible by home users by way of Blue Coat's K9 security service.

Continue reading "Blue Coat securing local networks with the Cloud"

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 5:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

PHP 5.3.1 released for 5 security flaws, 113 bugs

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From the 'Yum/Apt-Get Update' files:

The first update to PHP 5.3 is now available providing 5 security fixes in addition a long list of bug fixes to the popular open source dynamic language.

PHP 5.3 was released at the end of June, so the 5.3.1 point update has been in the works for five months at this point.

On the security fix front two of the bug fixes are for safe mode items which could have left a PHP system at risk:
  • Fixed a safe_mode bypass in tempnam().
  • Fixed bug #50063 (safe_mode_include_dir fails).
The three other fixes are a collection of different issues.

Among them is a new "max_file_uploads" INI directive, which according to the PHP 5.3.1 release notes, "...can be set to limit the number of file uploads per-request to 20 by default, to prevent possible DOS via temporary file exhaustion."

Sanity check are added to exif processing and there is a fix for an open_basedir bypass in posix_mkfifo().

While the security fixes are obviously an important reason for PHP users to migrate immediately, the long list of non-security items is also noteworthy.

Continue reading "PHP 5.3.1 released for 5 security flaws, 113 bugs "

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

Fedora 12 updates package installation policy

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From the 'Error Correction' files:

The public milestone release of Fedora 12 this week had one big flaw in it that is now set to be corrected.

One key standard practice on nearly every Linux system I have ever seen or used is the separation of root and user roles. New software installation that affects an entire system typically can only be installed by the root user. That's a behavior that was modified with the Fedora 12 release such that a local user could install signed applications without root authorization.

Now Fedora is reversing that policy.
"After more discussion and thought, though, the package maintainers have posted to the fedora-devel-list mailing list agreeing to provide an update to Fedora 12's PackageKit," Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields wrote. "The update will require local console users to enter the root password to install new software packages."
Makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is why the new policy was put into Fedora 12 in the first place.

Fedora developer Owen Taylor though has put together a lengthy post about the developer rationale for the initial policy change and I can kinda/sorta see why at first it might have made sense for some people (but not all).
"In Fedora 9, 10, and 11, the first time a user tried to install a package from the Fedora repositories, they would be prompted for a root password, with a checkbox to remember that permission for the future. (Before Fedora 9, you had to enter the root password every time.)," Taylor wrote.

Continue reading "Fedora 12 updates package installation policy "

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

November 19, 2009

Mozilla earned $78.6 million in 2008
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From the 'Free Software Making $$' files:

Mozilla gives its software away for free, yet year after year they keep making money. For the 2008 year, Mozilla is just now disclosing how much revenue it generated and it was another growth year for the open source group.

Revenue at Mozilla was reported at $78.6 for 2008 which is a 5 percent increase over the $75.1 million reported in 2007. The revenue growth rate appears to have slowed somewhat in my opinion. Back in 2005, Mozilla's revenues were only $53 million.

As has been the case over the last several year the bulk of Mozilla's revenue is driven by search revenues generated from Firefox by Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay. So whenever you search using the default start page in Firefox, you're actually helping to support Mozilla.

Digging deeper into Mozilla's financial report shows some other interesting tidbits of information.

For example, Mozilla actually lost $7.8 million (which is taken into account as part of the revenue calculation) from its investments. As well Mozilla's expenses in 2008 skyrocketed by 48 percent to $49.4 million up from $33.3 million in 2007.

Continue reading "Mozilla earned $78.6 million in 2008"

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 3:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

Google Chrome OS goes open source in Chromium OS
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From the 'Browser Operating System' files:

Google today has officially open sourced its under-development Chrome OS operating system under the Chromium OS project.

The code is available now at: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/building-chromium-os - I'm currently in the process of trying to build a full system now (so more to come from me soon).  Right now the gziped Tarball is 232 MB (pretty small for an OS) and the official build milestone number is 0.4.22.8.

Google is working with Canonical, the lead sponsor behind the Ubuntu Linux project on part of the underlying OS. Chris Kenyon VP of OEM services at Canonical blogged today Canonical is contributing engineering to Google under contract. So, that means that there IS a link between Ubuntu and Chrome OS! That's a surprise.  But hey it's still all open source.

By making the project fully open source,Google is opening the project up to participation and comment from interested developers. It also means that they'll be contributing code back to the open source community, which ultimately means that other vendors could benefit as well.

Aside from the Chromium OS announcement today, Google has provided a whole lot of interesting information about Chrome OS.

During a live event (that was also webcast) today Google detailed what we should all look for in their new ChromeOS.

Basically it's all about the web. Apps are in the cloud as well as users' data. Sundar Pichai, VP of Product Management at Google explained that the local hard drive in Chrome OS should just be thought of as a local cache for syncing with the cloud. That's cool.

Going a step further, by design Chrome OS will specify a reference hardware architecture which will require Solid State Drives (SSDs) instead of regular hard drives. The idea is to provide for a faster overall user experience.
"Every application is a web application so users don't have to install program," Pichai said.
chromeOSmaster_small.jpgPichai also showed off how Chrome OS would have a new apps tab to make it easier to load and access apps.

The screenshot (left) gives us a glimpse of how that new apps tab may look. Those apps are basically just url shortcuts, organized in a window.

There is also an Mac OS  'fish-eye' type of interface for scrolling between open windows which looked pretty interesting as well.

Continue reading "Google Chrome OS goes open source in Chromium OS"

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 1:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Share

Schmidt, Otellini join tech lobby

The chief executives of Google and Intel have joined the executive committee of TechNet, a lobbying group representing the technology industry.

TechNet announced the appointments of Google's Eric Schmidt and Intel's Paul Otellini along with word that Rey Ramsey would be taking over as the group's CEO in January.

Ramsey has been serving as chief executive of One Economy, a nonprofit that focuses on delivering technology training and Internet access to low-income people.

In his role at One Economy, Ramsey has figured prominently in the broadband policy discussion, frequently appearing at FCC proceedings and congressional hearings.

Cisco CEO John Chambers, who co-founded TechNet and currently co-chairs the group, called Ramsey's selection "an inspired choice."

Schmidt and Otellini will join tech luminaries such as EMC CEO Joseph Tucci, Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson and Symantec President on CEO Enrique Salem on TechNet's executive committee.

Posted by Kenneth Corbin at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

Google Chrome Frame security flaw discovered by Microsoft
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From the 'I Told You So' files:

Back in September, Google launched Chrome Frame which embeds a Chrome-type browser inside of a Microsoft Internet Explorer(IE) browser. At the time, Microsoft claimed that Chrome Frame could make IE less secure.

Guess what? Turns out Microsoft was right.

Late Wednesday, Google issued an update to Chrome Frame with version 4.0.245.1 for a cross-origin bypass security vulnerability.
"An attacker could have bypassed cross-origin protections," Google warned in its advisory. "Although important, "High" severity issues do not permit persistent malware to infect a user's machine. We're unaware of any exploitation of this issue."
What's also particularly interesting about this Chrome Frame vulnerability is that it was not discovered by Google itself. It was discovered by Microsoft.

So to recap, Microsoft was worried months ago that Google Chrome Frame put IE at risk and now they've proven it.

Continue reading "Google Chrome Frame security flaw discovered by Microsoft"

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 10:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Share

November 18, 2009

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 released with 83 bug fixes
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From the 'Coming Soon, Very Soon' files:

The third beta of Mozilla's open source Firefox 3.6 browser is now adding fixing 83 bugs and adding several new features.

Of the 83 bugs fixed, 13 have been tagged as being critical. It looks to me like the majority of those critical flaws are crash related items.

One particularly interesting critical bug fix is one for the crash reporter itself. According to Mozilla".., the updater crashes when trying to update with crash reporter open."

One of the key goals overall for the Firefox 3.6 release is to increase performance. To that end, there is at least one new feature in Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 that will help to support that goal. From a technical perspective, Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 now implements the async attribute of script elements. Basically its a way run scripts asynchronously  to improve overall page load times.

Another new change is the component directory lock-down for add-ons.
"In addition to the standard mechanism for extending the browser via add-ons and plugins, though, there has historically been another way to do it," Mozilla developer Johnathan Nightingale wrote. "Third-party applications installed on your machine would sometimes try extend Firefox by just adding their own code directly to the "components" directory, where much of Firefox's own code is stored."
That's a problem for a number of potential stability and security reasons, but it's a problem that is being eliminated with Firefox 3.6 Beta 3.

Continue reading "Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 released with 83 bug fixes"

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

Google Chrome OS: What to look for this week
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From the 'It's Not Vaporware' files:

Google is holding an event on Thursday to discuss its Chrome OS open source operating system. Details are sparse at this point, though the official media invitation gives us some clues that we'll get some real technical insights.
"This event is a follow-up to the announcement we made in July, and Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management will be speaking along with Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS," the Google media invite states.
Though the official briefing is tomorrow, there is a whole lot that we know today about Chrome OS. There are also a few items that we can speculate on, (which is always good fun in the absence of the official specs).

We know that Chrome OS uses the Chrome Browser, most likely built from the dev-channel for Linux Chromium build. I use Chrome for Linux everyday now and it is a solid, capable and fast browser.

We know that Chrome OS will be Linux based.  We don't know which distro (if any) it will be based on. Chromium is available in the .deb packaging format (used by Debian based distribution including Ubuntu), so one obvious guess would be that Chrome OS will in some way shape or form be Debian based as well. 

That said, Android (Google's other open source operating system) is not Debian based, so perhaps Google will just build their own Linux distro from the kernel up for Chrome OS.  Personally, I think that's the better route for Chrome OS, though they really should stick with a common packaging format (.deb or .rpm) in order to enable some degree of easy packaging for applications.

Continue reading "Google Chrome OS: What to look for this week"

Posted by Sean Michael Kerner at 9:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

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