Go ahead and clean up the coffee you just spit all over your keyboard. We’ll wait. Back? OK. A judge in Texas ruled that Microsoft Word’s XML systems violate patents by Toronoto-based i4i Inc. Word uses XML in reading and writing XML, DOCX, and DOCM files.
The lawsuit alleges that MS violated i4i’s 1998 XML patent #5,787,449. The injunction will go into effect in 60 days and prevent Microsoft from selling or demonstrating Microsoft Word. MS will have to pay i4i about $290 million in damages.
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Back in March of 2008, Comcast's Gerard Kunkel proclaimed that Comcast was experimenting with embedding cameras in your DVR or cable box, allowing the company to know exactly who is watching what, at what time. Once a privacy backlash fired up Kunkel quickly backpedaled, but the idea of a nosy DVR may not be that far off. Light Reading explores how several cable companies are interested in a technology by Prime Sense that uses "3D-sensing" cameras to identify which users are in a room using thermal identification technology. While MSOs would probably love tailored ads based on who's in the room, early uses for this technology involve improved cable GUI and program interactivity.
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Google Privacy Opt Out Announced Via The Onion
by Michael Arrington on August 12, 2009
The Onion strikes again, announcing Google Opt Out today, a product that lets people opt out of Google’s information gathering activities by having their home destroyed and moving to a covered villiage complex at an undisclosed location. As always, they nail it. Video is below.
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When Debian developer Joey Hess started tinkering with webOS, he noticed that it was sending something to Palm once a day. Surely, Palm wasn’t sending anything too potentially incriminating without making it blatantly obvious to the user, right? Wrong.
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Texas Judge Rules Microsoft Can’t Sell Word Anymore
Go ahead and clean up the coffee you just spit all over your keyboard. We’ll wait. Back? OK. A judge in Texas ruled that Microsoft Word’s XML systems violate patents by Toronoto-based i4i Inc. Word uses XML in reading and writing XML, DOCX, and DOCM files.
The lawsuit alleges that MS violated i4i’s 1998 XML patent #5,787,449. The injunction will go into effect in 60 days and prevent Microsoft from selling or demonstrating Microsoft Word. MS will have to pay i4i about $290 million in damages.
Read More
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Another Court Deals Major Blow to DVD Copying
A California appeals court on Wednesday overturned a lower court ruling that had paved the way for a $10,000 DVD copying system called Kaleidescape and other products from the company with the same name.
The 6th District Court of Appeal in San Jose, California, was the second court in two days to rule that companies are bound (.pdf) by the entire Content Scramble System licensing regime, which prevents duplicating DVDs.
A San Francisco federal judge ruled late Tuesday that RealNetworks’ DVD-copying software was a breach of the Content Scramble System license, which is required for DVDs and computers to play DVDs. The license allows DVD players to descramble the encrypted code on a DVD, but the license prohibits the duplication of a DVD. Both RealNetworks and Kaleidescape claimed a loophole in the CSS license allowed the copying of DVDs.
In both cases, Kaleidescape of Sunnyvale, California, and RealNetworks, of Seattle, claim that the CSS license issued by a partner of the motion picture studios — the DVD Copy Control Association — did not require, as the studios alleged, that a DVD be in the machine to play back the movie. Hence, a copy could be made, they claimed.
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Diebold Quietly Patches Security Flaw in Vote Counting Software
Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, has patched a serious security weakness in its election tabulation software used in the majority of states, according to a lab that tested the new version and a federal commission that certified it.
The flaw in the tabulation software was discovered by Wired.com earlier this year, and involved the program’s auditing logs. The logs failed to record significant events occurring on a computer running the software, including the act of someone deleting votes during or after an election. The logs also failed to record who performed an action on the system, and listed some events with the wrong date and timestamps.
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Small businesses largely not PCI compliant
Angela Moscaritolo August 12, 2009
Though 83 percent of small businesses are familiar with the PCI DSS, just 62 are compliant, according to a recent survey.
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Microsoft pushes out ATL, ActiveX fixes
Dan Kaplan August 11, 2009
The software giant on Tuesday cleaned up its flawed Active Template Library, in addition to issuing a host of other patches.
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Top websites using Flash cookies to track user behavior
Angela Moscaritolo August 11, 2009
Little-known Adobe Flash cookies are being used by some websites to get around users' attempts to avoid being tracked by advertising networks, according to research from University of California, Berkeley.
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eBay mandates developer password change
Chuck Miller August 11, 2009
The giant web marketplace site eBay has warned developers of a security vulnerability, and is requiring that they change their credentials immediately.
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US-CERT director resigns, plans to work for RSA
The director of the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has resigned.
Mischel Kwon has headed up US-CERT, an arm of the DHS's National Cybersecurity Division, since June 2008.
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19 security vulnerabilities fixed in Windows components and applications
WINS, Telnet and the Active Template Library (once more) are among the vulnerable components. The updates also eliminate critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Web Components, and a DoS vulnerability in ASP.NET that cripples applications using IIS more…
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Lockpicking and the Internet
Physical locks aren't very good. They keep the honest out, but any burglar worth his salt can pick the common door lock pretty quickly.
It used to be that most people didn't know this. Sure, we all watched television criminals and private detectives pick locks with an ease only found on television and thought it realistic, but somehow we still held onto the belief that our own locks kept us safe from intruders.
The Internet changed that.
First was the MIT Guide to Lockpicking, written by the late Bob ("Ted the Tool") Baldwin. Then came Matt Blaze's 2003 paper on breaking master key systems. After that, came a flood of lock picking information on the Net: opening a bicycle lock with a Bic pen, key bumping, and more. Many of these techniques were already known in both the criminal and locksmith community. The locksmiths tried to suppress the knowledge, believing their guildlike secrecy was better than openness. But they've lost: Never has there been more public information about lock picking -- or safecracking, for that matter.
Lock companies have responded with more complicated locks, and more complicated disinformation campaigns.
There seems to be a limit to how secure you can make a wholly mechanical lock, as well as a limit to how large and unwieldy a key the public will accept. As a result, there is increasing interest in other lock technologies.
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Microsoft Knew About Bugs Two Years Ago
According to the security firm that alerted Microsoft of the flaws, Redmond was first alerted about them in 2007.
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Android security chief: Mobile-phone attacks coming
As smartphones become more popular, they're going to get some unwanted attention from criminals, Google Inc.'s head of Android security said today.
"The smartphone OS will become a major security target," said Android Security Leader Rich Cannings, speaking at the Usenix Security Symposium. Attackers can already hit millions of victims with a smartphone attack, and soon that number will be even larger. "Personally I think this will become an epiphany to malware authors," he said.
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