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WIN8 Enter Final Pre-Beta
Microsoft Windows developer build tracking site Winunleaked.tk has recently updated its Windows 8 build number page, documenting the milestones Microsoft developers have been achieving in the compilation of the Windows 8 operating system. According to the latest numbers, it appears that the company has just released the final pre-beta build, marking another significant milestone in the release cycle of the operating system.
The site claims Microsoft’s own testers will then vote on which of the next Windows 8 builds will become the “Final Beta,” with a voting decision being made on Saturday, January 28th. The final beta build will then be shown at an internal Microsoft preview on Monday, January 30th.
The official pre-beta build number is 8189.0.winmain.120120-1830, and according to the site, the next builds for Windows 8 will be labeled as “Beta Escrow” builds. Additionally, the operating system roadmap claims that the “Final Beta” build to be released to the public will be named “winmain_win8b1.”
Microsoft and Others Enable IPv6
The so-called worldwide launch of IPv6 has been set for 6 June 2012, when companies will permanently enable IPv6 connectivity in their products and services.
Following the relative success of 2011′s IPv6 day, a number of firms including Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have pledged support for “World IPv6 Launch” day, which has been set as 6 June 2012. On that day the companies have pledged to permanently enable IPv6 connectivity to their associated products and services.
IP address allocation bodies such as ARIN and RIPE have been pushing IPv6 adoption for years but it took last year’s dramatic exhaustion of IPv4 addresses to jolt companies into action. IPv6 day was supported by many of the firms taking part in the IPv6 launch later this year, to drum up awareness and see how much disruption there will be when IPv6 connectivity is enabled.
Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC said, “Operational experience and measurements on World IPv6 Launch will help content providers and ISPs to identify and rectify any potential problems with delivering services over IPv6.”
Big Blue Still The Patent King
As technology companies start to stockpile patents so that they can see off their rivals IFI Claims Patent Services, a company that maintains global patent databases, has clocked the outfits with the most weapons in any patent war.
More than 224,505 utility patents were awarded in the U.S. last year, jumping two percent over the previous year’s record-breaking tally of 219,614 patents. IBM has always had the most patents, probably because it has been around the longest. The company was granted 6,180 utility patents, up nearly five percent from 2010. Samsung was the number two 4,894 patents, followed by Canon at 2,821 patents, Panasonic with 2,559 and Toshiba with 2,483 utility patents.
Microsoft, which held on to the third spot in 2010, is in the sixth place with 2,311 utility patents granted last year, According to IFI CEO Mike Baycroft global companies, and especially Asian ones, are collecting U.S patents at a dizzying pace, and now Asian firms hold eight of the top 10 slots in the 2011 ranking.
RIM Hopes Apps Will Help Sales
January 18, 2012 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Research In Motion is highlighting the native and Android apps available on its struggling PlayBook at the Consumer Electronics Show as it gets ready to launch the first major overhaul of the tablet’s software in February.
The company is showing the PlayBook OS 2.0 in its booth, demonstrating the Android apps that will finally be available to users of the tablet. RIM said in March last year that it would release a player that would let users of the tablets run apps designed for Android, and that capability will finally be available with PlayBook OS 2.0.
Popular games such as Cut the Rope and Plants vs. Zombies will be available in the store, said Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations and ecosystem development. The apps appear and work like any other app; users don’t have to launch a separate player to run them.
Not just any Android app will be accessible to users, and that’s by design, Saunders said. “We don’t want to enable an open marketplace the way the Android Market is,” he said. Android developers must use a software package to make their apps compatible with the PlayBook, and then they must submit it to RIM’s standard app curation process. The company hopes to weed out the malware and pirated apps that often appear in the Android Market, he said.
When PlayBook OS 2.0 becomes available, “some number of thousands” of Android apps will be available in the market, Saunders said. The company has been working with some of the aggregator marketplaces to port apps and attending Android meetups to encourage developers to make their apps available to PlayBook users, Saunders said.
RIM is taking pains to attract as many developers as possible by supporting as many languages and frameworks as possible. “One thing we’re focused on is providing a rich palette of tools developers can use,” Saunders said. RIM has developed ports for a number of frameworks and languages to make it easy for developers to use whatever tools.
Motorola, Lenovo To Offer Intel-Smartphones
January 17, 2012 by admin
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Intel announced multi-year deals with Motorola Mobility and Lenovo to create smartphones and tablets, and said the first Google Android phones using the top chipmaker’s processors would go on sale this year.
Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said Lenovo would launch a smartphone for the Chinese market using Intel’s newest chip in the second quarter of the year, while Motorola will release its phone in the second half.
The agreements with the U.S. and Chinese consumer electronics makers help shore up Intel’s boldest foray into the mobile arena. The company is hoping its new “Medfield” chip conserves enough power to compete with rival smartphones using ARM Holdings’ more energy-efficient architecture.
The world’s largest chip maker is also making a concerted push for the likes of Hewlett Packard to go big on super-slim, Apple Macbook Air-like laptops called Ultrabooks, which it hopes will preserve its dominance of the PC market as tablets like the iPad draw consumers away.
“It is a multi-year, multi-product strategy that will bring both phones and tablets to the (U.S.) marketplace starting with a phone in the second half of 2012,” Dave Whalen, a vice president in the Intel Architecture Group, said of the agreement with Motorola.
“You’re going to see us working very closely with them on technologies,” Whalen told Reuters in an interview.
Symantec’s Virus Code Hacked
Symantec is looking into an Indian hacking group’s claims that it accessed source code used in the company’s flagship Norton Antivirus program.
A spokesman for the company on Thursday said that one claim by the group was false, while another is still being investigated.
Meanwhile, the Indian group, which calls itself Lords of Dharmaraja, has threatened to publicly disclose the source code very soon.
On Wednesday, the group posted on Pastebin what it claimed was confidential documentation related to Norton AntiVirus source code. A review of the material showed what appears to be a description of an application programming interface (API) for Symantec’s AV product.
The group also posted what it claimed was the complete source code tree file for Norton Antivirus. That document appears to have been taken down.
‘Yama Tough,’ the hacker who posted the documents, released at least two more on Google+ allegedly related to Symantec source code. One of the documents appears to be a detailed technical overview of Norton Anti-Virus, Quarantine Server Packaging API Specification, v1.0. The other document, from 2000, describes a Symantec Immune System Gateway Array Setup technology.
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Apple Goes Down In Court
Apple has lost a move in US District Court in San Francisco to keep some of its software ‘secrets’ out of view of the public.
It had asked Judge William Alsup to keep documents sealed that had surfaced in its lawsuit against Psystar, Bloomberg reports. The information about Apple’s Mac OS X operating system covers topics such as technological protection measures, system integrity checks and thermal management techniques.
The court turned down Apple’s request, however, noting that the company didn’t deny that the information was already public or claim that it had been misappropriated. Apple had argued that it still deserved trade secret protection because it didn’t release the information and had never confirmed it, but that didn’t convince Judge Alsup.
The information at issue is available on a web site about the Mac OS X operating system, the judge noted, adding that Apple’s decryption key haiku is available to any user that compiles and runs publicly available source code on a Macbook Air laptop.
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Google Launches Politics Page
January 10, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Google has launched a political hub site to help the voting public get information, discuss issues and track candidates’ popularity.
On Monday, Google launched an election site designed to not only offer users information but also to give them a chance to provide feedback on the candidates and the issues.
“From the nineteenth century’s pamphlets to the twentieth century’s TV ad revolution, our elections have always been shaped by how we communicate and consume information,” wrote Eric Hysen, a member of Google’s politics and elections team, in a blog post. “Just in time for the Iowa Caucuses, we’re launching an election hub where citizens can study, watch, discuss, learn about, participate in and perhaps even make an impact on the digital campaign trail as it blazes forward to Tuesday, November 6, 2012.”
The election site went live just in time for the Republican caucuses in Iowa. It’s was a pivotal day for the six GOP candidates campaigning in Iowa, with each trying to emerge as an early frontrunner.
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Can Hackers Attack A Trains Network?
January 7, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Security expert Professor Stefan Katzenbeisser of Technische Universität Darmstadt told a security conference in Berlin that the GSM-R which is being installed in train networks makes them vulnerable to hackers.
Katzenbeisser said that the new system was vulnerable to “Denial of Service” attacks and, while trains could not crash, service could be disrupted for quite some time. Speaking to the Chaos Communication Congress he said that Network Rail is currently installing GSM-R across the British railway network.
It uses the similar technical standards to 2G mobile networks and is due to replace older signalling technology in southern England next year, and throughout the whole country in 2014. But train switching systems, which enable trains to be guided from one track to another at a railway junction, have historically been separate from the online world. If they were connected to the internet as they are in GSM-R they could be hit by Denial of Service attacks.
Is Samsung Flip Flopping?
January 3, 2012 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics, Smartphones
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Samsung is apparently rethinking its decision not to bring Android 4 to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab.
Earlier the company stated that neither device could be updated due to the size of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. The news created a bit of an issue with users sharpening scythes, pitchforks and lighting torches to go on a lynching. Now word on the street is that the company is considering backing down on its decision due to “strong customer demand.”