Early in December Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle notified the German regulator that they planned to form CPTN Holdings with a view to purchasing 882 of Novell's patents. But the filing was withdrawn (Rücknahme) on Dec. 30. No reason was given for the withdrawal by German authorities, but it is likely voluntary as authorities would not yet have had time to investigate the proposal.
However, in recent weeks the German Federal Cartel Office has received letters and recommendations from various open-source organizations including the U.S.-based Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
These open-source advocates are extremely alarmed that patents with claims on some elements of open-source software could fall into the hands of companies that compete with that open-source software. Given Novell's past involvement in free software development, it's seems very likely that at least some of the company's patents would cover free software technologies.
Details on Dart on the Goto conference site were brief and Google has not officially said anything. Goto called Dart: "A new programming language for structured web programming."
According to the email, though, Dash has been designed to hit three objectives: improved performance, developer usability and what Google is calling the "ability to be tooled".
Translated that last bit means an ability to be used with tools for coding activities such as refactoring used in large-scale programming projects.
Driving Dash/Dart is Google's fear of Apple and the rise of the closed web and what that could mean to Google as a programming platform for accessing the web. Google is apparently concerned innovation is moving off the web as we and Tim Berners-Lee know it, and on to the popular but fenced-off iPhone and iPad. That poses a huge problem for Google when you've built a search and ads empire on a web without fences.
The web has succeeded historically to some extent in spite of the web platform, based primarily on the strength of its reach. The emergence of compelling alternative platforms like iOS has meant that the web platform must compete on its merits, not just its reach. Javascript as it exists today will likely not be a viable solution long-term. Something must change.
The language has been designed to be consumed in the browser VM, on the front-end server and different compilers
Google has folded the team behind its JSPrime successor to GWT into the effort building the new language, while Joy will be built in to provide templating and model-view controller (MVC) features for code development.
YouTube has decided it's had enough of Adobe's perenially-p0wned Flash and will therefore now default to delivering video with the HTML5 <video> tag.
A post by the video vault's engineering and development team says the move is now possible, and sensible, because the industry has invented useful things like adaptive bitrates, encryption, new codecs and WebRTC that make the <video> usable work in the real world.
Those additions mean HTML5 is at least as functional – or more so – than Flash, and if YouTube detects you are running Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox, it'll now deliver video using <video> and flush Flash.
YouTube's also decided to can what it calls the “'old style' of Flash
YouTube seems not to care a jot that its actions are inimical to Adobe, saying it's just doing what all the cool kids – Netflix, Apple, Microsoft and its competitor Vimeo – have already done.
Which is not to say that Flash is dead: those who don't run the browsers above will still get YouTube delivered by whatever technology works bes tin their environment. And that will often – perhaps too often* – be Flash. ®
Bootnote * Until they get p0wned, that is: Flash is so horridly buggy that Apple has just updated its plugin-blockers to foil versions of the product prior to 16.0.0.296 and 13.0.0.264.
It’s true that ordering Apple to develop the backdoor will fundamentally undermine iPhone security, as Cook and other digital security advocates have argued. But it’s possible for individual iPhone users to protect themselves from government snooping by setting strong passcodes on their phones — passcodes the FBI would not be able to unlock even if it gets its iPhone backdoor.
The technical details of how the iPhone encrypts data, and how the FBI might circumvent this protection, are complex and convoluted, and are being thoroughly explored elsewhere on the internet. What I’m going to focus on here is how ordinary iPhone users can protect themselves.
The short version: If you’re worried about governments trying to access your phone, set your iPhone up with a random, 11-digit numeric passcode. What follows is an explanation of why that will protect you and how to actually do it.
Less than a week after the attacks in Paris — while the public and policymakers were still reeling, and the investigation had barely gotten off the ground — Cy Vance, Manhattan’s District Attorney, released a policy paper calling for legislation requiring companies to provide the government with backdoor access to their smartphones and other mobile devices. This is the first concrete proposal of this type since September 2014, when FBI Director James Comey reignited the “Crypto Wars” in response to Apple’s and Google’s decisions to use default encryption on their smartphones. Though Comey seized on Apple’s and Google’s decisions to encrypt their devices by default, his concerns are primarily related to end-to-end encryption, which protects communications that are in transit. Vance’s proposal, on the other hand, is only concerned with device encryption, which protects data stored on phones.
It is still unclear whether encryption played any role in the Paris attacks, though we do know that the attackers were using unencrypted SMS text messages on the night of the attack, and that some of them were even known to intelligence agencies and had previously been under surveillance. But regardless of whether encryption was used at some point during the planning of the attacks, as I lay out below, prohibiting companies from selling encrypted devices would not prevent criminals or terrorists from being able to access unbreakable encryption.
Vance’s primary complaint is that Apple’s and Google’s decisions to provide their customers with more secure devices through encryption interferes with criminal investigations. He claims encryption prevents law enforcement from accessing stored data like iMessages, photos and videos, Internet search histories, and third party app data. He makes several arguments to justify his proposal to build backdoors into encrypted smartphones, but none of them hold water.
Before addressing the major privacy, security, and implementation concerns that his proposal raises, it is worth noting that while an increase in use of fully encrypted devices could interfere with some law enforcement investigations, it will help prevent far more crimes — especially smartphone theft, and the consequent potential for identity theft. According to Consumer Reports, in 2014 there were more than two million victims of smartphone theft, and nearly two-thirds of all smartphone users either took no steps to secure their phones or their data or failed to implement passcode access for their phones. Default encryption could reduce instances of theft because perpetrators would no longer be able to break into the phone to steal the data.
Vance argues that creating a weakness in encryption to allow law enforcement to access data stored on devices does not raise serious concerns for security and privacy, since in order to exploit the vulnerability one would need access to the actual device. He considers this an acceptable risk, claiming it would not be the same as creating a widespread vulnerability in encryption protecting communications in transit (like emails), and that it would be cheap and easy for companies to implement.
But Vance seems to be underestimating the risks involved with his plan. It is increasingly important that smartphones and other devices are protected by the strongest encryption possible. Our devices and the apps on them contain astonishing amounts of personal information, so much that an unprecedented level of harm could be caused if a smartphone or device with an exploitable vulnerability is stolen, not least in the forms of identity fraud and credit card theft.
We bank on our phones, and have access to credit card payments with services like Apple Pay. Our contact lists are stored on our phones, including phone numbers, emails, social media accounts, and addresses. Passwords are often stored on people’s phones. And phones and apps are often full of personal details about their lives, from food diaries to logs of favorite places to personal photographs. Symantec conducted a study, where the company spread 50 “lost” phones in public to see what people who picked up the phones would do with them. The company found that 95 percent of those people tried to access the phone, and while nearly 90 percent tried to access private information stored on the phone or in other private accounts such as banking services and email, only 50 percent attempted contacting the owner.
Vance attempts to downplay this serious risk by asserting that anyone can use the “Find My Phone” or Android Device Manager services that allow owners to delete the data on their phones if stolen. However, this does not stand up to scrutiny. These services are effective only when an owner realizes their phone is missing and can take swift action on another computer or device. This delay ensures some period of vulnerability. Encryption, on the other hand, protects everyone immediately and always.
Additionally, Vance argues that it is safer to build backdoors into encrypted devices than it is to do so for encrypted communications in transit. It is true that there is a difference in the threats posed by the two types of encryption backdoors that are being debated. However, some manner of widespread vulnerability will inevitably result from a backdoor to encrypted devices. Indeed, the NSA and GCHQ reportedly hacked into a database to obtain cell phone SIM card encryption keys in order defeat the security protecting users’ communications and activities and to conduct surveillance. Clearly, the reality is that the threat of such a breach, whether from a hacker or a nation state actor, is very real.
Even if companies go the extra mile and create a different means of access for every phone, such as a separate access key for each phone, significant vulnerabilities will be created. It would still be possible for a malicious actor to gain access to the database containing those keys, which would enable them to defeat the encryption on any smartphone they took possession of. Additionally, the cost of implementation and maintenance of such a complex system could be high.
Privacy is another concern that Vance dismisses too easily. Despite Vance’s arguments otherwise, building backdoors into device encryption undermines privacy. Our government does not impose a similar requirement in any other context. Police can enter homes with warrants, but there is no requirement that people record their conversations and interactions just in case they someday become useful in an investigation. The conversations that we once had through disposable letters and in-person conversations now happen over the Internet and on phones. Just because the medium has changed does not mean our right to privacy has.
In addition to his weak reasoning for why it would be feasible to create backdoors to encrypted devices without creating undue security risks or harming privacy, Vance makes several flawed policy-based arguments in favor of his proposal.
He argues that criminals benefit from devices that are protected by strong encryption. That may be true, but strong encryption is also a critical tool used by billions of average people around the world every day to protect their transactions, communications, and private information. Lawyers, doctors, and journalists rely on encryption to protect their clients, patients, and sources. Government officials, from the President to the directors of the NSA and FBI, and members of Congress, depend on strong encryption for cybersecurity and data security. There are far more innocent Americans who benefit from strong encryption than there are criminals who exploit it.
Encryption is also essential to our economy. Device manufacturers could suffer major economic losses if they are prohibited from competing with foreign manufacturers who offer more secure devices. Encryption also protects major companies from corporate and nation-state espionage. As more daily business activities are done on smartphones and other devices, they may now hold highly proprietary or sensitive information. Those devices could be targeted even more than they are now if all that has to be done to access that information is to steal an employee’s smartphone and exploit a vulnerability the manufacturer was required to create.
Vance also suggests that the US would be justified in creating such a requirement since other Western nations are contemplating requiring encryption backdoors as well. Regardless of whether other countries are debating similar proposals, we cannot afford a race to the bottom on cybersecurity. Heads of the intelligence community regularly warn that cybersecurity is the top threat to our national security. Strong encryption is our best defense against cyber threats, and following in the footsteps of other countries by weakening that critical tool would do incalculable harm.
Furthermore, even if the US or other countries did implement such a proposal, criminals could gain access to devices with strong encryption through the black market. Thus, only innocent people would be negatively affected, and some of those innocent people might even become criminals simply by trying to protect their privacy by securing their data and devices.
Finally, Vance argues that David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and Opinion, supported the idea that court-ordered decryption doesn’t violate human rights, provided certain criteria are met, in his report on the topic. However, in the context of Vance’s proposal, this seems to conflate the concepts of court-ordered decryption and of government-mandated encryption backdoors. The Kaye report was unequivocal about the importance of encryption for free speech and human rights. The report concluded that:
States should promote strong encryption and anonymity. National laws should recognize that individuals are free to protect the privacy of their digital communications by using encryption technology and tools that allow anonymity online. …
States should not restrict encryption and anonymity, which facilitate and often enable the rights to freedom of opinion and expression. Blanket prohibitions fail to be necessary and proportionate. States should avoid all measures that weaken the security that individuals may enjoy online, such as backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows.
Additionally, the group of intelligence experts that was hand-picked by the President to issue a report and recommendations on surveillance and technology, concluded that:
[R]egarding encryption, the U.S. Government should:
(1) fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards;
(2) not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software; and
(3) increase the use of encryption and urge US companies to do so, in order to better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other storage.
The clear consensus among human rights experts and several high-ranking intelligence experts, including the former directors of the NSA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and DHS, is that mandating encryption backdoors is dangerous.
Unaddressed Concerns: Preventing Encrypted Devices from Entering the US and the Slippery Slope
In addition to the significant faults in Vance’s arguments in favor of his proposal, he fails to address the question of how such a restriction would be effectively implemented. There is no effective mechanism for preventing code from becoming available for download online, even if it is illegal.
One critical issue the Vance proposal fails to address is how the government would prevent, or even identify, encrypted smartphones when individuals bring them into the United States. DHS would have to train customs agents to search the contents of every person’s phone in order to identify whether it is encrypted, and then confiscate the phones that are. Legal and policy considerations aside, this kind of policy is, at the very least, impractical. Preventing strong encryption from entering the US is not like preventing guns or drugs from entering the country — encrypted phones aren’t immediately obvious as is contraband. Millions of people use encrypted devices, and tens of millions more devices are shipped to and sold in the US each year.
Finally, there is a real concern that if Vance’s proposal were accepted, it would be the first step down a slippery slope. Right now, his proposal only calls for access to smartphones and devices running mobile operating systems. While this policy in and of itself would cover a number of commonplace devices, it may eventually be expanded to cover laptop and desktop computers, as well as communications in transit.
The expansion of this kind of policy is even more worrisome when taking into account the speed at which technology evolves and becomes widely adopted. Ten years ago, the iPhone did not even exist. Who is to say what technology will be commonplace in 10 or 20 years that is not even around today. There is a very real question about how far law enforcement will go to gain access to information. Things that once seemed like merely science fiction, such as wearable technology and artificial intelligence that could be implanted in and work with the human nervous system, are now available. If and when there comes a time when our “smart phone” is not really a device at all, but is rather an implant, surely we would not grant law enforcement access to our minds.
Policymakers should dismiss Vance’s proposal to prohibit the use of strong encryption to protect our smartphones and devices in order to ensure law enforcement access. Undermining encryption, regardless of whether it is protecting data in transit or at rest, would take us down a dangerous and harmful path. Instead, law enforcement and the intelligence community should be working to alter their skills and tactics in a fast-evolving technological world so that they are not so dependent on information that will increasingly be protected by encryption.
1. Executive Summary
Ahmed Mansoor is an internationally recognized human rights defender, based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and recipient of the Martin Ennals Award (sometimes referred to as a “Nobel Prize for human rights”). On August 10 and 11, 2016, Mansoor received SMS text messages on his iPhone promising “new secrets” about detainees tortured in UAE jails if he clicked on an included link. Instead of clicking, Mansoor sent the messages to Citizen Lab researchers. We recognized the links as belonging to an exploit infrastructure connected to NSO Group, an Israel-based “cyber war” company that sells Pegasus, a government-exclusive “lawful intercept” spyware product. NSO Group is reportedly owned by an American venture capital firm, Francisco Partners Management.
The ensuing investigation, a collaboration between researchers from Citizen Lab and from Lookout Security, determined that the links led to a chain of zero-day exploits (“zero-days”) that would have remotely jailbroken Mansoor’s stock iPhone 6 and installed sophisticated spyware. We are calling this exploit chain Trident. Once infected, Mansoor’s phone would have become a digital spy in his pocket, capable of employing his iPhone’s camera and microphone to snoop on activity in the vicinity of the device, recording his WhatsApp and Viber calls, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps, and tracking his movements.
We are not aware of any previous instance of an iPhone remote jailbreak used in the wild as part of a targeted attack campaign, making this a rare find.
The Trident Exploit Chain:
CVE-2016-4657: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to arbitrary code execution
CVE-2016-4655: An application may be able to disclose kernel memory
CVE-2016-4656: An application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges
Once we confirmed the presence of what appeared to be iOS zero-days, Citizen Lab and Lookout quickly initiated a responsible disclosure process by notifying Apple and sharing our findings. Apple responded promptly, and notified us that they would be addressing the vulnerabilities. We are releasing this report to coincide with the availability of the iOS 9.3.5 patch, which blocks the Trident exploit chain by closing the vulnerabilities that NSO Group appears to have exploited and sold to remotely compromise iPhones.
Recent Citizen Lab research has shown that many state-sponsored spyware campaigns against civil society groups and human rights defenders use “just enough” technical sophistication, coupled with carefully planned deception. This case demonstrates that not all threats follow this pattern. The iPhone has a well-deserved reputation for security. As the iPhone platform is tightly controlled by Apple, technically sophisticated exploits are often required to enable the remote installation and operation of iPhone monitoring tools. These exploits are rare and expensive. Firms that specialize in acquiring zero-days often pay handsomely for iPhone exploits. One such firm, Zerodium, acquired an exploit chain similar to the Trident for one million dollars in November 2015.
The high cost of iPhone zero-days, the apparent use of NSO Group’s government-exclusive Pegasus product, and prior known targeting of Mansoor by the UAE government provide indicators that point to the UAE government as the likely operator behind the targeting.
Remarkably, this case marks the third commercial “lawful intercept” spyware suite employed in attempts to compromise Mansoor. In 2011, he was targeted with FinFisher’s FinSpy spyware, and in 2012 he was targeted with Hacking Team’s Remote Control System. Both Hacking Team and FinFisher have been the object of several years of revelations highlighting the misuse of spyware to compromise civil society groups, journalists, and human rights workers.
The United States takes pride in being a technological leader in the world. Companies such as Apple, Alphabet, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft have shaped our (digital) lives for many years and there is little indication of that changing anytime soon.
But, as Statista's Felix Richter notes, when it comes to IT infrastructure however, the U.S. is lagging behind the world’s best (and many of its not-so-best), be it in terms of home broadband or wireless broadband speeds. According to OpenSignal's latest State of LTE report, the average 4G download speed in the United States was 16.31 Mbps in Q4 2017.
The United States takes pride in being a technological leader in the world. Companies such as Apple, Alphabet, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft have shaped our (digital) lives for many years and there is little indication of that changing anytime soon.
But, as Statista's Felix Richter notes, when it comes to IT infrastructure however, the U.S. is lagging behind the world’s best (and many of its not-so-best), be it in terms of home broadband or wireless broadband speeds. According to OpenSignal's latest State of LTE report, the average 4G download speed in the United States was 16.31 Mbps in Q4 2017.
The United States takes pride in being a technological leader in the world. Companies such as Apple, Alphabet, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft have shaped our (digital) lives for many years and there is little indication of that changing anytime soon.
But, as Statista's Felix Richter notes, when it comes to IT infrastructure however, the U.S. is lagging behind the world’s best (and many of its not-so-best), be it in terms of home broadband or wireless broadband speeds. According to OpenSignal's latest State of LTE report, the average 4G download speed in the United States was 16.31 Mbps in Q4 2017.
That’s little more than a third of the speed that mobile device users in Singapore enjoy and ranks the U.S. at a disappointing 62nd place in the global ranking.
While U.S. mobile networks appear to lack in speed, they are on par with the best in terms of 4G availability. According to OpenSignal's findings, LTE was available to U.S. smartphone users 90 percent of the time, putting the United States in fifth place.
Many thanks to FreedomWorks and the Center for Democracy and Technology for the fine work they did in opposing this tyranny of our government trying to take over the Internet.
excerpt:
"Sen. Patrick Leahy has abandoned his controversial proposal that would grant government agencies more surveillance power -- including warrantless access to Americans' e-mail accounts -- than they possess under current law.
The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. The remarks came a few hours after a CNET article was published this morning that disclosed the existence of the measure.
A vote on the proposal in the Senate Judiciary committee, which Leahy chairs, is scheduled for next Thursday. The amendments were due to be glued onto a substitute (PDF) to H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved.
Leahy's about-face comes in response to a deluge of criticism today, including the American Civil Liberties Union saying that warrants should be required, and the conservative group FreedomWorks launching a petition to Congress -- with more than 2,300 messages sent so far -- titled: "Tell Congress: Stay Out of My Email!"
A spokesman for the senator did not respond to questions today from CNET asking for clarification of what Leahy would support next week. (We'll update this article if we receive a response.)
A Democratic aide to the Judiciary committee did, however, tell CNET this afternoon that Leahy does not support broad exceptions for warrantless searches of e-mail content.
A note from Leahy's Twitter account added: "Technology has created vacuum in privacy protection. Sen. Leahy believes that needs to be fixed, and #ECPA needs privacy updates." That's a reference to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which currently does not require that police always obtain a warrant for the contents of e-mail and other communications.
This revised position will come as a relief to privacy
Forbes magazine has a doom and gloom Microsoft article that "ends on a note of doom". They lampoon Windows 8 using the reviews of other bloggers like Charlie Demerjian, "Microsoft has failed". http://goo.gl/H4mZc
The end of Microsoft though comes from the inability of Microsoft to change course. In short, Microsoft has fallen into a death spiral consistent with Catastrophe theory (http://goo.gl/6CWwY).
No comment or mention of Microsoft Cloud efforts: Azure, Live.com, or SkyDrive.
excerpt:
In the end, the death spiral for Microsoft is in full effect, and management is expending a lot of effort to speed it up. Anyone who dares point out that the entire system is collapsing, or worse yet suggests an alternative, gets Sinofsky'd. Or was it Guggenheimer'd? In any case, Microsoft is unwilling to change, and that is very clear. Even if they wanted to, they are culturally far beyond the point of being able to. What was a slow bleed of marketshare is now gushing, and management is clueless, intransigent, and myopic. Game over, the thrashing will continue for a bit, but it won't change the outcome. Microsoft has failed.
I hope this isn't true. Microsoft has been a stabilizing force in the market and many users are very attached to its products. For the first time, however, businesses can look to Google and to Apple and see plausible, battle-tested alternatives to the products they have used from Microsoft-for much less money. And in a bizarre way, Microsofts spasm of innovation has made the company now a destabilizing factor for IT departments and Google Docs is looking an awful lot like the old guard.
The big question is how fast Microsoft might collapse if businesses began to defect en masse. Like other phenomena of global instability, extreme change seems to come quicker now. For Microsoft, the window is closing fast."
One of the "Lessons of Massachusetts" is that the key lock-in point for Microsoft's monopoly is their iron fisted control of the productivity environment, anchored by MSOffice and the Windows local workgroup client/server system. Key to office productivity is the compound document model that fuels every business process and business productivity system. It's the embedded logic and database connectivity (OLE, ODBC, MAPI and COM ActiveX controls) that juice the compound document model.
Convert a compound document to another format (or PDF), and you BREAK the both the document, AND THE BUSINESS PROCESS!!!!
It was the breaking of the business process that stopped Massachusetts from moving to the Open Document Format !!!!
So now comes a story with consumer sales vs enterprise sales numbers that seemingly shatter the Lessons of Massachusetts. How is that?
My take is that the numbers Microsoft touts are true. Consumers are making new purchases - NOT enterprises. The simple truth is that, as Microsoft introduces new OS and Application Services geared to Mobile / Cloud Computing, these new systems BREAK legacy business systems. It's still way too costly for businesses to transition to the new models.
Eventually though, businesses will replace those legacy business productivity systems with Mobile / Cloud Computing systems. And it will be a rip-out-and-replace transition; not the gradual "value-added" transition everyone hopes Microsoft will provide.
Interesting stuff.
excerpt:
"If Microsoft is an enterprise company, then why is it spending so much time and money on stuff like Bing, Xbox, Windows Phone, and the Surface RT? It should be going all-in on cloud computing and services.
If you were to ask Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, his answer would probably be: It's a dumb question, we're both.
In an interview with Jason Pontin at MIT Technology Review, he said:
""Our number-one thing is supplying products to consumers. That's kind of what we do.
Note that rip-out-and-replace to get to the cloud is a very risky strategy for MSFT because the company forfeits its vendor lock-in advantage; the question for the enterprise then becomes "replace with what?" The answer in many cases will be non-Microsoft services. And traditionally, what the enterprise uses has driven what enterprise workers use at home far more than vice versa.
It seemed inevitable, and now it has happened: for the first time ever, feature phones have taken a backseat to smartphones in terms of quantities shipped.
In the first quarter of 2013, device makers shipped 216.2 million smartphones worldwide, a volume that accounted for 51.6 percent of total global shipments and that marked the first time smartphones have claimed more than half of all quarterly shipments, according to market researcher IDC.
"Phone users want computers in their pockets," IDC analyst Kevin Restivo said in a statement. "The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away."
Samsung continued to exert its dominance during the quarter, shipping 70.7 million smartphones for year-over-year growth of 60.7 percent. Second-place Apple shipped 37.4 million iPhones, up 6.6 percent. Other phone makers saw some seriously big surges: Rounding out the top five, LG shipped 10.3 million smartphones (up 110 percent), Huawei shipped 9.9 million (up 94 percent), and ZTE shipped 9.1 million (up 49 percent).
Microsoft announces a new plan, "Microsoft Dynamics", to accelerate the transition to replace their traditional / conventional software systems with cloud-ready infrastructure. Dynamics also serves as a migration guide, providing "seamless integration" of services from old IT to new Cloud.
Competitors mentioned include SalesForce.com, SAP and Oracle. Lots of focus on integrating CRM into the full line of business applications. This is somewhat similar to the Visual Productivity challenge of integrating gMail into a working productivity system based on the Google Apps platform. Embedding the full range of Visual Web Communications into productivity apps and services is the key at all levels.
One thing to consider in this article is that the only Cloud - Productivity - Business systems contenders are SalesForce, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. Google Apps isn't mentioned. Nor is Amazon, RackSpace or VMware. Apple, Cisco, HP and Facebook are also left out.
Interesting development in the world of real time Web Apps. Looks like Business processes and services in the Cloud are embracing HTML5, and moving fast to replace legacy client/server. Note this is not Flash or Silverlight RiA.
excerpt:
Telax Hosted Call Center, a leader in cloud contact center solutions announced the release of its HTML5-based Call Center Agent (CCA) today. Key to the development of the browser-based CCA was Websocket, a component of HTML5 that provides a bi-directional, full-duplex communication channel over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. Websocket is currently supported by the latest versions of Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Firefox, making Telax's new CCA compatible with the most popular browsers in Mac environments.
Before HTML5, real-time unified communication software was typically deployed as a local client because its browser-based counterparts were unable to deliver an acceptable user experience. Some browser-based clients use 3rd party software such as Adobe Flash or Sliverlight to operate adequately, but both solutions require software installation and are not mobile friendly.
Good discussion, but it really deserves a more in-depth thrashing. The basic concept is that a perfect storm of mobility, cloud-computing and HTML5-JavaScript has set the stage for a major, massive shift in application development. The shift from C++ to Java is now being replaced by a greater shift from Java and C++ to JavaScript-JSON-HTML5.
Interesting, but i continue to insist that the greater "Perfect Storm" triggered in 2008, is causing a platform shift from client/server computing to full on, must have "cloud-computing".
There are three major "waves"; platform shifts in the history of computing at work here. The first wave was "Mainframe computing", otherwise known as server/terminal. The second wave was that of "client/server" computing, where the Windows desktop eventually came to totally dominate and control the "client" side of the client/server equation.
The third wave began with the Internet, and the dominance of the WWW protocols, interfaces, methods and formats. The Web provides the foundation for the third great Wave of Cloud-Computing.
The Perfect Storm of 2008 lit the fuse of the third Wave of computing. Key to the 2008 Perfect Storm is the world wide financial collapse that put enormous pressure on businesses to cut cost and improve productivity; to do more with less, or die. The survival maxim quickly became do more with less people - which is the most effective form of "productivity". The nature of the collapse itself, and the kind of centralized, all powerful bailout-fascists governments that rose during the financial collapse, guaranteed that labor costs would rise dramatically while also being "uncertain". Think government controlled healthcare.
The other aspects of the 2008 Perfect Storm are mobility, HTML5, cloud-computing platform availability, and, the ISO standardization of "tagged" PDF.
The mobility bomb kicked off in late 2007, with the introduction of the Apple iPhone. No further explanation needed :)
Th
One security start-up that had an encounter with the FBI was Wickr, a privacy-forward text messaging app for the iPhone with an
Android version in private beta. Wickr's co-founder Nico Sell told CNET at Defcon, "Wickr has been approached by the FBI and asked for a backdoor. We said, 'No.'"
The mistrust runs deep. "Even if [the NSA] stood up tomorrow and said that [they] have eliminated these programs," said Marlinspike, "How could we believe them? How can we believe that anything they say is true?"
Where does security innovation go next? The immediate future of information security innovation most likely lies in software that provides an existing service but with heightened privacy protections, such as webmail that doesn't mine you for personal data.
Wickr's Sell thinks that her company has hit upon a privacy innovation that a few others are also doing, but many will soon follow: the company itself doesn't store user data.
"[The FBI] would have to force us to build a new app. With the current app there's no way," she said, that they could incorporate backdoor access to Wickr users' texts or metadata.
"Even if you trust the NSA 100 percent that they're going to use [your data] correctly," Sell said, "Do you trust that they're going to be able to keep it safe from hackers? What if somebody gets that database and posts it online?"
To that end, she said, people will start seeing privacy innovation for services that don't currently provide it. Calling it "social networks 2.0," she said that social network competitors will arise that do a better job of protecting their customer's privacy and predicted that some that succeed will do so because of their emphasis on privacy.
Abine's recent MaskMe browser add-on and mobile app for creating disposable e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards is another example of a service that doesn't have access to its own users' data.
Stamos predicted changes in services that companies with cloud storage offer, including offering customers the ability to store their data outside of the U.S. "If they want to stay competitive, they're going to have to," he said. But, he cautioned, "It's impossible to do a cloud-based ad supported service."
Soghoian added, "The only way to keep a service running is to pay them money." This, he said, is going to give rise to a new wave of ad-free, privacy protective subscription services.
The issue with balancing privacy and surveillance is that the wireless carriers are not interested in privacy, he said. "They've been providing wiretapping for 100 years. Apple may in the next year protect voice calls," he said, and said that the best hope for ending widespread government surveillance will be the makers of mobile operating systems like Apple and Google.
Not all upcoming security innovation will be focused on that kind of privacy protection. Security researcher Brandon Wiley showed off at Defcon a protocol he calls Dust that can obfuscate different kinds of network traffic, with the end goal of preventing censorship.
"I only make products about letting you say what you want to say anywhere in the world," such as content critical of governments, he said. Encryption can hide the specifics of the traffic, but some governments have figured out that they can simply block all encrypted traffic, he said. The Dust protocol would change that, he said, making it hard to tell the difference between encrypted and unencrypted traffic.
It's hard to build encryption into pre-existing products, Wiley said. "I think people are going to make easy-to-use, encrypted apps, and that's going to be the future."
Companies could face severe consequences from their security experts, said Stamos, if the in-house experts find out that they've been lied to about providing government access to customer data. You could see "lots of resignations and maybe publicly," he said. "It wouldn't hurt their reputations to go out in a blaze of glory."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Marlinspike sounded a hopeful call for non-destructive activism on Defcon's 21st anniversary. "As hackers, we don't have a lot of influence on policy. I hope that's something that we can focus our energy on," he said.
NSA as the cause of the next major disruption in the social networking service industry?
Grief ahead for Google? Note the point made that: "It's impossible to do a cloud-based ad supported service" where the encryption/decryption takes place on the client side.
"The good:
......... The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, free turn-by-turn navigation, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light.
The bad:
............ Apple Maps feels unfinished and buggy; Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter. There's no NFC, and the screen size pales in comparison to jumbo Android models.
The bottom line:
.............. The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe."
The Federal Communications Commission is poised to ruin the free Internet on a technicality.
The group is expected to introduce new net neutrality laws that would allow companies to pay for better access to consumers through deals similar to the one struck by Netflix and Comcast earlier this year. The argument is that those deals don’t technically fall under the net neutrality umbrella, so these new rules won’t apply to them even though they directly affect the Internet.
At least the commission is being upfront about its disinterest in protecting the free Internet.
The Verge notes that the proposed rules will offer some protections to consumers:
The Federal Communication Commission’s proposal for new net neutrality rules will allow internet service providers to charge companies for preferential treatment, effectively undermining the concept of net neutrality, according to The Wall Street Journal. The rules will reportedly allow providers to charge for preferential treatment so long as they offer that treatment to all interested parties on “commercially reasonable” terms, with the FCC will deciding whether the terms are reasonable on a case-by-case basis. Providers will not be able to block individual websites, however.
The goal of net neutrality rules is to prevent service providers from discriminating between different content, allowing all types of data and all companies’ data to be treated equally. While it appears that outright blocking of individual services won’t be allowed, the Journal reports that some forms of discrimination will be allowed, though that will apparently not include slowing down websites.
Re/code summarizes the discontent with these proposed rules:
Consumer groups have complained about that plan because they’re worried that Wheeler’s rules may not hold up in court either. A federal appeals court rejected two previous versions of net neutrality rules after finding fault in the FCC’s legal reasoning. During the latest smackdown, however, the court suggested that the FCC had some authority to impose net neutrality rules under a section of the law that gives the agency the ability to regulate the deployment of broadband lines.
Internet activists would prefer that the FCC just re-regulate Internet lines under old rules designed for telephone networks, which they say would give the agency clear authority to police Internet lines. Wheeler has rejected that approach for now. Phone and cable companies, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, have vociferously fought that idea over the past few years.
The Chicago Tribune reports on the process directing these rules:
The five-member regulatory commission may vote as soon as May to formally propose the rules and collect public comment on them.
Virtually all large Internet service providers, such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Time Warner Cable Inc., have pledged to abide by the principles of open Internet reinforced by these rules.
But critics have raised concerns that, without a formal rule, the voluntary pledges could be pulled back over time and also leave the door open for deals that would give unequal treatment to websites or services.
I wrote about the European Union’s attempts to defend the free Internet:
The legislation is meant to provide access to online services ‘without discrimination, restriction or interference, independent of the sender, receiver, type, content, device, service or application.’ For example, ISPs would be barred from slowing down or ‘throttling’ the speed at which one service’s videos are delivered while allowing other services to stream at normal rates. To bastardize Gertrude Stein: a byte is a byte is a byte.
Such restrictions would prevent deals like the one Comcast recently made with Netflix, which will allow the service’s videos to reach consumers faster than before. Comcast is also said to be in talks with Apple for a deal that would allow videos from its new streaming video service to reach consumers faster than videos from competitors. The Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality laws don’t apply to those deals, according to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, so they are allowed to continue despite the threat they pose to the free Internet.
Cute. Deliberately not using the authority the court of appeals said it could use to impose net neutrality. So Europe can have net neutrality but not in the U.S.
"Opt out of PRISM, the NSA's global data surveillance program. Stop reporting your online activities to the American government with these free alternatives to proprietary software."
A designer named Peng Zhong is so strongly opposed to PRISM, the NSA's domestic spying program, that he created a site to educate people on how to "opt out" of it.
According to the original report that brought PRISM to public attention, the nine companies that "participate knowingly" with the NSA are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.
Zhong's approach is to replace your workflow with open-source tools that aren't attached to these companies, since they easily stay off the government's radar.
If you want to drop totally off the map, it'll take quite a commitment. Are you ready to give up your operating system? The NSA tracks everything on Windows, OSX and Google Chrome. You will need to switch to Debian or some other brand of GNU Linux! Like Mint!!!!!
Personally I have switched from Google Chrome Browser to Mozilla Firefox using the TOR Browser Bundle - Private mode.
Perhaps the best article about Google that I've ever read. The author describes the many insidious methods and requirements that Google uses to dominate and totally control the Android Open Source Project, and the incredible Android ecosystem that has grown up around that oss project. This is a must read!
Intro:
"Six years ago, in November 2007, the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) was announced. The original iPhone came out just a few months earlier, capturing people's imaginations and ushering in the modern smartphone era. While Google was an app partner for the original iPhone, it could see what a future of unchecked iPhone competition would be like. Vic Gundotra, recalling Andy Rubin's initial pitch for Android, stated:
He argued that if Google did not act, we faced a Draconian future, a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice.
Google was terrified that Apple would end up ruling the mobile space. So, to help in the fight against the iPhone at a time when Google had no mobile foothold whatsoever, Android was launched as an open source project.
In that era, Google had nothing, so any adoption-any shred of market share-was welcome. Google decided to give Android away for free and use it as a trojan horse for Google services. The thinking went that if Google Search was one day locked out of the iPhone, people would stop using Google Search on the desktop. Android was the "moat" around the Google Search "castle"-it would exist to protect Google's online properties in the mobile world."
Wow! 30GB free. 250 file formats with a "universal translation engine". And HTML5.
excerpt:
"You can't have convergence unless you have the ability to translate files across different platforms and devices," Donald Leka, TransMedia's CEO, told Macworld. "There's a war between the big tech companies like Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and Google, and these compatibility issues are not going to go away."
Glide also lets you share any documents or media in your account with other users or the public. And with new desktop clients for Mac and PC that can sync a local folder up to your cloud storage space, Glide is taking on popular competitors like Dropbox, SugarSync, and Apple's own iDisk.
Glide is free to use in desktop browsers and on the iPad, and free accounts get 30GB of space to start. Premium accounts offer 250GB of space for $50 per year.
Gary Edwards on 11 Jan 11Early in December Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle notified the German regulator that they planned to form CPTN Holdings with a view to purchasing 882 of Novell's patents. But the filing was withdrawn (Rücknahme) on Dec. 30. No reason was given for the withdrawal by German authorities, but it is likely voluntary as authorities would not yet have had time to investigate the proposal. However, in recent weeks the German Federal Cartel Office has received letters and recommendations from various open-source organizations including the U.S.-based Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). These open-source advocates are extremely alarmed that patents with claims on some elements of open-source software could fall into the hands of companies that compete with that open-source software. Given Novell's past involvement in free software development, it's seems very likely that at least some of the company's patents would cover free software technologies.
