New virus can pass from PCs to mobile devices.
(InfoWorld) – “A security association is reporting what it says is the first virus that can pass from a [Windows — ted] PC to a [Windows — ted] mobile device and then erase files.”
Talk about interoperability! C#, Visual Studio .NET, ActiveSync, WindowsCE/MobileOS and Windows on the PC.
Over on the ProFox mailing list, Ed Leafe links to a new video showing off the “Real Windows Vista.” Absolutely hysterical and dead on. I, for one, cannot wait to experience the power of Microsoft Windows Vista. Wait! I already have!
NPR’s “This I Believe” program this morning featured Josh Rittenburg’s “Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day.” Wow. A very well-spoken sixteen-year-old.
MySQL buys company, hires noted database architect.
(InfoWorld) – “My SQL has acquired a small Web application technology company and in the process hired its founder, Jim Starkey, a noted database software architect, MySQL announced on Monday.” By James_Niccolai@idg.com (James Niccolai), posted at InfoWorld: Top News
Ed Leafe, well-known in the FoxPro community as a former MVP and proprietor of the ProFox mailing list and OpenTech web sites, is speaking this weekend at the U.S. Python Conference on “The State of Dabo, Where we’re at, February 2006.” For those who haven’t seen it yet, dabo is a framework for rich-client, multi-tier, database-agnostic software development, similar to what Visual FoxPro promised. dabo runs on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. The white paper looks great! At PyCon last year, Ed’s presentations were ranked highly. Wishing him great success this year as well!
I’ve been doing a lot of work with MySQL lately, developing in-house LAMP applications for clients to do data entry as well as internet-facing sites for data retrieval and processing. A couple of clients are querying their in-house MySQL database for mail merge, form fill-in and analysis. I’ve used the MyODBC driver available from the MySQL AB web site. They offer a number of connectors, including ODBC, JDBC, a C interface. I was surprised to see they did not offer an OLEDB interface. In a recent conversation on Ed Leafe’s OpenTech forum, Sam Thorton pointed out that an OLEDB provider is available at SourceForge.net. Cool! I’ll have to check it out.
I’m making weekly trips to the vet, and burning a CD of audiocasts to pass the time on the trip. While my passengers are good companions, they’re not sparkling conversationalists, so this week, I listened to:
Both audiocasts came from ITC: All Programs
OSNews reports Knoppix on the Intel-Based Macintosh. “We reported a few days ago that we had Linux booting on the Intel-based Macintosh. We have been looking at Linux on this hardware some more, and we are glad to report that we now have a full-fledged Knoppix distribution working, complete with the X Window system. We are releasing the first pictures of Knoppix 4.0 running on a 17-inch iMac Core Duo. The X Window system is shown running at full resolution (rather, fuller resolution – 1472×900 – notice that the bottom right edge of the KDE dock is cut off). Most (but not all) aspects of the hardware seem to work, but we have yet to analyse exactly what doesn’t work and assess how much work it might take to get such things working.”
Awesome! Linux booting on the MacBook could lead to a dual-boot, dual-proc laptop.
OSNews reports Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS. “Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC. Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm’s latest Server Tracker market share report.”
I guess it’s all in the interpretation, isn’t it?
Note, too, that Linux is broken out as a third-place entry. Combining Linux and UNIX, their $22.8 billion puts Windows to shame. OTOH, you could break it out into Windows 2000, Windows 2003, AIX, HP/UX, Solaris and so forth. It depends on what you’re trying to prove.
Over at Ars Technica, Eric Bangeman points out a Safari vulnerability worth taking note of. “The widely reported Trojan horse for Mac OS X may be a dud. However, a security flaw in Apple’s Safari browser is something to be concerned about.” It looks like Apple made the poor decision of depending on the file extension to determine how “safe” a document is to open — even if the document also has metadata making it an executable script. Tsk, tsk. Wise advice in the article: turn off the Safari option to “Open “safe” files after downloading.” Even Apple puts “safe” in quotes — that should be a hint!