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Microsoft Vista Beta One: We Were Only Kidding…

By on August 1, 2005 in Microsoft

OSNews posts The Whys, Whats and Whens of Vista. Head of all things Windows at Microsoft, Jim Allchin provides a heads up on the operating system formerly known as Longhorn: “Most of the stuff that we would expect that tech enthusiasts and consumers will be interested in will happen at Beta 2. Beta 1 is not what I would call deeply interesting unless you are a real bithead”.

I probably haven’t griped for 24 hours or so how wrong this is. Microsoft “ships” a product, in the sense that the reviewers (and likely anyone who cares) can evaluate it, and it’s not even out the door before Microsoft is saying that none of this is final, that the “good bits” are in Beta 2, the UI comes later, you just wait, we’ll get it right next time. They’re just throwing it against the wall, seeing who says “ooh” and “ah” and then they’ll ship another one. What’s the point of wasting your time looking at something they promise isn’t final?

Doc: Saved by the Wayback Machine

By on August 1, 2005 in Technology

The Eldred decision may rank as one of the dumbest Supreme Court decisions of our time, ruling that the owners of a copywritten piece of work, by the rights of their ownership could prevent the copying of the work for the purposes of preservation of the work for the good of ourselves, society and posterity, despite the fact that Article 1, Section 8 clearly states that “The Congress shall have Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”

Copyright protects for a limited time the right of the author to make a buck from copies of his/her works in order to motivate the author to go to the trouble of producing the work in the first place. Copyright does not protect an idea from being copied, only its expression. This allows the free exchange of ideas in society, for the greater good of all. However, when the owner of a copyright has the ability to prevent any copies from existing, by allowing the original to rot to dust, they are destroying not just their property, but the ability of future generations to ever see the work, clearly not what the framers of the Constitution intended “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Doc wrote a great analysis on this case and that, too, was almost lost in the passing of a web site:

On The Doc Searls Weblog, Doc blogs “Recovery. On January 20, 2003, Lawrence Lessig wrote, Doc has a brilliant and absolutely correct diagnosis at the American Open Technology Consortium website about how we lost in Eldred. The link in that quote went to aotc.info, a site that no longer exists. Ever since aotc.info went down, I’ve regretted losing that one post.”

“This was especially so yesterday, when I wrote Web 2.0, Free Markets and Free Culture, at IT Garage. While writing it I wished I could point back to whatever-it-was that Prof. Lessig found so agreeable. All I could remember was that it had to do with metaphor, also the subject of yesterday’s post.”

“Then, when I woke up at 4am, about 15 minutes ago, I thought: Duh! Archive.org and its Wayback Machine! Of course! So I checked, and found that much of aotc.info was backed up there. After digging around, I found the post in question.

So, a big thanks Archive.org for doing its outstanding work.”

Novell: SCO owns no copyright, and we ought to get all their licensing money

By on July 30, 2005 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews points to a Groklaw article: Novell Files Countersuit Against SCO. “Today, Novell has answered SCO’s complaint alledging Novell slandered SCO’s ownership of the Unix copyrights. Novell claims that SCO approached Novell in 2003 to try and pursuade them to go along with the Linux Licensing Scheme. When Novell refused, SCO attempted to talk Novell into transfering the Unix Copyrights to SCO, which Novell also refused to do. Novell has also filed four counterclaims against SCO, one of them being Slander of Title (for SCO slandering Novell’s ownership of the Unix Copyrights).”

Delicious. If accepted, Novell should earn all the monies SCO got from “licensing” rights to software it didn’t own, plus penalties. Looking forward to the next step.

Boot Fedora Faster

By on July 26, 2005 in OpenSource

OSNews points to an article that tells you how to Boot Fedora Linux Faster. “Everyone wants a quick boot time, from the beginner user to the advanced user, this is a issue that bothers us all. As Linux has advanced it has increasingly become slower to boot. So I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds.”

You can never have too much RAM, too slim a laptop or too fast a boot-up sequence!

Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage becomes mandatory

By on July 26, 2005 in Microsoft

OSNews points to an eWeek article, Microsoft Lowers the Boom on Illegal Windows Copies. “Microsoft is tightening the noose for those people running illegal or pirated copies of its Windows XP/2000 software on their systems. Starting Tuesday, it will be mandatory for users of this Windows software to certify that their software is a genuine and legal copy before they will be able to receive any updates except security patches.”

This just has Bad Idea written all over it. Copy Protection (and this is just a delayed form of Copy Protection) inevitably takes out some innocent bystanders while the really serious pirates work around it. (The first PC software I bought was CopyIIPC so that I could make backup copies of the company’s Lotus 1-2-3 key disks, since the employees were always destroying disks.) Some of Microsoft’s customers will end up in a situation where the “Windows Genuine Advantage” package, in an effort to enhance their experience, stops them from doing what they legitimately need to get done. More collateral damage. We’ve all ended up in a situation where Windows demands “Office CD 2” or that you type in some product key thats back in the office a thousand miles away. From the article:

Microsoft has also made changes to streamline the process, including no longer requiring customers to enter their product key since the ActiveX control used to validate their software can now automatically determine whether they have a genuine Windows product.

Oh, that should work fine.

Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator

By on July 25, 2005 in Technology

Dave Winer at Scripting News points to MacWorld: “Yahoo on Monday will announce the acquisition of Konfabulator, a Macintosh and Windows application that allows users to run mini files known as Widgets on their desktop — the same model used by Apple for its Dashboard application.”

Platform-agnostic applets that run on every desktop could be yet another challenge to proprietary OS vendors like Apple, Microsoft and Sun, along with web-based applications.

GreaseMonkey security exploit

By on July 19, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

Despite Microsoft’s attempt to, er, monopolize the security news…

Alex Feldstein posts Attention Greasemonkey Users. “There’s a serious security issue for Greasemonkey. Until I can study this in more detail, and as my use of GreaseMonkey is very minimal, I have chosen to disable it. (Via J-Walk)”

As best I’ve been able to ascertain, the problem occurs in versions before 0.34 and possibly also in the 0.4 alpha, but 0.35 is okay. The GreaseMoney add-in shows a little monkey face on the bottom of the browser. Click to toggle whether it is disabled, and only turn it on when you need it and trust the underlying page. You may also want to consider adding the NOSCRIPT add-on, which lets you specify which sites ought to be allowed to run JavaScript at all.

Remote Desktop Protocol flaw can lead to DOS and crashed servers

By on July 18, 2005 in Microsoft

Computerworld News notes Microsoft warns of remote access protocol flaw. “Microsoft is warning users that a flaw in the software used to remotely access computers running the Windows OS could leave them vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack.”

This is the RDP flaw I blogged last week. Affected machine include Win2K as well. It appears that scanning for the affected port is on the increase, too, according to the Internet Storm Center. I’m advising clients to turn off port 3389 at the firewall, and only enable it (via ssh, for example) when needed.

Windows RDP Exploit Discovered

By on July 17, 2005 in Microsoft, Technology

OSNews notes Windows RDP Exploit Discovered. “A denial of service vulnerability reportedly affects the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol.” OS News goes on to advise, “Either disable RDP or make sure you have a firewall enabled for port 3389 until a fix is available.” This is nonsensical advice. First, if you have “a firewall enabled for port 3389,” does that mean the process can’t go through the port. If so, what’s the point of running Remote Access?

The report does not identify the problem as something that could allow a malicious attacker to take over your machine, only inconvenience you with a denial of service issue, or possibly shutting down your machine. Obviously, you should turn off Remote Desktop access if you don’t need it.

There’s a stunning note on the Microsoft Security Advisory linked from the OSNews article: “Remote Desktop is enabled by default on Windows XP Media Center Edition.” What on earth were they thinking, by enabling a remote access interface on a OS designed to be used as standalone home media appliances? Is this Trustworthy Computing? Not even close.

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