TechEye |  |
- Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake
- Steve Jobs killed iPhone patent in the EU
- Ballmer goes out punching
- Samsung attacked in PR gold for Apple
- Malware could be hiding in your GPU
- Google celebrates 15th birthday with algorithm change
- iFixit reports new iPhones fiddly to fix
| Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake Posted: 27 Sep 2013 04:28 AM PDT Bill Gates has admitted the puzzling Control-Alt-Delete key combination used to access the login screen is dumb. Speaking to Harvard University, Gates said that it was a mistake and the process should have been performed with a single button. He added that it was not really Microsoft's fault. Apparently the guy who did the IBM keyboard design refused to provide Microsoft with a single button. Control-Alt-Delete was originally designed to reboot a PC, in the early versions of Windows it was a log-in screen. The IBM PC that Gates helped develop was introduced in 1981 and he was at the mercy of suits at Big Blue. According to Geekwire, it finally explains why Microsoft used the somewhat difficult keyboard combination. The version of the story fleshes out what David Bradley, the engineer who came up with the Control-Alt-Delete sequence said in a 2001 interview marking the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC. He said at that time that he invented Control-Alt-Delete, but "Bill made it famous". Bradley said he did not know why Gates used Control-Alt-Delete for the login screen, a hole in the story which Gates has finally cleared up. Windows XP and Windows 7 still use Control-Alt-Delete and it works in Windows 8 as a shortcut for locking your PC or accessing the task manager. |
| Steve Jobs killed iPhone patent in the EU Posted: 27 Sep 2013 04:03 AM PDT One of the highlights of Apple Messiah Steve Jobs' career was also one of his biggest blunders. The spiritual and temporal head of the cargo cult gave a keynote to Macworld in January 2007 which was one of his best. To the cheering throngs he announced, in detail, a major new product six months before its expected availability. He said that Apple was releasing an iPhone. This was unusual for Jobs and Apple. The company is as secretive as the Bavarian Illuminati and never tells anyone what it is doing. In this case, Jobs broke the mould. On paper it was a good idea, it generated the sort of hype which was going to propel the smartphone into a must have item. But Jobs failed to understand the implications the move would have on his German patents which could undo his "thermonuclear war" with rival Samsung. According to FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller, the Bundespatentgericht, or Federal Patent Court of Germany, declared that by giving so many details about the phone six months early, Jobs had invalidated his own patent. The court declared Apple's EP2059868 patent for a "Portable electronic device for photo management," covering a specific use of Apple's "bounce-back" user interface effect, invalid due to prior art. US patent law allows inventors a year in which to file a patent document after coming up with a new idea. During this time period, nothing publicly shown or published could be considered prior art. But in Europe this grace period does not exist and when Jobs gave his 2007 speech he was considered to be pre-filing disclosure and therefore technically prior art. Apple tried in vain to claim that what was shown in Jobs' video was much different from what was finally released in the EU, but the Judges did not buy that. Mueller said that the patent will still be appealed to the Bundesgerichtshof or Federal Court of Justice. |
| Posted: 27 Sep 2013 03:53 AM PDT The shy and retiring CEO of Microsoft, Steve "sound of silence" Ballmer, gave his last staff presentation with a typically subdued, low-key performance. Ballmer launched himself onto the stage to the tune of "Can't Hold Us" by Seattle's Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. He left to the strains of Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin" which was the song placed at his first employee meeting in 1983. That 1983 song, for what it was worth, was followed by "The Time of My Life" from the finale of "Dirty Dancing". It all seems oddly appropriate, given what he has in his bank account. According to Reuters, Ballmer was "visibly moved" - we don't know who was moving him as he is usually propelled under his own steam. Ballmer told the staff that they had "unbelievable potential" in front of them and an "unbelievable destiny". We are not sure we believe that either, but it was also a cut and paste from his 1983 meeting. He said Microsoft and a handful of others are poised to write the future. The Vole is going to think big and is going to bet big, he said, although without Steve it charge it will be hard to find anyone that big ever again. Thousands of full time Microsoft Voles showed up to see Steve's last hurrah. Most of them were bussed in from Microsoft's campus on the east side of Lake Washington. More than 25,000 other staff tuned in via webcast. Ballmer told the throngs that when he told his parents he was dropping out of Stanford's business school to join Microsoft in 1980, his dad asked him what a PC was. These days, he said, Apple is about being "fashionable," Amazon.com is about being "cheap," Google is about "knowing more," but Microsoft is about "doing more". Ballmer's exit will take a fair bit of colour from Microsoft, but at least staff will not have to worry about that ringing in their ears for a month after their January staff shindig. |
| Samsung attacked in PR gold for Apple Posted: 27 Sep 2013 03:29 AM PDT Some pundits have been wading into Samsung for "copying Apple" by releasing a gold version of its Galaxy S IV right after Apple released and then quickly sold out of its gold iPhone 5S. "If recent reports are correct, the demand for the gold version is higher than Apple expected. Of course Samsung wanted in on the action," wrote TechCrunch. Cult of Android cheekily asks: "does this company [Samsung] have any shame?" The main theme appears to be that Samsung blatantly copied Apple's glorious winning strategy by releasing a gold Galaxy S IV right after Apple. But if we are going to get into a juvenile peeing contest about gold plated phones, it may surprise commentators to discover it was Apple that copied Samsung. Samsung released a gold smartphone in August, weeks before the gold iPhone 5S came out. It was called the Galaxy Golden and it was a pig-ugly hybrid flip phone-smartphone. It had two 3.7-inch AMOLED displays with WVGA resolution, a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, LTE support, a 1,820 mAh battery and the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system. But what was more important was that it shipped in a "champagne gold" colour. It seems that Samsung has been thinking about Gold phones for a while now, long before Apple showed off its first sample. Then again, like the rectangle with rounded corners, gold isn't really something that belongs to either of the quarrelling companies. Don't expect that to stop them and their fans from fighting about it, though. |
| Malware could be hiding in your GPU Posted: 27 Sep 2013 03:17 AM PDT Malware writers have worked out ways of hiding trojan horses in places where viruses checkers can't look, according to one security researcher. Patrick Stewin has demonstrated a a detector which can be built to find sophisticated malware that runs on dedicated devices and attacks direct memory access (DMA). This will mean that it will finally tell us how effective crackers have been at getting malware into graphics and network cards. The code has managed to find attacks launched by the malware, dubbed DAGGER, which targeted host runtime memory using DMA provided to hardware devices. DAGGER attacked 32bit and 64bit Windows and Linux systems and could bypass memory address randomisation. It has now been developed to a point where the host cannot detect its presence, Stewin said. Stewin said that DMA attacks could be launched from peripherals and are capable of compromising the host without exploiting vulnerabilities present in the operating system running on the host. Stewin's research was to develop a reliable detector for DMA malware and he thinks he has managed to do it. According to SC magazine, the code used a runtime monitor dubbed BARM. BARM modelled and compared expected memory bus activity to the resulting activity. Stewin said the detector would not significantly drain computer power. His code will be shown off in a research paper with the catchy title "A Primitive for Revealing Stealthy Peripheral-based Attacks on the Computing Platform's Main Memory", which will be presented at the 16th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defences in October in Saint Lucia. |
| Google celebrates 15th birthday with algorithm change Posted: 27 Sep 2013 03:11 AM PDT On its 15th birthday, Google announced a change to its search algorithm it has said is the most significant in years. Dubbed Hummingbird, the algorithm could nip at the heels of smaller websites, just as happened with the previous one. The last changes, Panda and Penguin, "fixed" parts of the old algorithm, but not an entire replacement of the whole. Hummingbird is a complete rewrite though it continues to use some parts of the old code. The last major change was in 2009, the "Caffeine Update" which helped Google better gather information than sorting through it. The last time Google carried out a rewrite this large was 2001. It is a testament to the power the search engine has in defining internet content that it can be the king maker for many internet careers. If Google's search engine can find you, and Google defines your site as acceptable, if you can be found by customers and qualify for adverts, and other goodies. Google's search algorithm defines what site you get your news from, rather than anything like providing interesting content. Specific news on Hummingbird at the moment is thin. Google has just said it is the most comprehensive overhaul to the search engine since "Caffeine" in 2009. Google told Software Development Times the algorithm allows it to look at long, complex questions more quickly, instead of being bogged down by each word, and to identify and rank answers from indexed content. The code has been in use for the last month, although Google has only just announced the change. There's been no major outcry among publishers that they've lost rankings. This seems to support Google, saying this is a query-by-query effect, one that may improve particular searches. It is possible that other search algorithm changes might have already stuffed up smaller sites enough and the new one will make no difference, but given what has happened in the past, we suspect a few will be taking a quizzical look at their traffic this month. |
| iFixit reports new iPhones fiddly to fix Posted: 26 Sep 2013 07:03 AM PDT Professional gadget-tinkerers at iFixit have put together a list of smartphones rated by how easy they are to repair. Apple's flagship new iPhones are by no means the worst on the list, but, as is typical with Cupertino's devices, they're fiddly enough for amateurs to have to resort to consulting an Apple genius. Motorola's Droid Bionic is at the top of the charts, scoring 9 out of 10 - 10 being the easiest to repair - as the battery can be removed in "seconds" and its design allows for quick and easy replacement of individual parts.Whether you want one is another question. Motorola's Atrix 4G was tied, because the LC and front glass are not fused so can be easily replaced individually. The battery's simple to remove, too, but components are soldered in place. Of the big hitters in 2013, Samsung's Galaxy S4 is right on top with 8 out of 10. The South Korean giant's battery is easy to replace and the device itself is simple to open for access to internal components. Some of these components are adhered to the back of a fused display assembly, so it's not all plain sailing. Blackberry's ill fated Z10 also scored a decent mark, at 8, thanks to its easy to replace battery and standard screws that make it easy to open. Smaller components are strongly adhered in place - which is generally what you want until it's time to replace something. Motorola's Moto X scored a 7 for easy to replace individual components and using just one kind of screw throughout, but the strong adhesive on the back cover makes opening the phone tricky. Apple's iPhone 5S and 5C both scored a 6 for the same reasons: the front panel is easy to remove and replace, but the battery is adhered in place and difficult to take out. You'll also need a proprietary pentalobe driver to open the devices. This puts them behind the iPhone 5 (score: 7) with an easy to remove and replace front panel and a "relatively easy to replace" battery. Again, you'll need a pentalobe driver to get it open. |
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