I read Negroponte’s statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO.

I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom. The IBM T23s that I have used for many years are adequate in practice, and the system and applications running on them are entirely free software, but the BIOS is not. I want to use a laptop with a free software BIOS, and the XO is the only one.

The XO’s usual software load is not 100% free; it has a non-free firmware program to run the wireless chip. That means I cannot fully promote the XO as it stands, but it was easy for me solve that problem for my own machine: I just deleted that file. That made the internal wireless chip inoperative, but I can do without it.

As always happens, problems arose, which delayed the migration until last week. On Friday, when I discussed some technical problems with the OLPC staff, we also discussed how to save the future of the project.

Some enthusiasts of the GNU/Linux system are extremely disappointed by the prospect that the XO, if it is a success, will not be a platform for the system they love. Those who have supported the OLPC project with their effort or their money may well feel betrayed. However, those concerns are dwarfed by what is at stake here: whether the XO is an influence for freedom or an influence for subjection.

Since the OLPC was first announced we have envisioned it as a way to lead millions of children around the world to a life in which they do computing in freedom. The project announced its intention to give children a path to learn about computers by allowing them to study and tinker with the software. It may yet do that, but there is a danger that it will not. If most of the XOs that are actually used run Windows, the overall effect will be the opposite.

Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Its functioning is secret, so it is incompatible with the spirit of learning. Teaching children to use a proprietary (non-free) system such as Windows does not make the world a better place, because it puts them under the power of the system’s developer — perhaps permanently. You might as well introduce the children to an addictive drug. If the XO turns out to be a platform for spreading the use of proprietary software, its overall effect on the world will be negative.

It is also superfluous. The OLPC has already inspired other cheap computers; if the goal is only to make cheap computers available, the OLPC project has succeeded whether or not more XOs are built. So why build more XOs? Delivering freedom would be a good reason.

The project’s decision is not final; the free software community must do everything possible to convince OLPC to continue being (aside from one firmware package) a force for freedom.

Part of what we can do is offer to help with the project’s own free software. OLPC hoped for contribution from the community to its interface, Sugar, but this has not happened much. Partly that’s because OLPC has not structured its development so as to reach out to the community for help — which means, when viewed in constructive terms, that OLPC can obtain more contribution by starting to do this.

Sugar is free software, and contributing to it is a good thing to do. But don’t forget the goal: helpful contributions are those that make Sugar better on free operating systems. Porting to Windows is permitted by the license, but it isn’t a good thing to do.

taken from www.fsf.org/blogs

Tim Berners-Lee developed the web while working at Cern

The world wide web is “still in its infancy”, the web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told BBC News.

He was speaking ahead of the 15th anniversary of the day the web’s code was put into the public domain by Cern, the lab where the web was developed.

The future web will put “all the data in the world” at the fingertips of every user, Sir Tim said.

“The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there.”

Making the web free to use had a vital role in spreading its use worldwide.

There are now 165 million different websites around the world, according to internet research firm Netcraft.

Sir Tim said he was optimistic about the future of the web.

‘Fantastic experience’

“The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience,” he said.

“The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues.”

Sir Tim predicted that the web’s ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.

“What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance.

“My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.”

The ubiquity of the web gives the impression that its success was inevitable but that was not always the case, said Robert Cailliau, who worked alongside Sir Tim.

The decision by physics laboratory Cern to release the web code into the public domain was not a straightforward one, he told BBC News.

Technical proposals

Mr Cailliau helped draw up one of the early technical proposals for the web and later helped convince the directors at Cern to “give the web away”.

“The difficult part was explaining to them the true nature of what the web was going to be,” he said.

“We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore Cern couldn’t hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away.”

He added: “We had toyed with the idea of asking for some sort of royalty. But Tim wasn’t very much in favour of that.”

He said competing technologies, such as Gopher, which was developed at the University of Minnesota, were also offering a method of using hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet.

“If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now.

“We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world.”

TAKEN FROM news.bbc.co.uk
 

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TAKEN FROM www.visualprogression.com

Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB “thumb drive” that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer’s Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

“These are things that we invest substantial resources in, but not from the perspective of selling to make money,” Smith said in an interview. “We’re doing this to help ensure that the Internet stays safe.”

Law-enforcement officials from agencies in 35 countries are in Redmond this week to talk about how technology can help fight crime. Microsoft held a similar event in 2006. Discussions there led to the creation of COFEE.

Smith compared the Internet of today to London and other Industrial Revolution cities in the early 1800s. As people flocked from small communities where everyone knew each other, an anonymity emerged in the cities and a rise in crime followed.

The social aspects of Web 2.0 are like “new digital cities,” Smith said. Publishers, interested in creating huge audiences to sell advertising, let people participate anonymously.

That’s allowing “criminals to infiltrate the community, become part of the conversation and persuade people to part with personal information,” Smith said.

Children are particularly at risk to anonymous predators or those with false identities. “Criminals seek to win a child’s confidence in cyberspace and meet in real space,” Smith cautioned.

Expertise and technology like COFEE are needed to investigate cybercrime, and, increasingly, real-world crimes.

“So many of our crimes today, just as our lives, involve the Internet and other digital evidence,” said Lisa Johnson, who heads the Special Assault Unit in the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

A suspect’s online activities can corroborate a crime or dispel an alibi, she said.

The 35 individual law-enforcement agencies in King County, for example, don’t have the resources to investigate the explosion of digital evidence they seize, said Johnson, who attended the conference.

“They might even choose not to seize it because they don’t know what to do with it,” she said. “… We’ve kind of equated it to asking specific law-enforcement agencies to do their own DNA analysis. You can’t possibly do that.”

Johnson said the prosecutor’s office, the Washington Attorney General’s Office and Microsoft are working on a proposal to the Legislature to fund computer forensic crime labs.

Microsoft also got credit for other public-private partnerships around law enforcement.

Jean-Michel Louboutin, Interpol’s executive director of police services, said only 10 of 50 African countries have dedicated cybercrime investigative units.

“The digital divide is no exaggeration,” he told the conference. “Even in countries with dedicated cybercrime units, expertise is often too scarce.”

He credited Microsoft for helping Interpol develop training materials and international databases used to prevent child abuse.

Smith acknowledged Microsoft’s efforts are not purely altruistic. It benefits from selling collaboration software and other technology to law-enforcement agencies, just like everybody else, he said.

TAKEN FROM seattletimes.nwsource.com

Canadian wireless carrier Rogers Wireless said Tuesday it has reached an agreement with Apple to begin offering the iPhone later this year, putting an end to months of speculation on the subject.

“We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year,” the carrier said in a statement. “We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.”

It’s long been presumed that Rogers would serve as the wireless provider who would usher the touch-screen handset into Canada, given that it’s the only carrier in the region with a GSM networked suited for use with the device.

In January of 2007, just weeks after Apple demonstrated the first iPhone at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the carrier issued an email statement to its customers saying it was in ongoing negotiations with the handset maker and would be the only Canadian provider to offer the device.

“I’m not saying whether we have agreements or anything [with Apple], but given the iPhone was launched on GSM, we’re in good position to reinforce that we’re the first and have the best-feature devices,” Rogers chief operating officer Nadir Mohamed would later say.

The carrier continued to backtrack on its claims in the month’s that would follow, calling reports of the iPhone’s arrival in Canada through Rogers as speculation on the part of the media. The contradiction sent shivers of doubt through hopefuls in the region, who began to wonder just when, and if, the much-hyped “jesus phone” would make its way up north.

Though the reasoning behind Rogers’ apparent about-face were never made public, speculation amongst analyst and industry followers were that data rates in Canada were too steep for Apple’s liking, Rogers still had some time on existing contracts with other handset makers, and that it was in the process of upgrading to a next-generation 3G network.

“The barrier to the iPhone in Canada is not Apple,” said Michael Geist, Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa. “Rather, it is the lack of wireless competition that [...] leads to pricing that places Canadians at a significant disadvantage compared with other developed countries.”

In February, the Canadian carrier for the first time began introducing affordable unlimited data plans, in what was seen as a sign that one more barrier to an official iPhone launch in Canada had been knocked down.

In addition to Canada, Apple has said that this year will also mark the launch of iPhone in several additional European countries, as well as portions of Asia. The touch-screen handset is currently available in the US, UK, Germany, France, Ireland and Austria.

TAKEN FROM www.appleinsider.com

TAKEN FROM /cerebrosuslens.blogspot.com

As per the unofficial timeline, Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) has been uploaded to Microsoft’s servers. Currently, the final build is only available on the download.windowsupdate domain in the following languages: Chinese (Hong Kong), Czech, English, French, German (Deutsch), Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Simplified (Chinese), Spanish, and Traditional Chinese. According to Microsoft TechNet, the 300MB+ x86 standalone installer (build 5512) will not be available today on the Microsoft Download Center nor on Windows Update.
There will be no x64 version of SP3 released; Windows XP x64 will be updated at the same time Windows Server 2003 is updated, since it is derived from the codebase of the latter. Although Microsoft has still to confirm the date, SP3 should be rolled out via Automatic Updates on June 10, 2008.

The service pack contains all previously-released Windows XP updates, including security updates, out-of-band releases, and hotfixes released since Windows XP SP2 hit Microsoft’s servers back in August 2004. There are reportedly 1,073 fixes in SP3, as well as various performance improvements. Every service pack Microsoft releases is cumulative, meaning it is possible to install (or slipstream) SP3 onto Windows XP SP1/SP2. Windows Internet Explorer 7 is not included as part of SP3 and still must be downloaded and installed separately (unless it is already installed).

With SP3, Microsoft has back-ported four Vista features to XP, including Network Access Protection (NAP) in order “to help organizations that use Windows XP to take advantage of new features in the Windows Server 2008 operating system.” The four features that are no longer Vista-specific are as follows:

• NAP is a policy enforcement platform meant for enterprise use that blocks systems attempting to access a network until they meet whatever security criteria the corporation has in place.
• “Black Hole” Router Detection helps detect and protect end users from a router that drops packets without returning the specified Internet Control Message Protocol response.
• Microsoft Kernel Cryptographic Module incorporates cryptographic algorithms in a single module other kernel mode drivers are capable of hooking into and accessing.
• The new Product Activation module allows users to install XP without entering a product key at installation.

Just over a month after the release of Vista SP1, XP SP3 hit RTM on April 21, 2008, as the rumors predicted. Up until then, Microsoft continued to stubbornly say that SP3 would go final in the “first half of 2008.” The last beta build Microsoft released to the public was XP SP3 RC2 Refresh, available in English, German, and Japanese.

 MSDN and TechNet subscribers received the final English 544.86MB ISO image a few days ago. As with Vista SP1, however, subscribers had to fight to get the final build before it hit RTW. MSDN and TechNet subscribers were supposed to get SP3 on May 2, 2008, or three days after it was available publicly.

With the release of SP3, XP will be found on consumers’ PCs for years and years to come. On the other hand, with Windows 7 a couple of years out, and with the recent broad release of Vista SP1, Windows XP’s life as market leader is slowly coming to an end.

The keyword here is “slowly.” Microsoft has extended the life of XP Home until at least June 2010 for budget laptops, and even Apple is supporting XP SP3. Furthermore, although Microsoft has plans to stop selling XP to most manufacturers and system builders on June 30, 2008, OEMs are fighting back.

Manufacturers have found a loophole to bypass the deadline: when purchasing a computer with Windows Vista Ultimate or Business editions, Microsoft has given consumers the option to downgrade to XP Professional. Companies such as Dell and Lenovo are using Microsoft’s “Downgrade Rights” to offer XP Professional for as long as possible. Microsoft is unlikely to be worried since consumers still have to purchase Vista and always have the option to upgrade to the company’s flagship OS whenever they choose to.

Although Vista SP1 was a very critical release for the software giant, XP SP3 is still extremely important. The company is quite aware that many businesses have made the decision to stay with XP and has more than once extended support for the now six-year-old operating system. The company will of course continue to release updates, but it is not clear whether there will be an SP4.

Would you rather have Microsoft focus on Vista SP2 and Windows 7, or would you say XP SP4 is a must-have? With Vista SP1 and XP SP3 both out the door, will you sticking with your current primary operating system?

Update

What originally looked like it was going to be a less complicated release than Vista SP1 has turned into a maelstrom of confusion for end-users. It’s time to set the record straight: Windows XP SP3 is available for download from Microsoft, but it has not officially hit the Release to Web (RTW) milestone as was originally planned for today.

The delay only recently became evident when Microsoft spokesperson posted the following message on Microsoft TechNet: “In the last few days, we have uncovered a compatibility issue between Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). In order to make sure customers have the best possible experience, we have decided to delay releasing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to the web.”

Having said that, if you are not running Microsoft Dynamics RMS, it is perfectly safe to install XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (which has also been pulled from automatic updates).

TAKEN FROM arstechnica.com

Over the past few days, Yahoo has been exposing visitors to fraudware banner ads and also ads that try to trick them into installing malware. The ads are displayed across numerous web portal sections, including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Astrology.

Some of the ads pitch women’s deodorant, but behind the scenes, they contact servers that have been used by previous rogue ads targeting high-traffic websites. Typically, the ads produce a pop up that looks strikingly similar to official Windows dialog pop-ups that urge the end user to download software to fix problems. Expedia, Rhapsody, MySpace, Excite, Blick, and CNN.com have all served up similar malicious ads in the past.

Attackers who inject their banners onto reputable sites usually take advantage of the highly decentralized way that online advertisements are sold. It’s not unusual for there to be a succession of affiliates, making it possible for an attacker to pose as an authorized agent of a name-brand product or service. In this case, Yahoo has gotten deceived into running ads that point to adtds2.promoplexer.com, which has been implicated in previous rogue banner attacks. Even if you don’t get redirected, the malvertizement still let’s the bad guys know that it is on display by sending info to adtds2.promoplexer.com/statsa.php?campaign=yahoo and adsraise.com/mbuyers/statistics.html

Among other malicious URL redirections there are:

eur.a1.yimg.com/java.europe.yimg.com/eu/any/yahoonew300×250.swf

ope.yahoo.com/eu/any/yahoonew728×90.swf

track.trackads.net/statsa.php?campaign=yahoo

Other sites that use Yahoo advertising (like Ebay) could potentially expose visitors to the malvertizement and fraudware sites.

So far emails were sent to three different Yahoo PR reps but until now there’s no indication anyone at the company is even aware of the problem.

An extremely efficient and simple way to avoid malware would be using the NoScript extension for Firefox. Even if you’ve whitelisted Yahoo, it will block JavaScript and Adobe Flash being sent from the attacker’s website.

taken from cyberinsecure.com/

Following in the wake of February’s news that customs agents were seizing electronics and making copies of all the files on cell phones and laptop hard drives, a federal appeals court has ruled on the legality of such searches. The result: Yeah, customs can do whatever it wants to your computer when you come across the border, without a warrant, and without cause.

The ruling extends to all electronics: In addition to laptops, feds can seize phone records and even digital pictures on your camera as they hunt for evidence. The ruling was unanimous among the three appellate judges.

Be assured that the ruling has little to do with thwarting terrorism. The appeal was actually part of an ongoing trial of a man named Michael Arnold, who returned from the Philippines and had his laptop scoured by the feds. They found purported images of child pornography on the laptop and later arrested him. In his trial, the evidence was suppressed for probable cause issues, as the court said that customs had no reasonable suspicion to search his laptop in the first place. That ruling has now been overturned.

As Wired notes, the court did not rule on whether you have to help agents access your hard drive. If you use a password or encryption, the court was mum on whether you can be compelled to provide information on bypassing that security in order to access materials on the drive. If you find yourself in such a situation and have anything on your computer that might be considered at all suspicious, you are probably wise to keep mum on providing login information.

This is an issue that will undoubtedly keep developing (and will probably be submitted, in the end, to the Supreme Court), but anyone traveling overseas with sensitive information (even confidential, legal stuff) should for now consider storing it elsewhere (online, perhaps) or simply leaving it at home.

TAKEN FROM tech.yahoo.com

While greeted with heaps of initial skepticism, forum jockeys over at OQO Talk now seem convinced that a junior member by the name of TRF has successfully hacked the OQO to run OS X Leopard. Adding a video filmed by Mr. Blurry Cam didn’t hurt the cause. TRF’s OQO is setup in a dual-boot Vista / OS X mode which boots Leopard in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. WiFi, sound, power management and Bluetooth… it’s all there with applications popping with serious snap. The only thing missing at the moment is WWAN access which TRF is now testing. While not yet a “plug and play” hack, it’s “definitely doable,” he says. Perhaps, but we’ll need more details to say the least. Video excerpt posted after the break.

[Thanks Albert L. and lambda jones]

Read — Forum post
Read — Full Video

TAKEN FROM www.engadget.com