John Lister

A new survey appears to confirm what most would suspect: people who discover security flaws make more money selling the details to criminals than to legitimate security companies. Research firm "Unsecurity" has carried out a survey of people who ... have discovered zero-day vulnerabilities and them sold them to security companies that then use the data to improve their products. Zero-day vulnerabilities occur when the original software manufacturer is unaware of a security risk in a software program. The name comes from the idea that once the manufacturer discovers the problem, there's ... (view more)

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer spoke at a news conference in New Delhi on Thursday and has guaranteed the much delayed Windows Phone 7 system will be released before the end of the year. Critics suggest, however, that beating the holiday shopping ... deadline will not provide much financial gain, but is more of a deadline to save face. (Source: informationweek.com ) Microsoft Management Shake-Up The comments do clear up some concerns over Microsoft's recent management shake-ups. As noted last week , Robbie Balch, who headed the entertainment and devices division, is leaving the company. Instead of ... (view more)

This week marked a historic, albeit merely symbolic moment in technology history. For the first time, Apple is worth more than Microsoft. The statistic in question is the market capitalization of the two companies, namely the current stock price ... multiplied by the number of shares. In theory it's the price you'd have to pay to take over the company -- though in reality, either the sellers or buyers controlling the deal would ultimately affect the takeover price. As of the end of trading on Wednesday, Apple's value was $222 billion, overtaking Microsoft's $219 billion. As well as taking the top ... (view more)

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit claiming an online software operator breached nine of its patents. The general reaction thus far is that the case has much to do about trying to deter a business competitor, rather than protecting genuine innovation. ... The case is against Salesforce.com, a company which offers customer management services: its slogan is that it is "the enterprise cloud-computing company", an idea borne out by its phone number, 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. Most of Salesforce's products are based on marketing campaigns and tracking sales leads, putting it directly in competition with Microsoft ... (view more)

The next version of Sony's PSP (PlayStation Portable) may not appear until next year. But rumors also suggest it will have much more impressive specifications than originally assumed. One report says that the PSP 2 will be a quad-core system, ... compared with the single core of the original PSP. In effect, that will be like having four separate processors able to carry out four tasks simultaneously. A quad-core system is what you'd expect to see in high-end consumer computers and would be extremely powerful for a handheld machine. It would follow in the footsteps of the PlayStation 3 (PS3), ... (view more)

An independent software company is offering a program it says will smooth the process of upgrading from XP or Vista to Windows 7. But there are questions about whether or not it breaches Microsoft licensing conditions. The package, called Desktop ... Upgrade to Windows, comes from Parallels. The firm specializes in virtualization software, most notably a package allowing Mac users to run Windows, which can be particularly useful for those making the leap from a PC to a Mac. The software aims to deal with two major upgrading headaches: one is that, with the exception of moving from one edition of ... (view more)

A new site aims to demonstrate Facebook's lax security and privacy by exposing some of the more embarrassing messages which users have posted. However, Facebook users appear to have undermined the site by posting intentionally bogus messages. The ... new site is known as Openbook and is intended to highlight changes made last month which made the search facility on Facebook much more public, even to non-users. It's even possible for status updates and other user info to appear on public search engines. This was particularly problematic as there have been several changes to Facebook's privacy ... (view more)

Google has dismissed Microsoft's claims that Google Docs is a failure, and says to use that the argument simply highlights Microsoft's proprietary tactics. The dispute comes as both sides step up their online cloud computing battle . Microsoft is in ... the midst of releasing its free online-only edition of its forthcoming Office 2010. Meanwhile, Google already has online document editing via its Google Docs service (plus the paid professional version Google Apps), and is heavily promoting that as an alternative to Office 2010. Microsoft: Google Docs Falls Short Indeed, it even said using Google ... (view more)

One of Microsoft's last hopes of escaping a $290 million fine for MS Word patent violations has once again fallen by the wayside. It means the company must either hope for an unlikely hearing at the Supreme Court, or pay up the cash. The case ... involves XML, a variant on web programming language HTML. Whereas HTML only covers the formatting and presentation of data, XML allows for description and classification of the content of that data. Series of Appeals End in Failure Microsoft Word lets users open XML documents, but the technique it uses to do so was ruled to have breached a patent by ... (view more)

Sprint has dropped plans to carry the Nexus One, Google's flagship cellphone. The news has somewhat undermined the revelation that Google's Android system is -- technically, at least -- outselling the iPhone. The news comes just weeks after Google ... cancelled plans to offer Nexus One with carrier Verizon. (Source: eweek.com ) The release of Nexus One, produced by HTC, marked the first time Google itself had directly marketed a phone based around its own open-source system, Android. The original plan was to have it available for all the major networks, but to engage in minimal advertising and to ... (view more)