Microsoft sues Barnes & Noble over Android devices

Microsoft filed suit today against Barnes & Noble as well as the makers of its Android-based e-reader and tablet devices for patent infringement, part of its broader campaign against Google's mobile operating system.
The software giant alleges that its patents cover a range of functions "essential to the user experience." The company specifically cites the way users tab through various screens on the Nook e-reader and the Nook Color tablet, both of which run Android, to find the information they're after, as well as the way they interact with documents and e-books.

"The Android platform infringes a number of Microsoft's patents, and companies manufacturing and shipping Android devices must respect our intellectual property rights," says Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's corporate VP and deputy general counsel for intellectual property and licensing, in a press release.

Microsoft says it's tried to no avail to reach licensing agreements with Barnes & Noble and its hardware partners. "Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market," Gutierrez says.

The suit was filed with the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington. Microsoft also named Foxconn International Holdings and Inventec Corporation as defendants in the case.

A Barnes & Noble spokeswomen declined to comment on the suit, saying the company doesn't comment on litigation as a matter of policy. Google, though, fired back. "Sweeping software patent claims like Microsoft's threaten innovation. While we are not a party to this lawsuit, we stand behind the Android platform and the partners who have helped us to develop it," Google spokesman Aaron Zamost said.

Microsoft previously sued Motorola, alleging that several of its Android devices infringe on Microsoft patents. Microsoft would prefer that companies making Android devices follow the lead of its longtime partner HTC, which worked out a deal last year covering its own Android devices.

Despite its many patents, Microsoft rarely sues over infringements. In a blog post, Gutierrez says that this suit is the seventh proactive patent infringement case brought by Microsoft in its 36-year history. "We simply cannot ignore infringement of this scope and scale," Gutierrez writes.

Microsoft, which is losing ground to Android in the marketplace, is pushing hard to take the fight to the courthouse. One tactic: make using Android, which is offered for free to manufacturers, more costly by raising the specter of litigation. Microsoft has claimed over the years that Linux-based products infringe on its patents, which has led to several licensing deals with companies making devices using the technology. And Android is based on the open-source operating system.

As Todd Bishop of GeekWire notes, the patents Microsoft is alleging infringement of are different from the ones cited in the Motorola case. This time, Microsoft is suing over patents such as ones that cover editing electronic documents, and capturing and rendering annotations.

The market for mobile devices is so lucrative that litigation is a key strategy to keep rivals off balance. Last year, Apple sued HTC for infringing on iPhone patents covering the graphical user interface and the underlying design. And Oracle, too, sued Google, alleging it infringed on patents related to Java in Android.

The size of the market is clearly one reason why Microsoft is willing to take on Barnes & Noble, long a loyal partner and customer for a variety of products and services. A decade ago, Barnes & Noble was one of Microsoft's marquee partners for its Microsoft Reader software, an early entrant into the electronic book market. Back then, Barnes & Noble created an eBook superstore, using the Microsoft technology, for customers who wanted to read books on laptops and the existing hodgepodge of dedicated reading devices that used Microsoft's technology. That business has since shuttered.

Barnes & Noble also partnered with Microsoft on its ill-fated Windows Live Search Cashback program, which paid rebates to customers who found products with Microsoft search engine and purchased them. And Barnes & Noble lent its name to the list of customers touting its business intelligence software back in 2004.
In addition to a permanent injunction barring the defendants from infringing on Microsoft's patents, the company is also seeking compensatory damages "with interest and costs, and in no event less than a reasonable royalty" as well as treble damages for the defendants "willful and deliberate" patent infringements.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/

Google excises Gears from Chrome

Standards groups are unwieldy and slow-moving. But when it comes to expanding what browsers can do, they turned out to be a faster way for Google to bring a handful of features to the Web than its Gears plug-in.
So it comes as no surprise that Google, after letting the Gears project spin down over the last year and a half, is removing the software altogether from its Chrome browser.

"It's finally time to say goodbye to Gears," said Gears team member Aaron Boodman in a blog post. "There will be no new Gears releases, and newer browsers such as Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 will not be supported. We will also be removing Gears from Chrome in Chrome 12."

Google launched Gears with much fanfare as an open-source project in 2007. The headline feature was the ability to get Web applications to work offline--in other words, when the network connection was down--and the star examples were Google Docs and Gmail.

But only a few other Web developers, such as Zoho, WordPress, and iStockphoto, dabbled with Gears, and Google decided instead to focus on bringing Gears features to Web browsers through standards rather than its own plug-in.

One thing is very different about the browser landscape now compared to 2007: Google has a browser. When Gears was introduced, a plug-in for others' browsers was about the best Google could do to advance the Web programming state of the art. Now, with Chrome, it's got its own vehicle to bring new Web features to market. Chrome accounts for about 10 percent of browser usage worldwide today, making it a much more effective vehicle for advancing the Web than Gears ever was--in particular because browser rivals also are adding many features found in Gears.

When it comes to offline support, the key idea is a mechanism to let the browser store data. Several of these are available or nearly so, including HTML5's Application Cache. Another important one that's catching on is IndexedDB. Mozilla and Microsoft, the top two browser makers, endorsed IndexedDB, and the technology prevailed over a rival called Web SQL Database.

Technologies such as these will likely be the way Google restores offline access to Google Docs, a feature it promised would arrive "early in 2011."

The writing has been on the wall for Gears since Google announced its preference for HTML5 standards over Gears in December 2009. But its influence lives on in more ways than just offline data storage.
Boodman pointed to a handful of features demonstrated with Gears that have made their way into Web standards:

• Web Workers, which lets a browser run multiple JavaScript tasks at once, including background tasks, letting developers keep a Web application user interface responsive and taking advantage of multicore processors.
• The File interface, which adds better file-handling features to browsers, for example letting people upload a video in separate pieces called blobs so a 500-megabyte file transfer won't be derailed by a flaky network.
• Geolocation lets the browser--once given a user's permission--tell a Web application the physical location of that user. That can help locate the person on a map, for example.
• Notifications let Web applications produce the sorts of pop-ups so widely used by e-mail, instant messaging, and other communication software.

These standards are in varying stages of implementation in Web browsers right now, but all of them look to have solid support among browser makers. In the end, Gears was probably more of a success than a failure.


Source: http://news.cnet.com/

Internet Explorer and Safari first to fall at Pwn2Own 2011, Chrome and Firefox still standing

Computerworld - Google's $20,000 was as safe at Pwn2Own Wednesday as if it had been in the bank.


The search giant had promised to pay $20,000 to the first researcher who broke into Chrome on the hacking contest's opening day.


But no one took up Google's offer.


"The first contestant was a no-show," said Aaron Portnoy, manager of HP TippingPoint's security research team, and Pwn2Own's organizer. "And the other team wanted to work on their BlackBerry vulnerability. So it doesn't look like anyone will try Chrome."


Only two entries had pre-registered for Chrome: Moatz Khader and one or more researchers going as "Team Anon." (Researchers may remain anonymous if they wish.) Based on a random drawing several weeks ago, Khader was to get first shot, with Team Anon second.


Team Anon is also slated to tackle RIM's BlackBerry OS on Thursday.


Late Wednesday, TippingPoint provided a tentative schedule for today's Pwn2Own; that schedule doesn't show any planned Chrome exploit.


Even if someone unexpectedly stepped up to take a crack at Chrome and exploited the browser, Google would be on the hook for just $10,000. As part of the deal it struck with TippingPoint, the two will split the $20,000 payment for a successful hack on the second or third days of the contest.


If Chrome comes out unscathed, as it now appears it will, the browser will have survived three consecutive Pwn2Owns, a record.


On Wednesday, researchers successfully exploited Safari and Internet Explorer. A team from French security company Vupen took down Safari 5 running on a MacBook Air notebook in five seconds, and independent researcher Stephen Fewer used a trio of vulnerabilities to hack IE8 on Windows 7.


Portnoy was impressed with Fewer's work. "The most impressive so far," said Portnoy. "He used three vulnerabilities to [not only] bypass ASLR and DEP, but also escape Protected Mode. That's something we've not seen at Pwn2Own before."


ASLR, for address space layout randomization, and DEP, or data execution prevention, are a pair of technologies baked into Windows that are designed to make it more difficult for exploits to reliably execute. Protected Mode is IE's "sandbox," which isolates the browser -- and thus any attack code that manages to infiltrate it -- from escaping to do damage on the system as a whole.


Pwn2Own continues today and Friday, when Mozilla's Firefox and four smartphones running Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows 7 Phone and RIM's BlackBerry OS will be in researchers' crosshairs.

Tablets are the 'post-PC era'? I beg to differ

I've been hearing "post-PC era" so much now that I wince when I hear the term. Clearly it must be time for me to get something off my chest.

There is no post-PC era.

Not as I see the landscape, at least. To me, tablets are a big break with the past when it comes to user interface, but deep down, more stays the same than changes. And the better tablets get, the more they'll simply absorb what we do with PCs.

In short, tablets will become PCs. Different PCs from today's PCs, but PCs.

Granted, I might be using the term "PC" differently from the main proponent of the "post-PC" idea, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who eagerly trotted the phrase out over and over during the iPad 2 launch last week. Apple often means "Windows personal computer" when it uses the term "PC," as evidenced in the Mac vs. PC ads. And there was a day when PC Magazine, PC World, PC/Computing and their ilk were indeed devoted to the Wintel world and not Macs.

But I prefer the term PC in a more generic "personal computer" sense. I use a MacBook Pro, a Lenovo Windows XP laptop, and a Dell Windows 7 laptop, and to me they all feel like, well, personal computers. There are differences between the Windows and Mac machines, sure, but I use the tools for exactly the same work and personal tasks. In short, for personal computing.


Today's differences


Right now there are plenty of legitimate distinctions between tablets and PCs. First and foremost, tablets have a touch-screen interface rather than the traditional combination of a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad. They're smaller and lighter. What they lack in processor power they make up for in battery life. They come with a different operating system that means the vast array of PC applications won't run. And at least in the case of the iPad, they lack the profusion of ports to connect external monitors, digital cameras, wireless network dongles, backup systems, thumb drives, and, yes, heated slippers.

Then there's the matter of how people use tablets. There's plenty of overlap--Web browsing, e-mail, social networking, casual games--but there are differences as well. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has ditched his PC for an iPad at work, but most people probably aren't ready to follow him just yet even if conservative corporate IT administrators could be persuaded to make a pretty radical change.

Many routine work chores become harder or impossible on a tablet. Microsoft Office is absent, typing on a virtual keyboard isn't the same, and file storage and transfer is a more complicated matter.

On the flip side, there are things tablets can do that PCs today can't. Games, drawing apps, and other interactive software take on a new direct, physical connection with a large touch screen and an accelerometer that tells a program how a person is moving the tablet around. Watch Apple's demo of iMovie for the iPad to get a feel for how far user interfaces are moving away from WordPerfect 5.1.

In addition, tablets function as book readers much more gracefully than laptops and are significantly more portable. The battery life means they're not nearly as tethered to power sockets. And the instant-on availability means people put off by the hassle of booting a PC might grab a tablet for a mid-conversation search to identify six wives of Henry VIII.

All these new options for tablets lead Gartner to agree with the post-PC idea: "We expect growing consumer enthusiasm for mobile PC alternatives, such as the iPad and other media tablets, to dramatically slow home mobile PC sales, especially in mature markets," said George Shiffler, a Gartner research director, last week.
In other words, to some extent, it's an either-or situation, where tablets replace PCs in some circumstances.

Tomorrow's similarities
To this point, I agree with the "post-PC" idea, too. Smartphones and tablets are qualitatively different from PCs, and they're supplanting PCs to some significant extent both when it comes to purchasing choices and daily usage.

But when I unleash my imagination and fast-forward a few years, I think the distinction between what we call PCs and tablets will fade.

Let's start with peripherals. Today, you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to your iPad. As I see things shaking out, wireless connections--Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct, or something else--also will permit many other devices to be attached. And as tablets adapt to the business world, I predict they'll get ports. Maybe Intel's new Thunderbolt, though doubtless expensive today, will provide a one-port-to-rule-them-all simplicity that will get along better with the sleek tablet world.

Processor power, too, will improve. Certainly very thin and light designs can't accommodate the hot and power-hungry CPUs of high-end or even mid-range PCs today, but the better mobile processors become, the more average computer user's workload they'll be able to handle.

The way I see things shaking out, people will often end up carrying a tablet with them. When necessary, modular keyboards, mice, and large monitors will be linked up to assemble something that would be awfully hard to think of as anything but a PC. Maybe for the laptop crowd, people who don't always have the luxury of a desk to clutter up with assorted accessories, keyboards will snap on or be built into optional covers.
I don't think PCs, as we see them today, will die out. But they'll be relegated to a smaller niche. Laptops have steadily encroached into the mainstream PC world, edging tower and desktop PCs away from the center of the market toward those on a tight budget, gamers, workstation users, and cubicle farm dwellers. Tablets, I think, will do the same thing to today's conventional laptops--push them out to the fringes where people need optical drives or major processor power or aren't willing to pay a premium for lots of flash memory or something slimmer than a pancake.

A continuum of PCs
"It's a shame, almost, that we squandered the term 'personal computer' 30 years ago," lamented the John Gruber of Daring Fireball while swooning over Apple's iPad 2 announcement.
Nonsense, I say. "Personal computer" was a perfectly reasonable term then, and the term will be just fine until Ray Kurzweil's singularity arrives and Skynet converts all the humans into smart matter.
A MITS Altair, a TRS-80 Model 4, an Osborne 1, an Apple II, a BBC Micro, a Macintosh SE, a Gateway 486DX2-40, a Power Computing PowerCurve 601/120, an IBM ThinkPad, an Asus eee PC--they're all PCs to me.

There have been some revolutionary shifts over the years, of course. Graphical user interfaces, hard drives, networking, graphics processors, portability, CD-ROM drives, the Internet, Wi-Fi--each of these have profoundly changed what a PC is.

With tablets, we get touch screens, orientation sensitivity, and geolocation.
In the future, maybe we'll get voice control that works, a high-speed, all-purpose optical communications port, biometric identification that rids us of our 450 usernames and passwords, smartphones that beam information to our contact-lens displays, batteries that recharge from the sun or from a glass of whisky, truly reliable and pervasive wireless networking, and nanobots swimming among our neurons so we can download the ability to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Is it personal? Is it computing? Then it's a personal computer.


Source: http://news.cnet.com/