May 24, 2012, 11:06 AM — The proliferation of social networks has created a whole host of problems for both end users and IT staffers--problems that one new service is using big data technology to solve. The story of Banjo seems almost apocryphal in nature: founder and CEO Damien Patton was in Boston's Logan Airport waiting for an outbound flight. A friend Patton hadn't seen in years was waiting for a different flight just one gate over. Both men were actively posting their locations on social networks, but since they were on different social networks, they were oblivious to each other's presence. This is where the idea for Banjo originated: a service with the capability to actively monitor different social networks in real time and ... Continue reading →

May 24, 2012, 10:01 AM — Most observers are applauding Google its successes in the Oracle v. Google case... but not everyone is thrilled about it. The jury for the Oracle vs. Google trial delivered their verdict for the second phase of the case--the patent phase--and as you probably know by know, found absolutely no patent infringement on the part of Google. With no patent infringement found, and only minor infringement found in the earlier copyright phase of the trial, Judge William Alsup dismissed the jurors early, since the planned damages phase was pretty much rendered moot by yesterday's decision. The trial is not over, of course: Alsup will probably rule on damages himself, and there's still his ruling on the copyrightability of application programming ... Continue reading →

A few minutes after the Oracle v. Google verdict, the ten jurors filed out to the elevator. A group of several reporters, including me, had hunkered down close to the elevators to wait for the jury as they walked out. Several Oracle lawyers stood farther back, also eager to hear from the ten men and women who had dealt their side a major setback. A court security guard, who had been outside the jury room throughout deliberations, walked the jurors straight to the elevator, saying the jurors didn't want to talk to anyone. That wasn't quite true. The foreman of the jury, Greg Thompson, stopped and answered reporters' questions for about twenty minutes, while Oracle lawyers listened quietly to his answers. Thompson's brief chat with ... Continue reading →

As this classic xkcd cartoon reminds us, sudo is very powerful indeed Linux and Mac OS X users and system administrators, and long before them, Unix users and sysadmins, have used sudo as an essential computer management tool. With it, users are given the power to make essential, but sometimes dangerous, changes to their systems. Recently a fundamental security bug in sudo was discovered, In some network this security hole could allow a cracker unlimited control of Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix systems. Fortunately, the bug has now been fixed. Sudo, which system operators (sysops) use all the time, has been around for almost as long as Unix has been. People often think sudo stands for “do as superuser.” That’s because it’s most commonly ... Continue reading →

"This is Nelson. Nelson has my stolen iPhone."Katy McCaffrey had her iPhone stolen on a cruise ship last month. She had lost hope in recovering her smartphone, but then photos started showing up in her Photo Stream. The handy iCloud service automatically uploads photos taken on an iOS device to a feed that can be viewed on other authenticated devices.Thanks to Photo Stream, McCaffrey got a look into the world of the man who stole her iPhone.In a public Facebook photo album titled “Stolen iPhone Adventures,” McCaffrey has uploaded 20 photos taken on her iPhone by a man named Nelson. ”It was stolen on board the Disney Wonder cruiseline back in April,” she said. “His photos are just making it to my photostream.”Based on the ... Continue reading →

Libusb has been forked as libusbx and it appears this library for user-space USB data transfers on Linux and other operating systems is gaining traction. The libusb project has been around for more than a half-decade to serve as a cross-platform, user-mode library providing generic access to USB devices. The open-source USB library has even been ported to Windows. However, it's been forked by some unhappy developers. The libusbx project has been spawned as the fork reportedly because of the upstream maintainer not dong any stable releases in more than a year and a half. The maintainer was also slow with merging new code and other work. As a result, several upstream libusb developers forked and created libusbx. The libusbx code is working on new ... Continue reading →

NoSQL and NewSQL database technologies pose a long-term competitive threat to MySQL’s position as the default database for Web applications, according to a new report published by 451 Research. The report, MySQL vs. NoSQL and NewSQL: 2011-2015, examines the competitive dynamic between MySQL and the emerging NoSQL non-relational, and NewSQL relational database technologies. It concludes that while the current impact of NoSQL and NewSQL database technologies on MySQL is minimal, they pose a long-term competitive threat due to their adoption for new development projects. The report includes market sizing and growth estimates, with the key findings as follows: • NoSQL software vendors generated revenue* of $20m in 2011. NoSQL software revenue is expected to rapidly grow at a CAGR of 82% to reach $215m by ... Continue reading →

A jury has found that Google did not infringe upon Oracle's patents. "Today's jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle's patents was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem," Google said in a statement. More to follow. Continue reading →