Facebook Patents Developing: A Lawsuit From Mitel; More Patent Applications From AOL, Others

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The Mitel Networks suit, filed on March 16, 2012, in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleges infringement of two different patents, one for an “automatic web page generator” and another for “pro-active features for telephony.” They date from 1999 and 2007.

And two patent applications filed last week come from Compass Labs and AOL and respectively cover “user interest analysis and systems” and “content publication activity by a user.”

via Facebook Patents Developing: A Lawsuit From Mitel; More Patent Applications From AOL, Others | TechCrunch.

Most every site on the Internet, including this WordPress site, has its web pages generated automatically using a backend database.

Supreme Court saves medical profession from diagnostic patents

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The prospect of allowing patents on what amounts to human thought prompted a broad range of interest groups, including the ACLU, the Cato Institute (disclosure: I contributed to Cato’s brief in the case), and the American Medical Association, to file briefs urging the Supreme Court to invalidate the patent. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court did so in a unanimous vote.

via Supreme Court saves medical profession from diagnostic patents.

The Hidden Risk of a Meltdown in the Cloud

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There are well known problems of course. The most obvious relates to guaranteeing the security of data when it is stored on computers that that a user does not own and that many others can also access. But various solutions have emerged such as encrypting data before it is sent to the cloud. For that reason, the migration to the cloud is proceeding at full speed in many places.

That may be folly. Today, Bryan Ford at Yale University in New Haven says that the full risks of this migration have yet to be properly explored. He points out that complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways and outlines various simple scenarios in which a cloud could come unstuck.

via The Hidden Risk of a Meltdown in the Cloud – Technology Review.

Now Ford imagines the scenario in which both load balancing programs operate with the same refresh period, say once a minute. When these periods coincide, the control loops start sending the load back and forth between the virtual servers in a positive feedback loop.

Low-Orbit Servers? Or A Pirate Prank?

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“We’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air,” wrote “MrSpock” on the Pirate Bay blog. “This way our machines will have to be shot down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. We’re just starting, so we haven’t figured everything out yet. But we can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore.”

via Low-Orbit Servers? Or A Pirate Prank? » Data Center Knowledge.

This is the only true implementation of cloud computing — the servers are literally in the clouds.  Exchanging torrents or magnet links is a relatively low bandwidth operation.  There really could be something to this scheme but I would think doing it with satellites would be better.  Transmitters and servers can use a lot of power.

The Pirate Bay said it was experimenting with using GPS to control servers using Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized Linux computer.

Raspberry Pi servers aren’t going to be able to handle any kind of web load.  They should consider some kind of broadcast system.

System Development Life Cycle

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Computerworld – Once upon a time, software development consisted of a programmer writing code to solve a problem or automate a procedure. Nowadays, systems are so big and complex that teams of architects, analysts, programmers, testers and users must work together to create the millions of lines of custom-written code that drive our enterprises.

To manage this, a number of system development life cycle (SDLC) models have been created: waterfall, fountain, spiral, build and fix, rapid prototyping, incremental, and synchronize and stabilize.

via System Development Life Cycle – Computerworld.

If Barnes & Noble Wants To Take Its Nook Tablet Abroad, It Has A Lot Of Work To Do

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She noted that at the moment “over 70 percent” of buyers of the Nook are women aged between 25 and 45. They live within 15 minutes of a B&N store and often have kids. “When you go in, you can see kids running around loose in the store,” she said. “We even have nook tables in the stores for the kids to try out apps.

via If Barnes & Noble Wants To Take Its Nook Tablet Abroad, It Has A Lot Of Work To Do | TechCrunch.

Google Defends Hotfile (and Megaupload) in Court

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Two weeks ago the movie studios asked the court to issue a summary judgment against Hotfile and shut the site down. The MPAA argues that Hotfile is a piracy haven that should not be eligible for DMCA safe harbor protection.

This request didn’t go unnoticed by Google, who have now filed an amicus brief in support of the file-hosting site. According to Google, the movie studios are misleading the court by wrongfully suggesting that Hotfile is not protected by the DMCA.

via Google Defends Hotfile (and Megaupload) in Court | TorrentFreak.

A unique ‘fileless’ bot attacks news site visitors

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Analysis of the exploit’s JAR file demonstrated that it exploits a Java vulnerability (CVE-2011-3544). Cybercriminals have been exploiting this vulnerability since November in attacks targeting both MacOS and Windows users. Exploits for this vulnerability are currently among the most effective and are included in popular exploit packs.

via A unique ‘fileless’ bot attacks news site visitors – Securelist.

After successfully injecting and launching the malicious code (dll), Java begins to send requests to third-party resources, which look like Google search requests: “search?hl=us&source=hp&q=%s&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=”…

These requests include data on the browsing history taken from the user’s browser, as well as a range of additional technical information about the infected system.

How To Catch a Criminal With Data

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The researchers ultimately turned the department onto a predictive software called SPSS, which had for years been used to crunch data in a host of disciplines not necessarily connected to crime. The department launched a pilot program with it to analyze trends, as part of a strategy of fighting crime by real-time data-mining.

via How To Catch a Criminal With Data – Technology – The Atlantic Cities.

IBM acquired SPSS back in 2009, and did the same late last year with Knisley’s software company, i2. On a computer monitor, Knisley had pulled up a program called COPLINK, which sucks into one massive database all that disjointed information that was once scribbled down by hand.

Dropbox: LAN sync protocol

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If all the dropbox clients have LAN sync enabled, then each of them should be able to understand and respond to the Discovery packet (assuming it’s able to distinguish between different user accounts. I believe it uses namespaces to identify them uniquely). This response packet called DB LAN sync(DB-LSP) is a TCP packet where the dropbox clients exchange data.

via Dropbox: LAN sync protocol – GeekLogs.