Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Even though Blu-ray player sales are on a rapid climb, and Sony’s new PS3 Slim and cheaper PlayStation 3 are expected to cause an explosion in Blu-ray penetration, market research company iSuppli says the drives haven’t even begun to break the PC market.

According to the firm’s tallies of the global PC market, only 3.6% of all computers shipped this year were equipped with Blu-ray drives, and the growth rate will remain low.

“BDs won’t be replacing DVDs as the primary optical drive in PC systems through at least the year 2013,” said Michael Yang, iSuppli’s Senior Analyst for storage and mobile memory. “They eventually will find success, but during the next five years, that success will be limited in the PC segment. The cost issue is amplified by the fact that the library of content is so small that there really isn’t a reason for users to switch at the moment, and while this is changing, and studios are rolling out more Blu-ray content every week, there remains a long way to go.”

By 2013, iSuppli predicts that BD drives will still only be installed in 16.3% of all PCs, at best.

ISuppli cites the succession of removable disc storage in PCs for the last 20 years. The 3.5″ floppy was eventually replaced by the CD-ROM because of the dramatic increase in storage, and the precipitously low price of distributing software on that format (remember the stacks of floppies you used to use when installing, say, Microsoft Office?). An operating system or large suite of programs which would take up numerous floppies (Windows NT 3.1, for example, took up 22 diskettes) could be put on a single CD-ROM.

Lower production costs were the principal driver for CD-ROM (CD-R, CD-RW) to be replaced by DVD (DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW). But now, as most software can still be contained in DVDs or as download packages, production costs have yet to be measured lower for the higher-capacity Blu-ray formats, and broadband has made Internet distribution not only cheaper but more expedient, there’s little motivation for anyone except for interactive movies and games to make the move.

Microsoft’s most recent Web-driven database technology is ADO.NET, although only the first three letters of its name have been a throwback to its predecessor: There’s nothing “ActiveX” about ADO.NET whatsoever. Up to now, its purpose has been to expose data through HTTP Web services that can be utilized by JavaScript clients (read: common Web pages) as well as by .NET applications including Silverlight.

But that fact has kept the pairings of ADO.NET with ASP.NET, and PHP with MySQL, separate and distinct from one another.

So with PHP being the more popular language, known to and practiced by an estimated 9.4% of the world’s developers — making it the #4 language in the world behind Java, C, and C++, according to standards group TIOBE — that pairing works against Microsoft, and keeps MySQL in the driver’s seat for as long as Oracle wants to keep it there.

This time around, Microsoft has decided its way out of that tangle is to let others solve the problem, and then to endorse (and, when warranted, to fund) the result. An independent, Pune, India-based firm called Persistent Systems, Ltd. Has spearheaded an open-source project to develop a kind of command-line re-interpreter, whose purpose is to make ADO.NET data accessible through PHP. It’s called PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services, and its setup is deceptively simple. ADO.NET already generates XML code in Atom format that specifies the formats of Web-addressable resources.

At design time, the PHP Toolkit re-interprets this schema and produces a series of proxy classes, which the Web developers then explicitly includes in his PHP code. The classes behave like objects, with members pointed to like columns in tables.

So for instance, in classic fashion, you can create a loop clause that iterates through each member of a table, and then prints (or, more accurately, echo-es) the contents of members of that table into slots in the PHP code. The XHTML produced for the client contains those contents. It’s all done with very minimal adjustments in the way PHP would normally handle tables; all it really needs is to include the proxy classes generated by the Toolkit, using the keywords require_once and define.

ADO.NET Data Services is supported by Service Pack 1 of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 as well as by the latest Expression Web 3, and will be a key component of Visual Studio 2010.

Foxit Reader, a free, lightweight PDF viewer and printer popular in our FileForum, has an evil twin.

Today, the Foxit Corporation warned that a malware claiming to be Foxit Reader for Macintosh has been perpetrating attacks on users thinking they were downloading an official version of the free PDF reader. The thing is, there is no Foxit Reader for OS X. The software is available for Windows, Windows Mobile, Embedded Linux, Desktop Linux, and U3.

“While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, we are not happy about the recent malware attacks masquerading as our Foxit Reader,” said George Gao, Vice President of Marketing and Sales of Foxit Corporation. “Foxit has always strived to insure that our solutions are secure for our users, and remains committed to address any Foxit product security issue in a professional and timely manner.”

Trend Micro researcher Ivan Macalintal found the malware on Sunday and classified it as a variant of the JAHLAV DNS trojan, a Mac malware discovered earlier this summer that prompts users to download a bit of software or a codec (earlier this month, it pretended to be MacCinema) which, once installed, would reroute users to phishing sites and suchlike.

Foxit has not yet returned Betanews’ requests for comment.

Google is not saying much today about a flaw discovered in the V8 JavaScript engine of its Chrome 2 stable Web browser, one which triggered an update that is being rolled out to Chrome users today. Amid what it is sharing today, however, is a surprising fact: Mozilla Security is being credited with the discovery.

Malicious JavaScript, Google says, can cause the Chrome browser to run arbitrary code, although that code may still be protected by the browser’s “sandbox” — its protected area of memory where running code has no access to system resources. However, it’s conceivable that code running within the sandbox could provoke the user (by social means, perhaps by feigning a crash or system bug) to perform an action that may trigger a more damaging process delivered through a different payload, so Google treated the issue with a “High” severity rating.

On the one hand, it’s conceivable that Mozilla’s security team may be testing other brands of open source browsers for the same possible exploits for which it’s testing various releases of Firefox. But a more plausible story is that a derivative of a Firefox bug that had already been reported or discovered by Mozilla’s security team, was tried by Mozilla or Google on a Chrome browser, with the same detrimental results.

If that’s the case, then the last Firefox bug to match the vague profile that Google’s presented thus far is a Firefox 3.0.11 bug found last June 11 by legendary Firefox security contributor moz_bug_r_a4. Now, “chrome” in the Firefox vernacular is a term that predates “Chrome” as Google’s browser brand name; Mozilla uses it to refer to the class of code that presents the on-screen appearance and controls for the browser, along with the elevated privilege that JavaScript code is granted to put them there. This way, JavaScript based in Web pages can’t change the browser to the same extent that an add-on can.

On the surface, moz_bug_r_a4 had found a JavaScript bug that could lead ordinary code to be executed with “chrome privilege” — again, nothing to do with Google Chrome, but with the keys to the browser interface being unlocked. More specifically, what he discovered and immediately reported was that a JavaScript object was being created in the middle of data instead of in protected memory, creating the possibility that a reference to a property of that object would move a pointer into that data, maybe triggering a crash or fault, and leaving that pointer open to exploitation and possible code execution.

Google promises to go in-depth about its own V8 JavaScript bug once it’s determined that enough Chrome 2 users have installed the update.

Skype’s connection fee for placing calls to landline and mobile phones in certain countries will increase 100% on September 6th, the company’s site now says.

For Skype users who are not on an unlimited calling plan, calls that connect to landline or cellular numbers incur a one-time connection fee and a per-minute charge.

Skype has more than 30 countries listed as so-called “Global Rate Destinations,” which are countries that are all subject to the same per-minute rate.

The increase in connection charge effects calls made to countries that are not Global Rate destinations.

For example, I’m a United States Skype user. Let’s say I want to call my friend in Canada. That call will cost me 3.9¢ to connect on top of the per minute rate. However, if I’m calling a friend in India, a country not considered a Global Rate Destination, I will have to pay 7.9¢ to connect in addition to the per minute rate.

Nokia has been quite busy this week. In advance of Nokia World 09, the company introduced its first PC in more than 18 years and two new handsets (the 5800 navigation edition and the 5230.) Today, the Finnish mobile phone leader introduced Nokia Money, a mobile banking platform that will continue the company’s advancement into the “wallet phone” model.

Working in cooperation with Obopay, Nokia Money will let users buy merchandise and pay bills with their mobile device.

“Rural consumers will particularly benefit from money transfers and, for urban consumers used to online services, we are enabling services such as payment of utility bills, purchase of train and movie tickets, top-ups, all through their mobile phones. Nokia Money is simple to use, secure and available across different operator networks and on virtually any mobile phone.” said Teppo Paavola, Nokia’s vice president in charge of corporate business development.

As with its other announcements this week, Nokia did not go into any detail into the methods behind Nokia Money — most notably, whether it will be a contactless method of payment. Looks like it will be yet another topic of discussion at Nokia World 09 in Germany next week.

The world’s largest torrent indexing site Mininova is the next site to fall to anti-piracy group Stichting BREIN, Dutch news services are reporting today.

A civil court order handed down today has given Mininova three months to remove all copyrighted works from its servers or face a €5 million fine. Stichting BREIN (lit: “The Brain Foundation”), which represents copyright holders, took action against The Pirate Bay earlier in the summer and won on similar grounds. However, that particular case is in appeal and awaiting its retrial on October 5.

Unlike the Pirate Bay, however, Mininova was already working with copyright groups to devise appropriate content filters. As its Web site policy currently reads, “Please note that we do not host any copyrighted content on this website. The torrent (metadata) files that we host do not contain data that might be copyrighted in any way.”

On its blog today, the Mininova team says it is considering appeal as well: “The court did not agree with Brein on all demands. Specifically, it ruled that Mininova does not infringe copyright and neighboring rights. The court also found Mininova can not be expected to remove files that are ‘reasonably likely’ refer to infringing material. Remarkably, the verdict does not give any consideration to the fact that Mininova has developed a content filter for Brein, nor to the cooperation between Mininova and other organizations of rights holders. This surprises Mininova, because it has always stressed the importance of cooperation.”

The e-reader market is hot, and everyone loves the competition. Thanks to the heightened activity in the sector, market research group NPD’s DisplaySearch this morning forecasts an astonishing growth in e-paper displays.

This year, 22 million units were shipped, resulting in $431 million in revenue. E-paper displays aren’t limited to the Kindle/Reader set either, they’re being used in cell phones, watches and clocks, advertisements, and more. Because of this, NPD forecasts a 64% compound annual growth rate in unit sales and a 41% growth rate in revenues. By that formula, the market will be worth $9.6 billion by 2018, with 1.8 billion e-paper displays shipped out for use.

Consumer awareness of e-paper has increased dramatically over the course of 2009, and the market is about to hit a competitive high note with a flock of new products from different manufacturers that support different content stores and wireless providers…and in turn, different rights management technologies.

Yesterday, Sony unveiled its first wireless e-reader, finally putting Sony’s products on par with Amazon’s popular Kindle, and offering wireless 3G through AT&T.

Barnes & Noble opened its own e-bookstore in July and now has a couple of hardware companies lined up to support it. In addition to Plastic Logic, which aligned with B&N earlier this year, iREX technologies announced on Monday that its newest 8.1-inch resistive touchscreen e-reader will include 3G content acquisition through B&N’s eBookstore.

Today, iRex announced that it will also roll out support for EPUB and PDF in the fourth quarter on all of its reader products. Interestingly, the inclusion of Adobe’s PDF will give iRex users the option to choose which DRM-inclusive format they support.

On iRex’s blog today, the company’s community manager wrote: “Unfortunately the relationship of Adobe and Mobipocket DRM’s is an exclusive one, and both can not be supported on one device at the same time. In order to ensure that our customers are not limited in any way from obtaining the content they desire to view on their eReader. Therefore we have decided to keep the old firmware with Mobipocket DRM available. This means that you as a customer can decide if you like to run Mobipocket or Adobe DRM on your device.”

Earlier this summer, Sony dropped its proprietary DRM in support of the “more open” Adobe CS4 copy protection. Amazon, however, remains committed to its AZW format, which cannot be shared among other e-readers.

If you’re collecting reasons people have given for avoiding Windows 7 purchases and upgrades, add this one in a little shelf all to itself: It is a threat to your civil liberties, according to the Free Software Foundation.

Today is the official launch day of an FSF fundraising campaign whose stated goal is to bombard employees of 499 of the world’s Fortune 500 companies (the one they left out probably wouldn’t make any difference) with letters claiming, among other assertions, that Microsoft is engaging in a clandestine spy operation, masquerading under euphemistic names such as “Windows Genuine Advantage” (one example the FSF lists), invading homes, offices, and even schools.

The goal of this empire of evil, FSF claims, is no less than the indoctrination of the world’s many citizens into believing that only Microsoft’s software should be installed on computers.

“Today, most children whose education involves computers are being taught to use one company’s product: Microsoft’s,” reads a manifesto posted this morning to the FSF’s new Web site, Windows7Sins.org. “Microsoft spends large sums on lobbyists and marketing to corrupt educational departments. An education using the power of computers should be a means to freedom and empowerment, not an avenue for one corporation to instill its monopoly.”

Unable to spend large sums for itself, the Foundation asserts it must rely on public donations to be able to reach “the Windows 7 decision makers” at the world’s Fortune 499 companies, preferably in $25 increments for every 50 letters sent. Those letters, presumably, will be delivered using the medium of communication it feels best suited to reaching these individuals: conventional postal mail.

Those who cannot be reached through the mail may perhaps be attracted, the FSF hopes, to paper flyers that individuals may choose to hand out in public places, or attach to surfaces where passers-by may happen to notice. More sophisticated computer users these days may be attracted to the FSF’s embeddable widgets and icons, which it is making available freely today.

In a statement this morning, FSF Executive Director Peter Brown argued that free software, unlike Microsoft software or anything with a price tag, respects individuals freedoms and does not extend the tentacles of the global spy syndicate. However, he did effectively blame users, not Microsoft, for an apparent psychological defect that results in them paying money for software: “Our growing dependence on computers and software requires our society to reevaluate its obsession with proprietary software that spies on citizens’ activities and limits their freedom to be in control of their computing,” Brown stated. “There is free software available right now for any activity you or your business needs, and it is better in the most important aspect — it respects your freedom.”

A public gathering in opposition to Microsoft’s evil plot was scheduled for noon today at Boston Common.

Like Sony Pictures and Lionsgate Entertainment before it, Paramount Pictures has agreed to supply its films to Redbox DVD rental kiosks. The $1 per night rentals that Redbox offers have caused a good deal of controversy among motion picture studios and has resulted in legal actions on the part of 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., both of whose opinions are clearly on record: Cheap rentals devalue their DVDs.

Paramount’s availability on Redbox will only be a trial, where the studio receives detailed rental metrics from the kiosks until the end of 2009. The studio will then evaluate the impact and viability of Redbox, to decide if it wants to stick with the program. At the end of the four-month trial, Paramount will have the option to extend it to 2014, with an “out clause” after two years.

Like its deal with Sony, Redbox has agreed to destroy Paramount’s rental copies after they’re taken out of circulation rather than re-sell them.

Redbox, a subsidiary of CoinStar, has taken both 20th Century Fox and Warner Home Video to court to “protect consumers’ rights to access new release DVDs.” Both studios want to force Redbox to receive their titles 28 days after they’re released in stores.