Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Many instances of malware on Windows-based systems masquerade themselves as system services — the various independent processes that respond to requests from both the operating system and applications with functions that users typically need. Network connectivity and printing are among the more common Windows services; and if you’ve ever perused the processes list of Task Manager (or, better yet, Process Explorer), you’ll find these processes are represented by the single .EXE file that hosts them, svchost.exe.
Any anti-virus database looking for a rogue system service will probably have to refer to svchost.exe as the process that launches it, even though that process is clearly part of Windows itself. On Wednesday, McAfee distributed a .DAT file to many of its enterprise customers that may have had a single faulty character. As a result, their anti-virus systems successfully quarantined not the service launched by svchost.exe, but svchost.exe itself.
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What a difference 12 months and an accounting change make. As I briefly noted yesterday, only about $1 billion separated Apple from Microsoft results in the first calendar quarter. With so many blogs obsessed about when Apple’s market capitalization might exceed Microsoft’s, perhaps the focus should be on earnings.
Some people might not understand the significance. The comparisons here are real, because they’re not fudgy market share or market capitalization comparisons. Apple has closed a huge revenue gap on Microsoft and lessened the lead in net income. This year promises the most visceral competition between Apple and Microsoft ever.
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While bitterness continues over the implications of Sections 3.3.1 through 3.3.3 of Apple’s recently modified Developers’ Agreement (PDF available here, through the Electronic Frontier Foundation), there’s lingering suspicion about the indeterminate boundaries pointed to by the long-standing Section 3.3.14, which now applies to iPad content as well as iPhone.
“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory,” the section reads.
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A process of elimination which has, apparently since February, cast aside a who’s-who of possible suitors, has left Lenovo as the only prospective suitor for Palm, Inc. still standing, after everyone else told Reuters no. It could mean Lenovo is genuinely interested, though it could also mean the only ones giving Palm any positive value…are in the press.
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Even if Apple CEO Steve Jobs says nobody will be using Adobe Flash in the future, and that the world is moving to HTML5, there’s still a place for Adobe’s browser plug-in on Android, the fastest growing mobile platform out there.
After putting Flash 10 on the HTC Hero last year, Adobe is ready to test the next iteration of Flash on all Android devices. Over the weekend, the company began accepting beta testers for the Android versions of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0.
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On Friday night, I bought an iPad nearly three months after giving 12 reasons why I wouldn’t. An unexpected reason came up: My wife’s MacBook Pro died. I reckoned she could temporarily use the tablet (which cost way less than any new Mac laptop) and give me a chance to better test the device (than using the Apple Store display models). I’m not among Apple’s inner circle of reviewers, nor on any of its other reviewers’ lists. I’d have to buy an iPad to test one and pay the restocking fee should I decide not to keep it. The MacBook Pro failure presented reason to join the iPad Generation.
Before getting to those 10 questions to ask, first it’s the story of the failed MacBook Pro. I bought the computer used — somewhat scratched and nicked but in excellent operating condition — in summer 2009. Early last week, the laptop started acting strangely, with scrolling display or pixelated frozen screen that required reboot. Thursday, the computer rebooted to kernel panic — Apple’s version of the Windows blue screen of death — every other reboot before freezing up again. So I hauled the ailing laptop into the local Apple Store, expecting prognosis that the graphics chip had failed; I’d already read on the InterWeb that generation of nVidia graphics chip was defective.
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Sorry, Apple, but your decision to delay introducing iPads internationally doesn’t wash. Your excuse — that US demand was unexpectedly high and, as a result, you had to prioritize customers stateside until production could catch up — is about as shallow and transparent as a Petri Dish full of Joost’s good ideas.
I don’t believe Apple’s flimsy excuse and I don’t believe anyone else should, either. If you think that Apple, master of the consumer electronics zeitgeist, was unable to accurately predict epic interest in a tablet whose existence was first speculated upon prior to the Battle of Hastings, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. (It’s in Saskatoon, but it’s a nice one.) And if you think Apple was somehow precluded from filling its global supply chain with as many iPads as its magic wand could conjure, I suggest you chuck the Kool-Aid and find yourself a tall glass of juice. Prune juice, maybe.
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Last Tuesday, in a conference that included invited members of the press including Betanews, Markham Erickson, the Executive Director of the Open Internet Coalition — which advocates for Google, Facebook, PayPal, Netflix, Skype, Sony, Twitter, Amazon, and TiVo, among others — urged the Federal Communications Commission to bounce back from its loss to Comcast last week in DC Circuit Court, by affirming its right to regulate broadband Internet services under a different section of US telecommunications law than it’s used before.
Since that time, a surprising amount of water has passed under the bridge, including a round of Senate hearings Wednesday in which leaders suggested new legislation could solve the problem, so that the FCC would not have to declare regulatory authority under Title II of the Telecommunications Act — the part that typically applies to telephone networks. A key Senate Republican, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R – Texas), vowed to oppose any effort by the FCC to redeclare under Title II.
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The first volume licensing arrangements for Microsoft Office 2010 will be made through company partners on May 1, almost two weeks earlier than expected. This news today from the company’s Office Engineering team, which released the final build of all versions of the company’s principal applications suite today.
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Today’s KIN phone launch should not be compared to iPhone. Anyone doing so should be whacked aside the head. Microsoft isn’t trying to directly compete with Apple’s smartphone but cater to a specific customer segment — Millennials and younger Gen Ys who use technology to socialize with friends or follow celebrities. Microsoft describes KIN as “an experience for the social generation.”

KIN “knits together a tight community of kindred spirits…who broadcast their lives all the time,” said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division. Bach introduced KIN during an event early afternoon East Coast time. So there would be no confusion, he made the distinction of Windows Phone 7 being “everything on the phone.” It’s more multipurpose. By comparison, KIN is customized for social media consumers and pulls data from cloud services. “We’re going to crank social up to 11,” Bach said.
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