According to this article at TheRegister. The US Navy is looking to standardize the second biggest network (after the Internet itself) on a Linux distribution. Apparently that amounts to 250,000 local servers and approximately the same number of remote servers. If a deal like that was to go to Novell or Redhat, it could single handedly make that distributor the biggest Linux distributor in the world (a place currently occupied by Redhat). Apparently Chris Christopher of the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Information Technology told ComputerWorld that they already have a significant Linux presence on their network along with most every other Operating System released in the last 15 years. Hence the need to standardize.

If the Navy standardizes on an Open Source Linux distribution, it would alleviate the worry about vendor lock-in which it seems is one of their more significant concerns. This concern is lessened somewhat by Linux because of the openness of the data formats in that one vendors distribution could take the place of another with minimal effort. The same cannot be said for companies like Microsoft who appear to have based their business on being hard to migrate away from, all the while touting interoperability in the press. That difficulty to migrate away from has resulted in much press from Microsoft’s “get the facts” campaign as being another reason why it’s better to stay with Windows. Obviously they never mention the fact that they themselves are the reason it is more difficult to migrate to another non-Microsoft platform.

Microsoft has long received criticism for using proprietary undisclosed file formats to lock your data away where you can’t get it without Microsoft’s products or licenses. The problem with that approach is that the data belongs to you, you should not have to rely on an outside party for access to your own property. Anyway, to try to address this concern, Microsoft released the specification schemas for Office 2003 which will be the default file format for the version of Office due out next year. The release is “royalty free” meaning that you need not pay Microsoft for the use of the schemas. The problem is that the license is designed to exclude Microsoft’s biggest competitor GPL licensed Open Source programs. In short Microsoft requires that any software that is able to read/write to their format attribute that code to Microsoft, it seems that even if it doesn’t contain any of their code and is instead just an implementation of the bare essentials required to access them it must still attribute to Microsoft in the code.

There are some in the Open Source community that believe that there may be no enforcable rights that Microsoft can claim in the new license and that licences may not be required in this instance, but that is an issue probably best decided by lawyers. The fact is that if the license is required, it is not compatible with the GPL, which is the licence that the vast majority of true Open Source software is released under.

The fact that Microsoft is trying to lock out GPL developers is hardly surprising as they are doing something very similar in the EU as part of their punishment for being found guilty of anti-competitive practises in the European Union. They were told that they must make their server protocols available to competitors so as to improve interoperability but have again done so in a manner that locks out their biggest competitor, GPL licensed software.

The only truly open document standard at this time appears to be the OASIS XML OpenDocument format used by StarOffice/OpenOffice. This file format is completely open and can be adopted by anybody with a desire to do so, including Microsoft. But don’t expect them to support it any time soon as to do so would lessen the impact of their own less open format and make it easier for people to swap to competitive Office suites and Microsoft would apparently prefer not to compete on price and features if they don’t have to. It should be noted that Microsoft’s XML based file format is NOT currently approved by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

I dream of a world where any text document/spreadsheet/presentation/database can be opened and saved by any Office application suite and that the only reason to choose one over another is the feature set and price of that Office suite. I suspect however, that Microsoft will be one of the last to join that party and will only do so when they are forced to by declining market share. Governments have become much more aware recently of the need to keep their information in non proprietary formats, so Microsoft may be pressured (by sales or the lack thereof) to comply sooner then expected. Governments make up a fairly significant portion of Microsoft Office sales.

You can get a more detailed look at the issue by reading Eweek’s write-up of the problem.

According to ComputerWorld, which has it from the IDG news service, Mastercard has revealed that up to forty million (40,000,000) credit card numbers may have been acquired by a malicious hacker attacking CardSystems Solutions Inc, a company that provides back end services for card companies. Of those 40 million, roughly 13.9 million may have been Mastercards so Mastercard are not the only company affected, they are just the only one thus far to warn the public about it.

The point of the article, seems to be that if you have a credit card, you should check your statements regularly either online or via your bank statements and be sure contest or charge back any payments you didn’t make if there are any. (But you’re doing that already right?)

In Mid April I wrote about the problem of security products actually hurting your security rather then helping as they are supposed to. BusinessWeekOline have an article that talks about a forthcoming report from the Yankee Group detailing how Anti-Virus/Spyware products together with other security products like Firewalls have had more flaws found in recent times then Microsoft’s own products. To even compete with Microsoft with regard to security flaws is amazing in itself, but when you consider that these products are actually supposed to protect you from external compromise it becomes a horrendous problem.

Security experts have long suggested to clients, that being protected by a current and actively updating Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and firewall product is part and parcel of staying secure online (for Windows users anyway, since Mac and Linux are mostly unaffected by such problems), but those very products themselves are in some instances being used as the attack vector used to get into your computers. A very dangerous state of affairs that requires an immediate response from the security vendors. It can’t be long before a company finds themselves beset by malicious software which was caused by a failure from a security product and that security company may find themselves in court being asked to explain themselves and pay damages.

As I intimated some time ago, the EU verses Microsoft case looks very much like being a case of Microsoft being found guilty and then getting to decide what it’s own punishment will be. In the same vein, Zdnet has said much the same thing (and much more eloquently then I). The fact that the “EU ordered” Windows XP without media player is being sold (or not sold as the case appears to be) at the same price as the normal version is a very good example of why it won’t work.

As ZDnet says, wouldn’t you like to be found guilty by a court of law then then asked to negotiate your punishment? Well worth the read if you ever find yourself in competition with Microsoft in Europe.

The Wall Street Journal reported (registration required.) on Friday that Google is looking to extend it’s revenue streams beyond advertising by starting an online payment system similar to and in competition with Paypal Inc.

No details were revealed about Google’s plan for this, but it seems likely that Google would want to create streams of revenue in addition to their advertising systems as everyone knows not to put all their eggs in one basket. Paypal don’t really have any international competition for their services so having Google compete with them will be good for both webmasters/storeowners and users alike.

The news does not bode as well for Ebay though as their Paypal unit accounts for a significant portion of their earnings. Obviously only time will tell how Google’s service will differentiate itself from Paypal’s but there is no doubt that Google will be the underdog in this market at least initially as Paypal have a huge head start and have millions upon millions of users already signed up for their service. That said however, Google showed with Gmail that they have the ability to create a revolutionary service that takes the industry by storm and to market that service in a way that competitors like Paypal can’t. In fact Ebay is a big advertiser utilizing Google’s Adwords network so the competition may actually hurt Google’s advertising revenue to some degree. Time will tell.

INSERT:
The rumours have been confirmed.

A rash is starting in the digital photo world around the denial of reproduction if your work is too good because ill informed and undertrained workers at chains like Walmart will deny your right to get prints made according to a recent AP Story. What strikes me as funny is that people are taking their high quality prints to a budget chain. Therein lies the problem. Establish a good relationship with your locally owned and operated photo store. When you have a hastle at Walmart it is because you just got what you are paying for, a cheap impersonal relationship by underpaid part time employees on a business model to drive the caring local stores our of business. Think about it … am I wrong?