Silicon Shecky

Windows 8 has been unveiled, OSx is Roaring, and Ubuntu is trying to create a Unity. These new OS’s give us a peek at the future, but what does it really say?

Over on ZDNet Ed Bott wrote a nice article on Windows 8. I’m not going to go into it in detail, but the Article and the screen shots got me to thinking, what is the future of the Operating Systems in general? Ubuntu and Windows have come up with new GUIs, and they are different. Geared toward simplifying navigation, are these becoming too simple? Are we getting to the point of making something that a fool can use, and only a fool will use it?

I am not against change, as long as there is a good reason for it. Making a GUI more user friendly is not a bad thing. The big problems I have with the way Ubuntu, and now Windows are going about it though worries me from a support standpoint. How much more difficult is it becoming to find the deep areas that those of us who do troubleshoot machines use? How much more training will we need? How will this affect how people use the OS in a business environment?

The OS that has changed the least in GUI appearance over the years is Macintosh. The basic layout, and where you find things has been essentially the same going back to its beginning, with just some upgrades to that classic look and feel. Apple boasts about how easy it is to use a Mac, and from an OS standpoint, they are right. You don’t have to learn a new GUI with every update. You have your bar up top which allows for the classic drop down menus. They added the dock at the bottom, but you don’t have to use it.

Unity, the new look kills off the classic menu structures to get at your programs. It takes more clicks to find something that is not docked. The more elegant look actually becomes more complex. When you log into the OS, you can choose to go back to the Classic look, but it is not prevalent on how to, although it is simple if you know where to look. Still, the more complex sets of clicks to find an installed program can be a big hindrance to acceptance. Also realize the look doesn’t add anything to security.

Windows 8 poses a bigger question. With it being meant for touch screen, although you can use a mouse and keyboard, and the look and feel being more toward Microsoft’s phone OS, how is this going to complicate finding files, finding software you install? The desktop space is a premium but, as we all know, you put too much there it becomes hard to find what you are looking for. Also what about software that is not on the desktop? How about file exploring especially if you are on a network where items are kept on multiple network drives?

These questions, and where the companies want to steer the computing world are really what will shape the future, and also cause problems. Too much change at once is not good, and change for its own sake usually causes more problems than its worth. Only time will tell what the answers are but, from first glance, it seems as if making the look the same across all platforms is happening, and from there, maybe you get into a situation like Chrome OS, where it is basically a browser, and nothing is kept locally. If that is the case, you can port your GUI look across multiple devices easy, but then who owns your information since it will not be stored locally? Its something to think about.

Years ago I use to think McAfee was a good Anti-Virus program. Then they got bloated. Now McAfee is becoming chicken little.

You can see the reports regularly. New exploit in this, new trojan here, new zero-day exploit, and on. The world of securing your information and your identity, either individual or corporate, is a complex and never ending battle. Nothing is going to be 100% secure. you know it, I know it and the bad guys know it. Its a matter of mitigation. The smaller area of attack we give the bad guys, the more chance that they will pass us up for an easier target.

It becomes more complex every year. New devices come out, connectivity becomes better, people become more greedy. In fact the more complex things get, the easier it is to break into them with simplicity. You may ask how is that the case. Simply put you just showed how. We tend to gloss over the simple items for the more complex ones, including bugs and holes. That is a discussion to have another time though.

Right now, in the security field, McAfee has been making a lot of headlines lately. From a RAT Report that other companies are calling “shady” to the latest report from them about cars becoming the next hacking target, McAfee keeps getting their name out there. The problems with these reports is their are either obvious or disputed. That McAfee look more like an attention hound than anything else.

This grab for attention comes on the heels of a decade of McAfee putting out worse and worse products. Suites that are so bloated that you machine drags to a crawl during start up. Anti-Malware products that let too much Malware through. Software that is difficult to remove from a system should you prefer to go with one of their competitors. How the mighty have fallen.

Most companies in the consumer security field, especially those that make Anti-Malware software, can run into these same pitfalls as the become more popular. Norton has, although they are slowly turning things around, they still have a long way to go. Kaspersky is doing its best not to fall down that path, but it does seem to be getting more resource intensive. AVG, well they put out a decent product but we are about due for another bad patch that messes machines up. None of them are perfect, but some are better than others, and McAfee has been considered part of the bottom of the heap for a while now.

So McAfee throws up a smokescreen. Instead of improving their product, they try to show that they know more. Sorry but knowledge of what is happening, and the ability to translate that into a decent working product do not have to be equal. In fact, McAfee has shown me that you can have the knowledge without the product. Then again, McAfee lately has been more like Chicken Little. Just remember, the sky isn’t falling, things are just progressing. We as the ones in the field need to keep our wits about us and it will all be fine.

The patent world is a jumbled mess. Companies are suing companies left and right. In the end, the consumer and economy get hurt.

News broke yesterday that Apple has won a round in the patent infringement case against HTC. HTC of course is appealing. Meanwhile HTC has purchased S3 to sue Apple. Kodak has sued Apple and RIM. Apple and Samsung are suing each other over patents also. This is just a small smattering of the lawsuits going on over smartphones, and just another example of how broken the patent system is.

A patent ( /?pæt?nt/ or /?pe?t?nt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention(from Wikipedia). A simple enough definition, yet a problem arises with patents in the technology industry. Technology moves fast, and patents cause it nothing but problems. The limit for a patent in the United States, or Europe is 20 years. The amount of time one of the patent lawsuits will go through the legal system is 3-15 years depending on resources of the companies, and whether they come up with an agreement outside of court.

The problem really arises in how many things get patented, and are there other ways to do those same things. A lot of the patent issues arise not from hardware, but from software. Software is a bunch of commands and equations. There are only so many ways to program something. Yes, you can license the patents from the patent holder. Yet if you write something that does a similar function, and goes about it a different way, without that patent license, you still could be sued.

This not only can stifle innovation, but create issues for the end consumer, which are the ones who in the end are supposed to benefit from innovation. Without that innovation, you don’t come up with valid competitors, which may leave a lack of choice and a larger expense to the consumer. The lawsuits can sow confusion in the consumer, slowing down the adaptation of new technologies, putting companies out of business, and increasing the unemployment rate. I am not saying that this will or always does happen, but it is a big chance to take.

Imagine, if you will, if say the Pythagorean Theorem was patented. Better yet, if the Theory of Relativity was patented. Think of all the items, designs, and things that we would be missing out on, or that could be sued into non-existence.

The real fix isn’t licensing, or suing, but a more reasonable term for patents and intellectual property in the world of technology, more specifically software.  20 years is reasonable for a drug, considering that by the time it actually gets to market there is around 5-8 years left on the patent, during which time the companies can make up their investment. A company such as Apple can easily make up its investment in a patent for a smartphone within 3 to 5 years of the device hitting market. The problem is that a drug company takes 12 years to market, research, get approval, and get the drug out to the consumer. A company like apple takes about 3 years to get a new device out and less when creating upgrades for said device. The original investment in the technology itself is only viable with the release of the first generation of said product, otherwise you wouldn’t have new iPhones coming out every 6 months to 1 year.

So what is the answer then? A 10 year software patent? Maybe 5 years? With the rate at which technology changes, it has to be less than 20 years. Otherwise, people could become afraid to innovate, new ideas could be stifled, and we will be left with less of a choice for items that are supposed to make our lives better.