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11 December 2010, 11:59

The H Week - JCP resignations, Android, Chrome OS, History Stealing & Operation Payback

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The H Week Logo In the past week, The H published two new editions of the Kernel Log, reported on resignations from the JCP Executive Committee and reported on announcements from Google on Android 2.3, Chrome OS and Crankshaft for the V8 JavaScript engine. Microsoft updated Office 2008 for Mac, and announced 17 bulletins for next week's Patch Tuesday. The H looked at the tools being used in the pro WikiLeaks protest, Operation Payback.

Featured

The H published two new editions in the Kernel Log series this week, the first on the Linux Foundation's latest study of who writes and supports Linux and the second looking at file system developments in the 2.6.37 Linux kernel.

Open Source

This week, the specifications for Java SE 7 and 8 were approved by the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee against the objections of various committee members including Java expert Tim Peierls and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). In consequence, both announced their resignation from the committee.

Just as the CyanogenMod project released version 6.1 of its modified Android firmware based on Android 2.2.1 "Froyo", Google announced the next major release of the open source mobile operating system as well as its second Nexus smartphone, the Nexus S. At the D: Dive into Mobile technology conference in San Francisco, Android chief developer Andy Rubin presented the first details of "Honeycomb", the upcoming tablet version of Android, and later confirmed that 300,000 Android phones are being activated each day across the globe. The Android Market also received an update with the addition of a new "Related" tab aimed at making it easier for users to find applications related to their current search, or to apps they may already have installed.

In other Google-related news, the company presented the new "Crankshaft" compilation infrastructure for the V8 JavaScript engine in Chrome and provided more details on its Chrome OS operating system. The Apache Software Foundation announced that the Google Wave communication platform has been accepted into the Apache Incubator.

Just ten months after joining Canonical, Matt Asay announced his resignation as the company's Chief Operating Office. Ubuntu sponsor Canonical donated a server to the KDE Community and the KDE developers announced that the KOffice suite would in future be known as the Calligra Suite.

In hopes of increasing its membership, the Linux Foundation launched a new individual membership drive and, later in the week, released a public beta of version 4.1 of the Linux Standard Base certification. Telecom specialist Huawei joined the Linux Foundation and developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced plans to provide future minor patches and bug fixes only for the current Stable Series of the Linux kernel.

Embedded specialist Mentor Graphics announced that it will take over CodeSourcery and nominations opened for the 2011 Eclipse Community Awards.

Open Source Releases

Security

Researchers found a way to bypass Protected Mode in IE7 and 8 to gain access to user accounts. Microsoft released a security update for Office 2008 for Mac and confirmed that it would patch a security vulnerability in Internet Explorer that is already being actively exploited.

It was reported that a number of online sites were using history stealing techniques to track users and the Mozilla Foundation announced that it has decided to disable support for WebSockets in the forthcoming Firefox 4 Beta 8 release. The H took a look at the tools and techniques used to stage protest attacks against the financial service providers that had blocked the accounts and transactions of whistle-blower platform WikiLeaks and Indian hacker Atul Alex revealed that he has a method for inserting a back door in the firmware for several Symbian-based phones.

Nullsoft and Apple both released security updates for their media players, a new version of OpenSSL addressed two security vulnerabilities and the latest version of WordPress fixed a privilege escalation issue in the blogging software.

Security Alerts

To see all last week's news see The H's last seven days of news and to keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.

(crve)

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