Report: IE10 for Windows 7 nears final release

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Can hardware help kill the password? Google thinks so

To help the Internet move on from usernames and passwords, Google wants to put a ring on it.

Google's engineers have been experimenting with hardware that would act as a master key for online services. Examples include a smart ring for your finger, a cryptographic USB stick, or a token embedded in smartphones. Google vice president of security Eric Grosse and engineer Mayank Upadhyay outline their proposal in a research paper for this month's IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine, according to a report in Wired.

The idea is to prevent remote hackers from accessing online accounts through stolen usernames and passwords. Without physically stealing the login device, they'd have no other way to gain entry.

Some Web services already offer this type of security through two-step authentication. For instance, when you sign into Gmail on an unrecognized PC, you can have Google send a text message to your phone with a validation code. Once you enter the code, Gmail can remember that PC indefinitely.

The problem with two-step authentication is that it's cumbersome to validate all your computers, and to go through the process just to check e-mail on a friend's computer. Signing in when your phone is out of service can be an issue as well, although Google does provide 10 backup codes for that situation.

A physical device—ideally one that could communicate wirelessly to computers—would make the process easier. "We'd like your smartphone or smartcard-embedded finger ring to authorize a new computer via a tap on the computer, even in situations in which your phone might be without cellular connectivity," Google's engineers write.

Of course, relying a ring or other device to login raises its own challenges. There'd have to be a backup sign-in method—one that's more secure than just a password—in case the device becomes lost or damaged. And while a ring or other contact-based device would help protect users from faraway hackers, it'd be easier to steal by spouses, co-workers or children. Google's engineers admit that they might still need to require passwords, but those passwords wouldn't have to be as complex as today's hacker-proof formulas. Also, not everyone will want to wear a ring or carry their phones around all the time just to use their computers.

Web developers will have to get on board as well, or at least embrace services like Account Chooser, which would let larger services like Facebook or Google act as a master login for smaller sites. Otherwise, we'll still have to remember a whole lot of passwords for sites that don't except hardware-based authentication.

Google's not the only tech giant that's interested in replacing the password. Last year, Apple bought AuthenTec, a fingerprint scanner firm, leading to rumors that future iPhones could have fingerprint sensors built into their home buttons.

The idea of killing the password became a popular notion last year, after a clever hacker managed to wipe out the digital life of Wired reporter Mat Honan. In a sense, it was a wake-up call, but given how often major websites get hacked, a better solution now seems long overdue. Hardware solutions from the world's major tech players could be just what we need.

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Six new features coming in LibreOffice 4.0

It's hard to believe LibreOffice has only been around about two years, so thoroughly has it come to dominate as the leading free and open source productivity suite, but late last week a release candidate for its next major version appeared.

"The Document Foundation is pleased to announce the first release candidate of our upcoming LibreOffice 4.0," wrote Thorsten Behrens, SUSE developer and deputy chairman of the Document Foundation board, in the official announcement. "4.0 will be our fifth major release in just over two years, and it comes with a nice set of new features."

Last month the foundation held a "test marathon" for the software, followed soon afterwards by the appearance of a second beta release. After two more release candidates in the coming weeks, LibreOffice 4.0 is due to arrive in its final form next month.

In the meantime, there's nothing like a release candidate for offering a sneak preview. Ready for a quick peek? Here are a few key features we can expect.

1. Support for Firefox themes

Firefox fans will notice a new level of integration between LibreOffice and their favorite browser. Specifically, in this upcoming version of LibreOffice, you'll be able to choose "Tools," "Options," "Personalization," and then "Select Persona." From there, you can choose the theme you like in your browser, paste its address into a dialog box, confirm, and then see it used in LibreOffice, as shown below.

The Document Foundation

 

2. Integration with Ubuntu's Unity

Users of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distribution, meanwhile, will find new integration with that distro's Unity desktop environment.

3. Wider access

New support for the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) protocol, on the other hand, will make it easier to access documents stored in systems including Alfresco, Nuxeo, and SharePoint, the project team says.

4. Thunderbird integration

For users of Debian and Ubuntu Linux, a new Mork driver implementation will offer access to the address book in Mozilla's Thunderbird email software. "This means that Debian/Ubuntu users can finally integrate LO with their Thunderbird address book," the release notes explain.

5. A filter for Publisher

Then there's the new import filter for Microsoft Publisher files, allowing them to appear in LibreOffice much the way they do in Publisher. LibreOffice 4.0 also now supports all existing Visio file formats, from Visio 1.0—released in 1992—through Microsoft Visio 2013, which was released last year.

6. Faster performance

Last but not least, loading and saving multiple types of files has been sped up considerably in LibreOffice 4.0, including those in .ods and .rtf formats.

There are also myriad improvements in each of LibreOffice's individual components as well as countless bug fixes. This first release candidate is not intended for production use, of course, but if you want to check it out, it's available as a free download from the project site.

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Obama calls for study on video-game violence

U.S. President Barack Obama called on Congress to provide funding for research on violence in video games and possible connections to real-world gun violence as part of a wide-ranging package of policy moves announced Wednesday.

Obama asked Congress to allocate $10 million for a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looking at the relationship between video games, violence in the media, and gun violence. The proposed study is one of several proposals Obama made in an attempt to address gun violence in the U.S. following a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a month ago.

Protecting U.S. children "is our first task as a society," Obama said. "This is how we will be judged."

About 30,000 U.S. residents die every year in gun-related incidents.

The CDC study is part of the White House's effort to end a congressional freeze on research about gun violence. Since the mid-1990s, Congress has prohibited the CDC and other federal agencies from researching the causes of gun violence.

"We don't benefit from ignorance," Obama said. "We don't benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence."

Several critics, including the powerful National Rifle Association, have pointed to violence in video games and movies as a possible cause for real-world violence in the U.S.

The entertainment and video game industries "have a responsibility to give parents tools and choices about the movies and programs their children watch and the games their children play," the White House said in a statement.

President Barack Obama

Obama also called on Congress to pass a law requiring background checks before all gun sales, including sales at gun shows. He also called on Congress to limit gun magazines to 10 rounds and to restore a ban on the sale of military-style assault rifles in the U.S., although there's wide disagreement over the definition of an assault rifle.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a trade group representing video-game makers, praised Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for a "thoughtful, comprehensive process" while engaging groups on possible solutions to gun violence. The trade group agrees that video game makers should give parents tools and choices, but it doesn't believe video games lead to real-world violence, the ESA said in a statement.

"The same entertainment is enjoyed across all cultures and nations, but tragic levels of gun violence remain unique to our country," the ESA added. "Scientific research and international and domestic crime data all point toward the same conclusion: entertainment does not cause violent behavior in the real world."

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Lightweight 'Kite' tablet runs Ubuntu 12.04 and Android 4.0

There's no shortage of Android tablets in the marketplace today, but devices that run Ubuntu Linux are still much harder to come by.

Canonical's own mobile plans are still a work in progress, of course, but on Monday an intriguing new contender popped up on Notebook Italia and then Engadget.

Specifically, the new "Nibbio," or "Kite," Full-HD tablet from Italian DaVinci Mobile Technology will dual-boot Ubuntu and Android and is due to begin shipping next month.

Just 19 ounces

Featuring a 10.1-inch IPS capacitive multitouch display with 1920-by-1200-pixel resolution and 16 million colors, the Kite Full-HD runs on a Samsung Exynos 4412 quad-core 1.4 GHz processor and includes Mali-400MP graphics.

WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 are both supported on the 258.3-by-164-by-9.5-mm device, which comes with 2 GB DDR3 RAM and 32 GB of internal storage.

Weighing just 539 grams, or about 19 oz., the Kite sports front and rear cameras, GPS, and gyroscope, and it supports USB keyboard and mouse. Linux-based Android 4.0 and Ubuntu Linux 12.04 are the operating systems supported.

Two app sources

With its 16:10 aspect ratio, the Kite delivers a definition that's 10 percent higher than that of the standard Full-HD, DaVinci says.

Its dual operating systems, meanwhile, will offer access to more than 700,000 apps through Google Play and more than one million for Linux through the Ubuntu Software Center.

Pricing is 309 euros, or about $410, including a three-year warranty. Availability in Italy is apparently planned for the middle of next month; whether it will come to other parts of the world isn't yet clear. In the meantime, preorders are now being accepted on the DaVinci site.

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RIM gets Visa approval for mobile payments via NFC

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This Nevada man does not have your lost cellphone

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Five notable new features in Fedora Linux 18 'Spherical Cow'

After numerous delays along the way, the final version of Fedora Linux 18 "Spherical Cow" made its long-awaited debut on Tuesday.

Late last year I wrote about a few of the interesting features that had appeared in the beta version of the software, but now this finished release brings quite a bit more to the table.

As the free, community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Fedora is nothing if not a leading-edge distribution, and it tends to offer a sneak preview of what's to come in RHEL and beyond. Currently in the No. 4 spot for page-hit rankings on DistroWatch, it's particularly well-known for its business-focused features.

Ready for a quick tour? Here are a few of the more notable new features in this release.

1. The MATE desktop

The introduction of a mobile-style paradigm in the world of Linux desktops has been just as controversial as it has in Windows 8, causing no end of debate over the merits of modern contenders such as Ubuntu's Unity and GNOME 3.

The enduring popularity of GNOME 2 has been striking in contrast, and we've already seen numerous examples of efforts to preserve the classic desktop. Now, Fedora is offering a like-minded option in the form of MATE.

"This desktop is perfect for users who have been running GNOME Classic or other window managers like Xfce as an alternative to GNOME 3," the Fedora team notes in the software's release announcement.

Users of Fedora 18 actually have many desktops to choose from, including also Xfce 4.10, KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.9, Cinnamon, and GNOME 3.6.

2. A rewritten installer

As I noted back when the beta release came out, Fedora's Anaconda installer has been completely rewritten for this release so as to make it easier to use for a wider range of users.

A hub-and-spoke model, for instance, makes installation easier for new users, "offering them concise explanations about their choices," the project team explains.

Other improvements include new visuals to improve the overall look and feel of the installation experience.

3. 'Secure Boot' support

The Fedora project was one of the first distributions to recognize the implications of the Secure Boot technology enabled in Windows 8's Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), and Fedora 18 is the first release to include the fruits of its labors. So, thanks to the software's included UEFI Secure Boot support, it can boot on systems that have Secure Boot enabled.

Tools are also available that allow administrators to create custom certificates to sign local changes to GRUB or the kernel, the release notes point out.

4. Samba 4

Also notable particularly for systems administrators is the inclusion of Samba 4, the latest version of the suite of tools that provide file- and print-sharing services in heterogeneous OS environments. Samba 4 goes even further than its predecessors, in fact, by introducing the first free and open source implementation of Active Directory protocols.

5. Eucalyptus

Last but not least is that Eucalyptus makes its debut in Fedora 18, which includes the cloud software's 3.2 release. Also included are OpenStack's Folsom release and version 3.1 of the oVirt engine.

Ready to take Fedora 18 for a spin? It's available as a free download on the project site.

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Google gives developers an early hands-on with Project Glass

Ever since debuting back in April of last year, developers and journalists alike have been clamoring to get their hands on Google's high-tech headwear, Project Glass. Google gave U.S.-based developers a chance to pre-order a pair of its glasses at the 2012 Google I/O, promising we would hear more about Project Glass in early 2013. Not more than two weeks into the new year and it looks like Google made good on its promise: On Tuesday the search giant announced hackathons in San Francisco and New York where select developers can get an early look at the glasses and the new "Mirror" API.

Since these hackathons are primarily for developers, it's highly unlikely Google is going to make any announcements as to Project Glass's availability or pricing. Since this is the first time any non-Google developers are able to work with Project Glass, we're excited to see what plans developers have for the platform and what kinds of apps can be written for it. This year's Google I/O is still several months away, so let's hope we hear more about Project Glass before May rolls around.

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US DOJ says it did not entrap Megaupload

The U.S. Department of Justice did not mislead a court and attempt to entrap file storage site Megaupload on copyright infringement charges, the agency said in a new filing in the case.

Megaupload's charges that the DOJ conspired to entrap the site on criminal copyright charges are "baseless," an official with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia wrote in a court document filed Friday. Earlier this month, Megaupload filed court documents saying that in 2010 the DOJ asked the site, through its hosting vendor, to keep infringing files as part of a DOJ investigation, then later charged Megaupload with copyright infringement.

But the search warrant contains no request for Megaupload to keep files, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Peterson wrote in the DOJ's Friday filing. "Megaupload does not cite a single communication between the government and Megaupload or a single instruction from any member of the government to Megaupload; there are none," Peterson wrote.

The DOJ also did not mislead the district court by inserting new information into affidavits related to the Megaupload charges, as Megaupload has claimed, Peterson wrote.

Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken pointed to a portion of the June 2010 search warrant targeting Carpathia Hosting, Megaupload's hosting provider. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked a judge to seal the search warrant affidavit because disclosure could "provide an opportunity to destroy evidence [and] change patterns of behavior."

The search warrant also asked Carpathia and Megaupload to assist in the copyright infringement investigation.

"The government cannot, on one hand, tell a U.S. court under penalty of perjury in seeking the cooperation of Megaupload in a search warrant they wanted to prevent evidence destruction of alleged infringing content files, and then, on the other hand, complain to a different court under penalty of perjury that Megaupload is a criminal for not destroying such files," Rothken said in an email.

After ICE asked Megaupload to cooperate in an investigation, the site was obligated to keep evidence, Rothken added.

"If the U.S. changed their mind at some point they could have written Megaupload a letter but they didn't," he added. "Instead the U.S. apparently used Megaupload's honorable compliance with the government's cooperation request to concoct a takedown of the entire Megaupload site by domain name seizure."

The DOJ, in its Friday filing, opposed Megaupload's request to file a new brief regarding its accusations that the DOJ conducted an improper search of its servers. It also opposed Megaupload's request to file a motion to unseal the search warrant materials, with the DOJ saying the materials are already unsealed.

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