One of the most annoying concepts about smartphones and tablets that I keep running into are that people (especially smartphone marketing folks) keep perpetuating the myth that apps are a good thing.

No, they’re not!

Apps are not a feature. Apps are a workaround.

There’s a reason why you have to run the Adobe Photoshop Express app on your iPhone instead of running a full version of Adobe Photoshop. There’s a reason why you have to run a Facebook app or a Hulu app on your iPhone instead of browsing to Facebook or Hulu on the internet like everyone else. Smartphones are incapable of running real software applications. And some smartphones and tablets, like those from Apple, can’t even run Flash on the internet, preventing you from using all sorts of websites.

The solution to this problem? Apps.

An app is what you use when you can’t use the real thing.

Apps are a WORKAROUND, not a feature.

So the next time someone brags about how many thousands of apps are available, or how many apps they’ve downloaded onto their phone, turn around and ask them one simple question, “Sure, but how many applications have you got?”

Uhh …

Der!

If you’re a CPU enthusiast, chances are you’ve heard by now that Microsoft is planning on releasing Windows 8 on x86 and on ARM. Which tablet manufacturers will be relatively happy with. But you, the consumer, not so much.

It reminds me of the old days, back when RISC and x86 were throwing punches. Back then you could take a RISC-based processor like the DEC Alpha and run Windows on it, as Microsoft did indeed support it … with a special version of NT at least. But a fat lot of good that would actually do you. Applications not directly built for the Alpha’s architecture were set to run in a compatibility mode, which rarely worked. In fact most installers wouldn’t even install. So you could have Windows on your non-x86 processor, but you couldn’t get many applications.

And now Intel is pointing out that (besides them not going into the ARMs race) just because Windows 8 runs on ARM doesn’t mean that your “legacy” applications will. Or even that new applications will. Only applications built to directly support the ARM architecture in use will be guaranteed to run on that ARM version of Windows.  And how many different versions of ARM will there be for that matter?

It’s a no-brainer to a software or hardware engineer.

But it’s not something that most end-users are likely to grasp right away. Not until they’ve purchased software that won’t work on their Windows+ARM tablet. Then, maybe, they’ll start reading the little compatibility section on the software box. Maybe.

You can be sure that not every software producer will bother supporting ARM. Most in fact likely won’t, at least not until ARM proves itself. Which many (like Intel) question if it even can, as the architecture is no where near as refined as x86 is these days. It’s rather like going back in time.

So one day you may be able to get yourself an ARM-based tablet running Windows, but it’ll be bare of actual software. And other than (hopefully) a few Windows essentials like Microsoft Office, and some gimmicky apps, it’ll likely remain that way. In fact you’ll be more likely to see those wacky open-source projects supporting ARM than you will professional software products.  And games?  Nuh-uh.

Microsoft of course vehemently objects to this reality portrayed by spokespersons of the likes of Intel. But in attempting to substitute their own reality, Microsoft has yet to actually state how this will in any way play out differently than it has in the past that we’ve already seen when Microsoft met RISC. Just calling someone a big fat liar doesn’t actually mean that their pants are indeed on fire.

And meanwhile, Intel – and others – continue to develop low-power all-inclusive micro-platforms for x86, like the Intel Atom, capable of running just as well and close to as cheaply in tablet form as ARM, while natively supporting all of your Windows (or Linux, or potentially even Mac as that’s done on x86 these days) software. (The same can be said of micro-servers as well.)

Which raises an obvious question: If you can make a full-blown x86 Windows tablet affordably and effective, then why would anyone want some gimmicky ARM tablet with limited software capabilities????

With or without Microsoft Windows 8.

Heck, give me my x86-based Linux or Windows cellphone running a full-blown OS and I’ll never care about ARM again. ARM has its places, but unlike the x86/RISC war of the past, ARM is not as suited to modern computing as x86 this time around. ARM still needs a lot of work just to catch up. Or, frankly, maybe it’s just better to leave it in the smaller less-intensive devices that it’s already in and we can just call it a day without repeating history. But then, I guess, where would be the fun in that?

So Microsoft will no doubt continue on the path to ARMing Windows for bare. And when customers don’t have any ARM-compatible software to install on their ARM-Windows products, Intel will certainly be smirking with an, “I told you so,” right on the tip of the tongue. And Microsoft, will, of course, blame everyone but themselves.

Which makes me wonder… What ever did happen to that old DEC Alpha Windows NT4 machine that used to gather dust under my desk? And did any of those third-party ActiveX control and MFC/C++ compatible library developers ever get around to supporting the Alpha? They claimed they would as soon as Microsoft did. Oh how little they knew…

It would seem that Intel is finally starting to catch back up to modern thinking, when it comes to software RAID.  It’s kind of funny, really.  They’ve been so dead-set against it in the past.  And in the long-distant past, they even had a point.  Software RAID used to be a real hit on the CPU.  Cards to perform some of those calculation-intense tasks could really make a difference to a server.  Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

But that was then. This is now.  Intel, a company well known for CPUs with multiple cores, and in fact those cores having Hyper Threading so that each core can simultaneously process two threads (more or less), allowing for, well, insane parallelism by CPU standards, is finally admitting that maybe, just maybe, with all of that processing power available, software RAID could sort-of kind-of fall into the background without anyone even really noticing that it was running.

Duh!

Susan Bobholz, spokesperson for Intel’s storage product marketing group at IDF’s SAS and RAID presentation, told folks, “I’ll plead guilty. We stood up here 10 years ago and told you software RAID sucked.“  But she then went on, “But that’s one of those things that’s starting to change in the industry.”

Uh huh.  Yes.  Starting to change.  Riiiiight.

“Software RAID is no longer the evil stepchild of the enterprise anymore.”

Congratulations on entering this century, Intel.

She goes on and on and rather boringly on.  Because, frankly, this is all information we already knew.  This is not news to us.  But at least she actually admits that software RAID can outperform hardware RAID these days, what with them big Intel multi-cored CPUs behind it and all instead of those old Celerons gathering dust.  And with them fancy processors and all, the performance hit can actually be less than 5% of the CPU’s available workload.  Simple background noise.

Of course then software RAID is rather defined by the, err … software.  The better the software, the better the RAID.  Overhead can eat into performance.  And an OS crash can be fatal to the array.  Points for Linux no doubt.

But it’s nice to see Intel coming about all the same.

TippingPoint has long been a proponent of information technology security, especially known for its Zero Day Initiative bug-hunt rewards program in which security researchers can earn thousands of dollars by revealing new vulnerabilities to TippingPoint, who in turns contacts the faulted software developers to get them to patch the holes in their code.

But a recent perusal in the ZDI database for high-risk vulns still sitting unpatched after more than a year after disclosure has grated on some nerves.  Some of those privately disclosed security holes have even gone as many as three years without being fixed by their respective software vendors.  And that’s just no good.

TippingPoint had been trying to be responsible, keeping the disclosure of the bugs private, giving their creators time to fix them to keep everyone safe without going full disclosure and letting the hackers also know of these vulnerabilities.  But after seeing too many software companies sit upon their laurels and do nothing about their holes, TippingPoint has had enough.

The new ZDI police will still be to privately contact software companies, but to only give them six months of privacy to correct their flaws.  After that six months, if no extension is agreed upon, TippingPoint will turn around and give full disclosure of the bug to the world at large, giving third parties an opportunity to fix the holes that a software vendor refused to act upon.

While many proponents (including myself) laud this tough-on-bugs approach, opposition to the “full disclosure” method (such as Microsoft, of course, inventors of security through obfuscation) argue that set timescales don’t work because some bugs take longer to fix and test than others, and that hackers can also use the disclosed information to make their job of getting into your computer easier.

And these are valid points.  But then, that’s probably why TippingPoint in fact has a method in place to file for an extension to that six month timeline.  TippingPoint seems to make it clear that if Microsoft can make a convincing argument on why they can’t fix their security hole in a mere six months, TippingPoint will be more than happy to extend that timeline to give them all of the privacy they need.

Meanwhile, there’s the other end of the spectrum.  Recently Google has expressed a policy similar to this new one from TippingPoint, but with a mere 60 days, just two months, of privacy, a much tougher deadline to meet.

The DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act was a very broad stroke copyright law enacted in 1998.  It extended the reach of copyrights whilst simultaneously granting far broader power to the copyright holder, most specifically in making it illegal to circumvent “encryption” of copyrighted materials.  No matter how poor the encryption was.  And no matter how many legal rights under the US “Fair Use” laws were trampled.

Since then, the DMCA has become a veritable pendulum swung over everyone’s head, preventing a great many formerly legal uses of copyrighted material.  Agencies like the RIAA, MPAA, etc. were all too happy to jump upon the new powers against usage of any and all copyrighted works in any way they disagreed with, regardless of what the law used to allow and rights people had before the DMCA.

To say that it was a law that undermined people’s trust in government, as well as in law itself. by handing over an abusive amount of power to corporate America whilst trampling the rights of the individual is a grievous understatement.

So it comes as both no surprise and great surprise then that some amends are finally being made.

The Librarian of Congress has released exemptions to the DMCA that finally begin redressing the loss of legal rights under US Fair Use law.  The following exemptions now apply to the DMCA:

1. DVDs can now have their encryption circumvented so that short portions of motion pictures can be used for educational uses, for documentaries, and for noncommercial videos.
2. Jailbreaking your cell phone for the purposes of running legal software otherwise blocked or banned.
3. Unlocking your cell phone so that you can use any network carrier instead of the one your model of phone was locked into using.
4. Video games can be hacked for the purposes of testing, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities.
5. Computer software protected by dongles can be cracked if the dongle malfunctions or is obsolete, such as if the company producing the software/dongle is no longer selling dongles.  (Or even in business for that matter.)
6. The encryption of electronic books can be circumvented if the encryption in all existing editions of the ebook prevent text-to-speech and likewise technologies that impinge upon the rights of disabled people.

It’s certainly not the restoration of all lost rights that the DMCA trod upon, but it is definitely a good beginning.  Most of my concerns are the narrowness of scope of the written law of these exceptions.  Namely details like the specific use of the acronym “DVD”.  Besides the fact that Blu-Ray Disks are now quite common, making DVDs antiquated, we’re also in the Electronic Age, where many movies aren’t even on any type of a compact disk at all, but are still encrypted.  So you can crack a DVD to copy a segment of it for your documentary, but you cannot do the same with a movie downloaded from NetFlix for example, because of the narrowness of the wording of this exception.

Likewise “video games” can be legally cracked now for security purposes, but no other encrypted or otherwise protected computer software can.  Again, the legal wording sets a very narrow scope.

And while outdated software using dongles from a company that no longer exists might be nice to finally be allowed to circumvent, what about similar protections in software that requires some form of network authorization that “phones home” to a server that no longer exists?  Think Steam and what would happen if those servers went dead.  Same concept, just newer technology, but because of the limitations set in the written word…

You get the point.  It’s a very good start, but, sadly, very based in the last millennium, not this one.

And then there are all of those other rights, like backing up for protection in case of damage to the original media, which aren’t even remotely addressed in these exceptions.  Transference to a different type of media when the physical format becomes outdated the same as those old dongles.  (Does anyone even have a working floppy drive anymore?)  Will we ever see those kinds of rights restored?  Circumventing encryption is sometimes a necessity in using our legally granted rights, but not according to the DMCA.

And then there’s that elephant in the room:  What is the point of legally protecting a form of encryption when the means of breaking that encryption is common knowledge?  If I encoded my blog in Pig Latin, should I really have any expectations of protection?

And then there’s the obvious question of the value of the DMCA at all: When aren’t the simple laws against misuse of copyright enough to legally protect a copyright?  Stealing is still stealing, regardless of whether you broke through a door to do it or not.

Perhaps one day these are all issues that will be addressed.  But at least, today, the Librarian Of Congress is finally putting to bed some of the gross abuses of the broad powers granted in the DMCA.