Just an observation:
eBay now supports sending notifications to various IM networks… the usual list. Except Skype. Now that’s curious, since eBay owns Skype, right? I would expect it to be the first offered, or at the very least be on the list….

Mark Shuttleworth on software patents: Microsoft is not the real threat

The real threat to Linux is the same as the real threat to Microsoft, and that is a patent suit from a person or company that is NOT actually building software, but has filed patents on ideas that the GNU project and Microsoft are equally likely to be implementing.

Interesting thought… and actually, not just a thought: Microsoft alumnus Nathan Myhrvold is busy accumulating patents with his Intellectual Ventures company. There’s more like that around…

I’m thinking… perhaps money (greed, that is) will solve this problem after all. These companies have nothing else going on except to try and arrange licensing deals. And thus companies producing a lot cash (big licensing potential) will be the prime targets. And, funnily enough those are the same companies that are currently the biggest patent producers. Since joints like intellectual ventures don’t actually produce software themselves, what would a cross-licensing deal do for them? That doesn’t help the bottom line. Oops, nothing to threaten/trade with for the big guys…

Heck, this could actually be “fun”. Mind you, I’d rather not see this – it’ll waste a great deal of money and other useful resources – it should have been resolved differently and long ago already, however it’s important it does get resolved one way or another and this might just help it along in its own weird way.

Oh fab.

Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users.

See http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm

(Software) patents that (IMHO) shouldn’t exist in the first place, but that’s not the point I want to make here. Companies now need to compete on speed of innovation and “getting it out there”, not on ability to hide, hoard and protect some perceived advantages. The above will just cost a lot of money, hinder innovation, annoy users, and in the end everybody loses. What a sad waste of energy.

OSDC is a grass-roots conference providing Open Source developers with an opportunity to meet, share, learn, and of course show-off. OSDC focuses on Open Source developers building solutions directly for customers and other end users, anything goes as long as the code or the development platform is Open Source. Last year’s conference attracted over 180 people, 60 talks, and 6 tutorials. Entry for delegates is kept easy by maintaining a low registration fee (approx $300), which always includes the conference dinner.

This year OSDC will be held in Brisbane from the 26th to the 29th of November, with an extra dedicated stream for presentations on Open Source business development, case studies, software process, and project management. The theme for this year’s conference is “Success in Development & Business”. If you are an Open Source maintainer, developer or user we would encourage you to submit a talk proposal on the open-source tools, solutions, technologies, or languages you are working with.

Previous years have included numerous talks on topics such as:

• FOSS Software Development Tools, Software Process and Project Management
• Languages/Platforms: C/C++, Java, C#/Mono/OSS.Net
• Scripting: Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby
• Databases
• Education
• Web Technologies
• Emerging Technologies and Innovation

For more details and to submit your proposal(s), see http://osdc.com.au/papers/cfp.html
If you have any questions or require assistance with your submission, please don’t hesitate to ask!

We recognise the increasing importance of Open Source in providing a medium for collaboration between individuals, researchers, business and government. In recognition of this, we offer optional peer-review for those members of our community who desire it. We are still finalising our review board, in addition to which those requesting peer-review will be asked to contribute reviews for up to three papers.

OSDC 2007 Brisbane – Key Program Dates:

• 30 Jun – Proposals deadline
• 31 Jul – Proposal acceptance
• 31 Aug – Submission deadline
• 15 Sep – Peer-review response (optional)
• 30 Sep – Final version for proceedings

• 26 Nov – OSDC 2007 Tutorials
• 27-29 Nov – OSDC 2007 Main Conference!

For all information, contacts and updates, see the OSDC conference web site at http://osdc.com.au/

OSDC gratefully acknowledges the following companies for their early commitment in sponsoring OSDC 2007:

• Apress
• Common Ground
• Google
• OpenGear

Interested in sponsoring also? See http://www.osdc.com.au/sponsors/opportunities.html

Andrew Dashin wrote about this. Basically, the function verifies whether a credit card number could be valid, using the number’s internal checksum algorithm.

I had the C code from long ago, and I think I even converted it to PHP at some point. It’s out there and it’s no secret (try googling for the Lunn algorithm). But, I don’t use it any more. Or to rephrase, you really don’t want to do this check.

From discussions with credit card experts a few years ago, I have learnt that they prefer you to feed pretty much any entered number to them, and then just act on what result they send back. This allows the banks and credit card gateways to better track fraud attempts.

This may sound odd, but it does make sense. It’s not so hard to generate numbers that pass the Lunn test. But if someone does an attack using a list of random or pre-generated numbers, the gateways can do better analysis and track the attempt if they get all the attempts, rather than just the ones that pass the check. If they don’t see all the attempts, they may not realise it’s an attempt….

I know, it’s a fine line here between user friendlyness (turnaround time to tell the user they’ve made a typo) and security. But this is credit cards we’re talking about… the less fraud the better. Please consider.