Posts by Lou Gosselin

Intel investigates after retailer sold fake CPUs

Not good, but my own experience with newegg is great

I place several orders a year with newegg and it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.

I wouldn't normally go out of my way to make a pitch for a company like this, but I feel they deserve good word of mouth.

Yes this mistake is bad, but I know newegg will fix it just as they had once for me when products were damaged in shipping.

Years ago I used to buy from tiger direct until they botched an order and failed to ship multimedia speakers with a new system purchase. It would not have been a big deal except tiger direct basically accused me of lying and wouldn't reimburse me or ship me the speakers. I'm only out <$50, but I will continue to hold this against them until they ship the speakers which they owe me. You listening tiger direct?

US judge puts freeze on Apple-Nokia patent kerfuffle

Unfortunately...

it will take more cases like this to prove to the world that software patents are an impediment to progress rather than a driver of progress.

"Each company has denied infringement on their own part"

And they're probably both right in that neither company has benefited from the work of the other, which is why software patents don't work. They don't spread knowledge as intended, and they encourage resources to be spent on litigation rather than R&D.

'Severe' OpenSSL vuln busts public key crypto

@An exploit can be critical for two reasons

That's correct, however because the exploit is physical, it's of limited practical use against general users of openssl. For example, on servers capable of decrypting their own data on bootup, physical access already implies data access.

Therefor a new physical attack vector, especially a difficult one, doesn't increase the group of unauthorized people capable of attacking the system.

This is problematic with DRM because the user who needs to open the content is supposed to be prohibited from knowing the encryption keys, however this goal is incompatible with encryption theory today which requires one to either have the keys or not.

Therefor DRM relies on faulty physical security and software obfuscation, which we already know are broken. We may yet discover an encryption algorithm weakness, but until we do another physical exploit only proves again that DRM is a faulty application of encryption for the purposes of true security.

OpenSSL

I like these types of articles... relevant, educational, interesting please publish more of these!

I glanced over the report, this is a hardware fault rather than an OpenSSL one per say.

Honestly I'm not sure if it should be software's responsibility to obfuscate code/data which in theory is secured by the hardware itself. There's no getting around it, the software will always have to trust the hardware it's run on.

The only way to validate the OpenSSL output is correct against hardware errors is to repeat the same operation. If the two results don't match, clearly a hardware error took place. This redundancy comes at a cost, though, and unless there is more than one implementation, then it's possible for the same error to reoccur.

Forgot your ThinkPad password? Get new hardware

@Ben 42

Thanks for responding.

"It depends on which password you're talking about."

Actually I was trying to understand what the password on lenovo laptops really protects.

"This seems to be what the article is referring to since replacing the motherboard wouldn't fix a forgotten HDD password."

Exactly, but when read in this context lenovo's statements about protecting data don't add up. Since they're willing to reset a user password to let the user boot up the machine, it would seem that protecting the data on the machine is not their concern. This is why I wondered if there was something special about these laptops I had overlooked.

Someone else's password

"If you don't want to get locked out, don't set a password.."

It's trivial for a non-owner else to set the bios password if the owner steps away for a minute. The supervisor password could go unnoticed for a long time.

Not clear

"If Lenovo were to reset administrator or HDD passwords by either policy or available procedure, then we would be creating an exposure and undermining the value of the passwords to deter theft and prevent unintended access to data."

Does this password protect the hard drive's encryption or merely the motherboard's bios?

Is the hard drive readable on another computer?

If the password merely protects the bios, I don't see why resetting this password is a big deal? In any case, lenovo should be able to reset the master password as well as any media keys it may be holding. The net effect would be the same as issuing a new motherboard and reinstalling the old hard drive/peripherals, with much less waste.

Opera's Jon Von Tetzchner on browser choice, the iphone and Google

@A level playing field

Microsoft does what every other big business does, uses it's sheer size to strong arm consumers and competitors to take control of markets. There's no denying that google and apple do it too. I don't want to be a "fan boy" for any of these big businesses, they're all corrupt and stop at nothing to make a buck even when it means off shoring jobs, letting quality slip, or bribing politicians for massive tax subsidies at our expense.

They're all very good at playing up public outrage towards each other as if just one company is responsible for all the problems, but really they all should be held accountable. A level playing field would offer much more choice since anyone could join the game regardless of political connections and financial affluence.

iPad and smartphone rootkits demo'd by boffins

@Nitpick

You're absolutely right of course, it just got mixed up in parlance.

The firmware updater, which would likely run with root permissions, is able to update the bootloader which runs in "ring 0". For the purposes of installing trojans, root access is probably sufficient.

Root access

Any phones which support remote updates can theoretically be remotely exploited. An update mechanism is effectively a back door into "ring 0".

It's not a stretch to believe that the manufacturer/provider have the ability to target a specific phone (or any other device for that matter) with a root kit.

If the military uses this technique, I wonder if they possess the authentication keys themselves or ask for the assistance of manufacturers each time?

Old PS3s locked out of PlayStation Network

I own neither

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/25/playstation_cracked_wide_open/

"*Before anyone says it, making hardware modifications in order to be able to peek at the memory behind the hypervisor when running Linux doesn't really count as breaking the encryption."

Non of the modded consoles have broken encryption. Obviously, if they had broken the encryption, a hardware mod would be unnecessary. Both techniques would be a means to an end of running arbitrary software on the box, which is the goal.

The arbitrary software can be a game patch, a linux console, a home brew game, whatever.

Microsoft stokes Google 'antitrust concerns' fire

All of 'em

I say, take them all down a few notches.

Parallels fondles Steve Jobs' bare metal

@Apple hardware

Actually, now that apple's OS runs on commodity x86 platforms, it is quite trivial to "port" both the OS and VMs to "non apple hardware".

The incompatibilities which exist are 1) licensing and 2) deliberate technical impediments.

As for the technical impediments, those can be overcome as psystar and others have shown.

It will be news when Apple modifies their licensing to support non apple hardware.

Visual Studio 2010 - chunky but has a great personality

Even Bulkier than 2008?

I sure hope it's not. Though I have no experience with 2010, the performance lost in moving from 2003 to 2008 is enough to make one want to pull their hair out waiting for VS to perform requested operation. That and it seems to lock it's own output files and stumble on itself during recompilation from time to time.

I sincerely would have hoped that the performance issues be addressed, but not from the sounds of it.

Opera cuts cord on first open-source baby

@Experts

"how come Opera as a closed-source browser is on more platforms than any other browser?"

I'll take you at your word that this is the case, but this says absolutely nothing about the quality or expertise of the open source community. It's not a fair assessment since many of the devices where opera is installed are closed platforms where open source developers are not welcome. I would argue that if these platforms were open and unlocked, then we would see a great deal of open source development on them.

For example, the iphone will likely never run mozilla or opera, but that's not because they don't have the expertise, it's because they're deliberately locked out.

"The reason to do open source is for marketing purposes."

Also,

"We're doing mobile phones. We're doing set-top boxes. We're doing cars. We're doing game consoles. We're doing all these things. And handling that complexity is extremely hard. And I think that requires fairly good control over the piece of code"

Does not sound like he understands open source very well. Opening the source code would result in more specialized experts on all platforms and likely even better support on diverse platforms. His notion that open source code cannot cope with diverse platforms is unfounded.

Of course, if it's *control* they seek, then yes, open source does not give them much control.

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

Flash is banned because it's an emulator

Jobs is wrong that Flash and HTML are redundant, there is no viable means to replace all (or even most) applications of flash with HTML. HTML and Javascript, as is, are inadequate and he knows this.

On the other hand, the same line of argument could have been applied correctly between Flash and Java (the JRE applet kind). The two are redundant (although conversion would still be far from trivial).

That neither of these are available is revealing of apple's actual motivations, java is known to have a good security track record, so why isn't it available?. It seems that the banning of emulators (which flash qualifies) has everything to do with preventing customers from installing anything sufficiently powerful to compete with revenue generating applications purchased from the iStore.

Why you subsidize Google's Soviet-style Net

@what's the problem

Consider two content distribution solutions, P2P versus centralized. With one, all traffic between ISP customers and a web host must travel over an expensive WAN for each consumer. With the other, ISP customers can exchange bulk files/streams locally with the WAN only needed to refresh stale content occasionally.

The peer to peer technologies developed in the past decade are faster, more robust, more efficient, and cheaper to operate than centralized servers. P2P can even use DRM to protect copyright as (in)effectively as centralized servers, so that's not a valid excuse to avoid P2P for content distribution.

Unfortunately google's business model of monitoring keywords and injecting customized ads into other people's content preclude it from effectively adopting the obviously better, more efficient P2P technology in bandwidth hungry applications like youtube. Viable P2P has existed in many forms since the days of napster without any commercial technical support whatsoever, so it's quite obvious the impediments are political rather than technical.

Now I wouldn't say google is alone in it's desire to build centralized services which they can control, but it is never the less guilty of pushing those centralized data centers in favor of P2P.

So, in a very real sense, depending on the proportion of bandwidth used by youtube, google's business model can be said to directly contribute to inefficient utilization of WANs. That's something we all end up paying for whether we want to or not.

This doesn't even touch on the argument that google consumes more bandwidth than it pays for as hinted in the article.

Experts reboot list of 25 most dangerous coding errors

customer requests

I hear that, worse yet is when a client is made aware of vulnerabilities and declines to pay to fix them. I'm sure that I'm not the only programmer who's had the nightmare of inheriting a messy code base.

Bad code quality is a reflection of the trend for businesses to compete on price rather than quality. The problem is far more widespread than just software. Businesses can hire professionals who know what they're doing, or they can give the project to the cheapest developers to jerry-rig the thing together. There are plenty of us capable of doing the job right, but frankly until clients start to care about (and pay for) quality, our employment hinges on doing the work quick, dirty and cheap.

This is evidenced by the eagerness of western business to hand over critical business functions to offshore teams with whom they can neither communicate in real time nor communicate proficiently in the same language.

@What?

I think you misheard what management was asking for.

Most firms won't PAY their coders to work more than 40 hours a week, but will never the less encourage them to work 60+ hours in order to justify not off shoring their jobs.

Oxford snaps high-speed movies with consumer cams

Not exactly a new concept.

This is the same principal as interlaced television, which can be viewed as a "high resolution" still shot, or a "high frame rate" moving video.

In both cases, the camera simply rearranges the order in which pixels/lines are sequenced.

I believe some early 3d video games used this technique to compromise between an increased frame rate and resolution (resulting in some motion blur).

Apple, Microsoft fingered for patent infringement by Emblaze

Emblaze

All your bases are belong to us.

Linus Torvalds doesn't hate the Googlephone

@sed gawk

Yours is the only reply worth responding to.

I agree wholeheartedly, that for a technology implementer such as yourself, there are many reasons use and contribute back to Linux.

However with regards to your statement about lock down...

"All of these were locked down tightly with only services related to management and application provisioning running. This resulted in a stable, secure, plug-in-and go device for the consumer and low management/deployment costs to the vendor."

I respectfully disagree, and I'll give you an instance where trusting the vendor doesn't work.

I purchased number of routers, which run linux, but prohibit user firmwares. They do not support wake on lan, which I'd like, but I was aware of this when I purchased them. I'd be content except for a persistent bug where all INFO packets on SIP ports are mutilated. It took a couple of tech support calls to finally acknowledge the bug. That was 8 months ago, and they still haven't fix their bug because I'm the small guy and they don't really care. The irony is that the new routers were indented to replace older models which did not have the bugs.

Due to their negligence, I've had to come up with my own solution (hack) of using non-standard SIP ports with these routers. I would have much preferred to compile my own firmware without the buggy SIP ALG and with WOL.

I also would never expect a vendor to support my custom firmware. Keep in mind that those of us willing and able to build our own firmwares generally don't care to go back to the vendor's firmware (ever), so I don't really buy the argument that we somehow cost the vendor more to use our own firmware.

Is it any good when it's locked?

As a real power user, I use Linux because it has open APIs allowing one to change any part of the stack to suit anyone's needs. Even the cheapest embedded devices, such as routers or NAS drives, can have extraordinary innovative capabilities if they are unlocked and reprogrammable.

However in the case of locked down devices, all the benefits of Linux are lost on the consumer. A locked and possibly buggy/limited Linux fork is no better than a proprietary product assuming the device is locked down from end user modification in both cases. Linus may not care since any device running Linux increases his brand's market share.

So while Stallman's GPL3 is more aggressive with end user's rights, Linus is more concerned with maximizing long term market share even if it means locking users out of their own hardware. I'd rather see Stallman's openness vision come true over Linus', however I acknowledge that more vendors could be swayed to open source with Linus' stance (albeit with limited user benefit).

Which approach yields maximum consumer benefit is very hard to say...

Benefit = open source utility * market share

For me personally if I cannot root a consumer device such as a phone or DVR, then there's little point in "knowing" that it runs a linux fork. It's got to be both open sourced and unlocked to have any benefit above a comparable proprietary product.

US bill seeks cybersecurity scholarships

Yes and No

I am one of those assembly language programmers possessing an "intimate knowledge of where the instructions meet the hardware". I am very fond of programming on bare metal, but I've had to incorporate platforms such as Java, .Net, PHP because that's where businesses are. This is where the security battles will need to be fought.

It's true that platforms have internal bugs (I'm looking at you PHP), and unmanaged languages can leave open low level overflow attacks (c). However in my experience most security bugs exist at a much higher level where low level hardware knowledge isn't applicable.

That said, I agree CS programs have been watered down, but this is a reaction to the markets no longer needing those skills. Until the market appreciates us more, I could not in good conscience advice a student to become an assembly language expert.

Researchers penetrate last bastion of Windows security

Sounds like flash isn't the real culprit

I despise flash as much as the next person. but in this case it sounds like flash was merely used to set the contents of memory to a known value. A separate exploit is still required.

Address randomization techniques serve only to make data structure overflows unpredictable (such that the attacker has a hard time figuring out where his malicious code will be loaded or should be loaded). Instead of running the hacker's code, randomization makes application crashes more likely. However the fundamental overflow bugs are still present.

Even with heap randomization, when enough of the heap can be initialized to contain malicious code, it could make successful overflow exploits much more likely. That's what it sounds like the case is here. Flash isn't the vulnerability, but a tool to prepare the heap for the attack.

In this regards, I wouldn't be surprised if other resources could be used in the same way to fill up the heap with binary code. A browser may allocate ram for java/javascripts/images/html/dom values/etc, any of which may actually be a wrapper for binary x86 code.

Adobe heats up iPad Flash bash

Apple should not even get a say...

"Whether you, Reg reader, think Flash is a buggy resource-hogging doggie or a vital element that needs to be accepted by all browsers"

In the ideal world, the consumer could pick and choose what to run on their device. Some people will want flash, others will not. Either way apple's approach is rather draconian.

Apple iPad spanked with Defective by Design protest

I value my freedom of choice, which is why I don't buy apple.

"Vendor lock is NOT a byproduct of Apple's success"

You have valid points, however I really have trouble believing that a much smaller apple would be capable of bringing such a restricted iphone/tabletpc platform to the market.

Ultimately, the only say I have is when I spend my own money on open products. If others buy into crippled products, that is their problem. Still, it disturbs me that, in the long run, buying patterns of other consumers can elevate locked platforms to the point where alternatives loose commercial viability and the locked platforms become the status quo.

I value my freedom of choice, which is why I don't buy apple.

@Another bunch of freetards...

Your tangent on open source rather misses the point.

Source code license and vendor lock are two independent variables.

The problem with DRM and vendor lock for consumers is that the vendor controls the product/service instead of the consumer. Even a closed source product can give consumers the choice to run it as they please.

"You are free to spend as much of your own life creating things (computers, media content, whatever) and distributing it for free as much as you like. No one is stopping you, go run along."

This is not the case with the iphone for instance. One can create the apps, but apple gets to decide on behalf of consumers whether they're allowed to install it, and then take a % of the profits for doing so.

Even someone who doesn't believe in open source has a right to be disappointed with apple's new fondness of restricted platforms.

Vendor lock is a byproduct of Apple's success

I despise vendor locked platforms, whether through DRM or other means. They're not good for consumers, innovation, or free markets.

That said, it's hard to deny that restrictive products can be very profitable for any company with enough clout to pull it off.

It's a common theme that I keep going back to; once a company reaches a certain scale, it can stop thinking about consumers and start applying unpalatable measures for profit. I guess all's fair in a free market, but I am very troubled with the notion that capitalism often rewards large anti-consumer companies over small pro-consumer companies. Smaller companies could not afford to turn their backs on consumers.

Innovative or not, Apple has joined the club where it can sell inferior (Vendor Locked) products for a premium.

Mozilla buries heels on un-YouTube open video

Good news, for a change.

We need more people like Mike Shaver to say no to exploitative software patent cartels.

Google flips default switch for always-on Gmail crypto

@Engineering Director FAIL

"https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn't travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data," Gmail Engineering Director Sam Schillace wrote

I noticed this as well. Especially as director of engineering, his words were poorly chosen. Though in his defense, maybe he was thinking that deep packet inspection at the ISPs would throttle the traffic because it was encrypted?

As for end to end HTTPS, that's a big duh. Plain HTTP has always been vulnerable to man in the middle, even if HTTPS is used to authenticate the HTTP session. Frankly we all should have know that well before the China incident.

Judge blames RealNetworks for DVD-ripping ban

@Fair Use?

The DMCA overrode that, people effectively don't have fair use rights any more.

In theory they do, but the technicalities of the DMCA mean they need to break the law in order to obtain a fair use copy.

Seagate may face noise reduction patent payout

Patent or trade secret?

"Details of the patented technology were provided under non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to both Seagate and Compaq - now part of HP - in 1998...Convolve filed a patent infringement suite in mid-2000 which MIT was involved in as the originating technology licensor...Paul Galloway, has signed an affidavit alleging that Seagate broke the terms of the NDA."

If patented, then it's public information. It is fundamentally wrong to expect both NDA protection and patent protection on the same technology at the same time.

Secret code protecting cellphone calls set loose

@Big Yawn

That's what I was thinking, people who care about privacy lost it a long time ago.

iPhone gets a decent keyboard

Personally,

I prefer technical articles to the glamor articles which pass for news these days.

Technical articles are good, satirical entertainment is good, unfortunately I have to put up with the rest. The register used to stand out as a unique news source, but now I read it mostly as a matter of habit.

Crypto snafu grounds 3D Avatar screenings in Germany

DRM is a consumer nightmare

Unfortunately, we must expect things to get worse before they get better.

Hackintosher goes titsup

Legal arguments

I would have liked to read about the legal arguments of the case, and perhaps some quotes from the trial. It's nice to know the outcome, but what about substance?

Iraqi insurgents hack US drones with $26 software

@Don't Panic

> 3) the control frequencies are not interfered with. Those are highly secure, and come from multiple redundant points.

Maybe you have inside information, but we're left to assume this is the case. For all we know it could be just as insecure.

> 4) hacking a drone, even if you could decrypt the signal, not only would rely on getting it to respond, but you'd have to know intimate details of the control signals.

Nobody should make this mistake, especially not the military. It's called security by obscurity. It doesn't work, just ask Skype.

> 5) it's not one computer, but 3, running on different hardware platforms and running on different OS. ALL THREE have to generate the same response at the same time in order for it to accept input. If one system goes rogue because it's been hacked, the other two ignore it, and the operator is informed a computer is down.

Again, maybe you have inside information, but this is presumptuous. And your paragraph contradicts itself internally. In your scenario, only two would need to be hacked. If it's the same application software being run on various platforms, it is likely that the application is equally vulnerable on each platform. If it's three separate application implementations, though not impossible, it would be incredibly difficult to ensure that each generates the exact same responses at the same time. This added complexity could actually increase the failure modes should the applications behave differently during a hack.

Besides, unless there are three separate control channels, it only needs to be hacked once to control all three implementations.

> Honestly, this is not a big deal.

I'm not panicking, but it is at the very least an embarrassment to have such a trivial vulnerability.

Mozilla man sends Firefoxers to Microsoft Bing

@It's all voluntary

What you seem to be forgetting is that significant pieces of google's behavioral data collection is acquired entirely outside of google's voluntary services.

Unless one knows about and specifically blocks all of google's domains, there is are plenty more avenues for google to track people online. If it was just google's search engine then this would be a non-issue.

Durham police demonstrate DNA will stuff you

Things which make me glad not to live in UK.

Police state and all. That's not what living is about. Why should a people live in perpetual fear of inadvertently being arrested?

PGP disk encrypt approved by MoD for military use

Security Levels

Any software, no matter what it's merits, is only as secure as the operating system.

If the OS is compromised, then so is the encrypted data.

It makes sense that a software only product has a maximum security rating. Making software stronger only means that the software is no longer the weakest link.

Higher security (above that of the windows OS) require hardware encryption.

All security products are vulnerable to physical access. An attacker can simply place a bug to record all passwords/fingerprints/etc. One time key generators are the only way to defeat these "bugs" and even these can be "burrowed" along with the machine.

US eyes speedy reviews for 'green' patents

Contradiction

"it isn't expected to create delays to the rest of the backlog. ....will not hire any additional reviewers to handle the green patent fast-track program."

Has the patent process been fundamentally changed for green patents? If not, then the above does not compute. These changes will make the patent system worse for all other patents.

Pitchfork-wielding mobs encircle smart meters

Remote Control

I don't know the details, but a teacher of mine discussed how they elected to have their home devices wired for remote shutdown during high utilization times. I think this was limited to hot water tanks, fridges, etc which are on intermittently anyways. I believe the device just synchronized the power cycles around peak periods. In return, the customer got a discount off the bill.

Just wanted to mention it because some posters don't get how it works (I presume this is the same type of system).

I guess it may be more controversial when it's imposed on people non-voluntarily, but the principal is just about getting more efficiency out of the existing infrastructure without physically adding capacity.

If the power companies wanted less controversy (with regards to controlling devices remotely), they could use the smart meters to charge different rates at different times, and then customers would voluntarily opt to run their devices at the low cost times.

iPhone upgrades - a one-way control-freak street

Apple deserves the critisism

...but an iron grip on others' apps is central to their business. Naturally they want to control the entire ecosystem, but the process has only made apple ugly.

In the other corner microsoft is doing the same thing with the windows kernel in a brilliant maneuver designed to stamp open source code out of windows.

Both these companies may claim they're providing a benefit to users, but then they cannot explain why they don't even offer the user a choice to install what they want on their own machines. I hope both these companies are sued for anti-consumer practices.

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon - the cloud dating game

Was this a slip or a joke?

> "You can just Google my name,” he said, before catching himself. "Or Bing my name."

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

Could happen to anyone.

Granted this person's activities may have brought attention to himself, however in theory, any of us could find ourselves in the same scenario without committing any crime. This is what the furor is about - a potentially innocent defender could never the less be imprisoned for standing up for what they believe is their fundamental right to privacy.

QinetiQ mail virus patent attracts barbs

Enough is enough

"Patents are designed to allow developers to stake out areas of technical innovation. However, in the fiercely competitive anti-virus market, they've more often been used as legal and marketing weapons."

Are there any other uses for software patents in any other market?

Appeal Court: Mod chips infringe game copyright after all

Mod chips taking the blame?

Someone mods a console for the same reason they break into the iphone. They own the device, why should the manufacturer determine what software they can run on their own hardware?

In practice, I guess many people obtain these mod chips to enable them to play pirate copies, but lets be honest here the illegal act of copying occurred without the use of a mod chip. The use of mod chips does not facilitate copying, technically it facilitates the execution of arbitrary software, which may already happen to be copied.

It's understandable why the game companies might wish to claim "they're guilty anyways, so it should be illegal", but the law should tread more carefully. The judge's rules was clearly based on this pre-desired outcome and came up with some nonsense to make it happen.

As for his argument itself, I think he made a mistake claiming that the rendered images were subject to copyright instead of the binary code which resulted in those renderings. For instance, applying this ruling in a different market, Adobe should own the copyrights to all images generated using Photo Shop since it rendered them, which is clearly nonsense. I could even argue that users putting creativity into a sufficiently expressive game would deserve ownership of the resulting screen renderings and not the game studio - a customizable pinball game comes to mind, mod'ed Quake levels, etc.

US Supremes prod software patent law

Software Patents don't help small time developers

Anyone in truly understanding the field knows that software patents offer very little for the masses of programmers out there. What the US courts should realize is that it is impossible for anyone to write useful non-infringing software today. The effort and expense required to research patents outweighs the effort to bring innovation to the market by several magnitudes. There are just too many software patents offering zero benefit to the public or the software programmers.

There are instances where I had the ability and will to develop a new innovative consumer product, only to find that my liability for software patent licensing for various unavoidable algorithms would exceed my limited budget.

Software patents are of more use to the larger companies with legal resources to maintain their portfolio and eager to sue their competitors. Those of us who care genuinely about innovation and less about lawsuits are rightly furious about the imposition of software patents, which only serve to increase overhead.

Of course the decisions will be made with respect to the interests of big business.