Java founder Gosling joins Google

Java founder James Gosling has taken a job with Google, he revealed in a blog post Monday.
"Through some odd twists in the road over the past year, and a tardis encountered along the way, I find myself starting employment at Google today," Gosling wrote. "One of the toughest things about life is making choices. I had a hard time saying 'no' to a bunch of other excellent possibilities."
"I don't know what I'll be working on," he added. "I expect it'll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon."
Gosling left Oracle last year after it purchased Sun Microsystems, the company where he created Java, the now-ubiquitous programming language. While initially somewhat vague about the reasons for his departure, Gosling later told eWeek that the reasons included inadequate compensation and an atmosphere of micromanagement.
His arrival at Google comes as the company is being sued by Oracle over alleged Java patent and copyright infringements in its Android OS. That matter and others have raised tensions in the Java community of late.
"Developers are unsure what future controls Oracle will try to foist over the Java community," said Redmonk analyst Michael Coté. "It's hard for many Java developers to feel sympathy for anything less than a very, very open Java after it was open-sourced many years ago."
It makes sense for Google to bring aboard a figure with Gosling's prominence and background, according to Coté.
"Google has hired some of the larger thought and technical leaders in the Java world," he said. "Having them on board and, important to this point, working on Java, certainly would give Google a bigger voice in the Java community."
In addition, Gosling is "clearly a good coder and a legend in the field, as it were," he said. "He's exactly the kind of person Google likes to collect up and use its cushy position to fund and, hopefully, let flower into new innovations."

Firefox 4 races out the gate, doubles share in 6 days

Mozilla's Firefox 4's browser usage share grew over two-and-a-half times in the six days since its March 22 launch, a Web analytics company said today.
According to California-based Net Applications, Firefox 4 accounted for 3.7% of all browsers used Sunday, up from last Tuesday's 1.4%.
Firefox 4's Sunday share was double that of Microsoft's newest browser, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), which debuted March 14.
Mozilla has been touting Firefox 4's download count since the browser launched last week, when it recorded 7.1 million downloads in the first 24 hours, and an unofficial record of 8.75 million the second day.
Those downloads have translated into a growing share for Firefox 4, which has averaged a 2.8% usage share since its release six days ago.
By comparison, IE9 is off to a much slower start, climbing just six-tenths of a percentage point -- an 80% increase -- and averaging 1.1% during its first six days. Since its launch two weeks ago, however, IE9 has doubled its usage share.
Firefox 4's battering of IE9 in the usage share battle wasn't unexpected. Unlike IE9, Mozilla's browser runs on Windows XP, Mac and Linux, operating systems that Microsoft's program doesn't support.
IE9 runs only on Windows Vista and Windows 7, which collectively account for slightly more than a third of all versions of Windows now in use.
Microsoft and Mozilla have traded barbs over the former's decision to dump XP. Microsoft has defended the move by saying it did not want to develop for what it called "the lowest common denominator," while Mozilla has bashed its rival for leaving XP users stuck with the two-year-old IE8.
It's unclear whether the releases of Firefox 4 and IE9 have managed to boost the overall usage shares of Mozilla or Microsoft, or if the gains of the new editions have come at the expense of older versions of the firms' browsers. Net Applications will not release its March numbers until Friday.
Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have been on a downward trend for months. Firefox has lost 2.5 percentage points in the last 12 months, while IE has dropped 4.8 points in the same period.
Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari have been the beneficiaries of those declines, picking up 5.3 and 1.9 points, respectively, in the last year.
Net Applications calculates browser usage share using data obtained from the 160 million unique visitors who browse the 40,000 Web sites the company monitors for its clients.
Firefox 4 can be downloaded from Mozilla's site; IE9 can be found on Microsoft's.
Firefox 4 is off to a faster start than IE9, according to Net Applications' usage share data.

Hotmail Disables HTTPS for Accounts From Certain Regions

Recently, there is a lot written about email account being hacked by governments. Last year the same happened in China for certain Gmail users. Google hit back by allowing HTTPS for all Gmail accounts by default. This added security has now become the norm and almost all email providers allow HTTPS access by default.

Hotmail recently deactivated HTTPS for accounts from certain regions according to EFF. This might have allowed governments of those regions to snoop into the email accounts of people from there.

Hotmail was deactivated in the Bahrain, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Jordan and a few more countries. Interestingly these countries are the ones that have had a few protest movements and subsequently government crackdowns.

Microsoft calls it a bug!

Officially Microsoft has responded with the following statement

We are aware of an issue that impacted some Hotmail users trying to enable HTTPs.  That issue has now been resolved.  Account security is a top priority for Hotmail and our support for HTTPS is worldwide – we do not intentionally limit support by region or geography…..

Read Entire message here.

I changed by location to some of the countries mention and I could use HTTPS, so I am guessing the issue was resolved by Microsoft. Even though Microsoft are claiming it was a bug, I still find it difficult to believe, considering the locations picked up by this bug.

What are your views on Hotmail security? Do you think it was an honest mistake and just a bug or do your suspect Microsoft’s intentions? Do drop in your comments.

Source: EFF