Hardware and Software Forum

DATELINE - July 30, 2009 An open letter was sent to Lance Davis, primary administrator, describing the problems experienced by the other major members and contributors to the [URL="http://www.centos.org"]CentOS[/URL] project. Here is that letter, in its entirety that's also posted on the front page at centos.org: [QUOTE]July 30, 2009 04:39 …

One last quick entry before the weekend starts (and before the month ends) - I saw a story on [URL="http://twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] today in which some hackers claimed they'd found a flaw in the iPhone that would allow a malicious person to take control of every one of those phones in rthe …

Gary McKinnon is either a UFO-obsessed nerd who happens to suffer from a form of autism, or a fugitive from justice who was responsible for the biggest military hack of all time. The description varies depending upon whether you are a balanced individual with no axe to grind or the …

There has been a lot of comment in the past on Gary McKinnon and his hacking into US military computers. Readers might understand that some of the comment in the UK has been about how he should have been tried over here, there's no need to extradite him and if …

There are two things you can be sure of about the annual Las Vegas Black Hat security conference: nobody will use the free wifi as they are all too [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19935/53/"]worried about being hacked[/URL], and someone will demonstrate an exploit that will scare the living bejesus out of you. The latter …

How transparent is too transparent? In an attempt to make it easier for ordinary people to see what their governments are spending their money on, more entities -- from city to federal -- are putting this information online, noting that it's a public record. But some government workers are uncomfortable …

If you haven't heard of [URL="http://www.proxmox.org"]ProxMox[/URL] yet, you need to hit the site right now and grab the [URL="http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Downloads"]ISO[/URL] file for the latest version (1.3) as of this writing. ProxMox is a bare metal (Type 1) hypervisor that comes with [URL="http://www.linux-kvm.org"]KVM[/URL] (Kernel Virtual Machine) and [URL="http://www.proxmox.org"]OpenVZ[/URL] technology rolled into a …

I'm having a rather traumatic experience with certain [URL="http://www.microsoft.com"]Microsoft[/URL] products lately. My problem is that I'm trying to "get to know" Microsoft's Hyper-V for my virtualization column over at [URL="http://www.linux-mag.com"]Linux Magazine[/URL]. The problem is, that to manage a true Hyper-V system remotely, you must have a Windows Vista or Windows …

A group of University of Washington students and professors has developed an application called Vanish that automatically makes data used with it disappear after eight to nine hours. The open-source software is [URL="http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/download.html"]downloadable[/URL] now, as well as information about how to use it and a research paper about its development, …

According to the latest [URL="http://www.messagelabs.com/mlireport/MLIReport_2009.07_July_FINAL.pdf"]MessageLabs Intelligence Report[/URL] from Symantec, things are looking good as web malware writers have taken a sabbatical. Unfortunately the spammers have gone multi-lingual in a lazy-ass automated kind of a way with great effect. Spam levels have, say Symantec, stayed at their highest level for two …

To be honest, these days it takes a new iPhone or maybe the latest Android-powered beast to get my smartphone pulse racing even if BlackBerry is the top of the smartphone pops in [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4324.html"]raw number terms[/URL]. So news of a new BlackBerry, the Curve 8520 which was also know as …

The High Court in the UK will this Friday decide if an appeal against the Home Office backed decision to extradite Gary McKinnon on hacking charges to the US is to be upheld or, as seems likely, not. McKinnon has been accused of what US prosecutors refer to the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2863.html"]biggest …

So Google reckons that it can provide [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26281/53/"]the perfect operating system[/URL] in Chrome, even to the point where according to Google's Engineering Director, Linus Upson, it will herald the end of malware. That's what he went [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html"]on the record[/URL] to say, promising that Google was "completely redesigning the underlying security …

Linus has spoken so get back to work and stop burning up the Internet with your hate speeches and endless ramblings about Microsoft and how this is so wrong. Linus accepted the code and gives his reasons as to why. Here's my take on the whole thing with responses to …

Word came out yesterday that [URL="http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/23/news/companies/ATT_earns.reut/"]AT&T didn't have a great quarter[/URL] (which ironically sent the stock price soaring because it wasn't as bad as expected). This loss seemed perplexing to me given that Apple reported its numbers earlier this week (as I wrote in [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4560.html"]Lauren's Wrong: People Definitely Want Macs[/URL]), …

What happens if you get caught out sharing copyright music or video online? If you live in Hull, in the north of the UK, the answer will probably surprise you. At the same time that most Internet Service Providers are applauding the recent [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22936/53/"]Digital Britain report[/URL] from the government which …

Adobe has issued a security advisory following the discovery of what it describes as a "critical vulnerability" which exists within the current versions of Flash Player (v9.0.159.0 and v10.0.22.87) across all platforms, Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, The same vulnerability can be found within the authplay.dll component that ships …

Apple released its [URL="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/07/21results.html"]third quarter numbers[/URL] yesterday and by any benchmark they were impressive. Consider these numbers as [URL="http://www.macworld.com/article/141829/2009/07/appleq309.html?lsrc=top_1"]reported by Macworld[/URL]: * $8.34 billion in sales and a net profit of $1.23 billion * 5.2 million iPhones * 10. 2 million iPods * 2.6 million Macs (of which1.75 million were …

Can anyone top this: the Ministry of Defence here in the UK has admitted that last year it managed to lose a server. A whole one, and get this, it was meant to be located in a secure government building for good measure. Over the years I have become more …

With some [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3427.html"]11.5 million subscribers[/URL] playing it worldwide, there is no denying that World of Warcraft is one popular online game. Nowhere more so than in China, where it has been reported around 5 million of those subscribers are based. It should [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4434.html"]come as no surprise[/URL] that not everyone in …

Usually quarterly spam trend reports from security vendors are, how can I put this nicely, actually I can't so I will just have to say it as it is: bloody boring and mostly pointless. However, the latest such report to fins its way into my mailbox from [URL="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/"]Sophos[/URL] caught my …

Just like the international gang summits in Los Angeles, Linux needs a collective, "sit-down" to discuss the future of this now formidable operating system. I'm not talking about a nice little get together with keynote speakers with high-powered, 10,000 foot views of where Linux is and where it's going. And …

According to a new [URL="http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/polls/2245397/poll-summer-smartphones"]poll[/URL] the Apple iPhone 3GS is the smartphone that most Brits would want to be seen with on the beach this summer. The poll asked some 1500 people which smartphone they would be taking to the beach, and 28 percent of them said it would have …

Some users discovered last week that Amazon has the capability to remove books from their Kindle electronic reading devices, even though they were bought, paid for, downloaded, and in the users' possession. Ironically, among the books with which this was discovered was George Orwell's [I]1984[/I], which postulated a society where …

Anyone else getting pretty fed up with the number of headlines both online and in the print media which have been exclaiming 'Twitter hacked' this week? I have even just got a press release, from a storage systems company of all things, that has the strap line of "Twitter hack …

If I hadn't already known--or at least had some idea of the religious zeal I was about to face, I would have been more shocked at the response to my [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4525.html"]2009's 10 Worst Linux Distributions[/URL] post from the other day. I now have definitive evidence that Linux is a religion--a …

It was revealed yesterday that [URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071600811.html"]Apple began blocking Palm Pre users [/URL]from syncing with iTunes. Apparently the latest upgrade, which I installed just this morning won't allow Pre users to sync with their phones. Seriously, Apple? Are you really going to be this petty? Do you really feel this threatened …

Another of those security trending reports has dropped onto my desk, this one coming from PandaLabs which is now apparently part of 'Panda Security, The Cloud Security Company.' Jeez, someone needs to give the marketing director a kick up the pants for that one. Anyway, back to the report: it …

Lawrence 'Larry' Roberts is something of an Internet legend, and for good reason: he helped build it. Way back in 1967 Roberts not only drew up the plans for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) which would eventually lead to the Internet, but he also headed up the team …

Last weekend Twitter was apologising for accidentally suspending a number of user accounts due to human error. Now it is suspending accounts again, but this time there is no error: Twitter is getting serious about malware. In a status posting on Thursday July 9th, Twitter [URL="http://status.twitter.com/post/138789881/koobface-malware-attack"]admitted[/URL] that it had come …

[URL="http://www.google.com"]Google[/URL] has confirmed that it is working on an operating system called [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html"]Chrome[/URL]. It will be a rival to [URL="http://www.microsoft.com"]Microsoft[/URL] Windows, a zillion flavours of [URL="http://www.distrowatch.com"]Linux[/URL], the [URL="http://www.apple.com/macosx/"]Apple[/URL] operating system and any other minority systems of which you might be aware. A lot has been said across the web about …

OK, so Firefox 3.5 is out and looking good but why should Opera care? After all, the alternative web browser from years back has long since lost that title to Firefox, at least as far as the desktop is concerned. But what about in the mobile market? Opera has been …

My colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols waxed nostalgically on Monday in his [URL="http://blogs.computerworld.com/so_long_compuserve_nice_to_have_known_you"]Computerworld Cyber Cynic[/URL] blog about CompuServe, the long-time service that shut down recently, and which Vaughan-Nichols says he's going to miss. As much as I like [URL="http://twitter.com/sjvn"]SJVN[/URL], I have to say good riddance to old technology. It long outlived …

[URL="www.facebook.com"]Facebook[/URL]'s page on which the location of the head of MI6's flat was available has been taken down. You also can no longer find information about his family and their whereabouts, which you could on the site previously. There has been a debate about this, of course. For Americans who …

You might wonder why a 10 year old web building business managed to become the number one trending topic on Twitter this last week, with the moonfruit hashtag being tweeted in excess of 10,000 times an hour at one point. The answer is not as straightforward as some would have …

With the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4487.html"]iPhone 3GS[/URL] slowly coming back into stock after [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/06/30/o2-runs-out-of-iphone-3gs/"]selling out[/URL] during the first week of release, there is more good news for potential buyers: the 3GS has been jailbroken. Yes, 19 year old George Hotz who you might remember shot to hacking fame a couple of years back …

Yahoo! [URL="http://ycorpblog.com/2009/06/30/serving-up-greener-data-centers/"]announced[/URL] this week that it would build what it said what would be the greenest, most energy-efficient data center in the world, powered by Niagara Falls. Data centers are some of the heaviest users of electrical power there are, both to run the servers themselves and to cool them. …

[URL="http://twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] has been in the headlines again. You can now pay a company to find potential followers, approach them and ask them to follow you and it's apparently a very innovative approach. It must be, that's why the BBC thought it [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8130456.stm"]newsworthy[/URL]. Actually I'm not so sure. I think I've …

Everyone knows that the iPhone 3GS only comes in black or white varieties, but some unlucky users are claiming to have got their hands on a pink version. The thing is, these started out as bog standard white models but, according to some reports, they get so hot during extended …

Security stories abound on the Internet, and as we enter a new month an old one has resurfaced. There are legal questions over the Sarah Palin hacking event last year. Graham Cluley has [URL="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/07/01/legal-arguments-sarah-palin-email-hack/"]blogged[/URL] about it. For me he's buried the main point right at the end of the story. …

This just has to be one of the best pieces of news ever - there is agreement for a standard for mobile phones. It's really as simple as that. Here's the story, [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_8124000/8124293.stm"]on the BBC's junior site[/URL], would you believe. I just can't work out why it has to be …

Generally speaking I would not recommend reading a newspaper in the hot tub. If that hot tub happens to be of the spa-jet variety then that only makes it worse. If the newspaper is a rare item from the 19th century then surely only a fool would consider it. Yet …

[I]How come I can't let go? I'm between two worlds ~Tom Petty, Between Two Worlds[/I] As I watched vendors navigate the changing software world last week at [URL="http://www.e2conf.com/"]Enterprise 2.0 in Boston[/URL], it struck me that the old companies are trying desperately to hold onto to the markets they have dominated …

On June 15th, less than two weeks ago, the [URL="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/15/apples_mac_sales_held_up_in_may_while_ipod_shipments_fell.html"]Apple Insider blog reported[/URL] that Apple sales continued slipping in May. Mac sales were down, perhaps not as much as expected but still down, and more surprising, the previously recession-proof iPod sales were falling. Could it be that the economy was …

Am I surprised that many 'IT Security Professionals' appear to have had a common-sense bypass when it comes to the security of their own mobile devices? Nah, not really. Look, we already know that [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/06/11/88-percent-of-web-users-are-morons/"]88 percent of web users are morons[/URL] and [URL="http://happygeeknewmedia.blogspot.com/2009/06/are-you-stupid-it-administrator.html"]93 percent of IT Admins are idiots[/URL] so …

I am probably showing my age here, but I can recall when relationships started as a result of face to face meetings. If those relationships came to an end, they ended the same way as a rule. OK, a few cowardly types might have resorted to a 'Dear John' letter …

You might have seen the announcement [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8116387.stm"]yesterday[/URL] that Microsoft is going to start offering free antivirus protection to its customers. The initial reaction is no doubt going to be reasonably positive, and speaking as someone with a family member who's been hit by a computer virus fairly recently, the easier …

There's a new campaign on [URL="http://twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] about fixing [URL="http://www.microsoft.com"]Microsoft[/URL]'s flagship email program, Outlook. Outlook 2010 will be coming out next year (just say if I'm going too quickly) and it renders emails oddly if they're in HTML. There are details [URL="http://fixoutlook.org/"]here[/URL]. Let's ignore the fact that the Fixoutlook page is …

Prejudices and opinions aside, at some point in your career you'll be asked to select a viable Linux distribution for your corporate network. How will you choose? Will you use the same distribution that you use at home or will you do some research and find something that's corporate-ready? Are …

The privacy invading nonsense that is the controversial UK ID Card Scheme could be scrapped by this time next year. With the chances of the Labour Party being returned to power looking very slim indeed, the chances are that a Conservative Government will be voted in. Which is good news …