Posts by newsguy

According to John Wolfe, Director of Internet Enforcement with the Business Software Alliance online auction sites have sold £4 million ($8 million) worth pirated software in just six months.

The BSA has managed to prevent 36,000 illegal products from getting sold in the same period, but it does look like it is fighting a losing battle here. Until consumers either learn that expensive 'new' software going for a song really is too good to be true, or perhaps more appropriately learn that it is ethically and legally wrong to purchase it, the problem will continue. Especially as this is most definitely not an auction only circumstance. WaReZ websites and P2P networks carry an average of 200,000 pieces of pirated software at any time according to the BSA.

"This is the tip of the iceberg" Wolfe told DaniWeb, explaining that the figure only represents those auctions where members' copyrights have been identified as being infringed and action taken to have them closed. BSA members include Apple and Microsoft. "Some auction offers may lead to dozens or even hundreds of purchases of illegal software. When buying software on auction sites, people need to be concerned if prices appear too good to be true. Counterfeit copies may not give you the functionality and full benefits of a legal version. There is also a significant data protection risk in that counterfeit software may be linked to hackers looking to access your network." Indeed, a recent study from IDC …

According to analysis from web security company ScanSafe, a third of employers are now blocking social networking sites to prevent staff poking each other in the workplace. Amongst its corporate customer base it has seen the number blocking such sites rise by 17 percent from this time last year.

Poking has become something of a global obsession ever since Facebook threw its doors open to the general public rather than being strictly a plaything of academia. In fact, ScanSafe says that Facebook usage grew by 270 percent during the last year, with 52 million users worldwide. Although MySpace still heads up the social networking space with 114 million users, LinkedIn is fast gaining traction and popularity among the business community.

According to ScanSafe, which provides web malware scanning and web filtering services, the most commonly requested social networking sites among its business-user customers are YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn, followed by Bebo, MySpace and Photobucket. However, 32 percent of all ScanSafe customers now block access to social networking sites, with MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook the sites companies are most likely to restrict employee access to. LinkedIn comes fourth in the 'most blocked' list.

ScanSafe also found that 54 per cent of customers block video downloads at work, a popular activity on sites like YouTube and LimeWire.

According to Eldar Tuvey, CEO of ScanSafe: "Companies are increasingly concerned about keeping usage in check - not just for security reasons, but for productivity and bandwidth considerations as …

comScore Media Metrix has published its monthly analysis of US online consumer activity showing that education related sites spiked during August as schools and universities began another academic year. With lottery jackpots reaching record highs, lotto and sweepstake sites also proved popular as did the sports genre what with the fall sports season about to get going. But it was the in-depth look at the reach of the online advertising media industry that caught my attention, not least the astonishing fact that Advertising.com apparently reaches 89 percent of the US online population.

One of the big climbers was Adconian Media Group which surged 7 places up to the number 21 spot with a 43 percent reach, that's a 7 percent improvement on its July performance. A couple of big names entered the Top 50 list, Amazon.com arrived at 37 while Walmart.com settled into the 43 spot.

Here is the Top 50 in full, showing the reach percentage as well as the total number of unique visitors.

1. Advertising.com 89% (160,960,000)
2. ValueClick 75% (135,762,000)
3. Yahoo! 74% (133,390,000)
4. Google Ad Network 73% (133,137,000)
5. Tribal Fusion 71% (128,624,000)
6. Specific Media 69% (125,399,000)
7. Google 67% (120,687,000)
8. Casale Media Network 65% (117,118,000)
9. Blue Lithium 64% (115,751,000)
10. AOL Media Network 63% (114,522,000)
11. Traffic Marketplace 60% (108,006,00)
12. DRIVEpm 58% (105,483,000)
13. MSN-Windows Live 57% (104,207,000)
14. 24/7 Real Media 57% (103,259,000)
15. YAHOO.COM Home Page 53% (95,363,000)
16. AOL 51% (92,740,000)
17. Tremor Media 51% (92,548,000)
18. Interclick 47% (85,712,000)
19. CPX …

Finjan Inc has published its latest Web Security Trends report which contains everything you would expect, plus something you probably would not: your widgets are out to get you.

Widgets, or desktop gadgets if you prefer, are exposing users to a whole host of not so delightful security exploits. Finjan's Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC) discovered that these super cool add-ons can be hot stuff when it comes to security, often containing code that is vulnerable to exploits by hackers and criminals. Finjan's research also suggests that new attacks that exploit the insecurities of widgets and gadgets are imminent. So perhaps it is time a revised security model is implemented to keep users protected from such attacks.

"As Widgets become common in most modern computing environments - from operating system to web portals, their significance from a security standpoint rises." According to Finjan CTO Yuval Ben-Itzhak, "Vulnerabilities in widgets and gadgets enable attackers to gain control of user machines, and thus should be developed with security in mind. This attack vector could have a major impact on the industry, immediately exposing corporations to a vast array of new security considerations that need to be dealt with. Organizations require security solutions capable of coping with such a changing environment with the ability to analyze code in real time, and detect malicious code appearing in innovative attack vectors to provide adequate protection."

Finjan is suggesting a host of measures to protect yourself from widget attack, including refraining …

IBM has announced that it is joining the OpenOffice.org development community, with an initial involvement concerning code contributions it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product. The code includes accessibility enhancements, and IBM is expected to make ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of OpenOffice.org. As an aside, IBM has also declared that it will leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its own product line.

Since the project's creation by Sun Microsystems in 2000, nearly 100 million have downloaded the product; and thousands contribute to it. As an international team of volunteer and sponsored contributors, the OpenOffice.org community has created what is widely regarded as the most important open-source project in the world today. The OpenOffice.org community acknowledges generous sponsorship from a number of companies, including Sun Microsystems, the founder and primary contributor. The suite contains word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, database, and other modules; it uses the ODF as its native file format as well as fully supporting other common file formats (including Microsoft Office).

The software runs on all major platforms, including Windows, Vista, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and is available in over 100 languages. OpenOffice.org is fully interoperable with other popular suites and may be used free of charge for any purpose, private or commercial; the license is LGPL.

"IBM is very pleased to be joining the OpenOffice.org community" Mike Rhodin, General Manager …

A new forensic computer from a UK based company promises to make the task of gathering evidence at the scene of a crime much easier. The dual booting Windows XP and Suse Linux TreCorder portable forensic lab is built into a rugged portable chassis and can simultaneously copy up to three hard drives at a speed of 2GB per minute per drive. This is a substantial time saving over the kind of kit currently being used by forensic detectives in the field.

Three Tableau T345 write blockers mean that the drives being copied can be IDE, S-ATA or SCSI. Actually, they can be all three at the same time if need be. Using Firewire B to connect to the host ensures the system does not need to be powered down when connecting new evidence drives, and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHZ CPU coupled to 4GB of memory and 4 Barracuda ES 500GB SATA-IICPU drives means that performance is not an issue.

Being a specially designed forensic tool, the TreCorder copies a mirror image of the drive and system memory, all deleted and reformatted data, and does so both quickly and securely so the evidence will stand up in court. This is achieved by using hardware based write protection to remove the notion of falsification of data during copying, and the copying is done on a sector by sector basis.

Does this mean that we will be seeing a TreCorder on CSI some …

The latest version, V4.0 RC3, of Damn Small Linux was released today and it is really very small indeed. Described as a 50Mb mini-desktop oriented Linux OS, DSL is actually small enough to fit and boot from a business card CD as a live Linux distribution.

Originally developed as something of an experiment in order to try and find out just how many perfectly usable desktop applications can fit inside such a small live CD, DSL has grown from a personal toy to a fully fledged community project. A community project which has seen hundreds of hours of development time resulting in an accomplished automatic remote and local application installation system, versatile backup and restore system and the ability to boot from within a host operating system. Yes, DSL can run inside Windows if the user so wishes. Perhaps most interestingly of all, it will transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install.

Using a JWM window manager, DSL loads four usable desktops with applications including a swathe of web browsers (Firefox, Dillo and Netrik), MP3, CD and MPEG players (XMMS), email (Sylpheed), word processor (TED), graphics editor (Xpaint) PDF viewer (Xpdf) file manager (emelFM), a web server, FTP client, and even a selection of games.

Sure, there are going to be some compromises with a distribution this size, but there aren't many desktop operating systems that will fit on a business card, now are there? If you need any more convincing …

McAfee Inc. has today announced the findings of new research which reveals that, as far as European small and medium businesses are concerned, size does matter when it comes to security and risk.

Having sampled more than 600 IT decision makers from small and medium sized businesses across Europe, McAfee's 'Does Size Matter? The Security Challenge of the SMB' report highlights a worrying gap between perception and reality when it comes to security issues.

Just look at the key statistics:

• 47% think cyber crime was an issue for larger organisations only
• 45% believe being not particularly well known means they are not at risk
• 58% consider themselves not a 'valuable target' in the eyes of cyber criminals
• 56% say they cannot make a cyber criminal any money
• 73% admit that online availability is critical to the business
• 58% are not concerned about becoming a victim of cyber crime
• 28% only spend an hour a week on proactive IT security management
• 19% acknowledge an attack might put them out of business
• 90% say they are adequately protected from attack
• 36% admit to accepting hardware and software default settings

"We know that cyber criminals don't discriminate, to them size doesn't matter," said Greg Day, Senior Security Analyst, McAfee. "Every SMB, even very small ones, will have customer details or financial information that will be of use to a cyber criminal.

McAfee's message to SMBs would appear to be very clear, that size really doesn't …

According to a Computerworld Singapore report quoting newly published research, 2012 will be the year of the Linux mobile phone, with some 31 percent of all smart phones, or 331 million devices, running Linux. The prediction is based largely upon the fact that Linux has a much faster growth rate than either Symbian or Windows Mobile, some 75 percent year on year.

Symbian is probably likely to be the main casualty, as outside of the US (where it enjoys a market share of less than 10 percent) it claims in excess of 70 percent of the global smart phone business, although the majority of this is restricted to Europe. Things are already very different in Asia, where Linux has a 30 percent market share in China and Japan for example.

The main driver as far as mobile handsets are concerned would seem to be Motorola which has announced it plans to get Linux running on 60 percent of its devices within a two year time frame with the help of the newly created LiMo group.

Motorola has also just announced its Linux based RAZR2 V8 mobile phone handset which it showcased at LinuxWorld in San Francisco a few weeks ago. The Linux RAZR2 V8 has already shipped in India and Vietnam, and the US joins the list this week. It's an important push forward for the mobile Linux market, because this is no niche handset, no geek toy, but rather a mainstream multimedia …

I stumbled across an interesting interview with Linus Torvalds over at apcmag.com in which the man himself would appear to be confirming that there will be no Linux kernel 3.0

The first hints are given when he responds to a question concerning why the 2.6 kernel has been around for so long, and explains his reasoning as to why a multi-year development cycle doesn't work concluding that the 2.6 base kernel is in such good shape that there is no pressing reason to go back to the old 'everything changes' development model. Torvalds adds "that means that we'll keep with the 2.6.x codebase, and just incrementally improve on it."

When questioned further, specifically about when we can expect to see the version 3.0 kernel, Torvalds states quite categorically that "we really don't expect to need to go to a 3.0.x version at all." This isn't the first time that Torvalds has questioned the need for a version 3.0, an email from September 2002 published at Kerneltrap says pretty much the same thing. In a reply to Jeff Garzik questioning him about a confirmation of the 2.6 numbering, Torvalds responds "I see no real reason to call it 3.0" and adds "but hey, it's just a number." But it would seem to be a final nail in the coffin of the kernel 3.0 dream, at least for the time being. After all, point increments can only go on for so long and when we hit …

Google has announced a new feature for users of its Google Earth application, and it goes by the name of Sky. Thankfully Rupert Murdoch has not done some dastardly deal with the search giants, but rather Google is enabling users to 'float through the skies' via Google Earth.

What this upgrade does is provide a tool to allow Earth users to both view and navigate through more than 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies, as they would sbe seen from anywhere on the planet. The high resolution imagery and informative overlays promise to create a unique playground for visualizing and learning about space.

Using the new tool is simplicity itself, just click on the Switch to Sky option from the drop-down view menu, and you can then drag, zoom and search the sky just as you would terra firma. Layers are also supported, and in fact there are seven new ones being introduced to launch the Sky feature, namely:

Constellations - From Cassiopeia to Andromeda, the Constellations layer connects the points of constellations through space, labelling each with its given name. Users can learn about the stars that make up their favourite constellations.

Backyard Astronomy - The Backyard Astronomy layer lets users click through a variety of place-marks and information on stars, galaxies, and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes. This layer is useful for the amateur astronomer who might benefit from a comprehensive, organized way to reference fragments of the …

IBM has announced what it is calling the Big Green Linux initiative in order to spark further interest in getting Linux firmly integrated into the enterprise, this time by going on the cost reduction and energy consumption attack.

This follows up from the Project Big Green commitment announced by IBM back in May, with its aim to sharply reduce data centre energy consumption for IBM and its clients. IBM has announced that it plans to consolidate approximately 3,900 of its own computer servers on to about 30 System z mainframes running the Linux operating system. IBM anticipates that the new server environment will consume approximately 80 percent less energy than the current set up, resulting in significant savings over five years in energy, software and system support costs. With more than 8,000,000 square feet of data-centre space for its employees and commercial workloads for clients, the overall impact is not to be undervalued.

Big Green has got support from Novell already. "With every release of our SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, Novell finds new ways to help customers reduce power consumption through improvements in policy-driven power management and system monitors for servers, along with better suspend functionality for laptops" Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell told DaniWeb. "We look forward to collaborating with IBM on ways we can improve integration between hardware and software to save customers both energy and money."

IBM looks determined to differentiate its offerings …

At first glance you might not immediately connect the Symbian loving Nokia with Microsoft in any way, shape or form. However, Nokia does know its market and so has already been collaborating with Microsoft on the Windows Media entertainment side of the fence. That collaboration is now to be boosted following the announcement today that support for Microsoft PlayReady technology will be built into the Nokia S60 and Series 40 mobile device platforms.

This new content access technology from Microsoft makes it relatively easy for both content owners and service providers to deliver virtually any type of digital content in whatever way they want. By supporting PlayReady, Nokia will make it easier for premium digital content to be offered to a radically increased installed base. It will also open the door to more flexible business models like renting content or accessing it offline. The technology supports a range of business models that can be applied to almost any type of digital content (music, video, games, ringtones, images and more) and a wide range of audio and video formats (including Windows Media Audio (WMA), Windows Media Video (WMV), AAC, AAC+, AMR and H.264). Microsoft released the PlayReady Porting Kit for mobile devices in early August 2007, and expects the first services using Microsoft PlayReady technology to appear in 2008. In addition, Microsoft has designed PlayReady to be fully backward-compatible with Windows Media DRM 10, which means that devices supporting PlayReady can access existing Windows Media DRM-based content as well as …

Everyone is familiar with social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, or virtual world environments like Second Life, but the chances are you have not heard of Club Penguin With the acquisition of this virtual world for kids today by the Walt Disney Company, that is all about to change.

Daring to be different, and taking the virtual meeting spaces concept to the 6-14 year old age group, Club Penguin has gone from zero to hero in less than two short years, growing to a current subscriber base of some 700,000 paid up members from 12 million activated users. This apparent disparity in the numbers can be explained by the velvet rope usage model which allows free unlimited usage of part of the world, the rest becoming available only to subscribers. Such things as buying furnishings for your igloo home or gaining status within the environment.

The exclusive focus on providing a safe online world just for kids, featuring animated penguin avatars inhabiting a snow-covered environment where kids can meet up, chat, participate in group activities and furnish their virtual home with currency that can be earned inside the world, obviously appeals to the Disney view.

“This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of leveraging technology to create and deliver high-quality entertainment around the world and our commitment to investing our capital to generate growth and value for our shareholders,” said Bob Iger, Disney president and CEO. “Club Penguin embodies principles that are of …

According to a statement from IT research company Gartner Windows 7 is just three short years away from fruition. In response to an enquiry following a CNET News story reporting a sales meeting of the Seattle software giants where the three year figure was supposedly mentioned, Gartner cites a Microsoft spokesperson as confirming that the company is "scoping Windows 7 development to a three year time frame." Gartner further states that Microsoft went on to qualify this by adding "the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar."

Although the Microsoft disclosure is not copied in its full unedited glory, Gartner does reveal that there will be 32 and 64-bit versions, and that it will be a full, kosher release rather than just a service pack.

From this it deduces that Microsoft either does not know what Windows 7 will be, or does not want to publically comment on it as of yet. I suspect that both deductions are not mutually exclusive and the truth is a mixture of the two. Three years in OS software development is worth at least two weeks in mixed political metaphors.

While Gartner use this as an advice springboard for enterprise users not to hold back in plans to deploy Vista, and continue to do so between the end of this year and the middle of next. Warning that "they should remember that if they target Windows 7 as their next OS instead …

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has finally moved from being vapourware and over-hyped smoke and mirrors hardware prototyping to being on the verge of a proper production line at long last. It has only taken five years for the Negreponte/MIT low-cost laptop to move from global computing for everyone concept into something approaching a reality. That might sound like a long time, but truth be told it is but a blink of an eye considering the huge problems faced by the OLPC team to keep the price down and the spec acceptable.

Unfortunately, it looks as if the dream ticket price tag of $100 will not be reached during the initial production run. Despite using open source software and a back to basics Linux powered OS, the Taiwan produced machine will actually cost $175 it would appear.

Hardware manufacturers have been told to ramp up production of the 800 component parts, including the all important low-powered AMD processor. The largest manufacturer of laptops in the world, Quanta, will be tasked with putting them all together and producing the XO, as it will be officially known.

According to the BBC test machines are already being tested successfully at temperatures in excess of 50 degrees. Vitally important considering the distinctly non-computer friendly environments to which these machines will be heading. Countries such as Brazil and Nigeria, where other test units are apparently already being used out in the field.

Whether all of this means …

Is Blu-Ray dead in the European water?

Independent pan-European research by GfK has today revealed that Blu-Ray may not be winning the high definition race after all, despite much brouhaha. In fact, according to the report on the state of the standalone high definition player market in Europe, HD DVD averaged a market share of 74 percent between January and May 2007. The figures also show that Toshiba is dominating this particular market, and it is a big market to dominate. In Europe alone there are already more than 130 HD DVD titles available, expected to rise to 300 by the end of the year. Worldwide, the total title target (try saying that while eating toast) will hit 1000 unique discs by year end.

"HD DVD players not only offer all the picture and audio benefits of other HD formats, they are also the most affordable and feature-rich players on the market today. This latest research reflects the fact that there is an ever-increasing number of Hollywood and European software titles available on the format today, which is driving further demand for players" Olivier Van Wynendaele, Toshiba Spokesperson for the European HD DVD Promotion Group told DaniWeb. "These figures are especially important because the standalone player market is by far the biggest driver of movie sales in the long-term" added Steve Nickerson, Senior Vice President, High Definition Media at Warner Bros. "This is simply because those who buy a standalone player are interested solely in buying and watching …

Bj looks a lot like an evil AIBO, with its black finish and blue glowing eyes. So what, you might say, who cares about yet another robot dog? The concept simply never caught on as far as the consumer was concerned, which is probably why the usually retail smart Sony pulled the plug on the plastic pet. But the interesting thing about Bj is that it is not a robot dog as such, instead the iXs designed device is being pushed as a research and development platform for those interested in artificial intelligence.

Oh, and Linux of course.

If you have the odd 600,000 Yen to spare (that’s about $5000) you can get your very own piece of tech history: the world’s first Linux powered dog.

Packing a 533MHz ARM processor punch, backed up by 64Mb of RAM and 16Mb Flash ROM and even both a webcam and WiFi, this sensor stuffed pooch is a thing to behold. A combination of infrared and proximity sensors together with an accelerometer ensures it is always aware of its surroundings.

I am assuming that the inventor had a good sense of humour, considering where you have to insert the USB memory stick in order to program it. Let’s just say that other robot dogs might be tempted to sniff around the device slot, say no more!

Pictures and the full spec, in Japanese, can be found here.

Hot on the heels of JavaFX, taking on the likes of Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash, Sun looks set to formally unveil its plans for Project Indiana this week and attack the Linux developer heartlands. Solaris has long been known as the really secure Unix variant that sucks when it comes to user friendliness.

Linux itself has long since got over the problems of difficult installation routines, you only have to look in the direction of Ubuntu on the desktop for proof of that. Sun has been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to address the user experience issue up until now. Things changed when Ian Murdock joined the company this year, exposing the cracks in the Solaris structure. Although it was Netscape pioneer Marc Andresson who made that ‘better Linux than Linux’ comment, Murdock seems to have taken it to heart and with Project Indiana looks set to try and make good on the promise.

Think of Project Indiana as being a GPLv3 licensed OpenSolaris distro, merging the best bits from Solaris and various Linux distros into a single user friendly Unix powerhouse. Maybe. Anything that lowers the barrier of entry into the Solaris world is good for Sun, or so they hope. That might not be the case though, because security when faced with vast corporate loading is what has sold Solaris to date. Trying to move the pitch from heavy duty secure workhorse to easy to install OS could alienate rather than attract potential users.

The …

Linspire and Microsoft in agreement over something? Although it sounds unlikely at first glance, that is exactly what is happening as the developer of the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems announces it will join Microsoft in its efforts to improve the ability of OpenOffice.org users to work with the Office Open XML format.

To this end, Linspire has confirmed that all future versions of Linspire will include Open XML bi-directional translators between ODF and Open XML.

It should not come as too much of a surprise, I guess, especially as both Novell and Xandros have already signed the bi-directional open source translation blood treaty with Microsoft.

What it means is that all future releases of Linspire and Freespire will include the bi-directional translators between ODF and Open XML, and users of both Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org will be able to share files with a lot less hassle while retaining format, formulas and style templates.

The Open XML format was standardized by Ecma International on December 7, 2006 and is currently under consideration for ratification by ISO/IEC JTC1. Open XML is the default format for the recently released Microsoft Office 2007. The OpenDocument (ODF) file format, which is an ISO-standardized, XML-based file format specification for office applications, is maintained by the open source community. The OpenDocument format ensures information saved in spreadsheets, documents and presentations is freely accessible to any OpenDocument-supporting application. OpenOffice.org currently support …

IBM has just announced the arrival of Blue Gene/P, the newest and fastest supercomputer around. How fast? Well Blue Gene/P just about triples the performance of Blue Gene/L, which currently holds the official title of the world’s fastest computer.

The IBM System Blue Gene/P Solution is designed to operate continuously at speeds exceeding one “petaflop” or one-quadrillion operations per second if you prefer. That is 100,000 times more powerful than an average home PC, and means that drug researchers could run simulated clinical trials on 27 million patients in one afternoon using just a fraction of the machine’s power. IBM claims it can process more operations in one second than the combined power of a stack of laptop computers nearly 1.5 miles high.

Not least because Blue Gene/P can be configured to reach speeds in excess of three petaflops.

With Blue Gene, the IBM design team has sidestepped two key constraints on state-of-the-art supercomputing, namely power usage and space requirements. It has been purpose-built to fit in smaller spaces and use less electricity compared to other commercially available supercomputer designs. The end result is a machine that is, according to IBM, “at least seven times more energy efficient than any other supercomputer.” The breakthrough Blue Gene design uses many small, low-power chips each connected through five specialized networks inside the system.

Four IBM (850 MHz) PowerPC® 450 processors are integrated on a single Blue Gene/P chip. Each chip is capable of 13.6 billion operations …

Mention mobile phone viruses and the chances are you will get one of two responses:

1. It is a money making exercise for security vendors who have created the mobile phone virus myth so they can sell protection nobody needs.
2. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

However, the arrest of a 28 year old man in Valencia, Spain puts a different perspective on things. He has been held on suspicion of creating and distributing more than 20 variants of the mobile phone Cabir and Commwarrior worms which target Symbian driven smartphones. When it comes to mobile phone security, Windows is not the bad guy for a change, Symbian is. Mind you, this is only because there are vastly more Symbian powered handsets than there are Windows ones at the moment.

Graham Cluley, Senior technology Consultant at security specialists Sophos told DaniWeb “Mobile phone viruses are not nearly as common as the malware that strikes Windows desktops on a regular basis, but they are just as illegal in their intent. Viruses are not harmless pranks; they cause real harm disrupting business and personal communications as well as destroying and stealing sensitive data.”

Surprisingly, a Sophos survey reveals that 64 percent of IT admins admit to having no mobile security solution in place to protect smartphones and PDAs, despite 81 percent of them agreeing that mobile malware will become a significant threat sometime in the future. Perhaps, in light of this arrest, that time is now?

According to a press release I have received from Wind River, a Device Software Optimisation (DSO) company, a Linux platform has been selected by Honeywell Aerospace for a space mission for the first time.

Wind River Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition, will be the underlying OS supporting the processing of science and experiment data onboard the NASA New Millennium Program Space Technology 8 (ST8) spacecraft. The ST8 mission is scheduled for launch in November 2009, with an expected duration of at least seven months consisting of two phases, including a one-month commissioning phase and a six-month experiment phase. The mission consists of four independent experiments, including the Dependable Multiprocessor on a common spacecraft bus being provided by Orbital Sciences Corporation. The Dependable Multiprocessor experiment will validate a computer system architectural approach that allows application flexibility by applying robust control of the high performance COTS cluster, enhanced software-based SEU (Single Event Upset) tolerance, and user-selectable redundancy only to the level required by the environment and the criticality of the task or computation.

Developing a Dependable Multiprocessor promises to be a game-changing technology that will create a new generation of smart spacecraft and robotics for future exploration missions conducted by NASA. Composed of a state-of-the-art commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based supercomputer architecture capable of incorporating both on-chip and FPGA-based algorithmic co-processors, Dependable Multiprocessor technology can autonomously and adaptively configure the level of fault tolerance applied to the COTS-based computer system in response to constantly changing …

As reported here last week, three security flaws had been discovered that impacted upon the 2.6.x Kernel. A NULL-pointer dereference within netfilter when handling SCTP connections with unknown chunk types that could be exploited to crash the kernel; a cpuset_task_read() function in /kernel/cpuset.c which had an underflow error that could potentially be exploited in order to read the kernel memory; and a problem whereby the kernel itself mishandled seeds for random number generation, potentially weakening application security for those programs relying upon secure random number generation.

Well according to the debian.org mailing list these have now been fixed with the release of numerous updates for Linux kernel 2.6.8 as detailed in Debian Security Advisory DSA 1304-1.

The latest update also fixes a number of other problems, such as the regression in the smbfs subsystem introduced in DSA-1233 causing symlinks to be interpreted as regular files.

Debian recommend that you upgrade your kernel package immediately and reboot the machine, and if you have built a custom kernel from the kernel source package that you rebuild to take advantage of the new fixes.

Just to help, the upgrade instructions are:

wget url (to fetch the file for you)
dpkg -i file.deb (to install the referenced file)

And for those of you using the apt-get package manager:

apt-get update (to update the internal database)
apt-get upgrade (to install corrected packages)

The concept of a soldier with a battery powered radio hiding in the bushes and reporting back to base for enemy troop position information is, other than in the movies, long gone. Heck, even the days of email and email attachments being sent via satellite modem to provide this kind of in-the-field data would appear to be numbered. Instead, it would seem, the US Army is maintaining an up to date SharePoint portal over satellite instead.

The US Army South has successfully deployed Corpora’s iOra Application Acceleration software alongside its Microsoft SharePoint platform to provide improved in-the-field access to operational information and collaboration with their main command post at Fort Sam, Houston. The network acceleration solution has enhanced the army’s ability to coordinate its humanitarian, theater security co-operation and anti terrorism operations in Southern and Central America according to a press release from Corpora that I received today.

The Army’s SharePoint deployment relies on this acceleration technology to provide soldiers with round-the-clock access to operational information wherever they are, sending each other links to pages they have created on SharePoint. This critical information can be more safely stored, kept more up to date and made more accessible to whoever needs it than it was when the military relied on that old technology of email.

Corpora cite an example of how this is enhancing the US Army south operations comes from their theater security co-operation exercises in remote areas of South America. The iOra technology provides …

Steve Jobs is always good for a surprise announcement, although usually the media has got an idea of what is about to be revealed. Not so at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco today, where the Apple CEO shocked everyone by announcing that the much loved Safari web browser client would be made available on the Windows platform. What’s more, it is being made available immediately and can be downloaded as a free public Beta here.

Apple says that Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, basing this claim upon industry standard iBench tests. Indeed, these tests would seem to suggest it can render web pages twice as quickly as Internet Explorer 7 and one and a half times as fast as Firefox 2.

Safari 3 features easy-to-manage bookmarks, effortless browsing with easy-to-organise tabs and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information. Other Safari features now available to Windows users include SnapBack, one-click access to an initial search query; resizable text fields; and private browsing to ensure that information about an individual’s browsing history isn’t stored.

“We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari” Steve Jobs told DaniWeb, continuing “hundreds of millions of Windows users already use iTunes, and we look forward to turning them on to Safari’s superior browsing experience too.”

Safari 3 supports all modern Internet standards so users …

According to postings at Kernel.org concerning a report by Vilmos Nebehaj which was consequently signed off by Linus Torvalds and Chris Wright, the Linux Kernel 2.6.x has multiple security vulnerabilities.

Well, to be precise, two vulnerabilities and what is described as a ‘weakness’ which are capable of being exploited by a malicious local user who could, under the right circumstances, reveal personal information as well as instigate a Denial of Service attack.

The three security flaws are as follows:

• A NULL-pointer dereference within netfilter when handling SCTP connections with unknown chunk types can be exploited to crash the kernel, hence the DoS attack vulnerability.
• The cpuset_task_read() function in /kernel/cpuset.c has an underflkow error which could potentially be exploited in order to read the kernel memory, hence the personal information disclosure vulnerability.
• A problem whereby the kernel itself mishandles seeds for random number generation, potentially weakening application security for those programs relying upon secure random number generation, which is described as a weakness although I am more inclined to lump it right into the whole vulnerability basket as it sure makes those applications so impacted rather vulnerable.

And the recommended solution would be? Yep, you guessed it, updating to Linux Kernel version 2.6.21.4

Websense has created a YouTube video here which reveals exactly how a ‘tubing’ attack works. What is tubing? Well according to Websense it is a new crimeware technique that attempts to dupe the recipient into watching a YouTube video clip that is not all it might seem.

While watching the video, what is actually happening behind the scenes is that you are being presented with a YouTube decoy and a Trojan horse known as YouTube04567 is downloaded on to your PC. The payload is, as is so often the case these days, an information stealing Trojan designed to grab personal ID data from your PC which is uploaded to an as yet undisclosed remote location.

Websense warn that although it has captured this code on the web, the chances are very high indeed that there are email and instant messaging lures lingering around in the wild for the URL in question. And, of course, who knows how many new YouTube video tubing decoys have been created or are waiting to be released onto the video hungry public?

The suspense is suspended and the mystery solved, Apple has revealed that the hugely hyped iPhone will go on sale in the US on June 29th. As for the cost that will depend upon the exact configuration, but the cheapest version will be $499.

As for networks you have a choice of one, the AT&T wireless division which used to go by the name of Cingular.

A raft of TV ads have been broadcast, showing the iPhone in all its glory and revealing various features. You can watch them online at Apple here.

Everyone wants to know what the next big thing is going to be, and if market analyst Datamonitor is to be believed the answer is mobile broadcast television. With the opportunity to combine two of the undeniably most popular and successful consumer products in history, namely TV and mobile telephones, Datamonitor predicts the number of mobile broadcast TV subscribers will grow from the 4.4 million there are today to an estimated 155.6 million by the end of 2012.

However the Datamonitor report “Opportunities in the mobile broadcast TV market, 2006 – 2012” does note that that although Mobile broadcast TV is continually highlighted as being the next big thing, there are also considerable hurdles that need to be overcome for this promise to be fulfilled.

“Currently there are about 4.4 million mobile broadcast TV subscribers globally and at that, split just between a handful of countries. This subscriber base will grow to 65.6 million in 2010 and more than double to an estimated 155.6 million by 2012 - a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66.2%,” Chris Khouri, associate media and broadcasting analyst with Datamonitor and author of the study told DaniWeb, continuing “However, consumer education, technological fragmentation and content adaptation will have to be addressed first before mass-adoption can take place.”

Datamonitor expects the Asia-Pacific region to have 76.3 million subscribers by 2012. Europe will have the second largest subscriber base with an estimated 42.7 million subscribers by 2012 with a CAGR of 102% …

Gentoo is the source of the advisory, sorry for any confusion.

Gentoo has issued a security advisory with a high impact rating affecting users of PHP <5.2.2.

Several vulnerabilities have been found in PHP, not least a huge number discovered by Stefan Esser during the infamous Month Of PHP Bugs (MOPB) including integer overflows in wbmp.c from the GD library and in the substr_compare() PHP 5 function.

There have also been reports of a buffer overflow in the make_http_soap_request() and in the user_filter_factory_create() functions as well as a buffer overflow in the bundled XMLRPC library. If that weren’t enough, the session_regenerate_id() and the array_user_key_compare() functions contain a double-free vulnerability. Oh, and let’s not forget the implementation errors in the Zend engine, in the mb_parse_str(), the unserialize() and the mail() functions and other elements.

The fact that remote attackers therefore have the potential ability to exploit these vulnerabilities in PHP applications which could, of course, lead to arbitrary code execution. And Denial of Service attacks. And scripted content execution within the context of an exploited site. And information leaks due to the bypassing of security.

And the workaround is? Err, it is non-existent actually. If you are a PHP 5 user then you really should make sure you are using the latest available version.

IT security and control firm Sophos is warning of an ongoing spam campaign which promises not only a trailer featuring, but also free tickets to see, the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End’ movie.

The warning signs are all there, the familiar skull-and-crossbones logo of the popular film franchise and the word ‘pirate’ should be enough to make you think twice. But apparently not, as users in Europe and North America have been taken in by the pirate ship full.

Rather than a trailer for the blockbuster movie starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, the email has a copy of the Troj/Yar-A Trojan horse attached. If pirate fans run the attached file they are shown a fake error message, and the Trojan horse downloads malicious code from the Internet while disabling anti-virus software.

"There is no film preview and there are no free tickets" Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, told DaniWeb. "The only thing that this email is trailing is an attack wave of malicious code against your PC. Once your computer is compromised, hackers will be able to steal information from you with the aim of identity theft and other crimes. Computer users who don't take care about what they run on their PC, and believe every email they are sent, could be heading for stormy water. If you want to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster book your ticket at the local cinema rather than clicking on a …

Sorry. I have been away from work for a few days. The press release does not mention pricing. Sorry. Again.

Sapphire Technology has announced a new addition to the HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics accelerator families scheduled for a July release, the completely passively cooled HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition. As fans of the Sapphire Ultimate Edition family will already be aware, these are renowned for not only being silent running, but also their enhanced performance and overclocking capabilities. Because of very low power consumption of these GPU’s a totally passive cooling solution can be used without impacting upon the class leading performance levels. The HD 2600 XT Ultimate features the latest unified shader architecture with 24 shader pipelines, a 128-bit memory bus and high speed GDDR3 memory.

Full specs for the HD 2600 XT Ultimate are:

• Engine Clock - 800 MHz
• Memory Speed – 1400 MHz
• Memory Configuration - 512 MB GDDR3
• Display Connectors - DVI-I + DVI-I + VIVO
• 2x Dual Link DVI
• PCI Express Interface
• Multi-Channel Audio (5.1 Surround) via HDMI Support

Also announced are the HD 2600 Pro with a similar architecture but using GDDR2 memory, and the HD 2400 XT / HD 2400 Pro which are both cost effective solutions featuring 8 unified shader pipelines and a 64-bit memory interface using GDDR3 and GDDR2 memory respectively.

Both of the HD 2600 and HD 2400 series’ also incorporate the latest ATI Avivo HD Video & Display Technology. An exciting new feature is the built in hardware UVD – a dedicated Unified Video Decoder that accelerates the decoding of …

Yesterday, in the UK, it was National Work From Home Day. So it was with perfect timing that Giritech and the conferencing services division of BT, published the results of “The Costs of Transport on the Environment – The Role of Teleworking in Reducing Carbon Emissions" report which was undertaken by Oxford University.

The study, which pulls together research from around the world, demonstrates conclusively that the reduction in commuting time resulting from people working at home will mean less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere - one of the gases that causes global warming. Not exactly earth shattering news to anyone with half a brain, let alone the combined brains of Oxford University boffins, it has to be said.

However, the research also shows that while more and more people want to work from home, the benefits of this trend are being undermined by poor co-operation by both Government and business over issues such as transport and the provision of IT.

“The research is clear: Working from home really can help reduce our carbon footprint as a country - if we manage it correctly,” Professor David Banister, one of the authors of the study, told DaniWeb. “Managing homeworking correctly will involve changes in behaviour. This would include providing secure and efficient technology to facilitate collaboration as well as properly managing heating at the employers end and the reduction of office space and heating costs at the employee’s end. If people work more than one day …

It seems that everyone and their uncle are doing a Linux deal at the moment, and the latest to hop into the same commercial bed are IBM and Red Hat. Today the companies have announced an initiative to encourage the dramatic growth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM System Z mainframes.

The main points to note are:

• The comprehensive programme will further assist companies in the evaluation, deployment and support of this joint platform. It was created in response to the growing adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on mainframes by governments and companies worldwide, who are taking advantage of the security, scalability and low operating costs of the joint platform

• The companies today are highlighting the security advantages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and System z. These include the superior physical security associated with a centralized mainframe server and storage installation, and the use of virtualization technologies

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is the first Linux operating system to ship with native support for the functionality necessary to meet Common Criteria for Trusted Operating Systems.

Here’s the press release in full:

May 9th, 2007 – IBM Corporation (NYSE:IBM) and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an initiative to encourage the dramatic growth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM System z mainframes. The comprehensive programme will further assist companies in the evaluation, deployment and support of this joint platform. It was …

According to the ViewSonic @Work @Risk Report millions of workers are suffering from chronic poor ‘desk health’ as part of a wider sick office syndrome epidemic. The survey, which looked specifically at British office workers, reveals that there is a clear link between poor ergonomics knowledge and an increase in symptoms such as headaches, eye fatigue and backache.

The study reveals that 46% of office workers spend six or more hours in front of their computer screens a day and the majority (51%) of these are not scheduling appropriate breaks according to ergonomic guidelines.

Around three quarters of workers report suffering from headaches (67%), eye fatigue (77%) and backache (71%). The incidence of physical symptoms increases markedly in line with lack of ergo-awareness. Work-induced stress and anxiety is also an issue for 78% of office workers.

Although most office workers say that ergonomic issues are important to them (75%), only a fifth have ever complained to their manager and asked for a better desk, chair, phone or screen, despite the high incidence of health issues. Indeed, a third admit not knowing where to start improving their desktop environment. The lack of knowledge is compounded by low levels of personal initiative; only 15% have tried to investigate best desktop policy or sought professional help, or spoken to friends or colleagues for ergonomic advice.

Mel Taylor, Vice President, Director of European Marketing, ViewSonic said: "The research shows that not only are we a workforce plagued by …

According to new research from Centennial Software removable devices are the single biggest threat to company data so far in 2007, yet four out of five businesses are failing to defend themselves. The research resulted from a survey undertaken at this year's Infosecurity Europe, and discovered that just 16 percent of those asked use software to manage the potential data leakage and network infection risks associated with removable devices. Almost half use no security controls whatsoever, while 27 percent rely purely on managerial discretion. But removable devices are seen as a bigger threat, and nominated by 38 percent of respondents as such, than malware on 22 percent or Web viruses with 23 per cent. The first time that removable devices have taken the top spot in the security threat stakes during Centennial surveys.

"The business world seems to be burying its head in the sand over the risks that removable devices pose. And this is almost akin to a masochistic tendency, particularly in a corporate environment," Matt Fisher, Centennial Vice President told DaniWeb. "Companies are aware how dangerous these devices are to their data security, yet they seem reluctant to implement practical solutions."

So it should come as no surprise that Walk-in Intellectual Property Poaching (WIPP) is becoming increasingly common. If people can simply walk in and remove data without proper constraints they are going to do it."In contrast with viruses and malware, data can be physically stolen using USBs, MP3 players and other removable devices." …

The comScore Media Metrix monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at top online properties for March 2007 has been released, and shows a change at the top of the rankings. Several key players in the social networking space experienced gains, as did those looking to both make and save money who flocked to lotto and coupon sites, while Coca-Cola’s “My Coke Rewards” promotion spurred a 40-percent increase to the Coca-Cola Company property, which saw nearly 5 million visitors in March.

“Shifts at the top of our Ad Focus ranking come at an interesting time with Google’s recent announcement that it would be acquiring Doubleclick,” Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix told DaniWeb, continuing “As advertising networks continue to compete for online ad dollars, there is sure to be increased attention on which ones are reaching the widest audience.”

When it comes to social networking and video sharing sites, the top gaining properties were Facebook.com which surged 25 percent, and eight spots in the Top 50 ranking, to nearly 21 million visitors and Xanga.com, which grew 60 percent versus February to 6 million visitors. Heavy Networks was the month’s top gaining property, up 100 percent to 6.8 million visitors, driven in large part by a popular video spoof featuring Pamela Anderson as a cartoon superhero, while traffic to video site Metacafe surged 40 percent to 5.6 million visitors

In the March Top 50 Properties Ranking, Yahoo! Sites remained at …

IBM has today announced the availability of an open beta version of its virtual Linux environment to enable x86 Linux applications to run without modification on POWER processor-based IBM System p servers. Designed to reduce power, cooling and space by consolidating x86 Linux workloads on System p servers, it will eventually be released as the roles off the tongue ‘IBM System p Application Virtual Environment (System p AVE).’

With a 31.5% global revenue share during 2006, IBM hopes to build on System p UNIX success and extend firmly into the Linux marketplace. Considering there are almost 2,800 applications that already run natively on Linux on System p servers, the chances are good that it will succeed. System p AVE will allow most x86 Linux binaries to run unmodified as well, which will expand the x86 workloads that can be moved to a System p server. Everyone wants to get more out of their investment in IT, and moving Linux workloads to virtual server environments that allow the consolidation of multiple servers onto a single platform is a great way of achieving that aim. But a systems approach that maximizes system resource utilization, manageability and flexibility as well as provides ‘no excuses’ reliability and scalability is needed.

“System p customers have told me that technology that may have been 'good enough' for deploying one x86 server at a time is not 'good enough' when consolidating over 300 x86 servers spanning eight racks onto one rack of more …

Just a week after Mozilla made the Release Candidate 1 version of the Firefox-alike open source email client available for download, comes the news that the final version is now here.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 brings lots of new features to the table, most notably:

• Message Tagging - Organize emails by assigning tags like ‘From Mom’ or ‘Weekend Projects’ to easily track and search for information. Users can choose from default tags, such as Important, Personal, To-Do, Later and Work, or create their own custom tags. Users can also add as many tags as they want to a message.
• Message History – Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation similar to Web browsing history navigation. Users can move backward and forward through their messages and easily browse through their message history.
• Search - Use the find-as-you-type pane to speed up searches within displayed messages and the quick search feature, which starts showing search results as soon as users start typing in search terms. Thunderbird 2 saves users time by allowing them to store searches as folders. Rerun saved searches by clicking on the saved search folder in the folder pane.
• Easy Access to Web Mail Services – Thunderbird 2 users can integrate and access popular Web mail services by simply entering their user names and passwords.
• Customization – Users can customize Thunderbird 2 with hundreds of free add-ons that change the look, feel and functionality of Thunderbird to suit their tastes. Users can also create their …

A newly published report by Infosecurity Europe reveals that out of 300 office workers interviewed at London railway stations and IT professionals at a computer show, an amazing 64 percent were prepared to give their passwords in exchange for a bar of chocolate and a smile. The survey also found that 67 percent thought that someone else in their organisation knew their CEO’s password with the most likely candidate being the secretary or PA. The survey was carried out to find out how easy it was to extract peoples work passwords using social engineering techniques with literally just the offer of a chocolate bar for taking part in a survey.

The survey found that it took a little more probing and a bit more coercion than the average office worker, but even the IT professional eventually succumbed to the questions of the attractive researcher who still managed to extract their passwords in exchange for a smile and a chocolate bar!

The researchers asked the delegates if they knew what the most common password is and then asked them what their password was. Only 22 percent of IT professionals revealed their password at this point compared to 40 percent of commuters, if at first they refused to give their password the researchers would then ask if it was based on a child, pet, football team, etc, and then suggest potential passwords by guessing the name of their child or team. By using this technique, a further 42 …

How small can a laser get? Good question, and according to the physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the answer is very small indeed, one single quantum dot small perhaps.

To put this into some perspective, a typical microdisk laser of the type currently used in experiments by NIST and Stanford Univeristy is constructed of layers of indium arsenide on top of gallium arsenide, the resulting etched out diskj being 1.8 micrometers across and containing an average of 130 quantum dot islands of indium arsenide in each one. The newly developed micrometer-sized solid-state lasers see a single quantum dot take the dominant role and when correctly tuned, NIST claims, can switch on at energies in the sub-microwatt range.

Ok, so it’s not an actual one quantum dot laser, not quite, but that one dot does effectively run the whole show. The disks are sized to create a “whispering gallery” effect in which infrared light at about 900 nanometers circulates around the disk’s rim. That resonant region contains about 60 quantum dots, and can act as a laser. It can be stimulated by using light at a non-resonant frequency to trigger emission of light. But the quantum dots are not all identical. Variations from one dot to another mean that their emission frequencies are slightly different, and also change slightly with temperature as they expand or contract. At any one time, the researchers report, at most one quantum dot—and quite possibly none—has its …

IT security and control firm Sophos is urging computer users once again to patch against a critical bug in how Microsoft Windows handles animated cursors (ANI files) as hackers exploit the problem by sending out emails related to professional party girl Paris Hilton and hardcore actress Jenna Jameson.

This latest attack is believed to be by the same group of hackers that last week spammed out scantily clad pictures of Britney Spears to exploit the Microsoft vulnerability. It follows news that Paris Hilton and Jenna Jameson were seen celebrating the latter's birthday party together at a trendy LA club last weekend.

The spammed email messages have subject lines such as "Hot pictures of paris hilton nude" and contain an embedded image not of the celebrity hotel heiress but of pornographic actress Jenna Jameson. When clicked on, the image links to a website containing the malicious Iffy-B Trojan horse. The Trojan horse in turn points to another piece of malware which tries to exploit the Microsoft vulnerability.

"The problem is that consumers and businesses may not yet have patched themselves against this vulnerability, and clicking on unsolicited emails like these could lead them to a nasty malware infection," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos told DaniWeb, continuing “Microsoft issued a patch for the problem last week, but determined hackers are still trying to lure computer users with promises of nude pictures and look set on taking advantage of the security flaw for some time to …

IBM has today announced a breakthrough chip-stacking technology in a manufacturing environment that paves the way for three-dimensional chips to extend Moore’s Law way beyond traditionally expected limits. The ‘through-silicon-vias’ technology allows different chip components to be packaged much closer together, resulting in faster, smaller and lower-powered systems. This breakthrough from IBM enables the move from horizontal 2-D chip layouts to 3-D chip stacking, which takes chips and memory devices that traditionally sit side- by-side on a silicon wafer and stacks them together on top of one another. The end result being a compact sandwich of components that dramatically reduces the size of the overall chip package and boosts the speed at which data flows among the functions on the chip.

“This breakthrough is a result of more than a decade of pioneering research at IBM,” Lisa Su, vice president Semiconductor Research and Development Center, IBM told DaniWeb, continuing “This allows us to move 3-D chips from the 'lab to the fab' across a range of applications.”

The new IBM method eliminates the need for long metal wires that connect today’s 2-D chips together, instead relying on through-silicon-vias, which are essentially vertical connections etched through the silicon wafer and filled with metal. These vias allow multiple chips to be stacked together, allowing greater amounts of information to be passed between the chips. The technique shortens the distance information on a chip needs to travel by 1000 times, and allows for the addition of up to 100 …

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) today announced the outcome of a jointly organized workshop in Bangkok, Thailand which addressed plans for the implementation and development of Next-Generation Networks (NGN) in the region.

With over 180 experts from 24 countries attending, including representatives of international organizations and the private sector, the forum was inaugurated by Mr Kraisorn Pornsutee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Royal Government of Thailand.

NGN is a catch phrase for the network infrastructure that will enable advanced new services offered by mobile and fixed network operators in the future, while continuing to support all existing services. This next-generation architecture will help leverage new technologies to dramatically reduce the cost of market entry, increase flexibility and accommodate seamlessly in a single multiservice network both voice and data.

The ITU/APT Workshop on NGN Planning made some key recommendations:

Regulators and policy makers to provide clear and consistent enabling environments for NGN and be involved in the NGN planning, implementation and educational process.

Develop standardized planning tools to assist developing countries to migrate from traditional telecommunication networks to NGN.

Regulators to ensure that service providers meet agreed quality of service standards equivalent to traditional circuit switched voice networks.

NGN Requirements to include security levels that meet the needs of end users and provide confidence in the use of applications and services in NGN-compliant …

I tried it with 'Wibble Wibble Ftang' as my name and it suggested Malcom j.

As has already been hinted at, it is a bit of random name generating nonsense. But one that borders on the racist it seems to me. Especially with Huggy Bear coming up so often.