Posts by newsguy

If you are in the market for a new Apple computer, you might want to wait a few days. It would appear that new super thin iMacs, MacBooks and even a cheaper Mac Mini are on the way real soon.

According to AppleInsider a raft of advertisements were published ahead of time, in error, by the Netherlands Apple Store online.

The Google Adsense adverts were spotted on Google.nl but when eager shoppers clicked the links they arrived at the Apple Store only to discover the goods were not actually available. And what goods. The advertising would appear to confirm many online reports over the last few months that Apple is about to launch thinner polycarbonate MacBook, am ultra-thin series of iMacs and a speed increased but price decreased Mac Mini.

AppleInsider expects them to be "accompanied by redesigns of the company's Mighty Mouse and Apple Remote, as well as aluminum wireless keyboards."

The online grapevine is suggesting that the new product line could be announced before the end of this week.

It seems that Google searches on terms that are related to iPhone SMS information are being used to return results that direct unsuspecting users to rogue AV sites. According to the Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network blog malicious URLs related to Apple iPhone SMS/MMS searches are ranking as high as result number six. Examples of the kind of searches that are being poisoned include "iphone how to send multiple chats over sms" amongst others.

Websense researchers have tracked the infection trail should a user click on a link controlled by the attackers using this particular rogue antivirus coupled to SEO poisoning scheme. It appears that they will be taken on the usual runaround of 302 redirects until they land on a scareware site that does the old 'run into a room shouting fire' trick and then try and sell you a fire extinguisher. Although in this case it is displaying a warning that your computer is infected with malware and then offering to let you buy and download fake antivirus software in order to clear up the non-existent infection.

Websense concludes that "The use of Blackhat SEO leading to Rogue AV will only increase in the upcoming year. This scare tactic has proved to be a very successful method of social-engineering users into installing software onto their computers and tricking them into paying for it".

According to the British government organisation which helps UK-based companies to succeed in the wider global economy, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), it is currently helping some 76 UK companies pitch for business with the European particle physics laboratory, CERN. Apparently, CERN spent a massive £110 million ($175.75 million) on such supply contracts last year.

UKTI is working with the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to bring senior procurement officials to the UK who are looking to fulfil contracts in areas such as IT, mechanical engineering and electronics. The UK companies will be meeting with CERN officials at two roadshows, the first of which is to be held at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire today while the second will be tomorrow at the STFC Daresbury Research Laboratory in Cheshire.

Sir Andrew Cahn, UK Trade & Investment Chief Executive says "Working with CERN is not only a feather in the cap for a British company but also an excellent business opportunity. Firms which meet the highest scientific standards required by this facility win not only business but also a world-class endorsement of their innovation and quality."

John Womersley, Director of Science Programmes at STFC, added: "This is a fantastic opportunity for UK businesses to be involved in one of the world’s most exciting scientific projects, and for the UK to reap some of the benefits of the major scientific investment made by the Science & Technology Facilities Council in CERN."

UK firms …

According to the 2009 Web Application Security Report from NTA Monitor, 90% of all web applications have at least one medium risk vulnerability and 27% have at least one high risk vulnerability. Apparently the most common vulnerabilities are those which involve SQL injection, cross-site scripting and cross-request forgery. One data security specialist told DaniWeb that not only should this come as no real surprise, but nor should the fact that the problem is steadily getting worse instead of better.

Brian Contos is the Chief Risk Strategist at Imperva, and he points out that the high risk category percentage is up from 17% last year, while the medium risk number has risen from 78% a year back. "Although this comes as no surprise to us" Contos says "it is an appalling indictment on the software audit and control operations in most companies. With NTA spotting an average of 13 vulnerabilities per test, it's clear that IT departments really do need to pull their socks up in terms of testing and auditing of their software development processes."

Indeed, according to Contos, NTA Monitor's report proves what he has been saying for some time: few organisations have the in-house resources to perform regular software testing and updating a clearly-stated set of application security policies. Worse, even fewer do as NTA Monitor suggests and include security service level agreements into their contracts with Internet or managed service providers.

Maybe some of the recently projected increase in security budgets for …

They say it ain't over until the fat lady sings, well it looks like this particular Opera story is far from over folks no matter what some might tell you. Perhaps the most famous Norwegian export since the Vikings, Opera the web browser has certainly lost favour with the technology press. Once upon a time Opera was the big threat to Microsoft Internet Explorer, it was the only alternative browser client that anyone who was anyone would talk about. Then along came Mozilla Firefox and everything changed, pretty much overnight. Today, Opera struggles to get column inches ahead of even upstarts such as Google's Chrome.

You would be forgiven for thinking, then, that the fat lady has well and truly been singing as far as this web browser is concerned. But no, quite apart from the phenomenal success the cut-down mobile version has enjoyed within the mobile phone market, the full-sized original is not only still around but still kicking ass.

The latest incarnation, Opera 10 with Turbo (whoever thinks of these names should be taken out back and hit with a stick, by the way) has been downloaded a whopping 10 million times in just the first week of release.

Opera now reckons it has more than 40 million active desktop users of it's browser family, to which you can add tens of millions others browsing on Opera products for mobile phones, game devices and even televisions.

"While we …

Symantec has detected a new Trojan which targets Skype users in order to monitor and record conversations made using the Internet telephony service. Apparently the source code for this particular Trojan, called Pesky Spy, is already being touted around the usual places where the bad guys can pick up such things.

It would appear to work by using the Windows API hooks that are intended for audio applications, such as Skype. The audio processes are monitored, calls recorded as relatively small MP3 files, and transferred quickly to anywhere on the Internet before the victim even knows their calls are being tapped. In fact, before the conversation even hits Skype.

Symantec explains that "Because the Trojan listens in the data traveling between the Skype process and the audio device, it gathers the audio independently of any application-specific protocols or encryption applied by Skype when it passes voice data at the network level. Essentially, it sits below these security measures, recording the audio at the Windows level—before outbound audio from the microphone gets to Skype and after incoming audio leaves Skype and reaches the speakers."

Skype is said to be aware of the Trojan, and is advising that users ensure their anti-virus and firewalls are up to date and operating properly.

Continuing on its charm offensive, the music industry is apparently not satisfied with the $675,000 fine for sharing 30 songs imposed on Joel Tenenbaum or the $1.92 million Jammie Thomas-Rasset was hit with for illegally downloading 24 tunes. Now it is going after the lyrics pirates.

The what? Well, exactly. But apparently three music publishers have filed copyright infringement suites against a couple of sites which display song lyrics so you can sing along while the music plays. According to an article in Billboard the two businesses concerned, Liveuniverse Inc and Motive Force LLC, have been accused of "exploiting unlicensed lyrics for profit through the operation of four web sites."

The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) accuses the businesses and their owners of engaging in willful copyright infringement on a vast scale. A press release explaining the action says "These sites are profiting on the backs of songwriters. It is unfortunate that copyright holders must so frequently divert energies to protect their rights to license and distribute their works. However, the demand for music prompts a seemingly endless stream of illegal business models."

The NMPA argues that music fans are the losers when free lyrics are posted online, and made available with iPhone apps for example when music is playing, because licensed businesses cannot prosper in the face of unlicensed competition. But some fans have been making it clear by posting to various forums online that they think just the opposite, with applications and websites …

I am, it appears, a lot more average than I hoped. Well, at least when it comes to the world of computer gaming. A new study reveals, amongst other things, that the profile of the average gamer looks a lot less like the hyperactive, cola drinking teen obsessed with kicking alien ass. In fact, it reckons, your average gamer looks a lot more like me: 35 and fed up.

Not that I am a perfect match, I will admit, as I don't consider myself to be overly aggressive (your average gamer is) nor introverted (I'm more of an Andrew WK 'Party Hard' type of guy) or even particularly overweight, so there is hope for me yet to escape the bondage of being average after all.

But then again it turns out that not only is the study based on data from 2006, but the original survey carried out in 2006 was restricted to just 552 people who lived in the Seattle, Washington. Which leaves me wondering just how representative of your average gamer the report really is. Mind you, it also concludes that playing video games is bad for your health and that many gamers show multiple signs of addiction. Nothing new in that opinion, of course, people have been telling us that gaming is bad for you for years. But there is also nothing new in this report that makes me take that particular opinion any the more seriously either, so I'll continue …

Sony Computer Entertainment America has filed a patent application, number 20090195392, which could lead to a PlayStation controller that knows when you are happy, sad or just plain angry.

The patent application is officially for a 'laugh detector and system and method for tracking an emotional response to a media presentation' has an abstract which reads "Information in the form of emotional responses to a media presentation may be passively collected, for example by a microphone and/or a camera. This information may be tied to metadata at a time reference level in the media presentation and used to examine the content of the media presentation to assess a quality of, or user emotional response to, the content and/or to project the information onto a demographic. Passive collection of emotional responses may be used to add emotion as an element of speech or facial expression detection, to make use of such information, for example to judge the quality of content or to judge the nature of various individuals for future content that is to be provided to them or to those similarly situated demographically. Thus, the invention asks and answers such questions as: What makes people happy? What makes them laugh? What do they find interesting? Boring? Exciting?"

Is it just me, or is anyone else having some difficulty in contemplating exactly how this technology, assuming it even works, could be used to enhance the video gaming experience? It appears that a camera and microphone would be …

I love a good patent story, I love my Nintendo Wii and I love bouncy cushions. However, it is a rare thing to be able to write a news story which covers all three. Yet it would appear that Nintendo has, indeed, filed a European patent for a bouncy cushion for the Wii. The actual patent refers to an inflatable air cushion or other seat, and comes complete with a special pocket for your Wii Remote in order to detect your movements and a Nunchuk can be used as reins. Did I mention that this particular bouncy cushion doubles up as a horseback riding or vehicle driving simulation device? Actually, it seems the bouncy cushion can be many different things as the patent also talks of using the Nunchuk as a lasso, sword or even for raising a balance hand in bucking bronco or bull riding. I quite like the bit where Nintendo talks about the cushion simulating elephants or dolphins, or how about dragons and giant eagles. You've got to love the imagination of these guys. There's even talk of it being a magic carpet controller...

Safari 4.0.3 is out now and available for download from Apple, for both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.

While there are the usual claims of making things more stable when using third party plugins and in particular for handling the HTML 5 video tag, it is with regards to security strengthening and bug squishing that the real interest lies.

So with the latest update Apple says it has fixed issues which impacted upon users logging in to the iWork.com document sharing service, an Apple service embarrassingly enough and I should have said prevented users logging on to be precise. Other bugs trampled underfoot include an odd retro effect one which could make some content online display not in colour but in a grey scale rendering instead.

Apple calls them security fixes, I say they are simply more bug fixes by another name. Whatever the semantics of the situation, Apple has patched an EXIF data flaw which could lead to a remote code execution on the Windows platform, the same flaw which had already been resolved for Mac users incidentally. What else, about the only thing of note I can see is the beefing up of floating point processing code to prevent buffer overflow exploits.

According to a new Gartner survey, despite companies driving down overall IT budgets this year things are looking good for global software spending in 2010. Well, I say good, but perhaps I should say a teensy weensy little bit better than this year. Gartner reckons that organisations surveyed indicated that software budgets will be rising in 2010 by an average of, cue drum roll, er 1.53 percent.

By region, 30 percent of companies in Asia/Pacific, 28 percent in North America and 25 per cent in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) said they expected their 2010 IT budget to increase. Overall, North America is still expecting software spending to decline 2.06 per cent, and EMEA is only slightly positive at 0.45 per cent for 2010 compared with 2009. Software budgets in Latin America will rise 2.54 per cent, and in Asia/Pacific, software budgets will increase 4.34 per cent, showing a very positive trend in increasing their software spending in 2010.

"Software vendors should continue to build, fund and invest in software sales and marketing programmes, even during tight market conditions to maintain customers and expand revenue opportunities," said Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner. "A market downturn is a disrupter that creates great marketing and sales opportunities for organisations prepared to take advantage of the right products, marketing programs and funding."