5,261 Posted Topics
 | The Intel Open Source Technology Center has officially released open source graphics drivers for the 965 Express chipset in a move that while not exactly unprecedented is, nonetheless, a most welcome display of commitment to the provision of free software drivers. Moreover, it is a display of that commitment in … |
| | I love IT wars, always have. Back in the day, I was a columnist for a couple of Amiga computer magazines and more than happy to throw my opinion around concerning just why an Atari was such rubbish by comparison. Things have moved on since then, but also stayed much …  |
| | I am a writer by profession. Over the last two decades, I have been fortunate enough to have seen more than twenty of my books make it into print. Some have even sold enough copies for me to earn royalties over and above my advance. With publishing house marketing budgets … |
| | Rockstar Games is no stranger to controversy, after all the Grand Theft Auto series of hugely successful video games revolve around the concept of robbing and killing your way to victory. But with the confirmation that it will release the long delayed ‘Bully’ in October, originally slated for a PS2 …  |
| | More bad news from the Las Vegas Black Hat Convention, this time for the blogging community. Most RSS reader software is vulnerable to malicious JavaScript insertion attacks, and web based readers are not immune either. With typical JavaScript based attacks targeting passwords and personal data, it is something that should … |
| | No, it is not a trick question and, yes, your security could be compromised by the fact that you trust your printer almost implicitly. At the Black Hat Security conference this week, Brendan O’Connor proved just how insecure embedded software can be, by exploiting a vulnerability affecting Xerox printers and … |
| | If your neighbour was borrowing your wireless Internet connection, without your permission, and you wanted to teach them a lesson, what would you do? [URL="http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html"]Pete [/URL]decided to have some fun with a fairly simple Squid proxy and turned their online life upside down. Literally. What Pete did was split the … |
| | According to [URL="http://www.spreadfirefox.com"]Spread Firefox[/URL] the Internet Explorer alternative has been downloaded 200 million times. Which sounds impressive enough, until you factor in the small matter of downloads not being the same thing as actual users? Yet while Spread Firefox admits as much and reminds us that the 200 million figure … |
| | How can so many people be so wrong all at the same time? That is the question I am left asking myself following the 410 to 15 vote in favor of the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (also known as HR5319 or DOPA.) The answer is, of course, that … |
| | Hehe, that touched a nerve here as I run a spyware reviews lab here in the UK for PC Pro magazine and am responsible for reviewing anti-spyware software both in standalone and labs/group test format. One of my real bug bears, because it is so wrong and becuase it results … |
| | How much money does Microsoft need? As much as possible would appear to be the answer, considering that it has announced a $1.50 fee to download the Office 2007 Beta as from August 2nd. Claiming a requirement to cover server costs as a result of the 3 million people that … |
| | In what could be an important week for anyone with the slightest interest in online chat, Microsoft and Yahoo began a limited public Beta which sees users of the two IM systems being able to talk to each other for the first time. My inside man tells me that the … |
| | Microsoft's Cybersecurity and Systems Management Research Group have created an automated tool, as part of the larger [URL="http://research.microsoft.com/SearchDefender/"]Strider Search Defende[/URL]r project, to combat sources of comment spam that is the scourge of blogs across the web. Because sites can get high legitimate search rankings while at the same time serving … |
 | I wouldn't get too excited about it, personally. See my [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry619.html"]blog posting[/URL] for my take on it all... |
| | Who would have thunked it, the Sony PS3 has run into yet more trouble before it has even made it into the shops. Well I would have for a start, the project has been plagued with bad planning, bad marketing and bad luck since the get go. The decision to … |
| | Surveys, I often find, manage to arrive at the most unexpected of conclusions. This could be down to the questions that are asked being worded in such a way to solicit a politically or commercially acceptable result. It could be down to the fact that people do not tell the …  |
| | It all started late in 1998 when the European Commission received a complaint from Sun Microsystems arguing that Microsoft had refused, perhaps understandably, to provide the information they had requested that would enable the Solaris OS to interoperate with Windows PCs. In less than 2 years the EU had charged … |
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| | American chip maker [URL="http://www.freescale.com"]Freescale Semiconductor[/URL] has today announced the development of a magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) chip which can maintain data using magnetic properties and not the traditional electrical charge methodology. Think of it in terms of storing data more like a hard drive, albeit a very small one indeed, …  |
| | Italy may have won the soccer [URL="http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/"]World Cup[/URL] in a thrilling final yesterday, but they did not even make it through to the group matches as far as the Malware World Cup is concerned. [URL="http://www.webroot.com"]Webroot Software Inc[/URL]. has just released details of global average malware infection rates during June 2006 … |
| | Although the Firefox Version 2.0 Beta is not actually released until Tuesday 11th, you can download the feature complete Windows public release candidate 1 build right now from the [URL="http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/bonecho-beta1-candidates/rc1/firefox-2.0b1.en-US.win32.installer.exe"]Mozilla FTP server[/URL]. Linux and Mac versions are also available, early reports suggesting that it works just fine with Intel based … |
| | Good question, but the answer may not be as straightforward as the announcement this week by Microsoft, and the ongoing online media coverage, suggests. The impression given is that Microsoft is supporting the Open Document Format in Office 2007 by sponsoring an open source based translator. This will take documents … |
| | Are users becoming more wary of link clicking in email? Are they getting savvy to the tricks of the email phisher? Certainly there is some evidence that the security message is starting to get through to the masses, but not nearly quickly enough to turn the phishing tide in my … |
| | [URL="http://metasploit.blogspot.com/"]H.D.Moore[/URL], he of Metasploit toolkit fame, has vowed to publish details of one browser vulnerability every day during July. Already he has been true to his word with exploit information relating to Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari but nothing that would help any would be attacker run unauthorized code on … |
| | The latest Merriam-Webster's dictionary update has ruffled a few feathers online. Not for the inclusion of Manga (noun: a Japanese comic book or graphic novel) nor ringtone (noun: the sound made by a cell phone to signal an incoming call) or even supersize (transitive verb: to increase considerably the size, … |
| | VIA Technologies has long since been known for a small is beautiful philosophy, and there is no reason to start doubting now if the [URL="http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/v-series/vx700/"]VX700 [/URL]chipset is anything to go by. Created specifically for Ultra Mobile PCs, the UMPC Origami form factor getting publicity and hyperbole in equal measure from … |
| | If Mac enthusiasts groaned when Apple announced it was switching to Intel chips, watch out for full-scale hissy fits as they discover that OS X 10.4.7 contacts Cupertino servers on a regular basis. Just how similar to Microsoft does Apple want to be? You would have thought that the furor … |
| | Have you ever wondered if the Internet is having a good day, if it is happy or sad, or maybe feeling a little depressed? Well, probably not, but thanks to a team of information access researchers from Amsterdam University you might be able to find out. [URL="http://ilps.science.uva.nl/MoodViews/"]MoodViews [/URL]work by tapping … |
| | As from July 11th, some 70 million users of the Windows OS will be left stranded without official support, and that includes no more security updates. By withdrawing support for its Windows 98, Windows 98 SE and Windows ME platforms, Microsoft is effectively leaving around 12.5 percent of Windows users … |
| | Just when [URL="http://www.microsoft.com"]Microsoft [/URL]had hoped things could not get any worse after the whole Windows Genuine Advantage phones home scandal, things have. Much worse, as the newly discovered Cuebot-K worm disguises itself as something called Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification. Intended as an anti-piracy measure, WGA has in fact been … |
| | There are not many things, it has to be said, that a Linux user would covet of his Windows using neighbor. Skype is quite possibly one of them though, but not for much longer. The first meaningful development for the Linux Skype client in almost a year has arrived in … |
| | The cost-per-click model for Google ads could soon be complimented by a cost-per-action one, if the testing for this click fraud busting technology proves successful. The concept is simple enough: advertisers would only get charged when a particular action is performed rather than simply clicking on the thing. Already a … |
| | The world of malware could be turned upon its head if the Blue Pill virtualization based rootkit due to be demonstrated at the [URL="http://syscan.org"]SyScan 06[/URL] Conference, Singapore, in a couple of weeks proves as undetectable as the security researcher who has created it claims. [URL="http://invisiblethings.org/"]Joanna Rutkowska[/URL] is a stealth malware … |
| | It’s not exactly a major advance in web browser client technology, but the release of [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx"]Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 [/URL]today is a move closer to the release version, scheduled for sometime later this year. What’s changed from the Beta 2 release? Er, good question, and one that had me … |
| | At [URL="http://www.supercomp.de/"]ISC2006[/URL], the 21st International Supercomputer Conference, in Dresden, Germany today an interesting announcement was made by [URL="http://www.tyan.com"]Tyan Computer[/URL]: the launch of the Personal Supercomputer. Not quite a desktop machine, it is being marketed as a deskside unit, the [URL="http://www.tyan.com/products/html/clusterservers.html"]Typhoon PSC[/URL] certainly promises to pack quite a punch. The 8 … |
| | Last week, via the official [URL="http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/"]MSDN WinFS blog[/URL] rather than the usual Microsoft PR channels, it was announced that WinFS is effectively dead. There was much talk of the great many technical innovations the WinFS project has created and how those innovations may find their way into a broader Data …  |
| | According to just released research from Michigan based [URL="http://www.onlymyemail.com"]OnlyMyEmail [/URL]Inc it would appear that Sender ID is ineffective as an anti-spam solution. Despite the high profile, and frankly somewhat aggressive PR campaign by [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologies/senderid/default.mspx"]Microsoft[/URL], the 60 day statistical analysis certainly suggests that it isn’t the Holy Grail of anti-spam that … |
| | What started off as a show of political defiance, with thousands of file-sharing downloader’s joining forces and planning to field 140 candidates in the September Swedish elections, has spread to the US. The trigger in Sweden was the May 31st police raid on a community of a million BitTorrent users … |
| | [URL="http://www.microsoft.com"]Microsoft [/URL]has, at last, shown its hand when it comes to answering the online services challenge from the likes of [URL="http://www.google.com"]Google [/URL]and [URL="http://www.yahoo.com"]Yahoo![/URL]; both of whom currently trounce the Seattle OS champions in both audience reach and earnings in the online sphere. [URL="http://www.live.com"]Windows Live[/URL] is moving out of Beta at … |
| | The reports that are popping up all over the web that [URL="http://www.ibm.com"]IBM[/URL], along with [URL="http://www.gatech.edu"]Georgia Tech[/URL], has [URL="http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=1019"]demonstrated [/URL]the world’s fastest ever chip are, sadly, not quite as exciting as you might at first think. Not least because this wasn’t a chip at all, but rather a transistor, and even … |
| | I’ve just returned from the [URL="http://www.symantec.com"]Symantec [/URL]Threat Response Center in Dublin, Ireland where a select handful of European security software reviewers witnessed the first public demonstration of Norton Confidential: the Symantec response to what it refers to as the CrimeWare explosion. Symantec acquired anti-phishing specialist [URL="http://www.wholesecurity.com"]WholeSecurity [/URL]towards the end of … |
| | The growing acceptance of IM in the workplace has, eventually, made an impression on [URL="http://www.aol.com"]AOL [/URL]which has started a public test of AIM Pro PE (Professional Edition). Although not expected to actually launch until the autumn, one has to wonder how much weight the consumer oriented AOL brand carries in … |
| | [URL="http://www.nintendo.com"]Nintendo[/URL] has been granted a broad stroke patent covering a “messaging service for video game systems with buddy list that displays game being played.” [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7056217.PN.&OS=PN/7056217&RS=PN/7056217"]Patent number 7056217[/URL] was originally filed way back in 2000, a whole year before the [URL="http://www.xbox.com"]Xbox [/URL]was launched, and two years before [URL="http://www.xbox.com/live"]Xbox Live[/URL] became a … |
| | The triple-gate transistor is not new, almost exactly three years ago on June 12th 2003 at the [URL="http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20030612tech.htm"]Symposia of VLSI Technology and Circuits in Kyoto[/URL], Japan, [URL="http://www.intel.com"]Intel [/URL]was heralding it as the future of chip design. However, the fact that at the same [URL="http://www.vlsisymposium.org/index.html"]Symposium this week in Hawaii[/URL], Intel reveals … |
| | As the battle to become the next [URL="http://www.microsoft.com"]Microsoft [/URL]heats up, this week I’ve been struck by the online maneuvering from both [URL="http://www.ebay.com"]eBay [/URL]and [URL="http://www.google.com"]Google[/URL]. The auction company is looking to tread on Google toes with its own contextual advertising service, named using devilish cunning ‘AdContext.’ Google, meanwhile, is keeping very … |
| | Get ready for [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/security"]Patch Tuesday[/URL]. July 13th will be the biggest update for 18 months, with no less than 12 security bulletins: 9 for the Windows OS, 2 for Office and 1 for Exchange. Of these, both Windows and Office updates include one flagged as critical, the highest Microsoft threat …  |
| | Last month it was revealed that the [URL="http://www.nsa.gov"]National Security Agency[/URL] had been logging telephone calls since 9/11. This month, the right to privacy debate is set to ignite even further after a report in the [URL="http://www.newscientisttech.com"]New Scientist[/URL] claims that the NSA is funding research into the harvesting of personal information … |
| | On May 23rd I predicted that Microsoft would start the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) within a few weeks, and I have been proven right. Microsoft today announced public availability of Vista Beta 2, the same build (5384) as was made available to developers at WinHEC. If you don't … |
| | Network design can certainly be innovative, and to those of a technical persuasion even considered a thing of beauty. But is it art? That was the question posed by a handful of senior Microsoft folk, the editor of an IT magazine and an Emeritus Professor at an art gallery in … |
| | Reports of the death of PDF support within Office 2007 and Vista are not only presumptuous but wrong. Despite the high profile publicity given to a spat between Adobe and Microsoft over the ‘Save as PDF’ function seen in the [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx?showIntro=n"]Office 2007 Beta[/URL], there is no doubting that users will … |
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