1,440 Topics

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Some school kids in Louisiana got a surprise last Monday when sitting at their computers: the floating head of Barack Obama on-screen. They were amongst the first to be infected with the Obama-head worm which spreads via USB memory sticks courtesy of the Windows Autorun feature which is causing widespread …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

The Mayor of London, the totally eccentric Boris Johnson, has written a column in a national newspaper in which he champions fellow loon [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2863.html"]Gary McKinnon[/URL], the [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20017/53/"]NASA UFO hacker[/URL]. Currently busy fighting extradition to the USA on the grounds that, essentially, to do so would not be fair to someone …

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Everyone knows that Linus Torvalds '[URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3825.html"]is a Linux[/URL]' but did you know he is also a born-again gnome? An Australian interview with the [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20046/53/"]often outspoken[/URL] creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, has revealed that he is a gnome once more. Well, OK, that he is a GNOME user once …

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Remember when China officially declared war on Internet pornography and set a target of just six months to purge the Web of sexually explicit images, stories and AV clips? No, well [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1407.html"]read this[/URL] to refresh your memory. While you are at it, make a note of the date: that story …

Member Avatar for John A
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Apparently it would appear that the Tomb raider franchise is not as healthy as it used to be. The days of movie spin-offs with Angelina Jolie would look like being long gone (was it really 2001 that the movie came out?) Indeed, publisher Eidos even had to renegotiate debt covenants …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Hey, it is not really such a silly question is it? After all, we now have the new President of the United States of America giving regular video addresses on YouTube which comes as no real surprise given his apparent belief in Google Government. In the UK there have been …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

How many passwords do you have to remember? The common answer is either too many and I sometimes forget them, or alternatively just the one as I use it for everything. Both options are bad in terms of security. Which is where password management systems come in, and these can …

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Security experts [URL="http://www.mcafee.com"]McAfee[/URL] confirm what we already know: when the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3023.html"]economy starts to hurt[/URL], the purveyors of malware jump in to increase the pain. With the revelation of it's 2009 threat predictions, McAfee looks ahead to a dismal year of continuing cyberthreats. Like I say, with no hint of surprise …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

With Inauguration Day finally upon us, mobile phone operators across the US are preparing for what could be a bigger test of capacity than the traditional biggest strain on the mobile network, New Year's Eve. Hopefully the months of hard work, involving adding capacity and prepping networks to cope with …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

What do you do when you poo? It is the kind of question you might expect your ten year old son to ask his ten year old mates in the school playground. However, it seems that Microsoft has been asking pretty much the same thing in order to generate some …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

If you are a Windows user and have not installed the [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx"]MS08-067 patch[/URL] from last October, then perhaps you had better pull your finger out. Of course, it could well be too late, and you could well be one of the nine million or so users who have already fallen …

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He has gone from dead to having cancer to suffering from hormone problems in the space of a few short weeks, now the Apple CEO is taking six months off work to recover. So just how sick is Steve Jobs? Last year the mention of the word cancer in the …

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It looks ever more likely that 2009 could indeed be the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3781.html"]year of the scam[/URL]. Symantec owned MessageLabs is warning that cases of advance fee [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1198.html"]419 fraud[/URL], along with other financial scams, have spiked as we enter 2009. From December 22nd 2008, through into January 2009, the number of scams …

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If you work in IT support you pretty much learn to expect the unexpected, but nobody could have seen some of these little gems, just [URL="http://www.pandalabs.com"]revealed[/URL] by the Panda Security tech support team, coming. For example, how about the customer who wondered if Panda antivirus software could be blowing the …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

My youngest daughter got a Nintendo DS for xmas, complete with a bunch of cutesy games which seem to involve patting animals of various kinds. It is, of course, pink. Which has kind of summed up the DS, a handheld games console for the family which is all cuddly and …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

The [URL="http://www.e-victims.org"]E-Victims Organisation[/URL], a non-for-profit UK community interest company set up to benefit Internet users by assisting the victims of e-crime after the event, has released a top 10 Internet Scams of 2009 predictions list. Indeed, E-Victims.Org goes as far as to suggest that with new scams appearing almost daily, …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Games are dangerous, corrupting, evil things. After all we have been told that playing GTA IV is more harmful to kids than [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19975/532/"]watching porn and drinking beer[/URL], and how the Nintendo Wii can [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22425/532/"]cause serious injury[/URL] to players and observers alike. Now, it appears, the truth is emerging. A brilliantly …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Cast your minds back a couple of years to 2007 and as far as hacking was concerned there was only really one big story, and I do mean big. The biggest reported case of cyber-criminals using hacking skill to steal something in the region of 40 million credit card details. …

Member Avatar for kanaku
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According to the latest figures to be released, it would seem that as far as gamers in the UK are concerned Nintendo is the bees knees grabbing nearly half the market. The [URL="http://www.elspa.com/"]ELSPA[/URL] numbers show that the [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22425/532/"]Wii[/URL] managed to increase game software sales by 112 percent over the previous …

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Barmy Steve Ballmer, [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20745/53/"]sometime monkey dancer[/URL] and full time Microsoft top dog now that Bill Gates has gone, has surprised us all by informing the world that January 13th will not be [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3614.html"]Windows 7 day[/URL] as predicted. The good news is that Windows 7 day will be on the 9th …

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Asus might have [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3637.html"]lost the netbook war[/URL] to Acer, but it is fighting back as far as the keyboard PC wars are concerned. With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still a day away in Vegas, the geeky and gadgetry announcements are coming thick and fast. We've already got a taster …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

According to numerous [URL="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5429969.ece"]reports[/URL] that is exactly what is being suggested. If the axe does fall, then it will be the first time that the company has had to make any really major cuts in the workforce during it's 32 year history. Of course, there has been no official confirmation …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Sophos, the security outfit, has issued a [URL="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/01/04/phishing-scam"]warning[/URL] for users of Twitter to be on the lookout for an evolving phishing attack which could steal personal data if they are not very careful. Already thousands of Twitterers are thought to have received messages from their friends which invite them to …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

According to the [URL="http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8"]latest figures[/URL] just published by Net Applications, a specialist Internet measurement company, Apple has seen Mac OS X grab a record gain taking it dangerously close to a 10 percent market share for the first time since the company started tracking OS usage. In stark contrast, however, …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Ever wondered what the most popular passwords being used are? Ever wondered what the crappiest, most insecure passwords being used are? Hey, you are in luck as it seems the two lists are exactly the same. The What's My Pass 'Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time' [URL="http://www.whatsmypass.com/?p=415"]list[/URL] makes for …

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Although most people do not pass their Microsoft Certified Professional exams until their twenties, maybe late teens if they are really good, some make the geek grade a little earlier. Indeed, one girl from Pakistan managed to do just that at the tender age of ten. However, now M. Lavinashree …

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[URL="http://www.messagelabs.com"]MessageLabs[/URL] Intelligence data reveals that, in an announcement that will probably come as no shock to anyone who actually uses the Internet, the average [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2459.html"]spam[/URL] level for the year managed to hit 81.2 percent. Perhaps a little more surprisingly, especially given the number of security vendor [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3419.html"]warnings[/URL] throughout 2008, [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18997/53/"]malware …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

If you ever wondered just what it takes to look for aliens, then prepare to get informed. Sure, you might imagine it doesn't take much more than hooking up a load of computers to form a gigantic zombie network which, for a change, does not use spare CPU cycles to …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Although you might think that your personal information, including your financial data, is hugely valuable to the cyber-criminal fraternity the truth would appear to be somewhat different. Security vendor [URL="http://www.trendmicro.co.uk"]Trend Micro[/URL] has published research which shows that at this time of the year, as we fast approach the climax to …

Member Avatar for sblsoftware
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Generally speaking, it takes quite a few years of studying and hard graft before someone gets to wear the wig and robes of a barrister in the British legal system. Unless, that is, you buy them on eBay. Surprisingly, that's precisely what one man did and ended up defending a …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

It really should come as no surprise that Apple apparently does not consider the iPhone to be a phone at all, but rather what John Geleynse, Apple Director of Technology Evangelism [URL="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12/12/apple_declares_iphone_a_challenger_to_nintendo_ds.html"]calls[/URL] "a console experience." That's what Geleynse told an iPhone Tech Talk developer event in San Jose, putting the …

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You cannot have missed the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3629.html"]story[/URL] this week about how a picture of a naked girl on an album cover led to Wikipedia being blacklisted by the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK. That blacklisting, which in turn prevented people from being able to edit Wikipedia posts depending upon their …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Asus pretty much invented the whole netbook concept as we understand it today with the Eee PC, and for the longest time it sat pretty at the top of the netbook sales charts. The more astute reader might have noticed the past tense here, because Asus no longer rules the …

Member Avatar for dannyblaze
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It had to happen, and it has. Ever since the Internet Watch Foundation, a British charitable organisation that acts as the official watchdog to track and report illegal content online, in particular child pornography, introduced a blacklist we all knew it would get controversial one day. That day has come. …

Member Avatar for AussieWebmaster
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Member Avatar for happygeek

The iPhone App Store has been open for just five months, since July 11th to be precise. Yet in this time, so an Apple advert running in the New York Times informs us, no less than 300 million applications have been downloaded. Now those are two hugely important numbers, 300 …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

An alpha version of [URL="http://www.opera.com/browser/next/"]Opera 10[/URL], the latest in a long line of web browser clients from the Norwegian-based developers, has been made available to download. Anyone remember Opera? It used to be the next big thing, until the next big thing came along in the shape of Firefox that …

Member Avatar for MattEvans
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Member Avatar for happygeek

We already know quite a lot about Windows 7: it has a distinct [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2008/09/21/windows-7-leaking-like-crazy/"]Office 2007 feel to the UI[/URL], it is likely to feature some kind of [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21193/53/"]instant on fast booting process[/URL], and the OS itself should [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2008/11/15/windows-7-scales-to-256-processors/"]scale to some 256 processors[/URL]. The launch of an official '[URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2998.html"]Engineering Windows 7[/URL]' …

Member Avatar for jbennet
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Member Avatar for happygeek

Microsoft has kept it fairly quiet, no press releases or launch trumpeting, but it now looks like the Xbox 360 has been upgraded with the new Jasper motherboard. The new Xbox 360 has been spotted in the wild by the eagle eyed [URL="http://www.xbox-scene.com"]Xbox Scene[/URL] chaps and as a result we …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

The United States holds many titles, some of them causes for joy while others are reason for shame. The latter category has long included 'King of Spam' being the country from which the majority of the spam on the planet originates. However, thanks to the [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2008/11/20/spammers-are-in-a-world-of-hurt/"]closure of just one spam …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

It has been a long time coming, but Google has at last approached the Wiki concept for search. With the announcement of the SearchWiki tool, Google now has something that lets users have a fair degree of control over results and adds sharing into the search mix. Control such as …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

When cornered by their wife, men sometimes say the most ridiculous things in order to wiggle out of trouble. However, blaming your iPhone for giving the impression you are having an affair has to rate as one of the best excuses ever. According to a [URL="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1786497"]posting[/URL] in the Apple discussion …

Member Avatar for happygeek
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Member Avatar for happygeek

Was anyone else really looking forward to being able to use the much hyped Google Voice Search feature for the iPhone? I mean, you could not move for news about the thing in the blogosphere last week, even the New York Times ran with a story about it and there …

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Facebook is many [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21230/53/"]different[/URL] things to many [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20059/53/"]different[/URL] people, but surely a social networking should be just that, social. Sure, there will always the odd group with a less than pleasant agenda, although usually these take the humour route rather than being downright nasty. So while an anti-Microsoft group might …

Member Avatar for brianslade20
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Barack Obama is the very definition of an Internet politico-geek, not least as I just invented the term. However, there is no denying that the President-Elect of the US has understood the power of the Internet, the power of social networking, better than any other political candidate for high office. …

Member Avatar for Thinka
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The Google Press office today brought to my attention an unusual and totally unexpected bit of Google trivia: the modelling of real-world phenomena using patterns in search to [URL="http://www.google.org/flutrends"]map the spread of influenza[/URL] across the US. Google is proving to be far more than just a search engine these days. …

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According to the fourth [URL="http://www.arbornetworks.com/report"]Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report[/URL] from Arbor Networks, published today, malicious attacks on networks are continuing to rise at an alarming rate. While that is no great surprise, the fact that during 2008 Distributed Denial of Service attacks have peaked at 40 Gbps most certainly is. Arbor's …

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Member Avatar for happygeek

The Pirate Bay is a website which claims to be the biggest BitTorrent tracker on the planet. So big, it seems, that it is even considering pitching for an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. Certainly, putting politics and legal arguments aside for a moment, there is no …

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A Firefox developer has [URL="http://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2008-11-04/dont-leave-trace-private-browsing-firefox"]revealed[/URL] that pre-release versions of Firefox 3.1 have been updated with a new feature. Officially called 'Private Browsing' it will be more familiar to many as the much talked about Porn Mode that [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20303/53/"]caused such controversy[/URL] when Microsoft announced it was being included within the forthcoming …

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We all knew it was going to happen, and that there was nothing we could do to stop it. In fact, it was only a matter of time until the polls had closed and Barack Obama had officially become the President-elect of the United States of America. It is not …

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According to the results of the first annual Green IT survey, IT departments in the UK are guilty of greenwashing with only 20 percent of businesses actually measuring the IT-related energy spend. Extreme Networks and Data Integration, behind the survey, revealed that analysis of the needs of UK public and …

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The End.