Topics by happygeek

The bad guys of the IT business are always looking for the most effective ways to infect the innocent Internet user, and increasingly that means turning to commonly used web browser plug-ins such as Flash or PDF readers. A couple of years ago we were [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1537.html"]reporting critical vulnerabilities[/URL] for all …

I hope I am not the only person who has occasionally thought that his mobile phone bears more than a passing resemblance to something straight out of Star Trek. Not being a Trekkie myself I cannot say whether it is a communicator or one of those handheld medical scanners, a …

Virgin Media has released the results of research carried out into just how much the British actually understand the Internet, and those results show that on the whole the nation is pretty much baffled by broadband. The study, which quizzed more than 3000 internet users, discovered that broadband jargon confuses …

May 5th should prove to be an interesting day for tech fans, as it would appear that both the much hyped Windows 7 operating system and the HTC Magic Android mobile phone will be launched to the waiting public. Neowin [URL="http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/18/windows-7-rc-coming-to-msdntechnet-soon-public-may-5"]spotted[/URL] that a Microsoft Partners [URL="https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40084742"]web page[/URL] (now replaced with …

This looks like it could get very interesting, very quickly. The online auction outfit, eBay, seems to be in the process of having something of a corporate clearance sale. There were stories circulating a couple of weeks back that [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24377/1231/"]Skype could be sold off[/URL], possibly back to the original owners, …

It might seem like something of an odd question, unless your idea of a good night in is a box of popcorn and a copy of some dodgy DVD featuring a Captain Jack lookalike doing unmentionable things to his crew. Yet the answer is that these two things, the illegal …

A [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=aa6e0660-dc24-4930-affd-e33572ccb91f&displaylang=en"]Microsoft security report[/URL] has 'revealed' that some 97 percent of the emails travelling across the Internet are actually unwanted spam. Well duh, like I didn't realise it was such a big problem. Actually, I didn't, to be fair. Mainly because just about every other security report I have read …

It has not exactly been the best of weekends for [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/04/03/google-to-buy-twitter/"]Twitter[/URL], and for those whose tweeting has been hijacked by not one but two worms it could easily be considered the worst of times. It all started when people noticed that a lot of their followers seemed to be recommending …

It is official, Britain has gone Twitter mad. No really, totally insane in fact. First there was the [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7962912.stm"]story[/URL], which I am assured is not some badly timed April Fool gag, that reveals the government is contemplating adding Twitter skills to the primary school curriculum while at the same time …

It seems, at long last, that Google has added some semantic thinking into the search mix. Ori Allon, the Technical Lead with the Google Search Quality Team, and Google Snippets Team Engineer Ken Wilder, have [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/two-new-improvements-to-google-results.html"]confirmed[/URL] the roll out of the improvement to Google search. With immediate effect, Google is …

Sexting is one of those words you might not have heard of if you are over a certain age. That age being 18 I would imagine. Sexting can best be defined as sending naked photos of yourself using your mobile phone to another phone or a social networking site. As …

Botnets are, without any doubt, a huge and growing problem. The technology news feeds are bursting to the seams with stories about them: how [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2838.html"]botnets boost click-fraud rates[/URL], how [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2838.html"]botnets control sex spam zombies[/URL], how the cyber-criminals are [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23383/1231/"]building the first mobile botnet[/URL] and even how some botnet builders are …

Stephen Wolfram is a British physicist perhaps best known for his work in creating the computational software Mathematica. That could all soon be forgotten if his Wolfram Alpha computational data engine proves to be the Google killer that some are suggesting. After all, it claims to be able to answer …

That's what Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart is claiming as part of a federal lawsuit by the Illinois lawman. The lawsuit is seeking a ban on one part of Craigslist, namely the Erotic Services section, which is accused of acting as a clearing house for prostitution. According to [URL="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5856408.ece"]The Times[/URL] …

Having already been accused of [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23321/1231/"]killing common sense[/URL] with some bizarre App Store [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/02/10/apple-bans-bouncing-barack-and-trouserless-bill/"]listing decisions[/URL], now it seems that an Apple sans Steve Jobs could be treading the path towards total market madness. Apple is displaying all the signs of losing the plot: announcing a raft of new desktops just …

If you believe the results of the first annual [URL="http://www.fiascoawards.com/index.php"]Fiasco Awards[/URL] then the answer would appear to be an unequivocal yes considering that Vista got a rather staggering 86 percent of the vote for the worst performing IT product of the year. But then appearances can often be deceiving, and …

Steven Sinofsky, the Senior Vice President for the Microsoft Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, in an attempt to quell a beta tester rebellion over a perceived lack of feedback concerning bug reporting has made an astonishing confession: Windows 7 has at least 2000 bugs. Sinofsky [URL="http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx"]states[/URL] that more than …

Dell is taking the netbook market by the horns, it would seem. First it [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23391/1231/"]refuses[/URL] to accept that the Psion netbook trademark is a valid one, and now it bucks the market trend for not being able to sell Linux powered netbooks. While the netbook market [URL="http://www.happynews.com/news/2242009/netbooks%20xp%20windows%20later.htm"]seems[/URL] to be moving …

The Pirate Bay is, without doubt, a huge thorn in the side of the music and movies business. As the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3479.html"]worlds largest bittorrent tracker[/URL] with more than 3 million users and well over 20 million peers it constantly flips the bird at The Powers That Be. Even the threat of …

Although it is all too easy to think of Queen Elizabeth II, as being something of an old fart the truth is that Her Madge would appear to have one eye firmly on the future. Indeed, the thoroughly modern monarch can already be found broadcasting [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3846.html"]just like the Pope[/URL] on …

Look, I am a British father of four. Two of my kids have been through the teenage years, so I know all too well just what a love affair the UK has with text messaging. As does my bank manager. So it really should not come as any surprise to …

Did anyone else get just a wee zing of excitement at 11.30pm (GMT) last night? I will admit to raising my glass and downing a large Jim Beam Black in order to celebrate the fact that UNIX Time had hit 123 billion seconds. OK, so I am a geek, what …

Us geeks have known it for ever, but the secret is now out: computer science rocks! That would seem to be the conclusion that a panel of international experts, admittedly they are experts in Computer Science and Informatics (CS&I), has arrived at. The [URL="http://www.rae.ac.uk/"]Research Assessment Exercise 2008[/URL] decided that the …

Well that was, err, interesting. For the best part of an hour this morning (Saturday 31st Jan) Google search effectively broke. In fact, it blacklisted the entire Internet so that any search just returned a screen warning users that whatever site they had searched for "may harm your computer" and …

It looks like Encyclopaedia Britannica, for hundreds of years the first name you thought of when the word 'encyclopaedia' was mentioned until Wikipedia came along and kicked sand in its face, is about to change. Sure, EB has changed rather a lot since it first saw the light of day …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …