Topics by happygeek

There has [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4259.html"]certainly been enough speculation[/URL] about when the Windows 7 Release Candidate code would actually be made available. Right here on DaniWeb [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4182.html"]we confidently predicted[/URL] that the big day would be May 5th following a slip up, or more probably a deliberate leak for marketing purposes, on the Microsoft …

Would you steal sensitive data from your employer if the price was right? According to a new survey conducted in the financial heart of London by [URL="http://www.infosec.co.uk"]Infosecurity Europe[/URL] reveals that 37 percent of those asked would do just that. While 63 percent remain honest, the cost of corrupting the remainder …

According to [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/hackers-us-fighter-jet-strike"]reports[/URL], the Pentagon has been subject to a successful hacking attack with details of the F35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter and the most expensive jet fighter ever, the target. Apparently, design data including that of the $300 billion jet project electronics system, have …

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 …

It is usually the Apple adverts which get the positive column inches both online and off, even when they go [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21257/53/"]straight for the Vista jugular[/URL] perhaps because they do so with no small dose of humour. Microsoft has done less well in garnering media support for its campaigns. Who can …

Will you be moving to Windows 7 during the next year, or will Vista disappointment, economic doom and gloom or compatibility concerns keep you away like 84 percent of business folks surveyed have said? The [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23795/53/"]Windows 7 Release Candidate[/URL] is nearly with us, complete with plenty of [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23084/1231/"]reported security problems[/URL], …

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 …

Following the introduction of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, better known as IPRED, which became law on Wednesday last week, the amount of Internet traffic has plummeted by as much as 40 percent according to the Netnod Internet Exchange which measures such things. Sweden has perhaps been best known, …

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 …

As the Chief Security Officer at telco giant AT&T, Edward Amoroso knows a thing or two about cybercrime. Which is why he has been giving testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation specifically assessing how vulnerable the US is on the cybersecurity front and proposing …

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 …

I knew it was going to happen, you knew it was going to happen, [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19244/53/"]everyone knew[/URL] that Street View would cause a privacy stink when it eventually launched in the UK. Everyone except Google it would appear. Although it is not saying how many images have been removed from the …

Well that didn't take long. No sooner had Microsoft officially launched [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2606.html"]Internet Explorer 8[/URL] to the waiting masses and talked up how new security features will ensure hackers will find it more difficult to exploit the new browser that guess what? Yep, a hacker exploits the new browser. During his …

For once, it seems, Apple has managed to keep a pretty tight lid on what is actually happening at a big launch do. But as we countdown the hours until tonight's long awaited iPhone 3.0 event, it is possible to make a couple of educated guesses. For start there 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 …

Microsoft, the company behind the Xbox games console, has announced the results of some new research which suggests that video games are [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19975/532/"]not as bad for kids[/URL] as some would have us believe. However, the real surprise has been that kids want their parents to keep a closer eye on …

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] …

With the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3625.html"]success[/URL] of the iPhone App Store and Microsoft wanting a [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20349/53/"]piece of the action[/URL] it was only a matter of time before RIM got into the [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21310/53/"]online application storefront[/URL] game. With the BlackBerry App World online store launching later this month, [URL="http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/application_storefront"]submissions are now being accepted[/URL] from developers …

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 …

First the good news: the GTA IV downloadable content expansion pack 'The Lost and Damned' has broken the world record for downloaded content, assuming such a record exists. Microsoft is not putting any numbers to the claim, but it is [URL="http://gamerscoreblog.com/press/archive/2009/02/27/SunDevil.aspx"]shouting[/URL] from the roof tops that the GTA IV DLC …

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 …

Alex Kochis is the Director of Product Marketing and Management in the 'Genuine Windows' bit of Microsoft. Which means he knows a thing or two about the 'product activation experience' when it comes to Windows 7. Specifically, he knows a thing or two about product activation for the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3766.html"]Windows 7 …

It is about time, but Twitter has now announced that it is rolling out a real time search function for users. Unfortunately the 'Search and Trends' feature is currently only available for a "limited set of accounts" [URL="http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/testing-more-integrated-search.html"]according to[/URL] Twitter founder Biz Stone who adds that most people "will not …

The tabloid newspapers are full of it, some here in the UK even have the [URL="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2255989.ece"]Google Ocean image[/URL] on the front page. Hardly surprising when you consider that it would appear the Google mapping app has discovered the mythical underwater city of Atlantis. The image, taken from the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3919.html"]recently launched[/URL] …

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 …

Is it good news from Sun Microsystems, if you are in the market for a generic communication protocol between a key manager and an encrypting device? Sun has announced what it claims to be the [URL="http://opensolaris.org/os/project/kmsagenttoolkit/"]release[/URL] of the first such protocol into an open source community as part of the …

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 …

Sometimes you kind of know a gadget is going to fail, simply because it launches at the wrong time. A great example would be the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2373.html"]Microsoft SPOT watch[/URL] which was essentially an expensive and ungainly data-casting wristwatch that could show very small amounts of news and weather data while you …

Today is [URL="http://www.saferinternet.org"]Safer Internet Day[/URL] 2009, apparently. Every year since 2004, one day in February has been designated as Safer Internet Day in order to promote a safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones. It is aimed primarily at children and young people across the world. …

Are you an Android or an iPhone? Maybe you are undecided, which could be he best position to be in as it seems that the smartphone market is set to be spoilt for choice in 2009. It would appear that Apple is set to release no less than three new …

So Google has announced a new service that effectively lets you track where your friends are at any time via Google Maps and mobile phones. [URL="http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html"]Google Latitude[/URL] is either a mobile real time social networking work of genius, or a big brother work of the devil depending upon your viewpoint. …

Regular readers will know that I am pretty much [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3412.html"]in love with everything to do with Google Earth[/URL] although the same cannot be said about Google itself. However, even the stains left by the search giant [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3900.html"]blacklisting the entire Internet[/URL] last weekend or it trying to [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20508/53/"]grab all your rights …

That is the somewhat surprising number that Juniper Research reckons smartphone sales will hit by 2013, despite the impact of the global financial crisis on the mobile handset market. In fact, so says a new report from Juniper Research, the smartphone sector sales could potentially sustain the performance of market …

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 …

Sony does not seem to have had a very happy Xmas if the various reports floating around the web are to be believed. Indeed, the third quarter financials which includes the holiday season show that the flagship PS3 console managed to sell some 440,000 units less than for the same …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …