Posts by happygeek

There are not too many times when one gets to connect the former Hollywood action hero and current Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the shrine to geekdom that is the UK Museum of Computing. So when one comes up you really do have to grab it and run. The connection being a famous Schwarzenegger quote. No, not "Gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman" or even "It's simple, if it jiggles, it's fat." I was thinking more of that classic Terminator line "I'll be back."

It was a little under a year ago that the Museum of Computing, the first such museum in the UK dedicated to the history of computers and computing, announced it was shutting up shop and effectively putting computer history into storage. The museum was launched back in 2003 and had managed to collect 2500 software items, 2000 hardware exhibits of which some 85 percent have been restored to full working order, 1500 books and manuals, and all of this on a shoestring budget of public donations. Something had to snap eventually, and it turned out to be the closure of the Oakfield Campus of the University of Bath where the museum was housed. I was particularly saddened by the closure, as one of my own prized possessions was exhibited at the museum: a pristine and limited edition gold-plated Sinclair Sovereign calculator from the seventies. True geeks can see a photo of it here.

MosaicFuneral: It is not my accusation, but rather comes from someone claiming to be a member of 4Chan who told the BBC they were responsible. The comment from Anonwinrar in this thread would seem to confirm this.

As for "WGAF" the answer is most parents of young kids who could have got exposed to hardcore porn disguised as kids content I would imagine.

And finally, suggesting that a news story is not covered in case of some kind of retaliation is not something that, as a journalist, I have any time for.

Right, so you did not aim these porn videos at kids you just used tags you knew kids would be searching for. Very mature.

And how do you explain having porn clips which start off with kid friendly content that then turns into sexually explicit content.

Ah, I see, that's where your "ultimate freedom of speech" claim comes in I guess. I suppose you would use the same argument to defend child porn then, after all it is just freedom of speech right?

<sigh>

Just how sick do you have to be to upload hundreds of porn videos, disguised as videos suitable for kids, to the most popular of video sharing sites? And how sick do you have to be to do so under the impression it is either funny or somehow exposing a YouTube shortcoming? I would suggest, in the light of the 'Porn Day' attack which hit YouTube yesterday, very sick indeed.

If this stunt was, indeed, intended to highlight a failing in the YouTube adult content filtering system then the people behind it could have done that without resorting to the tactics they did. They could have been mature and sensible about it, but instead opted to demonstrate more immaturity than can be found at the annual dumbass convention.

You see what happened was a whole load of video clips got uploaded to YouTube which purported to feature Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers or other content which would appeal primarily to children. Many of the video clips apparently did start off with kid's video content, one assumes in order to circumvent any automatic adult filtering process, before proceeding to display sexually explicit acts featuring groups of adults.

Can you imagine being a parent of young kids and having to deal with the fallout of such an experience? Sure, you might argue that it is the responsibility of the parent to ensure that their kids are not viewing inappropriate material. You might argue that it is the responsibility …

Don't forget that Wolfram Alpha thinks the population of Wales is just 5956 instead of nearly 3 million.

Where would we be without the Global Positioning System? Well, without GPS I probably would not be at this hotel nice and early, waiting for a meeting to start. Forget the idiots who end up driving on train tracks or toppling over cliffs, for some of us SatNav has become not a car gadget but an essential tool for business life. Despite SatNav manufacturers sometimes getting things very wrong indeed, the honest truth is that without GPS I would, quite frankly, be paddling up a smelly dark brown creek without a canoe.

Which is why I was a little worried to hear that the US Government is a tad concerned that GPS as we know it could start turning pear-shaped from 2011 onwards. The GPS satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, the system is another of those awesome military inventions that somehow found a route into everyday civilian life. The US Air Force has been looking after the maintenance of the GPS network for the a couple of decades, since early on in the 1990's in fact.

Now the US Government Accountability Office has warned that a lack of proper investment, not least when it comes to replacing old satellites with new ones, means the world is facing that most unwanted and feared of things: GPS FAIL.

The GAO report to Congress states that it is "uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to …

I am not a great fan of online translation services, or at least not the free variety which almost invariably end up making some huge gaffs. However, Google obviously likes the idea as it has been providing just such a tool for a while now in the shape of Google Translate. Today it has announced that the technology will be integrated into Gmail as an experimental feature.

This will, the nice lady in the Google Press Office tells me, enable you "to conduct entire conversations in multiple languages, with each of you reading the messages in whatever language you choose."

Think of it as a step towards totally automatic email translation between 41 global languages, because that is what Google is doing. Or, put another way, translating between 41 languages works out to some 1640 different language pairs on offer. That is, so I am reliably informed, full coverage of the languages used by no less than 98 percent of Internet users.

Trouble is, I am left thinking that all this means for me is that Gmail will now very kindly translate all my spam into English. After all, it is only spammers who ever send me foreign language email, and much of it ends up arriving at my Gmail address.

Strange but true, usually the best of enemies it would seem that Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are in full agreement over something for a change. What is more, they are working together in order to find a solution as well.

According to Horacio Gutierrez, the Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, the two are ganging up to voice concern regarding the 'Principles of the Law of Software Contracts' that has been drafted by the American Law Institute. Microsoft and the Linux Foundation have sent a joint letter to the ALI which asks for more time for interested parties to comment.

Gutierrez says "While the Principles reflect a lot of hard work and thought by the ALI, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation believe that certain provisions do not reflect existing law and could disrupt the well-functioning software market for businesses and consumers, as well as create uncertainty for software developers."

On the fact that Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are working together on this one, Gutierrez insists it is not remarkable given that a wide range of issues impact upon all software developers. "Our industry is diverse and sometimes contentious, but if nothing else unites us it is that we all believe in the power of software" Gutierrez says, concluding "I hope that this represents just one of many opportunities to collaborate with the Linux Foundation and others going forward. We have a lot more we can …

.

There is something of a media fuss going on over here in the UK thanks to the fact that Ivy Bean is using Twitter. No, she is not some soap star or a topless glamour model and does not have a famous footballer as a boyfriend. In fact her claim to fame is quite a simple one: she is the older person on Twitter.

The clue is in her Twitter username, @IvyBean104. Yes, Ivy is 104 and now she is Twittering. This should come as no great surprise, after all a couple of years ago she was the 102 year old Facebook Frisbee queen.

So far her Tweets have included such pearls of wisdom as "Deal or no deal in 4hrs" and "just had breakfast now chatting to my friend mabel." However, I should not complain seeing as my own (@happygeek) recent Tweets have included such things as "MPs are taking money that has been squeezed out of dinner ladies." What is more, 104 year old Ivy is kicking my ass as far as followers are concerned as well. I have under 400, she has picked up 3000 in just a couple of days!

The silver surfing bug appears to be contagious as The Telegraph reports a number of other residents at the Hillside Manor old folks home in Bradford are also getting online. The home Residence Manager, Pat Wright, says that four have "signed up for 'computer-college’ while …

It is certainly clever, from the perspective of making a protest while pretending to be complying with the legal process I guess.

?

It has not been the best of days for Google. First there were the reports about Gumblar, a Google SERPs manipulation that is growing at an unprecedented rate. And now it seems that porn has been thrown into the Google mix, or at least into the Google Gadgets mix.

I was first alerted to the problem by a thread which appeared the official Google AdSense support forums which revealed that the main Google Gadget Directory page included not one, but two, explicit sex related Gadgets. One is called Akrosex Sex Videos and the other Beautiful Naked Women Pics. You could not exactly say that these Gadgets were hiding their true colours under deliberately inoffensive names, but then the icon images for both were obviously sexual in nature as well.

Whereas Apple is filtering out anything vaguely offensive from the App Store, it would appear that Google has fallen asleep on the job as far as screening offensive material from the Gadget Directory. Oddly, early reports showed that the sites behind the Gadgets also had AdSense adverts on them but these were quickly removed. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the Google Gadget Directory. At the time of writing, more than a day after the Gadgets were first reported as being shown, they remain in full view. Both Gadgets have full nudity and sexually explicit photographs in violation of the terms and conditions of Google Gadgets.

Recently Google has hit the headlines with concerns over privacy courtesy of Street View mapping, plus allegations of trademark infringements with the Android open source mobile phone OS. The latest headlines, though, look like returning to the heart of Google: the search engine.

Google SERPs malware manipulation has hit new heights with the discovery that a series of website compromises know collectively as Gumblar has now infected more than 1,500 sites. Gumblar is growing at an alarming rate, by some 80 percent in the last week alone which pretty much eclipses the growth rate of any previously known Google SERPs manipulation scheme within the same kind of time frame.

Gumblar can grow so rapidly because of a number of rather unique characteristics which, when combined, makes traditional detection methodologies ineffective to say the least. Essentially, whenever you visit a Gumblar compromised site you are at risk. That risk might be from being susceptible to seeing fake search engine results when you go on to use the Google search engine afterwards, which will then forcibly redirect you to an 'imposter site' which in turn could scrape your personal data, including credit card details and the like, leading to identity theft and other fraudulent activity. One such activity being the theft of FTP credentials which can lead to any site that you manage also falling victim to the Gumblar compromise in turn. Of course, it should be pointed out that the injection and redirection both occur …

Microsoft has made a double whammy of Windows 7 update announcements. The first concerns a hotfix for a bug that could "cause some application failures on the English version of Windows 7 Release Candidate 32-bit Ultimate" while the second brings news of the arrival of as many as 10 'fake' updates which "will not deliver any new features or fixes."

There has already been some concern over potential security problems with Windows 7, and consternation at how the 'free trial period' will be ended which some have described as being mental, so such mixed messages are bound to be met with much interest. But there is a simple explanation for the apparent confusion.

The first hotfix comes because, according to Microsoft itself, the English version of Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) 32-bit Ultimate has a folder created as the root of the system drive (%SystemDrive%) missing important entries in the security descriptor. "One effect of this problem" Microsoft says "is that standard users such as non-administrators cannot perform all operations to subfolders that are created directly under the root." Which means that applications referencing folders under the root might not install or uninstall successfully and operations or applications that reference them could fail. It goes on to explain that if a folder is created under the system drive root from an elevated command prompt then it won't inherit the correct permission from the root meaning specific operations such as deletion of …

Kaspersky Lab has successfully patented yet another bit of security technology. This time it is a new heuristic analysis technology which allows security ratings to be assigned to software based entirely upon behaviour patterns during emulation. Is this something to get excited about? Well, yes, if you look beyond the marketing spin and focus on what Kaspersky is actually doing here. The point being that with existing methods there are no 100 percent guarantees that new malicious programs can be detected, a typical chicken and egg situation which would require new technologies to detect and block potential new threats to be incorporated into the security solution. Kaspersky Lab reckons the new heuristic analysis method, which was developed by Nikolay Grebennikov, Oleg Zaitsev, Alexey Monastyrsky and Mikhail Pavlyushik, based on a system of rules can accurately assign a security rating to different processes. Using a constantly expanding system of rules, and ensuring that the most popular operations used by malicious programs are properly indicated (access to different parts of the registry, access to the Internet etc) the technology will express each such operation as a percentage to reflect a potential security risk level. When the operation is actually executed, the cumulative potential security rating of a process will increase and so as the rating grows this means different access restrictions to certain resources are introduced. Hostile activity by malicious programs can therefore be prevented at the outset by blocking access to the resources it needs to execute such activity …

With the Windows 7 release code out there and available for download right now, and free to use until 2010 for good measure, the last thing Microsoft will want to hear is bad news about potential security risks for users of the new flagship OS. But that's exactly what researchers over at security outfit F-Secure is delivering.

The Helsinki-based F-Secure reckons that a well known and long-lambasted problem that has existed in Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Vista has not been fixed. That problem is Explorer hiding extensions for known file types. F-Secure claims that virus writers have long used this feature in order to trick people into thinking executables are simple document files and the like. Double naming virus.exe to virus.txt.exe would result in Windows hiding the .exe part and leaving the unsuspecting user seeing what looks like a .txt file instead of the actual executable, aided and abetted by the bad guys changing the icon inside the executable to seal the deal.

F-Secure tried the age old trick using Windows 7 and, oh dear, you can probably guess the rest.

"Bottom line: We still fail to see why Windows insists on hiding the last extension in the filename. It's just misleading" says F-Secure.

Microsoft has admitted messing up with Windows 7 security in the past, but the chances of it doing the same with this potential risk are pretty slim I would imagine. After …

According to the latest report from The NPD Group, US consumer sales of the BlackBerry Curve have outstripped those of the Apple iPhone in the first quarter of 2009. It says that an aggressive buy-one-get-one-free promotion from Verizon Wireless has helped in no little part to push the Curve into first place and make it the best-selling consumer smartphone in the US so far this year.

NPD says that RIM’s consumer smartphone market share increased 15 percent to nearly 50 percent of the smartphone market in Q1 2009 versus the prior quarter, while the Apple (and for that matter Palm) share dropped by 10 percent.

But the good news for RIM does not stop there, taking consumer sales during the first quarter in the United States into account, it has three out of the top five smartphones:

1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
2. Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
5. T-Mobile G1

"Verizon Wireless’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base contributed to RIM capturing three of the top five positions,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at The NPD Group. “The more familiar, and less expensive, Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major U.S. national carriers."

People should note that the Windows 7 free ride actually ends on March 1st 2010 when, according to Microsoft itself:

"Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010."

RMS?

Good point! ROFL :)

Looks like Google could be in deep water, along with the Open Handset Alliance and some 40 or so companies, over an apparent trademark infringement. Now you might think that there had been some pretty heavyweight due diligence before Google and the OHA determined to call the open source mobile phone operating system. And indeed, it would seem that Google had indeed made all the right noises to the US Patent and Trademark Office but unfortunately the PTO refused the trademark application after it determined the mark had been granted to a software development outfit by the name of Android Data Corp. way back in 2002. Google, on the other hand, were rather late to the trademark game apparently waiting until a few days before unveiling the plans for Android in October 2007 to make the application. An application that was rejected in February 2008 on the grounds that it was too similar to the 'Android Data' mark awarded to Android Data Corp. founder Erich Specht six years earlier. According to reports Google appealed on the grounds that the original holder had lost it's claim through inactivity, an appeal that the PTO once again rejected. Further appeals also failed, and the Google trademark application as finally suspended in November 2008.

Now it would appear that Specht has decided enough is enough after Google, the OHA and a long list of other defendants including the likes of Motorola, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile and Toshiba have been selling goods and …

Doh! I missed the woodsmoke reference at the start of your comment. See where you are coming from now! :)

@Jon

Are you sure you are commenting to the right posting here? Your comments make no sense in relation to the Presto netbook installation story at all.

I am no great fan of the concept of National ID Cards, although my reasoning is not so much based upon distrusting the 'if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear' argument nor even the 'big brother invasion of privacy' paranoia which seems to grip most of the mainstream media in the UK whenever the subject is mentioned. I do admit that both of these things do play a part in my dislike of ID Cards though, but the real deal clincher for me has always been a bit more pragmatic: the UK Government is really crap at doing big IT projects and even crappier at protecting citizen data.

Just last year the British Prime Minister, Gordon 'looks really creepy smiling' Brown, admitted as much when he said that the Government was unable to "promise that every single item of information will always be safe." If further proof were need of the farce that is the ID Card scheme in Great Britain then look no further than what the Identity Minister, Meg Hillier, had to say in February when she admitted that even though some cards had already been distributed, there were no plans to make police forces buy readers for them.

Now, even the man who introduced the whole idea of ID Cards in the first place back in 2001 when he was Home Secretary, David Blunkett, appears to have made a rather dramatic u-turn on the subject. Speaking at the …

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 reporting critical vulnerabilities for all Adobe Flash platforms, and towards the end of last year there were reports of a critical vulnerability in Adobe Reader. Cue Jaws soundtrack: just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Adobe PDF water.

According to an official Adobe security warning "All currently supported shipping versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat (Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.1, 8.1.4, and 7.1.1 and earlier versions) are vulnerable" to another zero-day JavaScript vulnerability. That's all shipping versions on all platforms, including Mac and Unix users.

Adobe says that it "plans to provide updates for all affected versions for all platforms to resolve this issue" although it cannot currently say how long this will take other than to confirm it is "working on a development schedule for these updates and will post a timeline as soon as possible."

So what should you do in the meantime? Adobe recommends that in order to mitigate the issue, JavaScript should be immediately disabled in both Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Alternatively you could, of course, find another application for your Flash and PDF requirements which is less popular and not so attractive to the bad guys.

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 tricorder is it? Anyway, one thing is for sure, and that is that mobile phones are getting a lot more Star Trek these days. And probably none more so than the Nokia 5800 limited edition which is being launched in the UK on May 1st, which should come as no surprise when you consider that Nokia is actually calling it the 5800 Star Trek edition.

So has it got pointed ears, or maybe it can transport you from one place to another complete with a wibbly wobbly screen effect? Err, no, sadly not. It can be set to stun though. Sort of. The mobile phone has a "special phazer app" although it has not been revealed exactly what this does as of yet. What has been revealed is that the Star Trek phone comes with no less than eight Star Trek ringtones including the obligatory red alert and the noise of that phazer gun being fired. You also get some exclusive wallpapers and animated screensavers but that seems to be about it.

Amazingly, given that this is obviously inspired by the release of the new Star Trek movie on the same day in the UK, and in which …

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 many and the rest are just as puzzled by security issues and Internet speeds.

Of course, and can call me cynical if you like, but the fact that this research has been published alongside an announcement that Virgin Media is to start opening a number of broadband schools, initially targeting those cities which showed least Internet knowledge in the survey, does undermine the credibility of it all a tad.

Sure, we have Virgin boss and well known British billionaire Richard Branson admitting that "I've never been terribly technical and I'm not at all ashamed to say that I'm probably a prime candidate for a Broadband School" but this is quickly followed by a media friendly marketing comment of "At Virgin Media we want everyone to feel comfortable asking questions, no matter how silly they think they are, so that they can get the most out of their internet service and enjoy everything the internet has to offer."

Still, with the Brits getting super fast broadband trials we thought it was interesting enough to report the results anyway. Especially as towards the end of last year, another survey also seemed to suggest that the …

Please, stick to comments about the posting rather than using them to plug another site.

There has certainly been enough speculation about when the Windows 7 Release Candidate code would actually be made available. Right here on DaniWeb we confidently predicted that the big day would be May 5th following a slip up, or more probably a deliberate leak for marketing purposes, on the Microsoft TechNet website. Well, we are now happy to say that we were both right and wrong after Brandon LeBlanc officially confirmed that the general public would be able to get hold of Windows 7 RC on May 5th. However, if you are a TechNet subscriber then you can grab a copy even sooner according to LeBlanc who stated on the Windows 7 Team Blog that "the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers."

LeBlanc also reports that, at the peak of the beta tester feedback cycle, the Microsoft development team "were receiving a “Send Feedback” report every 15 seconds for an entire week." The fact that 84 percent of folk in one survey said no thanks to Windows 7 at least for the forthcoming year or so does not seem to have dampened the media hunger for Windows 7 news, nor for that matter the ability of the public to soak it up.

Of course, despite the recent court case and supposed closing down of The Pirate Bay it has still managed to beat Microsoft to a public release of Windows …

First Apple decided that an iPhone game which featured Barack Obama bouncing on a trampoline and Bill Clinton without trousers was in such bad taste that it had no place in the App Store and so refused to feature it. Then came the equally mad news that an application to put South Park wallpaper and perfectly legal video clips from the series on the iPhone was also far from being what it deems acceptable content for the App Store and banned that as well. At the time the developers of this particular app were quoted as saying that Apple thought the content could be potentially offensive.

Really? I wonder why Apple did not think that an iPhone game that was deemed acceptable and did appear for sale in the App Store was not potentially offensive when it revolves around the sick objective of getting a baby to stop crying by shaking it until it dies. Before it was removed, the App Store description of this sick 'game' said "On a plane, on the bus, in a theatre. Babies are everywhere you don't want them to be! They're always distracting you from preparing for that big presentation at work with their incessant crying. Before Baby Shaker there was nothing you could do about it."

OK, the application was removed within two days but surely that is two days too many for something that was obviously going to cause offence and, indeed, pain to those who …

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 Infosecurity Europe reveals that 37 percent of those asked would do just that. While 63 percent remain honest, the cost of corrupting the remainder is not cheap. Researchers attempted to measure just how much of a temptation would need to be on the table to get workers to download and hand over the data, proposing incentives ranging from a good meal to £10 million cash.

Of those who were prepared to entertain the theft, 63 percent would need at least £1 million in order to go through with it. A further 10 percent would do the dastardly deed in return for their mortgage being paid off, while 5 percent just wanted a decent holiday thanks very much.

Worryingly, for 4 percent it would only need their credit card bill to be paid off and 2 percent just wanted a slap up meal. Interestingly, 5 percent said they would do it in exchange for a new job, although I'm not sure they thought that one through given that they would have just proved themselves to be totally untrustworthy anyway.

Most telling was the fact that 63 percent of those asked said it would be easy get that data out of their company, this despite 88 percent admitting that the data they had access to was indeed valuable.

"Although it …

I am more attracted to brains than boobs any day. Of course, brains and boobs are always a good combination :-)

According to reports, 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 been stolen. Several terabytes of data in all are said to have been successfully stolen from a computer system that deals with in-flight maintenance fault diagnosis. Insiders say that the attacks have originated in China, but this has unsurprisingly been ferociously denied by Chinese government officials. A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry told the Telegraph newspaper that "China has always been against hacking and we have cracked down very hard on hacking." While the Chinese Embassy in Washington said it was all "a product of the Cold War mentality" designed to inflame political opinion against China. Certainly China has something of a history when it comes to allegations of cyber espionage.

However, whoever was behind the hack may have got some useful material that could, in theory, make it easier to defend against attacks by the plane they have not got any data on the most sensitive areas of the F35 as these are all held on computers with no physical connection to the Internet. It is believed that the attackers got hold of the data they did manage to steal by exploiting network vulnerabilities through a number of …

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 spotted that a Microsoft Partners web page (now replaced with a bog standard information page) had been published which announced that Windows 7 Release Code would be released to the public on May 5th. OK, so we have sort of been here before with these so-called Microsoft leaks have we not? I prefer to think of them as viral press releases. The last one came at the end of March, and also pointed to a May date for RC. As with this latest one, that page was pulled just as soon as the blogosphere had picked up on it, so as to let the viral marketing take over. Mind you, Microsoft needs all the publicity it can get right now as recent reports suggest that a whopping 84 percent of folk have no intention of upgrading to Windows 7 anytime soon.

Maybe the HTC Magic, the second of the Android powered phones (the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Dream were, after all, the exact same thing) to make it to market, will fare better. When it makes it to market, that is. It had better hurry up if it wants to see off the flood of competition that …

I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say "there are no easy answers" to be honest :)

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 Skype could be sold off, possibly back to the original owners, with anything up to a billion dollar discount off what it paid for the Internet telephony outfit just four years back. Now it appears that eBay will indeed bee disposing of Skype, but instead of selling it back to the original founders it looks like it will be spinning it off and out the door by way of an IPO sometime next year.

It has also been confirmed that another relatively recent acquisition, the social bookmarking service StumbleUpon, has already been sold back to the original founders. eBay paid $75 million in cash for StumbleUpon back in 2007, but there is no word as to the sale price as of yet. StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp did make it clear, however, that "there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses" and it was "best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths" when talking about the purchase in a rather brief press release.

Now it seems that eBay is also spending money, as reports emerge of a $1.2 billion deal to purchase Korean online auction giant, Gmarket.

What is interesting about all of this is that it points …

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 file-sharing we commonly refer to as piracy and the porn business, have loads more in common than you might imagine.

For starters, both are hugely popular online. Pornography has traditionally been something of a driver of e-commerce innovation. After all, most pornographers are in the business for profit rather than pleasure, and working out ways to monetize online content was always a priority. And so it was that successful micro-payment systems and pay-as-you go streaming services were pretty much the brainchild of the adult content realm. Piracy has equally been at the forefront in terms of both online popularity and technological innovation. Ask yourself this, would P2P file-sharing services really have matured so quickly were it not for the momentum provided by the opportunity to easily distribute copyright content without having to pay for it?

The other thing that really binds these two Internet stalwarts together, of course, is the desire of The Powers That Be to stamp them out and the apparent impotence that is displayed when trying to do just that.

Many countries have rallied against online pornography, perhaps the most notable being China. Was it really two years ago that I was …

It is usually the Apple adverts which get the positive column inches both online and off, even when they go straight for the Vista jugular 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 forget those godawful Seinfeld adverts and that Steve Ballmer I AM A PC video that someone saw fit to publish online?

The latest attempt to grab attention by Microsoft has been the Laptop Hunter series, perhaps better known as the Lauren and Giampaolo show. These turn the focus onto the value proposition, showing 'ordinary' users on a budget choosing Windows-based machines every time. The Giampaolo character was pretty obviously chosen for his 'cool' image and to try and rub some of that cool factor off onto the Windows laptop. Indeed, he even admits to being cool enough to buy a sexy Mac, but then goes on to explain why he is savvy enough to choose Microsoft instead.

It has been a long time coming, but Apple PR has at last responded. In a quote given to Business Week one Bill Evans says that "both Apple and Microsoft can agree... everyone thinks the Mac is cool." He goes on to stick the knife in by adding that "A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want."

What grabs me about this comment is that it has been …

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 Windows 7 Release Candidate is nearly with us, complete with plenty of reported security problems, not to mention confusion surrounding there being no less than six versions of Windows 7 to choose from. Yet despite all the carefully timed marketing from Microsoft, it would appear that not everyone is convinced of the desirability of the new OS - at least in the short term.

One new survey of more than 1100 IT professionals from small, mid-sized, and large IT organisations worldwide has revealed that an astonishing 84 percent have absolutely no plans to upgrade to Windows 7 during the course of the next year - and that in the face of some pretty encouraging and enthusiastic reports from beta testers so far. The company which commissioned the survey, KACE, tells us that the leading concerns cited for this no adoption/slow adoption strategy were software compatibility, cost of implementation and the current economic environment. It also says that concerns were apparent across IT departments of all sizes. 72 percent indicated they were actually rather more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than staying with an outdated XP operating system.

If this were not bad enough news for Microsoft, the survey also pointed towards 50 percent …

No, DaniWeb expects comments to be polite, even when you disagree with a posting. There is no need to resort to the kind of personal abuse you have been dishing out. As such those comments of yours deemed impolite and containing personal abuse have been removed. The others remain.

Davey Winder
Co-Admin, Blog Editor, DaniWeb

C'mon - it is an opinion piece, and Ken is as entitled to his opinion as you are to yours. If anyone looks foolish, then I am afraid it is you by rolling out the standard 'Microsoft/Apple are evil' conspiracy theory line.

In short, Ken is not going to be fired - he is a talented journalist and a valued member of the DaniWeb editorial team.

A Microsoft security report 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 over the last six months or so has the volume of spam at being around 80 percent. Quite why the Microsoft report has such a huge jump on everyone else has yet to be explained to me.

But it gets better. The report also reckons that drug spam is the biggest problem, and that some of this unwanted email even comes complete with malicious attachments. Shock, horror, those attachments are increasingly coming as MS Office documents or PDF files as well.

Microsoft's Chief Cyber Security Advisor, and a man I actually respect greatly, Ed Gibson told the BBC that this rise in spam signalled a move from targeting software vulnerability and instead homing in on the user weakest link. "With higher capacity broadband and better OS, and higher power computers it is easier now to send out billions of spams. Three or four years ago the capacity wasn't there" Gibson said.

Other revelations in the report include: rogue antivirus software is on the way up and software vulnerabilities are on the way down. But when it comes to surprises, perhaps the fact that while "Microsoft software accounted for 6 of the …

It has not exactly been the best of weekends for Twitter, 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 the same website. OK, so that's not exactly unheard of after all a lot of people use Twitter to pass on details of interesting finds to their social network. However, when those recommendations take the rather juvenile form of "Wooo, www-dot-StalkDaily-dot-com :)" or "Dude, www-dot-StalkDaily-dot-com is awesome" then eyebrows start to get raised.

The good thing about Twitter though, well one of the many good things about Twitter, is that news both good and bad spreads really quickly. So when people realised that their update messages were being hijacked to spread this spam, they started posting tweets warning their followers and asking them to spread the word. The author of the StalkDaily worm quickly caught on and hijacked messages soon started appearing which claimed "Virus!? What? www-dot-StalkDaily-dot-com is legit!"

Actually, what was happening was a typical cross site scripting attack, in this case spamming links across Twitter without the permission, or knowledge in many cases, of the users involved.

In his official Twitter blog, founder Biz Stone has confirmed that "a worm took center stage" but adds that "no passwords, phone numbers, or other sensitive information was compromised as part of these …

Writing at the official Windows Experience blog, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc refers to the latest NPD Retail Tracking Service data which shows that as of the February 2009 the Windows share of the US netbook market is a staggering 96 percent. That's up from less than 10 percent of US unit sales during the first half of 2008 when the words netbook and Linux pretty much ran together. Now it seems that the netbook revolution is leaving Linux behind.

Of course, this has as much to do with the evolution of the hardware as it does with any disaffection for Linux. Market positioning has changed from being the cheap and cheerful Internet device at the budget end of the spectrum for the geek on the move who just wanted email and web plus something that would run an assortment of free open source apps. Now a netbook is seen more as a mini-notebook PC capable of running the kind of software your average user is familiar with from their laptop or desktop experience. As LeBlanc says "little did we know that these devices would evolve so much in such a short time." And evolve they have. Forget the tiny screens and tinier SSD storage, forget the snails pace processors, forget the cramped keyboards. netbooks have grown in all aspects from screen size (10" is now the standard rather than 7") to storage (100GB+ hard drives instead of 4GB SSD) and 1GB RAM is pretty much to be expected.

I know that Apple has been expending a lot of hot air telling anyone who will listen that the new iTunes pricing regime is a good thing for consumers. I know that it reckons that for every song which is ramped up to the new 99p (here in the UK) price it will drop another 10 songs down to the 59p bottom dollar pricing. Trouble is, I also know that music download market runner-up Amazon has taken advantage of consumer confusion surrounding the price changes by jumping in with 100+ songs going for just 29p a pop.

Importantly, Amazon has opted to drop the price on big selling tracks such as Poker Face by Lady GaGa while Apple has the same song, which currently tops the UK charts, at the new top tier price of 99p. Now given a difference of 70p I wonder why anyone would, if aware of the Amazon offer of course, still go ahead with the iTunes purchase.

I can only assume that Apple is hoping that ignorance will be bliss and that the majority of the iPod owning masses will simply click and buy without being aware that there is an alternative.

It is a risky business, especially in times of economic woe, to hope that your customers simply do not notice that you have hiked your prices. An even riskier business when the alternatives include not just Amazon with lower prices for downloading tracks, but also completely different models …

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, until now, for ABBA, Greta Garbo, tennis players who sell underwear and that chef on The Muppet Show. Bork Bork Bork. That, and being host to the Pirate Bay which is the largest and certainly the most notorious BitTorrent tracker on the face of the planet. Described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading" the Pirate Bay has been in the news most recently for the ongoing fight against the Swedish authorities.

One of the most Internet-connected countries in Europe, Sweden enjoys average broadband speeds in excess of 8 Mbps, rising to 50 Mbps in parts. Or perhaps I should have said enjoyed, considering that nearly half the countries Internet traffic seems to have disappeared overnight with the introduction of what many see as a Draconian law to fight illegal downloaders.

Sweden certainly seems to have dropped a bomb on the Internet, that is for sure. It is believed that as many as ten percent of Swedes use peer-to-peer services for such downloads, with the Pirate bay being the best known service of course. But IPRED now obliges ISPs to hand details of such activity …

And another that has been sent my way:

Guardian newspaper to switch from ink to Twitter after 188 years of publication. "Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters."

Here's another good press release that has just emerged:

"Opera Software today unveiled its newest innovation to be included in Opera 10--Face Gestures. Opera Face Gestures enable anyone with a Webcam to control their browser moving only their face. Based on the same architecture as Opera's Mouse Gestures, Face Gestures makes surfing the Web as easy as smiling, batting an eye lash or flaring a nostril."

Yes, it is April 1st, the day that you have to read the news with just a little more skepticism than usual as the pranksters roll out their made up stories. Some are so close to the truth that it is hard to actually tell they are gags at all, of course. The best April Fools' Day pranks to have emerged this year, in my opinion, are the ones that combine both a hint of possibility with a dash of stupidity and in so doing ensure the reader has to do a double take. Here are my IT related favourites for this year.

A special mention has to go out to DaniWeb writer Ken Hess who managed to publish a new story revealing that "IBM Buys Linus Torvalds" which is patently, obviously wrong but such a great headline that you are drawn into wanting to read more. When you do, you discover a very well crafted piece of writing that is just full of the kind of subtle with that much AFD writing lacks. I loved the line that informed us how "Novell and Hovespian made an unsuccessful bid for Richard Stallman earlier this year" for example and how Torvalds will "be required to appear in IBM commercials and promotional materials" as well. Nice one Ken.

But my favourite AFD gag so far this year, as someone who specialises in IT security issues, has to be the official news release that arrived in my mailbox this …