posted by Thom Holwerda on Tue 25th Aug 2009 21:56 UTC
With Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system arriving on people's doorsteps over the coming weekend, you'd think that all the new features are known by now, and there will be no more major surprises. Well, that's not entirely true: on Intego's Mac Security Blog, it is reported that Snow Leopard comes with anti-virus/malware functionality built-in. Update: Snow Leopard testers on MacRumors confirmed the functionality. How, exactly, it works, is not yet known, however.The Intego blogs talks about "reports we've seen" which state Snow Leopard comes with anti-virus/malware functionality built-in, and also provides a screenshot of how it looks. This dialog appeared after downloading a file through Safari, and the operating system detected the RSPlug trojan.
There's no way at this point to confirm this news, but it's interesting nonetheless. Only today did Apple release two Get a Mac ads which played on the rather outdated mantra of "thousands of viruses" for Windows, so if Snow Leopard came with built-in anti-virus/malware, that is sort-of funny.
Joshua Long theorised which anti-virus/malware scanner Apple chose to include with Snow Leopard; ClamAV was a logical contender, but as it turns out, ClamAV's engine labels the above trojan differently. Intego and Symantec do label it as such, and of those, Intego obviously couldn't be it. Could this mean Apple licensed the engine from Symantec? Or did they develop their own?
It is important to stress that there is currently very little to be worried about when it comes to the Mac and security. While several security researchers claim Mac OS X is easy to hack, large-scale infections have yet to take place. Still, proper security policies should always be enforced.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/10 0:07 UTC, submitted by SReilly
Hand-held devices could soon have pressure-sensitive touch-screens and keys, thanks to a UK firm's material that exploits a quantum physics trick. The technology allows, for example, scrolling down a long list or webpage faster as more pressure is applied. A division of Samsung that distributes mobile phone components to several handset manufacturers has now licensed the "Quantum Tunnelling Composite". The approach could find use in devices from phones to games to GPS handsets.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/09/10 23:57 UTC
"Whereas the iPhone is aimed at short, focused tasks, the iPad is more likely to lend itself to longer, more general tasks that involve using multiple apps, just as we're used to on the Mac. It's easy to imagine wanting to use an iPad to read text in Mobile Safari, copy some text to a Pages document, and send that document to a colleague via Mail. That specific example may turn out to be possible with the current iPhone OS, but it points toward needing more ways for iPad apps to work together in the future."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/08/10 23:34 UTC
"The 'Llano' processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it's not a GPU - instead, it's a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an 'application processor unit', or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/08/10 19:38 UTC
"The scuttlebutt is that IBM seemed perfectly content to wait until May to launch the Power7-based Power Systems servers, but something changed and compelled the company to move up the announcement of its first machines using the eight-core processor to today. Big Blue is not in a habit of explaining its motives or its timing for product launches, but it seems clear that IBM wanted to get out in front of a whole lot of processor and systems launches that are expected between now and the summer."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/08/10 19:33 UTC
Mozilla has announced that they are going to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger definitively. "Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed since then," Josh Aas writes, "We would like to take advantage of more modern technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/05/10 23:46 UTC
"The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs. Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7. The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/05/10 21:50 UTC, submitted by tyrione
"Today, Clang completed its first complete self-host! We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM's regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/05/10 21:43 UTC
With all the virtualization schemes running on top of Linux, how do they exploit the underlying kernel for I/O virtualization? The answer is virtio, which provides an efficient abstraction for hypervisors and a common set of I/O virtualization drivers. Discover virtio, and learn why Linux will soon be the hypervisor of choice.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/05/10 21:41 UTC
"The Mono Project releases the first preview of Moonlight 3.0, giving application developers a first look at the open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight 3 technology for the Linux platform." Sadly, it's still Firefox-only.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/04/10 23:13 UTC
"In a definitive defeat for film studios - and in a first case of its kind worldwide - Australia's Federal Court has ruled that ISPs have no obligation to act on copyright infringement notices or to disconnect subscribers after receiving multiple letters. If copyright holders want justice for illegal file-sharing, they need to start by targeting the right people: those who committed the infringement."