David Adams Archive

Firesheep Countermeasure Tool BlackSheep

Submitted by HAL2001 2010-11-08 Privacy, Security 11 Comments

Firesheep is a Firefox extension that makes it easier to steal logins and take over social media and email accounts after users log in from a WiFi hotspot or even their own unprotected network. Zscaler researchers have created, and are now offering to every consumer, a free Firefox plugin called BlackSheep, which serves as a counter-measure. BlackSheep combats Firesheep by monitoring traffic and then alerting users if Firesheep is being used on the network. BlackSheep does this by dropping â€˜fake’ session ID information on the wire and then monitors traffic to see if it has been hijacked.

US Army Betting on Android

David Adams 2010-10-29 Wireless 7 Comments

The Army is 20 years and a half-billion dollars into a star-crossed effort to build custom communications and digital-mapping gadgets for its soldiers. Special Operations Command, on the other hand, is taking a simpler approach: They’re planning to use Android phones.

Google Docs Users Stranded by Bug

Submitted by Dan Warne 2010-10-29 Web 2.0 13 Comments

Cloud apps can be a godsend -- until they stop working, taking all your data with them. Google Docs users worldwide have learned this the hard way this week, locked out of their documents by a bug which Google says is currently its #1 priority to fix, but hasn't been able to resolve for six days and counting. The bug, associated with Google's new multiple account login feature, causes an endless redirect when people try to open a document. Microsoft has been quick to jump on the opportunity to promote its forthcoming Office 365 service, which caches files locally, as a better solution than the all-cloud solution Google is offering. Google has been apologetic about the bug but says since it is not actually an outage it will not honor its 99.9% uptime guarantee for Google Apps Premier users.

Submitted by sawboss 2010-10-24 Apple 71 Comments

Being the brains behind Microsoft has made Bill Gates the wealthiest guy in the world. So he can pretty much afford to buy his kids any gadgets they want. However, Apple devices are banned in the Gates’ house. This is surprisingly not a rule set by Bill Gates. Melinda Gates has made it very clear in an interview with The New York Times that she does not allow Apple hardware in the house. If the kids want an iPod they’ll have to settle for a Zune instead.

Windows 8 To Be Released In October 2012?

Submitted by Debjit 2010-10-24 Rumors 16 Comments

Microsoft Netherlands published a news story on their website on Friday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Windows 7. Nothing surprising there one would think, except for the fact that the last paragraph of the article gave an outlook at the future, revealing the Windows 8 release date.

XP Takes Babystep Into The Abyss

Submitted by Amy Bennett 2010-10-22 Windows 45 Comments

As of today, Microsoft won't allow manufacturers to install XP on new netbooks," says blogger Kevin Fogarty. "That doesn't mean corporate customers who special-order hardware with XP won't be able to get it, or even that its market share ( 60 percent!) will drop any time soon.... It just means XP has taken the first babystep toward obsolescence and the long (really long, considering its market share) slide down toward the pit of minor operating systems like the MacOS X (4.39 percent) , Java ME (.95 percent) and "Other" (which I think is an alternative spelling for "Linux" (.85 percent).

Submitted by shaneco 2010-10-22 Windows 5 Comments

Look at you Windows 7! One year old and making everybody forget Vista was ever born. To mark the occasion, we highlight Windows 7 rollout lessons learned in CIO.com stories featuring BMW, Continental Airlines and more.

Should Sites Be Held Liable for User Comments?

Submitted by fran 2010-10-18 Legal 31 Comments

Britain's Attorney General has said that website owners should be made legally responsible for comments made by visitors. According to a report on Out-law.com, Dominic Grieve told members of the Criminal Bar Association that the spiralling number of internet news web sites meant it was becoming more and more difficult for courts to ensure that trials were fair, and that juries were not exposed to material that could prejudice a hearing.

Microsoft Tool to Aid Windows 7 Migrations

Submitted by fran 2010-10-18 Windows 1 Comment

Microsoft began the second beta test of a key virtualization tool this week, with the aim of helping to ease the way for corporate customers who are held back from migrating to Windows 7 by incompatibilities with required older applications. Version 2 of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) is now available for download for users interested in beta testing the upcoming release.

Microsoft’s 3-D Strategy

David Adams 2010-10-18 3D 8 Comments

Microsoft has joined the wave of companies betting that 3-D is the next big thing for computing. At a recent talk at MIT, chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie said he sees the technology as an innovation that "will get people out of treating a computer as a tool" and into treating the device as a natural extension of how they interact with the world around them. Microsoft plans to introduce consumers to the change through its gaming products, but Mundie outlined a vision that would eventually have people shopping and searching in 3-D as well.

Microsoft Release Regez Fuzzer Tool

Submitted by fran 2010-10-18 Privacy, Security 4 Comments

Microsoft has released a free tool to help programmers test their regular expressions for vulnerability to denial of service attacks. The JSDL Regex Fuzzer, released by the software giant earlier this week, is designed to test programmers' regular expressions - a ubiquitous formal language for matching strings of text - for clauses that execute in exponential time and which stand the chance of being exploited for nefarious means.

You Can’t Innovate Like Apple

David Adams 2010-10-06 Apple 52 Comments

Let me tell you, when what you teach and develop every day has the title "Innovation" attached to it, you reach a point where you tire of hearing about Apple. Without question, nearly everyone believes the equation Apple = Innovation is a fundamental truth--akin to the second law of thermodynamics, Boyle's Law, or Moore's Law. But ask these same people if they understand exactly how Apple comes up with their ideas and what approach the company uses to develop blockbuster products--whether it is a fluky phenomenon or based on a repeatable set of governing principles--and you mostly get a dumbfounded stare. This response is what frustrates me most, because people worship what they don't understand.

Submitted by irbis 2010-10-06 Wireless 17 Comments

As the third high-profile departure at Nokia in recent months Ari Jaaksi, vice president of MeeGo devices and operations, who had worked at the company since 1998, told Finnish newspaper Talous Sanomat that he resigned from Nokia last week. According to Nokia Communications Manager Tapani Kaskinen the departure will not affect MeeGo's development schedule. Nevertheless the news cast doubts on whether we'll see a MeeGo-based device from Nokia before the end of 2010.

MenuetOS Adds Fourier Transform

Submitted by fran 2010-10-04 OS News 13 Comments

Yesterday MenuetOS released a kernel update that includes Fourier transform, sinc and resampling. Fourier transform is significant in that it allow for more efficient computation and is essential for high speed computing.

Cardboard PC

David Adams 2010-10-04 Humor 12 Comments

Recompute has just launched a "green" pc whose chassis is made up entirely of cardboard. No joke. It can be ordered in different configurations, from an Athlon X2 Linux, to an Athlon II Quad Core Windows 7 model. Please note this is not for sensitive viewers. Steve Jobs and other aesthetes are encouraged not to read further.

Submitted by Idefix 2010-10-04 OS News 43 Comments

Once upon a time, operating systems used to matter a lot; they defined what a computer could and couldn't do... Today, there's only one operating system: Unix (okay, there are two, but we'll get to that). This is why I contend that the OS doesn't matter - or that we need to take another look at the word's content, at what we mean when we say 'Operating System'.

Submitted by sawboss 2010-10-02 Humor 31 Comments

If you follow the keyboard collectors market (yeah, didn't think so . . .) then you'd certainly know that the IBM model M15 split ergonomic is pretty much the most desirable keyboard out there. A small number of them were made over a short span of time (1994-1995), and their clunky plastic knob and super-adjustable design meant that over years many of them broke. So when one lands on eBay, it's a big deal.

Submitted by google_ninja 2010-10-02 Legal 11 Comments

Today EFF, joined by Public Knowledge, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Apache Software Foundation, filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which Microsoft is trying to make it easier to invalidate an issued U.S. patent. If successful, this challenge should help in the fight against bad patents by lowering the standard required to prove that the patent is invalid to the same one required to prove infringement. It should especially help the free and open source community.

Arm Plans To Add Multithreading To Chip Design

Submitted by fran 2010-09-30 Hardware 28 Comments

"Arm plans to add multithreading capabilities to future architectures as it tries to boost the performance of its processors, a company representative said on Tuesday. The company is looking to include multithreading capabilities depending on application requirements in different segments, said Kumaran Siva, segment marketing manager at Arm, at the Linley Tech Processor conference in San Jose, California"

Microsoft Marks Anti-Malware Anniversary With Stats

Submitted by fran 2010-09-30 Bugs & Viruses 29 Comments

"To mark the first anniversary of Microsoft Security Essentials, the company has released some sobering statistics it has gathered during the past year via the free anti-malware software. According to Microsoft, Security Essentials has been installed on 31 million computers worldwide. Out of that group, 27 million users reported malware infections during the year."