News Archive
I'm keeping a close eye on the latest Firefox betas to be released by Mozilla. The reason is that if past performance issues have been fixed, it’s quite likely that I might consider making a switch to it as my main browser. While I find Internet Explorer 7 to be fine, I think that there would be advantages to switching to a unified browsing platform across Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
Advertisements placed by Google in Web pages are being hijacked by so-called Trojan horse software that replaces the intended text with ads from a different provider, Romanian antivirus company BitDefender says.
Face it - Elvis is dead and both Vista and Leopard failed to make grab the hearts of users in the way that their makers hoped they would. PC World’s list of disappointments Vista makes it in at the top slot, while Leopard comes in at #8. Neither comes as a surprise to me. What happened in 2007 should serve as a cautionary to both Microsoft and Apple. The longer you leave an operating system about before a replacement, the greater the inertia will be when it comes to trying to shift them onto the new version.
I was in a large computer store looking at computer LCD monitors and a lady was asking about which one was the better one to buy. A man (presumably her family) told her that the ones which indicated TFT (Thin Film Transistor) were the ones to buy. I then interjected that everything was TFT and it’s been that way since the extinction of those ugly STN passive matrix LCDs 8 years ago they use to sell with the cheaper laptops. Of course this invariably invited more questions as to which LCD was the better buy and better quality so I spent a few minutes showing them some of the shortcomings to many of these displays.
A zero-day hole is several major HP laptop models could provide an easy way for hackers to take complete control of Windows machines, according to a warning from an independent security researcher.
Apple has shipped a new QuickTime version to plug at least three more security vulnerabilities that put Mac OS X and Windows users at risk of code execution attacks.
The latest batch of Seagate’s hard disk drives, which come already formatted to NTFS, are not compatible with the Linux operating system. The official response from Seagate Tech Support is that its drive “does not support Linux.”
Amidst growing chatter that the anti-virus/anti-spyware market is gasping for air, a veteran virus fighter says desktop security products must add new protection mechanisms to keep pace with aggressive online criminals.
I downloaded the release candidate of Vista Service Pack 1 yesterday and was prepared to wait till its public debut next week before writing about it. But after upgrading a few machines here and doing some tests, I changed my mind. If Microsoft’s decision to ditch the WGA kill switch in SP1 didn’t convince you, would you be interested in a 300% increase in tripling your network file transfer speeds?
Internet phone company Skype has issued a patch for a high-risk vulnerability affecting Windows users but, strangely, a public acknowledgment of the flaw comes a full month after the release of the fix.
Microsoft’s final batch of patches for 2007 has been released to cover at least 11 security vulnerabilities that put millions of users at risk of remote code execution attacks.
Microsoft has begun making a near-final Release Candidate (RC) test build of Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 3 available to anyone interested in trying out the new build — the same way that it is doing with Vista SP1.
Yesterday I put up the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone up as the biggest hits of 2007. Today while glancing through my inbox I come across this request:
“So, you like the Wii, but what, in your opinion, were the products that sucked the most for 2007?”
Facebook has stirred up a great deal of controversy and now harsh criticism with its Beacon advertising program. Three weeks after launching Beacon Facebook, the company did a 180-degree turn to make it more palatable for users rather than advertisers. It still fell short of the total opt-in approach that some critics called for.
On the one-year anniversary of the launch Internet Explorer (IE) 7, the IE team posted yet another “stay tuned” message to the IE team blog, regarding an informational update on IE 8. Tony Chor, Group Program Manager, posted that IE 7 is now used by 300 million individuals, according to data from Visual Sciences. According to this data, IE 7 is the second most popular browser, after IE 6. IE 7 already is the most popular in the U.S. and the UK and Microsoft expects it to surpass IE 6 worldwide “shortly,”
Researchers at Symantec have intercepted two different in-the-wild malware attacks targeting an unpatched code execution vulnerability in Apple’s QuickTime media player.
When SP1 ships sometime in early 2008, it will strip away one of Vista’s most annoying features and remove one of the most persistent objections to Vista’s adoption. Microsoft plans to remove the infamous “kill switch” from Windows Vista when SP1 is installed, restoring the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program to its original role as a series of persistent but nonlethal notifications.
New Zealand Police this week cracked down on an alleged botnet ringleader in New Zealand, who the FBI claims had illegal control over 1 million computers
Remember that “Redmond, start your photocopiers” jibe back when Tiger was released? Are Vista and Leopard all the proof we need that the photocopiers have been running flat out both at Redmond and Cupertino?
The other day Ed Bott posted five secrets to faster Windows starts. It’s a good listing, but Ed misses what I think is the ultimate tip for achieving a faster, more reliable Windows installation.
What is this marvelous tip? Read on …
Here's our considered list of some of the worst IT-related disasters and failures. The order is subjective--with number one being the worst
New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1
Virtualization has the potential of offering tremendous advantages over physical environments, but in the move to virtual, the organization often lost some things it took for granted. One of those things is clarity of what is going on, where, and with whom.
Lawyers for plaintiffs in a case brought against Microsoft over Vista's marketing have claimed that even the software giant's marketing director was confused by the prelaunch campaign in the U.S.
It’s no wonder the Social Web–the Internet with the concept of people and relationships embedded in the fabric (what Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls the Giant Global Graph)–has become such a controversial topic. It’s a kind of spontaneous, greedy gold rush for the social networks to accumulate members, exploit the social graph for revenue and add new features as fast as possible.
Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has admitted to losing the details of 25 million individuals, with 7.25 million U.K. families potentially affected.
By now many of you will have read accusations that Facebook has “ruined Christmas”. The story being promoted by MoveOn.org is that because “Project Beacon”, a component of Facebook’s new advertising platform, publicizes purchases at participating sites on a user’s Facebook “news feed”, friends and loved ones are inadvertently being told what they can expect for Christmas.
Google is planning to establish a local presence for its services – something which will greatly benefit the SA online market.
The ADSL ISP space is hotting up with smaller players taking on the big guns. But who is leading the ADSL ISP race?
South Africans venturing online to buy music downloads need to shop around, because some retailers can be almost 12 times more expensive than others.
Microsoft has conceded that the pseudo-random number generator used by Windows XP suffer the same security shortcomings at Windows 2000.
A Californian gamer has filed a class action lawsuit demanding damages in excess of $5m against Microsoft and software developer Bungie, all because his copy of Halo 3 allegedly doesn’t work properly.
MWEB has launched their ‘triple play’ service for R 599-00 for the first 12 months. But will you really
save money?
According to Mozilla's blurb: "Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues." That means little to me. All I'm interested in is performance, reliability, look and feel. And from what I've seen so far, Firefox 3 Beta 1 succeeds spectacularly in all areas.
Offering uncapped local ADSL services remains a headache for many ISPs – the bigger players give their views.
Google has brought the idea of user-generated content a step further with its plans to allow users to edit Google Maps to make it more accurate.
Before mortgage fraud, there was dot-com fraud. And there was Henry Bazarte, a New Jersey man convicted of swindling his friends and acquaintances into investing in a broadband-provider scam.
Telkom Internet is trialing its uncapped local ADSL bandwidth service where users who have reached their cap still have local access.
Commtech, an Israeli security firm announced that it had detected several spam targeting users with mails that impinge on their conscience to get them to download malware.
Commercial WiFi hotspots face a dim future in South Africa unless prices are reduced to compete with 3G/HSDPA rates
While a few select trial users are enjoying 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, the launch of a fully commercial service is being held back by Telkom.
Wow. As a law student, I’m just amazed by this Wired post reporting that a judge dismissed an anti-slam lawsuit because the message was written as if by a real person
Western Digital announced its Serial ATA (SATA) drives that consume 40% less power than competing drives.
Telkom is planning to improve its ADSL speeds and promises far better ease-of-use for broadband by 2011.
The extensive WiFi access network in Tshwane - operated by Neology – will grind to a halt next month. Neology informed free users and paid subscribers that all services on this network will be suspended from the 15th of December.
Google South Africa, set to officially launch in February 2008, says it will go on a big broadband drive next year.
Popular BitTorrent site Demonoid.com has been taken offline after legal threats to its webhost by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).
The Dutch police have arrested a teenager who stole £2500 worth of virtual furniture from an online hotel, reports Ananova.com.Authorities said, in what was the first case of its kind, the 17-year-old was arrested after playing Habbo Hotel — an international game and online community with an estimated seven million members.
A survey by renowned database hacker David Litchfield has found a whopping 492,000 Microsoft SQL and Oracle database servers directly accessible to the Internet without firewall protection.David Litchfield — database server exposure survey
Seagate has issued a warning about Trojan Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah that has infected a number of shipped hard drives.
A Microsoft executive calls the ease with which two British e-crime specialists managed to hack into a Windows XP computer as both "enlightening and frightening."
AN UNDERSEA cable promising cheap bandwidth for Africa yesterday finally named its backers, signing up enough well-connected local investors to guarantee its landing rights in SA
Microsoft has finally shipped a comprehensive fix for a critical URI handling vulnerability that exposes Windows users to drive-by malware attacks.
The Mac is going main-stream” is just one of the catch-phrases that we’ve seen in the past two weeks when reading about the Trojan horse infecting Apple Mac OS X users. This attack has created a lot of controversy in the security realm. What’s so special about this Trojan horse that everybody is so jazzed up about it? What risk are Apple users facing and is the world going to end?
LOS ANGELES--A Los Angeles man on Friday admitted infecting 250,000 computers and stealing the identities of thousands of people by wiretapping their communications and accessing their bank accounts.
Although Microsoft is still getting plenty of "oohs" and "aahs" when it demos its Surface computer, the company is finding the task of bringing the tabletop computer to market a little rougher than it anticipated.
DoubleClick, the massive internet advertising network that recently agreed to be bought by Google, has been caught serving rogue ads designed to trick users into buying unneeded software, according to an article on eWeek.
More signs of a new Vista SP1 build waiting in the wings“Seems with a little tweak, the old registry file that Microsoft provided to testers (that got leaked) can be used to download a new build of Vista SP1, 6001.17036,” reported an “All About Microsoft” reader. There’s “no way to really tell at the moment if its the RC (Release Candidate) build, but I guess things are pretty imminent now.”
Customers aren't the only ones frustrated with the high-definition format wars—Sony CEO Howard Stringer is reaching the end of his rope as well. Blu-ray, which is backed by Sony, was doing well up until recently and winning the war based on merits, Stringer said at an event in New York. That is, up until movie studio Paramount decided to "change sides" and go exclusively HD DVD in August. Things have apparently become more difficult since then, and the high-profile CEO is showing signs of wear.
People often ask what an acceptable monthly ADSL cap will be. We take a look at international benchmarks.The excessively low monthly ADSL usage limits is a very contentious issue, especially after Telkom cancelled uncapped, free local bandwidth in November 2005.
Anyone who uses Firefox on Windows knows the browser has an almost insatiable appetite for memory, and it's not unheard of for PCs to allocate a half GB or more of memory just to the browser alone.
Prince, described by some people as one of the most creative and talented musicians, hired the infamous “Web Sheriff” who announced lawsuits against The Pirate Bay in the U.S., France and Sweden. “Way to go on losing all your fans” was the first response of Pirate Bay admin Brokep.
Are we being bombarded by far too many update? Wrox editor Jim Minatel thinks we are. He has a point. Take a look at this list that he posted on his blog:
Spammers are exploiting YouTube's "invite your friends" function to send spam containing a variant of the "Storm worm."
So here I am, burning some brain cells and taking some time to relax playing a game on Kongregate, when a little window pops up in the corner of my screen and says “Kongregate is sending this to your Facebook profile: Nate played Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 at Kongregate.” Which immediately elicited a “Hellll no” from my mouth.
Facebook on Tuesday announced its long awaited advertising system, dubbed Facebook Ads. According to the company’s statement, Facebook Ads will allow “businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want.”
A pupil at a Finnish high school reportedly posted a video manifesto onto YouTube before killing seven people and injuring several others this morning.
Apple’s popular iPhone will not be coming to South Africa says local Apple distributor.
A blogger has discovered a data loss glitch in Apple’s recently released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. This bug could result in the loss of data when moving files from a Mac to or from any external drives. The medium could range from a local USB flash drive, SMB file share, or even a network attached storage.
As more and more full-featured web applications look to replace traditional desktop apps, the concept of a web-based operating system has gained a lot of momentum. And since Wal-Mart began selling a $199 PC running a free Linux distribution—called gOS—with a hearty dose of webapp integration, we're getting closer. If you've got an extra PC gathering dust, gOS is not only a worthy operating system for a cheap PC from Wal-Mart; it's also an excellent (and free) way to repurpose your old PC.
Thousands of PC users have been duped into surrendering sensitive information and installing malicious software after falling victim to a complex scam that continues to plague well-known websites, a researcher warns.
A New Jersey man was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Friday for helping send spam e-mails to more than 1.2 million America Online subscribers.
Do you find yourself going online more and more? You're not alone.Four out of five U.S. adults go online now, according to a new Harris Poll. The survey, which polled 2,062 adults in July and October, found that 79 percent of adults--about 178 million--go online, spending an average 11 hours a week on the Internet.
In Telkom’s Acceptable Use Policy for ADSL Access Service the company warns, amoung other things, against the downloading of large files or large quantities of files and online gaming as it “may result in excessive data transfer”.
Telkom says that SAIX has developed a technical solution for uncapped local bandwidth, but that TelkomInternet needs time to test possible solutions.Telkom recently committed to ICASA that they will be in compliance with respect to the regulation ‘local bandwidth shall not be subject to the cap’ by 1 November 2007.
The opening volley of official announcements from Google and the Open Handset Alliance bring good news for people sick of the carrier choke hold. Of course, it's easy to spot who gets an Android device first: T-Mobile and Sprint. And it's easy to understand why underdogs like them would be the first two carriers to sign on to the initiative. But let's look a little deeper, to see why the gPhone/Android platform is off to a much better start than the iPhone, and why you probably won't have to switch to a carrier you don't want to get a phone you might really love.
As we know Ghost is a software used to image your Windows installation, in other words it help you to have a complete backup of a PC for later restore or replication in environment such as School,University, Computer Training lab, and so on.
The Internet as a means of retailing is now set to become a reality. After several false starts, sales forecasts for 2007 are set to hit near fifteen billion pounds in the UK, after starting off at five billion pounds in 2003
Google is the new Microsoft, at least in the way every move the company makes and its relationships are viewed in the context of a secretive, powerful company bent on world domination. Christopher Soghoian adds to the drama, making a case that Google unduly influences the direction of the Firefox browser
MySpace has embraced the OpenSocial APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), a means of building applications for all sorts of social networking sites that aren't Facebook. Oh, and Bebo has joined the mix as well.
Telkom assured ICASA that it will have uncapped local bandwidth by 1 November 2007, but the company remains mum on this promise.
Windows Vista was released to manufacturing a year ago next week, and landed on retail shelves exactly nine months ago today. To mark the occasion, I dragged a system out of mothballs and installed the original RTM version of Vista Ultimate on it. (Well, OK, I also needed a test bed for some upcoming work, but still…)
The Ubuntu operating system has been charged with crimes against hard drives. A number of users have complained this week about the OS (7.04/7.10) forcing drives to spin up and down at an unnatural rate due to some very aggressive power management features. According to Ubuntu wizards, however, this is a firmware/BIOS issue and not the OS's fault.
Miscreants have released a sophisticated Trojan into the wild that targets Mac users, according to Intego, a company that markets security software that runs on OS X.
Google’s open social networking platform play is the buzz of the blogosphere tonight. (see Techmeme). Indeed, it is called OpenSocial in that the set of APIs allows developers to create applications that work on any social network that joins Google’s open party. So far, besides Google’s Orkut social net, LinkedIn, hi5, XING, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning (see Marc Andreessen’s post) have joined the party.
When it comes to e-mail, most of us (e-mail users and the e-mail solutions providers that serve them) have lost our sensibilities. The facts that (a) legitimate e-mail finds its way into our junk mail folders, (b) we must spend our time searching through junk mail folders for that legitimate e-mail, and (c) we somehow think this is normal, is proof that we’re gluttons for punishment.
Vodacom will launch its R 25 per week MusicStation download service tomorrow, promising unlimited access to over 1 million songs.
CONTRARY TO WHAT the cynics may have thought, it seems the Nepad-led mega undersea and terrestrial cable project - about which very little was known until weeks ago - may just get significant private sector buy-in.
IdentityBlog.com, a Web site run by Microsoft’s chief architect of identity and access, has been hacked and defaced.
While Gmail doesn't filters all the spam messages that could reach your inbox, it certainly does a better job than other webmail apps like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail. Gmail's filters are constantly improving and an important ingredient of their effectiveness is the use of community signals
MTN recently announced their new HSDPA mobile broadband pricing structure, bringing it in line with Vodacom’s current rates. Both providers offer the same technology and data speeds, namely 1.8 Mbps HSDPA, so which provider has the best value proposition?
In the wake of this week’s malware attacks using rigged PDF files, Microsoft has updated its security advisory to stress that the underlying flaw in the Windows operating system is still not fixed.
Years ago when I was still a bit more naive, I thought we could end the spam dilemma if we would simply implement domain-level sender authentication using digital signatures. In fact when David Berlind wrote “Why spam could destroy the Internet” in November 2002, Berlind quoted me saying that every domain’s official SMTP server should digitally sign each message to prove the email came from that domain. SenderID and Yahoo’s DomainKeys came out around 2004 gave me the satisfaction of knowing that I wasn’t alone in calling for domain-level authentication and DomainKeys is very similar to what I was proposing in 2002. The difference is that I proposed using standard commercial digital certificates from commercial Certificate Authorities to distribute public keys whereas DomainKeys used DNS to publish its public key information.
When I’m setting up a new Windows-based PC, the part that I dread is when it’s time to install security software onto it. I just know that no matter how swift and powerful the system is, installing any kind of security suite onto it is going to kill performance. It’s a lot like buying a BMW M5 and then murdering the performance by attaching it to a trailer full of concrete.
In a polite but barbed exchange, Telkom told the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) that forcing a cut in the wholesale fees that other operators paid to use its bandwidth would deter future investment in infrastructure and damage SA’s telecoms sector
It was the worst-kept secret in the internet industry, but today Microsoft proved all the rumor-mongers right by confirming that it is taking a stake in Facebook, and shutting Google out of the social networking website.
The other day a list of ? Reasons You’ll Be Speechless” when you use Windows Vista (I guess Microsoft aren’t hearing the “Wows!” and assuming that we’re all speechless instead) hit the media (I’m pretty sure this isn’t a new list …). I was going to write a piece about this yesterday but didn’t - it seems that everyone else was saying what I was thinking. Earlier today I decided to take a more objective look at the 100 reasons and see which apply to me - not many it turns out.
Facebook users who type sensitive information into a site feature known as Notes may be interested in knowing that it is currently experiencing a bug that allows documents designated as private to be read anyway.
Less than 24 hours after Adobe shipped a fix for a gaping hole affecting its Reader and Acrobat software, PDF files rigged with malware are beginning to land in e-mail spam filters.
According to a memorandum attached to the Broadband Infraco Bill - up for debate on Wednesday afternoon - the high broadband costs in SA compared to international counterparts have been investigated.
According to a memorandum attached to the Broadband Infraco Bill - up for debate on Wednesday afternoon - the high broadband costs in SA compared to international counterparts have been investigated.
Microsoft and Google are girding for battle for supremacy over the information technology sector, a duel watched closely by others in the sector.
Anyone who uses Firefox on Windows knows the browser has an almost insatiable appetite for memory, and it's not unheard of for PCs to allocate a half GB or more of memory just to the browser alone.
The long awaited ICASA ADSL hearings will take place on the 15th and 16th of May at the ICASA offices in Pinmill Farm, Sandton.
Vodacom’s recent announcement that it will reduce its data rates by 20% was applauded by the broadband community, but this is not the last reduction in the pipeline.
Telkom’s usage based ADSL drew a great deal of criticism when it was launched last year, mainly due to the restrictive nature of Telkom’s usage based pricing model.
THERE are several competing broadband technologies for mobile executives to choose from, and each have their strengths and limitations, says Shergen Padayachee, wireless technology manager at Grintek.
The long-awaited signing of the Electronic Communications Bill has finally taken place, paving the way for cheaper telecommunications services that South Africa desperately needs.
According to a reliable source the Second National Operator (SNO) may have its own ADSL offering ready before the end of 2006.
Clarity is at last emerging about how the newly licensed second network operator, SNO Telecommunications, plans to tackle Telkom in fixed-line telephony. But objections by Sentech over the use of frequency spectrum could scupper its hopes of providing telecom services affordably.
Investors dumped Telkom shares last week, wiping out more than R6bn in shareholder value. The sell-off came in response to moves by the fixed-line operator to increase spending on its network and a warning that its margins are likely to fall somewhat short of earlier forecasts.
There are now more than 200 000 local broadband users according to the latest feedback from the various broadband providers.
Government’s telecommunications custodian, the department of communications (DOC), has listed the delivery of high-speed internet as one of its top priorities for the 2006/7 year.
Dr. Angus Hay, CTO of Transtel, said that to experience true broadband one needs a speed of 1 Mbps or more. Dr. Hay was speaking at the recent Institute for International Research’s 2006 Broadband Africa Summit.
After yesterday’s disturbing news that Internet Solutions (IS) had to suspend ADSL provisioning to new users, Telkom has partially solved IS’s problem by making an additional 70 Mbps of IPC bandwidth available.
Internet Solutions (IS) has decided to suspend the provisioning of any new IS ADSL users on their network due to capacity problems.
Telkom is expected to announce a price reduction of broadband line rentals later this month. Further cuts are expected later in the year when the company presents its annual tariff filing to the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) for approval.
South Africa was jubilant on Monday after a stunning one-wicket victory in the highest-scoring one-day international clinched a 3-2 series win over Australia.
Low-cost devices and affordable Internet connectivity for all
Confident of raising funding and taking on Telkom Sentech wants to expand its MyWireless broadband telecommunications network dramatically in the next couple of years as it positions itself to compete more effectively with Telkom and the cellphone companies.
Infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick told Tectonic that, given the choice between finding security vulnerabilities in closed and open source, he'd prefer to attack an open source environment.
We will be upgrading H-Sphere to 2.4.3 patch 9 starting at 16:00 (18:00 GMT) on 1/18/06
Satisfactory high-speed Internet access has proved elusive in SA despite promises by various wireless service providers. However, evolved 3G cellular technology will soon deliver a new era of Internet connectivity, say Leaf Wireless and Ericsson.
Recent speculation that Sentech might pull the plug on its MyWireless Classic packages was unfounded according to Sentech's Winston Smith.
Recent figures released by Point Topic show that the number of broadband connections worldwide has surpassed the 200 million mark.
Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) and telecommunications provider MCI (Profile, Products, Articles) announced Tuesday a multiyear partnership to offer software and services that will allow users to call from a PC to almost any phone in the world.
Cape Town's power supply was restored by 7pm on Friday following a city-wide outage, a city spokesman said.
Fortunately, Visual Hosting has a diesel backup generator and there wasn't any downtime.
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