Seven critical Windows patches next Tuesday, including to Media Player
Microsoft's regular pre-briefing on monthly security issues contained some dire news, including patches for a reportedly "Critical" vulnerability affecting Windows Media Player for XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2008.
The dynamics of this problem, in keeping with Microsoft's current policy, are not being revealed until at least next Tuesday, though the company did acknowledge its existence late yesterday. If the company is implementing its so-called MAPP policy, announced earlier this week, then it's possible that some select partners who produce security software may know the details.
Did a single security engineer avert a DNS disaster?
Had someone with ill intent been as smart or as lucky as security engineer Dan Kaminsky, the entire Internet could have been rendered mostly inoperative. The extent of just how big a fix he implemented, is only now being realized.
There is an entire subculture that has developed around the notion of deconstructing information technology. And like those who prefer to fish in pre-stocked ponds, the people who populate this subculture are not, for the most part, particularly clever. They may be adept with their tools, but they don't construct exploitation strategies for themselves. Rather, they wait until someone smarter can do it for them.
Facebook's response: Worms are not our problem
The response from representatives of social networks impacted this week by the discovery of a type of worm that targets them specifically, appears to have come straight out of West Side Story. They're playing it cool, boys, real cool.
In a company blog post late yesterday, whose timing is the main indication of its being a response to concerns raised earlier this week over Kaspersky Lab's discovery of a worm being disseminated through social networks, Facebook's head of security, Max Kelly, advised users that if they really think they have a worm or virus on their computers, they should contact Microsoft or Apple.
Mozilla Labs considers grafting IM onto Firefox
Download Snowl 0.1 alpha from FileForum now.
When a company's lab typically comes forth with an idea for the general public, it already has a proposition in mind for why that idea is necessarily good. This morning, one of Mozilla Labs' latest ideas actually leaves that question open.
Toshiba doubles its embedded flash capacity to catch up with Samsung
Thumb drives and portable music players may continue their rapid capacity increase, thanks to #2 flash supplier Toshiba introducing 32 gigabit chips this fall. It's a big gamble, though, for a catch-up player in a declining market.
Just 16 months after the company said it was ready to begin sampling 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND flash memory for embedded devices, using its 56-nanometer lithography process, Toshiba announced late this morning that it would begin sampling 32 Gb embedded flash devices using its 43-nm process in October.
Prospects for DVB-H mobile TV dimming even with EU mandate
There is one standard for digital mobile TV in Europe, as the European Commission decided five months ago. Despite that, service providers are still opting for their own methods instead, and even the EC is already planning an alternate route.
Even though the European Commission formally decided last March that DVB-H will be the single mobile digital television standard for Europe, private operators charged with the task of determining how to build a business model around DVB-H services may be drawing a blank, and are believed to be considering quitting altogether.
No more delays: SQL Server 2008 released to manufacturing
With two of Microsoft Windows Server product lines, due for release on November 12, completely dependent upon this product's having been released to manufacturing, SQL Server 2008 is at last on its way.
Microsoft officially announced its release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2008 this afternoon. MSDN and TechNet subscribers will find the product officially available for download in the Servers section, BetaNews has confirmed. And the company's Web site for the product has officially been updated.
Open 3D graphics standard backed by Sony, Intel, Nvidia gains kinematics
You might prefer for the game console of your choice to be distinct or superior in some well-defined way. But as a developer, you might prefer to develop toward a more open, portable standard, such as the one being advanced this week.
In advance of a major demonstration at a graphics industry convention in Los Angeles next week, the Khronos Group coalition of graphics developers announced they will be demonstrating an improved open standard for representing 3D graphics assets that adds the ability for objects to have movable skeletons with skin and other objects attached.
Pioneer now says it can add four more layers to its Blu-ray disc
With the optical disc industry upping the ante last month, raising its goals for optical disc-based storage to a half-terabyte, Pioneer returned to testing a possible multi-layer BD, and now says it can squeeze more capacity onto one disc.
During a symposium on optical storage in Hawaii last month, Pioneer Electronics showed off its latest permutation of multi-layer recording using the DVD form factor, unveiling its draft specifications for a 16-layer Blu-ray Disc with as much as 400 GB capacity. But apparently, the company was surprised to find that the symposium had set forth a little higher goal: 500 GB by no later than 2012.
Huge correction: More opposition to Yahoo's Yang than first tabulated
In an error literally akin to finding the "0" key stuck on your typewriter, a major securities service admitted it had problems adding values ranging into the hundreds of millions, in its tabulation of Yahoo shareholder votes last Friday.
The provider of securities processing services to seven of the US' top ten brokerage firms, according to an SEC filing, admitted late yesterday that it did indeed make a serious error in the tabulation of shareholder votes for Yahoo board members during its shareholders' meeting on August 1.
Mozilla: Tell us how you see the future of Web browsing
With new versions of Firefox adding welcome features but no radical changes to the way people live and work, its producers are wondering whether the general public may have better ideas about Firefox' future than their own engineers.
After the production of a new and not-so-fanciful proof-of-concept video for Mozilla Labs by San Francisco-based software design consultants Adaptive Path, the Mozilla organization has put out an open call for anyone and everyone to create similar videos that could offer glimpses into a future browser, unlimited by the confines of its operating system.
Microsoft to share more vulnerability data with select partners
In what may be becoming a semi-annual ritual, Microsoft chose the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas to unveil its latest initiative to share details about Windows vulnerabilities with outside sources who may be able to help.
Almost every year this decade, Microsoft has launched or enhanced an initiative to share security information with developers and administrators. In 2005, the company launched its Security Support Alliance, an extension of a program launched the previous year to give advance notices to Certified Gold partners.
Friendster picks up key Google exec in a gamble for Asia Pacific
In an apparent refocus of the social network provider on the Asia Pacific region, today Friendster announced it had secured the services of a fellow who helped bolster Google's presence there in recent years as its new CEO.
It's the type of boast you would expect to hear in the voice of the late, great Don Adams: Would you believe that Friendster is, and has been for some time, the leading social network online in the Asia/Pacific region?
Dish Network reports losing subscribers, blames transition period
For a company that's earning 50% more as a spun-off entity than it did as a wholly-owned division of EchoStar, what could possibly go wrong? Yesterday, Dish Network actually listed 28 possible dire consequences in a filing with the SEC.
For the past year, digital satellite service provider Dish Network has reported gaining subscribers by the truckload, signing up approximately 170,000 net new customers in just the fiscal second quarter of 2007 alone. But that gain was pared down to 110,000 in the third quarter of last year, followed by 85,000 in the following quarter, then 35,000.
Cablevision's DVR does not infringe copyright, appeals court rules
If you take the recording device of a DVR off the customer's premises and place it in an upstream transmitting station, does that constitute an unauthorized duplication? Last year, a US district court said yes. Today, it's a new ballgame.
In a ruling this afternoon that is very, very likely to be appealed itself, a three-judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed a lower court ruling in March 2007 in favor of movie and cable TV studios. That ruling stated that Cablevision Systems' plan to provide cable customers with a DVR-like system using its remote servers, constituted an illegal rebroadcast of their content. This afternoon, the judges strongly disagreed.
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