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.
Despite Real ID, WV licensees may exclude photos from licenses
Religious fundamentalists in West Virginia are now being exempted from getting their digital photos emblazoned on their driver's licenses, after objections over carrying around what they conceive as the biblical "mark of the beast."
Although objecting West Virginians will still be required to have their license photos taken at a state Department of Motor Vehicles office, their photos will be removed from its computer immediately afterward, with the state retaining hard copies of the pictures at its main office.
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.
Openmoko to publish 'open' phone recipes, after dealing with NDAs
Openmoko has finally decided to release the full schematics for its open source, "build-your-own" phones, apparently after the removal of stumbling blocks surrounding non-disclosure agreements for GSM chips.
About a month after shipping its own Neo FreeRunner phone, Openmoko today rolled out plans to post the compete inner workings of that phone and its predecessor, the Neo 1973, on its Web sites at Openmoko.com and Openmoko.org, for use under a Creative Commons (CC) license.
Yahoo tweaks advertising policies in response to Congress
Last week, Congress sent letters to Internet platform providers expressing concern over targeted advertising. Now those letters have resulted in action from at least one company, which will now enable users to opt-out.
As part of its new privacy policy announced this afternoon, Yahoo will give its users a choice as to choose whether to opt-out of the company's targeted advertising across its properties. It is already offering its users an option to opt-out of similar ads served by third-party networks.
Could cuts in telcos' 'terminating rates' be passed on to consumers?
Users who want to lower their cell phone bills could be in for a treat -- or maybe not -- if the FCC responds favorably to a petition filed jointly by the nation's top three wireless providers, backed by powerful industry groups.
In their petition to the US Federal Communications Commission, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon Wireless -- along with the CTIA, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), the VON Coalition, and other parties -- are mutually seeking uniformity around, and reductions in, the carrier "terminating rates" which service providers charge each other for helping to carry one another's traffic over networks.
Reporters booted from Black Hat Conference for hacking
Three French journalists have been shown the exit from the yearly hacking confab after it was discovered they were hacking into the press room's Wi-Fi network.
Dominique Jouniot, Marc Brami, and Mauro Israel of the French IT publication Global Security Magazine are being accused of the hack. The magazine had been a sponsor of the conference, however organizers said they had ended the partnership as a result of the actions.
Google sees erosion of its $1B AOL investment
Google has admitted to the SEC that its 2006 investment in AOL could be "impaired," meaning that its 5 percent stake in AOL might now be worth considerably less than the $1 billion the company paid in 2006.
For Google, this assessment might bring a substantial charge against future profits, although the highly profitable company -- which earned $2.55 billion during the first half of 2008 alone -- seems likely to be able to absorb the loss rather handily.
Apple pulls $1,000 App Store 'gem' after eight downloads
Armin Heinrich, the developer of the 'I Am Rich' application that sold for $999.99 and does essentially nothing, isn't sure why his submission was pulled from the App Store as it was done without warning.
Eight people are said to have downloaded the program, including six in the US, one in Germany and another in France during the day it was live. Using the App Store's revenue split, Heinrich would have made nearly $5,600 in revenues from an program that essentially does nothing.
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.
IPhone feature could enable Apple to kill apps remotely
11:10 am EDT August 8, 2008 - Another technical writer has disagreed with author Jonathan Zdziarski's and the media's initial suppositions about the whether the list he discovered on his 3G iPhone truly is a blacklist-in-waiting.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that its a Core Location blacklist, and that the "clbl" in the called URL stands for exactly that. Applications who use that portion of the iPhone code must follow some very strict rules for privacy reasons.
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.
Ubuntu attracts the lion's share of LinuxWorld's smaller crowds
Download Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Alpha 3 from FileForum now.
Even though attendance was a bit sparse during this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo when compared to previous years, the Canonical booth -- where the latest Ubuntu Linux software was being shown off -- still managed to draw a crowd.
IBM VP urges open source devs to make Linux less like Windows
If Linux is going to make bigger inroads on the desktop, developers need to stop cloning Microsoft Windows and instead produce more unique user interface designs, according to Bob Sutor, IBM's VP of open source and standards.
Sutor made these remarks today at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, a day after IBM issued the latest in an eight-year series of Linux announcements, joining at LinuxWorld with Linux distributors Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical in an initiative to build "Microsoft-free PCs for business."
LinuxWorld shows off the latest data center-in-a-truck
Talk about your portable servers. Rackable Systems brought its ICE Cube Modular Data Center to LinuxWorld, demonstrating how companies can literally ship their data centers from city to city, even overseas, in cool comfort.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - Self-contained, fully portable, modular servers are becoming more popular because they help reduce data center costs, and these all-in-one data centers can be moved from location to location with ease. Over the past few years, at least two companies have created their modular centers in shipping containers that can be transported by road, rail or air.
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