Slashdot reports in Another Critical Microsoft Hole that IE, once again, has a problem with granting ActiveX controls too many rights. This latest security flaw in Windows NT/2000 (not present in XP) is a really good as the best solution Microsoft can recommend is to “…to make sure you have no trusted publishers, including Microsoft.” (Security Bulletin MS02-065). That means you have to remove all the trusted publishers from your list, because the control at issue is actually signed and... [More]

The August 15, 2002 Cryptogram by Bruce Schneier at Counterpane Internet Security explains what is known about “Palladium”, the code-name for Microsoft’s trusted computing intiative. It’s abbreviated as Pd, like an element. Isn’t that cute. This is a natural outgrowth of Hollywood’s (in the form of the MPAA and the RIAA) jihad against its customer base and our acceptance of the blame. It aims to use hardware to prevent people from doing anything that Hollywood doesn’t want them to with... [More]

Am I looking for conspiracies where they don’t exist when I read The Importance Of Being In India in Business World India and this article, Bill Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS in India on Canada.com on the same day and wonder whether the two are connected? I mean, Gates himself said that “…[h]e worried that India’s enormous progress in information technology − the country has the only Microsoft software development centre outside the United States − would be thwarted by AIDS.” At this... [More]

The Washington Post reports in Europe’s Microsoft Alternative that a region of Spain, “a western region of Spain called Extremadura, a mostly rural expanse of olive trees and tiny towns with 1.1 million inhabitants”, is planning “to convert all the area’s computer systems, in government offices, businesses and homes, from the Windows operating system to Linux”. This is a trend that started in Asia, with first China, then India, declaring that they would be standardizing on Linux or other... [More]

3.998GHz! Now that’s an overclocked chip. This was spotted at Slashdot in an article called P4 2.80GHz Overclocked to 3.917GHz. In their English language abstract, they mention that they actually got it to run at 3.998GHz after all. Yeah, those numbers are correct. These crazy Finnish guys place the entire chip assembly into a bath of liquid nitrogen inside a styrofoam cup (see picture). In a couple of pictures, you can see the Fluke thermometer registering -193°C! The whole site’s in Finnish,... [More]

Ars Technica has a rundown on the latest Apple/Mac conference, MacWorld New York, in MWNY Keynote: Time to line the RDF with asbestos?, which announced a lot of new products, both hardware and software. Most of the hardware changes are incremental updates, with the IMac upgrading to a 17" wide screen, which is very cool. The IPod now has “[u]p to 20 GB of storage, official support for calendar and contacts, and Windows support via MusicMatch.”

The most interesting updates are on the software... [More]

Opera casts off legacy code for speed on CNet’s News.com provides basically a press release about Opera’s new 7.0 browser, dubbed Presto. Latest information on the 7.0 release is available on Opera software’s 7.0 page.

“Dubbed Project Presto, after the musical tempo-character marking indicating speed and lightness, the rewritten browser was designed to make Opera both faster and more compatible with the Document Object Model (DOM), an emerging standard technology that lets scripts, like... [More]”

Almost 2 months ago, the Mozilla project finally released a 1.0 version of its browser. Mozilla Milestone 1.0: the Review on Ars Technica gives a good overview and review of the final product.

Those who’ve downloaded builds of Mozilla over the years have doubtless found that Mozilla seems to suffer from an identity crisis. Sometimes it seems like a browser, sometimes it seems like a standards-compliant rendering engine, sometimes it feels like a development environment cum operating system. It... [More]

State of Decay on DDJ documents a new classification system for a phenomenon everyone in the computing world has experienced: cruft. Cruft is defined thusly:

“When you spot a class interface that is no longer used by any client, but that nobody dare delete, that’s cruft. It is also the word “seperate,” added to a spellchecker’s private dictionary in a moment of careless haste, and now waiting for a suitably important document. Cruft is the cruel corruption and confusion inevitably wrought by... [More]”

And for more than just the usual reasons of getting your mail delivered through the evil empire. This time, they’re deleting your mail without warning as ZDNet point out in Microsoft begins to clean out Hotmail “[a]s part of a series of new storage policies aimed at driving more people toward its paid services”.

So, in addition to Microsoft changing their privacy policy every couple of weeks by adding some extra vendor-sharing checkboxes to their preferences, then selecting them as ‘on’ by... [More]

GM’s Billion-Dollar Bet on Wired.com is about GM’s bold plans for a fuel-cell vehicle by 2010, long before other major rivals expect to be forced by oil shortages to change their fleet. In short, GM sees opportunity in fuel-cells because it allows them to design a car that requires far less tooling, less design and fewer moving parts than the internal combustion dinosaurs we think are advanced now.

The car itself will be quite different from cars today simply because the move to fuel cells... [More]

Ars Technica has a Satellite Radio Review. It discusses availability, content, and pricing. There are currently two providers in the market, XM Radio and Sirius. The technology behind it is quite involved, with XM Radio supporting a “100,000 Sq. Ft. broadcasting facility in Washington DC”. The whole enterprise is enormously expensive:

“Sirius radio operates three birds all at Geo-Sync orbit as well. When you add up the cost for digital audio storage, encoders, multiplexers, modems, satellite... [More]”

You may start to hear more about this phenomenon called ‘warchalking’ sooner of later. With the increase in wireless internet access, users with a lot of extra bandwidth are wondering how to let others know what sort of access is available in the area. Enter warchalking. Business Week has the article A Wireless End Run Around ISPs discussing how this trend started, some symbols to recognize and possible future usage or problems.

Advocates of a free internet have been creating their own... [More]

A Guide To Metric Time… seen on Slashdot in Isn’t it Time for Metric Time? discusses a proposed system for converting to base-ten time. As if the U.S. doesn’t have enough problems converting to metric measurement, except curiously for soda containers, here comes a new proposal sure not to be adopted.

“Metric Time (MT) is an attempt to create a decimalized time system for our modern base-10 using world. This is a neglected part of the Metric System (or SI) which has created a whole measuring... [More]”

The Register has Corporates! Give your PCs to Africa, a drive by Computer Aid International to get corporations to donate their “end-of-life PCs” to a good cause.

“In the West, organisations consign millions of usable PCs to the scrap heap each year. … End-of-life PCs are worthless to most companies − but invaluable to school children. Companies have written down the value of their redundant computers to nil, and all they see is a headache in getting rid of their old kit. We can take care of... [More]”

Opera Software has a recent press announcement, Opera strikes accord with Macromedia…, which announces that future Macromedia products for the MacOS will use the embedded Opera engine to render pages.

“Opera will deliver a full-featured, embeddable version of its desktop browser to be integrated into a wide range of Macromedia Web development products. … Opera and Macromedia will work together to develop and maintain an application programming interface (API) for an embedded browser on the... [More]”

Wired.com has an article that teaches you How to Disappear. If you’re like me and get about 150 junk mails over a long weekend, you may want to read this article on how to opt-out for good. The article gives a “three-tiered guide to pick a level of solitude”.

At the intro level, they suggest to just write to large name-database clearinghouses and demand to be expunged, anonymize your web access by surfing by proxy or using an anonymous remailer (which aren’t illegal in the U.S. yet).

The next... [More]

MS security patch EULA gives Billg admin privileges on your box on The Register talks about the new EULA for the recent patch to Window Media Player. It seems to involve some wording that allows Microsoft to upgrade your machine and software automatically to conform to DRM standards it, and its content providers, have agreed to. Whether you’ve agreed to it doesn’t matter. Your agreement is implicit in your use of the patch for the security holes in their software. That’s right, they ship... [More]

Logitech Pocket Digital Review on Hardward Central reviews the new Logitech digital camera. It’s only 1.3 megapixel, but if you’re looking for a snapshot camera, this one has other statistics that make it more attractive than other alternatives, like the popular Intel Pocket Camera. “[I]t’s no larger than a laptop’s PC Card, half an inch thick and 1.8 ounces … Battery life is ample; controls, including a self-timer, are simple … the Logitech is almost an impulse buy at $130.”.

The battery is... [More]

IBM Research News has recently announced their latest new ‘world record’ for storage density. IBM’s ‘Millipede’ Project Demonstrates Trillion-Bit Data Storage Density says:

“Using an innovative nanotechnology, IBM scientists have demonstrated a data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch — 20 times higher than the densest magnetic storage available today.”

The breakthrough involves a return to mechanical storage, reminiscent of the punchcards of old, but this time, the card is “a... [More]”

Xentex Technologies has developed a dual screen laptop called the Xentex Flip-Pad Voyager. Each screen is 13.3" diagonal, but each is also aligned in portrait mode. For presentations, the screens can be swiveled around to face the 180° the other direction (JPG). The start of the tour shows it all folded up and mentions that it sits at 3" high, so it’s more of a slim briefcase than the laptops you’ve become used to. It looks pretty high-tech though, like something out of James Bond or Mission... [More]

Lawmeme has posted the Top Ten New Copyright Crimes, which has coverage of a recent interview “with Jamie Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting (an AOL Time Warner company)”. He recently made news for this interview for the rather remarkable claim that:

“[Ad skips are] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad- supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re... [More]”

The Register ran MS in Peruvian open-source nightmare. Peru is considering a bill to require that all public offices use only open-source software. Once Microsoft got wind of this, Señor Juan Alberto González, General Manager of Microsoft in Perú issued a stern warning against doing so and provided the usual raft of logic.

In an extremely well-written reply, and possibly the most eloquent and accessible defense of Open Source software I’ve seen, “[Peruvian Congressman... [More]”

The Apple Developer’s Conference is full of cool announcements. First, and most importantly, is the impending release of OS X 10.2, called Jaguar. Apple has a A Look Inside Jaguar covering the major points. The most exciting is Quartz Extreme:

“Jaguar dramatically improves the performance of Mac OS X with Quartz Extreme hardware-based graphics acceleration. Quartz Extreme takes advantage of the OpenGL 3D graphics engine to make the entire desktop a fully accelerated OpenGL scene. A supported*... [More]”

The Mac Expo last week announced the latest IMac. I think Mark Morford summed it up best in Please Lick This iMac:

<q>It looks like a big vanity mirror stuck atop a large scoop of white rice. It’s utterly annoying in that whole getting-it-right sort of way. It forces you to justify instant feelings of rabid consumerism. It makes you want one. Immediately.</q>

The New York Times had an equally delirious article, For Apple, to Be Flat Is a Virtue.

<q>In other words, Apple’s new design manages... [More]

If you’re in the market for a new display system, there’s an extensive review of the latest and greatest video cards on the Tech Report called ATI vs. NVIDIA: The next generation…. The first 4 pages are just geeky pictures of the video cards themselves (though, being a geek, I think the cards look pretty nice). The ‘contest’ begins on page 5, with basic system specs for the test harness and raw throughput numbers for each of the cards. The cards compared are the “Radeon 7500 vs. GeForce4 MX 440... [More]”

Quantum Picture develops image-recognition technology. Their proof-of-concept is an ingenious automated cat-flap that prevents kitty from bringing in any unwelcome guests (as cats are wont to do). It’s called the Flo Control Project. You can see a picture of Flo standing in front of her high-tech door, which is commercially available as Cat Mate, to the left.

Basically, the setup has a digital camera and a lamp, the lamp projects a silhouette of the cat’s head onto a screen, then the camera... [More]

Back in January, Microsoft announced that their next version of Windows would consolidate their multifarious data-stores into one package. Currently, they have NTFS, SQL-Server and the Exchange format to house and index data. This was reported and covered in detail by the Register in XP successor Longhorn goes SQL….

Recently, the Register ran an interview with Benoit Schillings and Dominic Giampaolo, both of BeOS fame, called Windows on a database…. The BeOS probably came the closest to... [More]

The Register is covering the ongoing Microsoft trial, which has entered the penalty phase. As a bit of background, the states are basically proposing that Microsoft make Windows more modular, so that OEMs can distribute versions of Windows with other vendor applications replacing Microsoft versions. This seems to make sense and at least begins to address Microsoft’s crippling monopoly on the desktop by allowing even the possibility that, upon purchasing a computer from a major vendor, one might... [More]

Having watched the music recording industry go through digital growing pains, the movie industry is taking a decidedly more legislative angle on piracy. The recording industry may have the DMCA, but that only prevents people from cracking encryption standards that copy-protect music. Hollywood has its sights set on hardware, not software. While the DMCA protects even horrible encryption standards from being cracked legally…by Americans anyway, the SSSCA is an industry plan to enforce... [More]