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Vol. 8, No. 17
5-8-08
1 Follow-up
2 Mother’s Day
3 TorrentSpy loses, Zune suspicion, FBI vs. Wayback Machine, AMD goes core crazy
4 Avoid code bloat
5 AVG alternative
Just to catch up on some recent stories, this week will wander a bit and cover some developments of late.
First, and most obvious, the XP SP3 debacle. After the rush and blunders trying to get the Service Pack installed and tested before the release date as a Critical Update, Microsoft postponed it again. On the day it was supposed to hit, no less.
This time the glitch was the sudden realization that it would crash a Microsoft Point of Sale application. How they failed to test it against their own products before doing real-world testing is beyond me, but there you have it.
The release date was changed and without notice (at least that I saw) suddenly showed up yesterday as a Critical Update. As before I installed it, this time on my work PC, with no issues. I did note, however, a major problem with QuickBooks although it may be unrelated to SP3. There’s a known issue with the April patch to .Net Framework that can crash QuickBooks and a load I did yesterday on a new PC sure enough crashed.
Just in case you might want to wait on SP3 if you use any Intuit programs.
Also recently I mentioned the modern problem of “botnets”, which are networks of machines infected with malicious access code which allow third parties to take over the machine and use it for nefarious purposes, usually identity theft or to send massive amounts of Spam.
Late last month a pair of researchers at security firm TippingPoint (http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/04/28/kraken-botnet-infiltration) managed to infiltrate the largest of the botnets, Kraken, and “capture” a good percentage of the infected machines’ traffic requesting updates.
This allowed for some good information on the distribution of the infections and a better idea of the actual size, but it presented an ethical dilemma. With access to up to 15% of the infected machines, should the researchers inject some simple code to remove the offending malware?
The researchers say yes. It’s unwanted malware, after all, and severely degrades the victim’s performance and bandwidth. They even counter the argument that the action would be similar to “white-hat” worm viruses that are released into the wild and only target infected machines for cleaning. In this case nothing is in the wild and the process can be stopped at any time.
Lab management argues that it might break something critical, like a system running medical life support equipment and, as we all know, management wins these arguments every time.
Personally I think if you’re a medical professional running a respirator or insulin pump with an unpatched insecure Windows machine you should lose your license to practice. If you’re hospitalized and glance at a screen connected to lines running to or into your body and see Windows, ask for a transfer to another facility.
Lastly, in a recent development in the ongoing legal attacks of the RIAA against their own customers, a judge has ruled that simply having music files in a “shared folder” does not violate Copyright.
In order to prove infringement, the RIAA would have to provide evidence that a file was actually accessed and downloaded from the defendant’s computer rather than just make the claim that sharing makes the file available and offers to distribute it.
If this ruling stands up to the inevitable appeals from Big Entertainment it could invalidate many previous court victories for them. My heart bleeds for their loss…
And with that, we are back on a normal schedule with Thursday issues.
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
A U.S. judge has ruled on a
nearly US$111 million
copyright-infringement decision against TorrentSpy.com, the BitTorrent
peer-to-peer search site. The case was brought by the MPAA, the
Motion Picture Association of America. Thank goodness Tom Cruise and
Brad Pitt can finally get off welfare:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145640/judge_slaps_torrentspy_with_111m_damages.html
A New York Times article purporting that
Microsoft is working with NBC
Universal to create a "copyright cop" -- or anti-piracy filter -- for
the Zune that will prevent playback of unauthorized videos, was
refuted by Microsoft today. After all, no one believes Microsoft
would ever spy on customers:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_refutes_a_Times_article_on_Zunes_copyright_cop/1210264294
The FBI has withdrawn its demand for records on
a Wayback Machine (an
internet archive site) user. Instead, the suspected criminal will
simply be held without charge pending further evidence so we'll all
feel safer:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207601080&subSection=Privacy
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on Wednesday
revealed significant updates
to its server chip roadmap through 2010. 12 cores on a chip in two
years? Dandy. Where's my flying car?
http://www.crn.com/hardware/207601162
Copy us on the good stuff!
Matthew Dattilo
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
The good folks at Apple not
only like to sell hardware at bloated prices, but they have obviously decided
that bigger is better when it comes to their software. Their QuickTime is a common format, but
QuickTime's player is huge. Avoid that space hog by watching your QuickTime
files in QuickTime Alternative. This free codec works in a number of browsers,
too. With QuickTime Alternative, you can watch QuickTime files over Internet
Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera.
It's free here: http://free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
If you are an audio/video
buff, there are plenty of add-ons and codecs at the parent site: http://free-codecs.com/
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have a family member that is just getting
into computers. I have put
them together a small PC running Win 98SE. I started looking for free
antivirus software and the first company I thought of was AVG, since I
have had great success using their program in the past. After going
there to download the program, I found out it does not support Win
98SE anymore. Is there another solution out there?
A: You can use Avast. I checked the requirements
and it does support
Win98SE. Here is the link
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
I am currently running this program on 3 of my
home computers and
believe there are other team members who run this as well.
Thanks
Micah D. Lackey
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