What began as a quiet post on Google’s official blog has ballooned into a full fledged international tempest, with the U.S. and China trading barbs about the role of the government in regulating the Internet.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday condemned cyber attacks and called for an Internet where all have equal access to knowledge and ideas. “Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century,” she said.
After years of censoring Internet searches for the Chinese government, Google’s patience with Beijing abruptly came to an end last week. The trigger for Google’s announcement that it will stop most censorship of searches from China and may halt its business there was a sophisticated series of E-mail hacks based in China and targeting companies and human-rights activists. Some search results such as politically sensitive topics and pornography will continue to be censored as negotiations proceed with officials from the Chinese government, according to a Google official.
The decision has prompted serious examination in Washington, where for years lawmakers and civil liberties groups have decried both Chinese hackers and Google’s policy of abetting communist censors in Beijing. The incident touches on several resonant issues for lawmakers, including censorship, electronic espionage, intellectual property, and human rights. The White House, which was briefed about the cyberattack before the public announcement, said that it backs the “right to a free Internet. Full Story
Comcast
Comcast is in discussions with partners to offer a music streaming service to its customers as an à la carte offering, we’ve heard from multiple sources. For an additional monthly charge of $5 or more, users will be able to stream on demand music online via a website and on their TV via their cable box.
For the last 18 months a Danish ISP called TDC has been offering customers in that country the ability to stream music online as part of their basic ISP packages ranging from $47 to $65 per month. From what we’ve heard from our friends in Denmark, the service is very popular.
The Comcast service would offer users the ability to stream music without any additional charges. Services like MySpace Music, Spotify and MOG (and the late iMeem) offer similar services today, but not through the cable box.
Bill Gates
Last summer, Microsoft founder Bill Gates made the somewhat surprising announcement that he was quitting
Facebook after being inundated with friend requests, explaining “It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up”. Today, it looks like he’s decided to give it another go. A few hours ago, Gates launched both a new Facebook Page and a Twitter account (@BillGates
Here’s a musical collaboration sure to be some kind of first: Rapper M.I.A. reportedly recorded a track of her upcoming album with a group of Filipino Verizon workers.
Rapper M.I.A. performs during the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park in this…Rapper M.I.A. performs during the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park in this August 2009 file photo, in San Francisco, Calif. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the 34-year-old singer said that a lengthy phone call with tech support inspired her song “I’m Down Like Your Internet Connection.”(C. Flanigan/Getty Images)
Say what?
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the 34-year-old singer said that a lengthy phone call with tech support inspired the song “I’m Down, Like Your Internet Connection.”
“I was having issues with my cable and wireless, and I was on the phone [with tech support] for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music, could you just learn these lyrics and sing it down the phone to me?’ Ten phone calls later, I have Internet that sticks and a song,” she told the magazine.
Representatives for the artist did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but Rolling Stone associate editor Brian Hiatt said that though he wonders whether M.I.A. was exaggerating the story, she insists it was true.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the 34-year-old singer said that a lengthy phone call with tech support inspired the song “I’m Down, Like Your Internet Connection.”“I was having issues with my cable and wireless, and I was on the phone [with tech support] for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music, could you just learn these lyrics and sing it down the phone to me?’ Ten phone calls later, I have Internet that sticks and a song,” she told the magazine.
Representatives for the artist did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but Rolling Stone associate editor Brian Hiatt said that though he wonders whether M.I.A. was exaggerating the story, she insists it was true.
If their as good as Jackie Chan then it has to be good. This Kaspersky Lab video was the best ad I have seen in a long time. Once you watch it, you will want to watch it over and over again. Maybe he should think about doing a movie about cyberspace. It would be totally different.
We found this video on Youtube on “How to manage your privacy settings on facebook”. The video gives great details on how to really be more private on facebook. If you are one of those type of people whom don’t mind being googled all over the place then you would set your privacy more open. Facebook privacy setting can be helpful to those who need a little more promoting. If you are an individual then you would want more privacy. Although people like, Martha Stewart,Tyler Perry, Vin Diesel and Roland Martin would have less privacy because they need there names always out there for the public to see.
Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can expect more attention from cybercriminals in 2010, according to a new report (PDF) released Tuesday by McAfee Labs. Also at risk are users of Adobe Systems products including Acrobat Reader and Flash. And move over Microsoft; the security firm predicts that Google’s Chrome OS will “create another opportunity for malware writers to prey on users.”
The company also anticipates smarter and more dangerous Trojans that “follow the money,” as well as a “significant trend toward a more distributed and resilient botnet infrastructure that relies much more on peer-to-peer technologies.”
In a recorded interview (scroll down for audio) David Marcus, McAfee Labs’ director of security research and communications, said that he expects “an explosion of Facebook and other services targeted by cyber criminals.” In addition to malware like Koobface that spreads among Facebook users’ friends list, Marcus expects an increase in rogue Facebook applications.
“When you click yes to ‘do you want to allow this application to access your Facebook account,’ you’re giving that application access to all the data in your Facebook account,” he said. Facebook vets the third-party applications that it distributes, but rouge developers are finding other ways to get people to install unauthorized apps.
“A lot of the spammers and scammers will send fake Facebook application requests to users’ inboxes,” he said. Marcus recommends that you only install apps from within Facebook by clicking “browse more applications” in the Facebook application installer.”
Twitter vulnerabilities
According to McAfee, Twitter is vulnerable mostly because of URL-shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com. There’s nothing wrong with Twitter or these services, but when you click on a shortened URL you have no idea where you’re going until after you get there. I would like to see a URL-shortening service that vets each URL for security and rejects those that are potentially dangerous. Twitter, according to the McAfee report is “also serving as a control vehicle for botnets.”
Criminals are now being more surgical in their attacks, singling out individuals and corporations as targets. The report points to the 10-month investigation of “GhostNet,” which McAfee Labs describes as a “network of at least 1,295 compromised computers in 103 countries” that “primarily belonged to government, aid groups, and activists.” The malicious code was delivered by e-mail with subject headings related to the Dali Lama and Tibet, according to the report.
The report also sites “a very targeted wave of attacks against the management of major companies,” as well as attacks carried out against “journalists from various media organizations, including Agence France Press, Dow Jose and Reuters based in China.”
Adobe products and Google Chrome vulnerable
Adobe products, especially its Acrobat Reader and Flash, are likely to replace Microsoft Office as the No. 1 software target, according to McAfee. It’s nothing they’ve (Adobe) done wrong,” Marcus said. “The bad guys go where the masses go” and because of the increasingly widespread use of Adobe products, “that tends to be what the bad buys will start looking to exploit. It really is nothing more sophisticated than that.”
Criminals are infecting PDF files and leveraging exploits in the opening of PDF documents, according to Marcus.
“Instead of viewing a PDF you’re actually taken to a website that downloads some type of malware to your machine.” Adobe plans to patch a critical hole in Reader and Acrobat on January 12.
There is also concern about Google’s Chrome operating system, which is expected to be officially released in 2010. Chrome, which will run Web-based applications, is likely to be vulnerable to attacks in HTML 5–the newest version of the hyper-text markup language that, says the report, “holds all the promises that today’s Web community seeks–primarily blurring and removing the lines between a Web application and a desktop application.”
McAfee also warned of banking Trojans with “new tactics that went well beyond the rather simple keylogging-with-screenshots” that were used earlier. Trojans now use rootkit techniques to hide on a victim’s system to disable antivirus software.
Remember when a lack of copy and paste was one of the biggest complaints about the iPhone? Well, even though those days are far behind us, copying and pasting on an iPhone could still be a lot easier. That’s where Pastebot comes in. This slick new app from Tapbots lets you store multiple snippets of text, links, and even images, for easy pasting later.
Adding a clipping is extremely simple: just copy something, open Pastebot, and it’s automatically added. Pastebot doesn’t just collect clippings, either. It lets you organize and modify them, even including some basic image filters, making it easier to find what you need later. It even syncs over wi-fi with a desktop app on your Mac, so you can pass clippings from your desktop to your mobile device with ease.
Pastebot is 3 bucks in the app store, and it’s 3 bucks well spent if you paste frequently on your phone, or just want a quick way to transfer some images and text between iPhone and Mac.
Give your iPhone a seriously powerful clipboard with Pastebot originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Filed under: OS Updates, Microsoft, Open Source
From the Chinese pirate masters of the non-sea-faring variety comes … Ylmf OS! Not happy with pirating Windows XP itself, these creative Chinese have gone one step further and hacked Ubuntu to look exactly like Windows XP. Why have they moved to Ubuntu? Because their previous release — a pirate version of Windows XP itself — is being cracked down on by Microsoft.
If you clicked the link above, you’ll notice that the entire site is in Chinese with no sign of any button that’ll magically turn it into English, but if you navigate to the download page, there does seem to be five links to the ISO that you can download. Initial testing, and the screenshots, would suggest that the OS’s GUI (graphical user interface) is purely Chinese too, but if you find out a way to convert it into American/English, let us know!
This isn’t the first time copycats or pirates have imitated a prevalent operating system. Cloned in China reported on the case of Tomato Garden Windows XP, another pirate distribution, where the creator was jailed for 4 years and fined $147,000. China has very lax piracy laws, but I would expect Microsoft to lean rather heavily on its friends there — if they have any — to make sure Ylmf OS is stamped out quickly. It might not be Windows itself, but you can sue for GUI copycatting too!
All in all, despite the questionable legality, it really is a great-looking copycat; almost pixel-perfect. I wonder if Ubuntu developers are happy, or despairing.
Infamous Chinese pirates launch Ubuntu that looks just like Windows XP originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Windows XP – Microsoft – Operating system – China – Graphical user interface
