Byte Into IT - 23 Jul 08

Registration opens for .me domains - Internet - iTnews Australia

Registrations for the .me top level domain started yesterday afternoon, giving users a new crack at getting a personalised web address.

Unlike the recent staggered rollout of the .asia domain, the .me registrations are open to everyone from day one.

The .me domain name was previously assigned to Montenegro after the country gained independence in June 2006.

However, owing to the widespread potential appeal of the name it is now available for general use.

Beware of 3G bill shock - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is warning consumers to be wary of the high charges that come with excessive data usage on new 3G mobile devices.

With the nationwide popularity of the recently released 3G iPhone, the ACCC said it wants to make sure consumers know the risks of usage caps and excess charges that come with data usage.

“In the case of smartphones, consumers can download greater amounts of information from the internet than ever before. With this, comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur considerable additional charges,” said ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Say goodbye to the computer mouse

It’s nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices.

“The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it’s over,” declared analyst Steve Prentice.

Every show an infomercial? TiVo, Amazon ink purchase pact

TiVo plans to introduce a new feature to its popular DVRs that will allow TV viewers to buy products on-screen directly from Amazon when they are shown on various TV shows—the ultimate form of product placement. TiVo hopes that the new venture will not only help the company offer new ways for users to interact with their DVRs, but also help shed its reputation among broadcasters for devaluing their advertising by enabling users to skip ads.

.org first top level domain to adopt DNS security protocol

ICANN has unanimously approved a request by the Public Interest Registry (which handles .org domains) to become the first generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) to switch to the DNS security protocol DNSSEC. As part of the agreement, PIR will trailblaze DNSSEC, while simultaneously developing an education and adoption plan that can later be disseminated across the Internet’s infrastructure, PIR’s use of DNSSEC is a significant step forward, but a mixture of contentious political and technological issues have slowed the worldwide development and deployment process.

DNSSEC is intended to fix fundamental flaws in the original DNS protocol that leave it vulnerable to several different attack vectors, including cache poisoning. This is accomplished in part through the use of digital signatures. By using such signatures, the DNS resolver can check to see if information it is receiving is actually from the appropriate address; the digital signatures effectively act as a password (the analogy is not exact).

The DNS flaws themselves aren’t anything new—they were discovered back in 1990—but the solution to the problem has been no less than eleven years in the making, putting the length of its development cycle almost on par with Duke Nukem Forever. DNSSEC development lasted from January 1997 to the present day, or roughly 11 years and six months. DNF was announced in April of 1997, and, assuming 3DRealms makes good on its 2008 projection, must ship no later than December 2008, for a total development time of 11 years, eight months. Hail to the king, indeed.

iPhone 3G tethering possible with jailbreak and proxy app

Although Mobile Safari on the iPhone is a reasonably good way to surf the web, there are also times when that screen is a little small, and you’d rather be using your laptop. WiFi is one option, but free, public WiFi isn’t a given in many areas. Depending on which mobile phone you have, you may be able to tether the device to your laptop and browse using a cellular data network. Now, the iPhone doesn’t normally have this functionality (much to our frustration), but thanks to the recent iPhone 3G jailbreak and a third-party proxy application, cre.ations.net has figured out a way to (sort of) tether your iPhone 3G and use your laptop via the 3G network.

Open Tech offers a different twist on the Apple clone

Just one week after news broke about a lawsuit pitting Apple against “clone” manufacturer Psytar, another company has announced that it will be throwing its own hat into the ring. Open Tech Inc. has announced it will begin selling Mac OS X-compatible PCs in the coming days, offering two models to choose from: the Open Tech Home, and Open Tech XT.

The Open Tech Home, clearly marketed for home use, features a 3.4GHz Pentium D processor, 500GB of storage, 3GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, a 500-watt power supply, built in WiFi, a GeForce 8600 GT (512MB), and a DVD burner for a total of $620. The XT, however, seems to be more of a pro workstation with a Intel Core 2 Quad running at 2.40GHz, 4GB of 800MHz DDR2, a 800-watt power supply, built-in WiFi, a GeForce 8800 GT (256MB) and a DVD burner for $1,200.

If we are looking at pure bang for your buck (and operating system aside), neither the Home nor the XT offer an outstanding ratio. You could build pretty much the same machine for cheaper elsewhere, but this is all about the operating system.

So how is Open Tech shipping its non-Apple computers with OS X installed? The answer is that it isn’t. While the company will preinstall Ubuntu 8.0.4 or Windows XP, the computer the company claims to be Apple-compatible won’t actually be able to do so with Mac OS X.

How To: Create Your Own Linux Recovery Disc

Linux.com writes up a helpful guide to creating your own custom system recovery boot disc using an Ubuntu 8.04 CD image, a little command line work, and a few recommended emergency tools, including the partition format/restore tool GParted, e2undel, a file recovery tool, and anything else you might need if your hard drive, RAM, or anything else on your system suddenly decides it doesn’t want to work. The guide requires a good bit of command line work, but it also lets you add whatever programs you’d like to have when you come back from the brink, and helps you strip out programs you don’t to boot faster. For a similar (but pre-compiled) hard drive-fixing tool, check out Gina’s guide to using the System Rescue CD.

Virtualization: VeeDee-Eyes Offers Pre-Configured Linux Distros for VirtualBox

If you’ve been checking out the newest VirtualBox beta for Mac OS X, or you’re intrigued by Linux but not ready to deal with virtualizing it, the Sun xVM VirtualBox VDI Index—or, as it’s skeevily nicknamed, veeDee-Eyes—has a host of pre-compiled, pre-configured images for you. No need to set up space, “boot” from a live CD and mess around with hardware config, as copies of Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and others are ready to run. Not all of them are free, with a few of the multi-GB distros asking for a buck or two to cover server costs, but a good number of interesting variants and betas are there for the taking. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and is a free download.

Linux Tip: p7zip Adds Built-In 7-Zip Tools to Ubuntu

The Tombuntu blog points out a seriously helpful package available in Ubuntu’s extended repositories that make creating super-efficient 7-Zip archives simple and fast, whether you’re right-clicking or working with a command line. Run this command to install it:

sudo apt-get install p7zip

Users of other Linux distros should find a similar package in their own sources. Once installed, creating compressed archives for storing or emailing is as simple as selecting the files, right-clicking, and choosing “Create Archive,” and de-compressing just as simple

Byte Into It - 16 Jul 08

Time machine needed to get iPhone? - Boing Boing

Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is “temporally out stock.” Perhaps it’ll be available last year.

Apple pushes 1 million iPhone 3Gs, 10 million iPhone Apps

Apple announced this morning that it had sold 1 million 3G iPhones over the weekend since the device’s launch on Friday. The device launched in 21 countries (France, one of the original 22 countries, is sitting this one out until July 17) to long lines that lasted throughout the weekend, making this the most successful device launch yet—at least in terms of sales. This was all despite significant problems over the weekend, including unresponsive iTunes activation servers, supply issues, and up-and-down MobileMe service.

What kind of iPhone data plan do you really need?

Here’s an overview of some common activities, how much data they used, and how long they took. Note that the tests were done with an iPod touch over WiFi, so there will be some differences with cellular data use.

Only 6 percent of iPhone buyers purchasing this summer

In the past two weeks, SRG has asked a total of 1,127 potential iPhone buyers when they were planning on purchasing the device, and only 6 percent said that they would be buying either this month or next month. Around 30 percent of those asked said they weren’t sure or would be buying “later”. A full 25 percent of those surveyed are planning to buy around Christmas, and roughly the same amount are planning on buying in early 2009.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Fix found for net security flaw

Mr Kaminsky discovered the error in the workings of the Domain Name System (DNS) about six months ago.

DNS is used to convert web addresses written in words - such as www.bbc.com - into the numerical sequences used by computers to route internet traffic around the world.

The flaw revolves around the way that the servers that translate words into numbers handle the requests they get.

Unresolved the flaw would make it simple to operate “phishing” scams, in which users are directed to fake webpages supposedly for genuine banks or businesses and are tricked into disclosing credit card details or other personal data.

Mr Kaminsky talked to Microsoft, Sun and Cisco and many others in March and has been part of a team engaged in secret research since then to develop the security patch which has now been released simultaneously.

“This hasn’t been done before and it is a massive undertaking,” said Mr Kaminsky.

Despite the scale of the operation few are expected to see any disruption to their web experience as the patch is applied. It is not thought that the flaw had been exploited prior to its discovery.

Technical details are being kept secret for another month to give companies a chance to update their computers, before malicious hackers try to unpick the patch.

Personal computers should pick up the patch through automated updates. Microsoft released its patch on 8 July as part of its regular security cycle.

Apres CAPTCHA, le deluge - Boing Boing

CAPTCHAs — the technology used to stop spammers from using computers to sign up for email accounts and the like — are thoroughly broken; spammers and researchers are finding better and better ways to get computers to recognize the word-soup.

Time machine needed to get iPhone? - Boing Boing

Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is “temporally out stock.” Perhaps it’ll be available last year.

MPAA: actual P2P distribution often “impossible” to prove

Copyright holders shouldn’t have to prove that an unauthorized distribution of their work occurred in order to collect damages, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The group made its argument in an amicus brief filed on Friday to Judge Michael Davis, the judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial, after he asked for feedback from the industry before deciding whether to order a mistrial. Both sides realize that the stakes are high and are throwing everything they’ve got Judge Davis’ way.

P2P leecher targeted in Germany for making files available

Evidence used to “prove” P2P users guilty of copyright infringement has been called into question a number of times recently, as the argument about whether “making available” music and movies counts as copyright infringement continues to rage on. In one case across the pond, it turns out that a German user who was targeted for making files available through the eD2K network had actually tweaked his eMule client so that it would not upload any files whatsoever. Telling the world “But I was leeching!” will rarely earn you any sympathy, but might in this case.

Campus copyright battle moves to textbook torrents

The RIAA’s extensive campaign against filesharing has drawn in a lot of individuals, but college campuses have remained a major target of the content owners’ legal threats. It’s pretty clear that there’s significant expertise with filesharing on college campuses, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this expertise has been put to use with other copyrighted materials. Textbook companies are getting worried about the sharing of their bread-and-butter online, and have started a campaign designed to block the sharing at its source.

Friday in San Jose CA: hearing to punish Universal for sending copyright threats to dancing toddler - Boing Boing

If you’re in Silicon Valley this week and want to have some legal-type fun, you could drop in on the Lenz v. Universal hearing (dress nice, behave yourself!) in which EFF will be arguing that Universal should be punished for sending a bogus copyright threat to a mom who posted a 29-second youtube of her adorable toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.”

BBC NEWS | Technology | Viacom ‘backs off’ YouTube demand

Viacom has “backed off” from demands to divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched a video on YouTube, the website has claimed.

Google had been ordered to provide personal details of millions of YouTube users to help Viacom prepare its case on alleged copyright infringement.

Google, owners of YouTube, will now hand over the database but without data that could identify users.

Microsoft tells Congress Yahoogle will own 90% of ad market

A US Senate subcommittee heard testimony today about the competitive implications of Yahoo’s recent deal with Google, which will see the company mix ads supplied by Google with its own on search result pages. In addition to two individuals who currently purchase search advertising, the hearings featured testimony from senior executives from the two principals involved in the deal, as well as Microsoft’s top lawyer, Brad Smith. Their testimony presented radically different pictures of what constitutes competition in the search market, how this deal will affect that competition, and the ongoing negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft: $1 of piracy = $5.50 in “lost opportunities”

Each dollar lost to software piracy equals $5.50 in lost opportunities, claims Microsoft. A new white paper released by IDC and funded by the software giant looks at how copyright infringement affects the software ecosystem as a whole, not just how it affects a single corporation. IDC claims that, if Microsoft were to make back each of those lost dollars, partner companies would gain $4.37 in increased revenues and $1.13 in lower operational costs. That’s assuming, however, that the Business Software Alliance’s estimated losses due to piracy are correct—an assumption that IDC makes in this report, despite having admitted in the past that the numbers are misleading.

NVIDIA newest patent beatdown target for Rambus

We thought that Rambus’ legal saga was finally winding down this year, with the cards largely having fallen in Rambus’ favor. A jury in California determined that the company’s patenting of DDR technology was not done fraudulently, and the DC Court of Appeals has determined that the FTC did not provide sufficient evidentiary support for its intervention in the RAM market. But instead of winding down, Rambus was apparently just warming up. The IP-only memory company has decided to start looking beyond traditional RAM manufacturing companies for further licensing, and has set its sights on graphics giant NVIDIA.

Apple finally sues unlicensed Macintosh cloner Psystar

Apple’s adventures with Mac clones had at best, mixed results, and Steve Jobs quickly ended the program in 1997 after his return as CEO. While a company named Psystar ignored that memo when it decided to release its own unofficial Mac clones earlier this year, there’s no way it’s going to miss Apple’s latest memo, which came in the form of a just-uncovered lawsuit filed earlier this month.

This past April, Psystar made instant waves by announcing a bargain-basement Mac clone for $399 that could run Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s Mac OS X. Psystar’s PC is an upgradeable tower with a respectable amount of features which, at face value, starts $200 lower than Apple’s cheapest—and highly unconfigurable—Mac mini at $599. Despite drawbacks like incompatibility with some Apple software updates, a flood of orders brought the company’s site down for days at a time.

Backup Utilities: Five Best Windows Backup Tools

Read on for a closer look at the five best Windows backup tools (according to Lifehacker readers), then give your vote to the application you like best:
- MozyHome does unlimited online backup for just $5 a month. Mozy is a set-it-and-forget-it solution, and the setting up part is incredibly simple. If you’re just looking to give it a test run or you don’t need unlimited backup, sign up for MozyHome Free, which gives you 2GB of backup space for gratis.
- Cobian Backup is free backup software that supports scheduled local and remote backups. Users love its rich feature set, as Cobian supports nearly every feature of its shareware alternatives. All current versions of Cobian are freeware, but the latest (version 9) is no longer open source
- SyncBack is full-featured backup software available in both freeware and shareware versions. The freeware SyncBack has a few limitations that the shareware version doesn’t, like inability to backup open files, but both versions offer extensive features—including backup profiles and options for local and remote backups. The shareware version of SyncBack will set you back $30.
- Acronis True Image creates full live disk images of your PC so that when the time comes that you need to restore a backup, you’re not just restoring files—you’re restoring an exact copy of your PC as it was. The latest version of Acronis supports excluding individual files and folders from your image or you can set criteria for the data that you want to back up (in case you don’t actually want to include everything in your disk image). Acronis True Image costs $50 and a 15 day trial version is available.
- Carbonite is an online backup solution similar to MozyHome. For $50 a year, Carbonite provides unlimited online backup and is another set-it-and-forget-it solution which offers off-site backup to remote servers. The biggest difference between Carbonite and Mozy is the price: Carbonite is $50 per year upfront compared to MozyHome’s $5 per month, which adds up to $60 a year but doesn’t lock you into a year. Carbonite does not offer a free version like MozyHome Free’s 2GBs, but there is a 15-day trial.

Firefox 3: Ctrl+Drag a Tab to Copy It and Its History

When you want to backtrack a few paces in your web surfing clicktrail but not lose the page you’re on, in Firefox 3, click on your current tab, hold down the Ctrl key and drag it. This will duplicate the tab and keep its history in the copy—that way you can back out and stay where you are in another tab. Sadly this trick only works in Firefox for Windows, not on the Mac. Don’t forget, you can also drag tabs between browser windows in Firefox, too.

Screenshot Captor

Screenshot Captor is a program for taking screenshots on your computer. It’s different from other screenshot utils in several notable ways.

Byte Into It - 09 Jul 09

Community to Gilliard: ‘Consider Open Source’ - Linux & Open Source - iTnews Australia

The Australian Open Source community has called for the consideration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the implementation of the Rudd Government’s Digital Education Revolution Policy.

In an open letter that was submitted last week to the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gilliard, members of the community expressed its support of the Government’s investment in Australian ICT capabilities, education and training.

The letter is signed by nine leading FOSS advocates, including: Open Source Victoria’s Education Spokesperson Donna Benjamin; OLPA Australia Director Pia Waugh; Red Hat Australia General Manager Max McLaren; and Samba Developer Andrew Tridgell.

Central to the FOSS argument is the low cost associated with Open Source Software, which could enable more flexible use of the $1000-per-unit National Secondary School Computer Fund (NSSCF).

Vodafone accidentally announces iPhone plans - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

Vodafone is offering four different plans, which are modelled after its current schemes, for both cap contract and business customers.

The cheapest monthly plan runs for $69 a month for $310 worth of minutes and texts, and 250MB worth of data. With this plan, customers will pay $189 for the 8GB and $309 for the 16GB.

With a $169 a-month contract, customers can get the 8GB iPhone for free, and the 16GB device for $89. This plan is worth $1200 of minutes and 1GB worth of data.

The other plans charge $99 a month for $600 worth of talk and text and 500MB of data, and $119 for $800 worth of text and talk and 500MB of data.

Vodafone said it will release more details on launch-day Friday

Opinion: Year of the penguin - Linux & Open Source - iTnews Australia

It’s taken the confluence of several disparate but connected events to create the perfect breeding ground for desktop versions of Linux to finally flourish.

Firstly, credit where it’s due, Apple’s decision to switch to a Unix core proved that you didn’t need to be a geek and/or a master of the command line interface to enjoy the benefits of Bell Labs’ near 40-year-old gaming platform. You could now watch the pretty pictures with the click of a mouse and have no need to know what was under the covers of MacOS X.

And of course, credit to über-geek Linus Torvalds for rescuing Unix from the litigators arguing over who owns which bit of what was once basically free anyway. Your correspondent purchased the full source code for Unix, on magnetic tape of course, for US$1 back in 1980.

IBM and Linden teleport avatars beween virtual worlds - Internet - iTnews Australia

Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, and IBM say they have developed have created a set of compatible avatars that can be used on either companies systems.

The two companies said that they have successfully transported avatars from IBM’s OpenSim virtual world server to a Second Life Preview server. The 3D characters were ‘teleported’ from one server to another and were able to function in both worlds.

The companies said that the occasion marks an important milestone in their interoperability efforts.

EU may regulate social networking sites over security issues

Social networking sites need more regulation in order to ensure that they won’t pose major security risks to users, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). The agency issued a preliminary version of its General Report (PDF) covering online security this morning, pointing out that it views social networks as a “positive social phenomenon” that are not without their own set of security problems, and the organization has a set of recommendations meant to protect users online.

ENISA said that some of the main threats identified so far through social networks involve digital dossiers, face recognition, and social engineering attacks on enterprises. Phishing attacks, reputation damage, ID theft, stalking, and cyberbullying are common as well. The organization says that, because of the human desire to connect and the growing popularity of social networks, it’s easy for users to let their guards down and not be aware of the size of the audience accessing their information. “Social Networking may be seen as a ‘digital cocktail party,’” read the report. “However, compared with a real-world cocktail party, [social networking service] members broadcast information much more widely and sometimes unadvisedly, either by choice or unwittingly.”

AMD set to ship first retail Mac Pro-ready graphics card

AMD has announced the ATI-branded Radeon HD 3870 for Mac & PC Edition, its first retail video card for the Mac Pro. Apple offers a version of the Radeon 2600 as the standard option for the Mac Pro, but this card is the first 3000-series available for that system. The card is also the first graphics card that is both Mac and PC compatible out of the box.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google must divulge YouTube log

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google’s legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a “set-back to privacy rights”.

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

BBC NEWS | Technology | It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars

Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and convenient graphical user interfaces.

Gates’ philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people’s good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Firefox download record official

Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for web browser Firefox 3.0 took place in June.

bfish.xaedalus.net » Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird.

Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird.

HOWTO Make online videos without getting sued - Boing Boing

American University’s Center for Social Media has just concluded a long, in-depth project to establish a set of “Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.” They worked with video makers, legal scholars, eminent sociologists, fans and others to create something that reflects the law, practice and future of fair use for video remixing and sharing online.

Digg - G-Park iPhone App Lets the Forgetful Bookmark Their Cars

Park your car and tap “Park Me” to take a GPS reading; on the way back, hit “Where Did I Park” for turn-by-turn directions back to the whip.

Digg - 12 Quick Hacks For Firefox 3

It’s time to hack it.

Slashdot | Google Open Sources Its Data Interchange Format

Google’s open sourcing of their internal data interchange format, called Protocol Buffers (here’s the code and the doc). Google elevator statement for Protocol Buffers is “a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible way of serializing structured data for use in communications protocols, data storage, and more.” It’s the way data is formatted to move around inside of Google. Betanews spotlights some of Protocol Buffers’ contrasts with XML and IDL, with which it is most comparable. Google’s blogger claims, “And, yes, it is very fast — at least an order of magnitude faster than XML.”

Extra storage as students go Gmail | Australian IT

GOOGLE has edged out some of the biggest brands in the enterprise IT services market to pick up another major contract win in Australia’s education sector.

Google partner SMS Management and Technology has emerged as the leading bidder to supply the NSW Department of Education with 1.5 million student email services using a customised version of the search giant’s Gmail service, Acting NSW Minister for Education and Training John Hatzistergos said.

“This commitment is a further demonstration of the NSW Labor Government’s commitment to equip teachers and students with the best possible means to compete successfully in the constantly evolving world of information technology,” he said.

NSW education department chief information officer Stephen Wilson said the department was yet to finalise its contract with SMS but confirmed that it had lodged the winning bid.

SMS will be the prime contractor alongside Google and Telstra to fulfil the contract, valued at $9.5 million over three years. It’s expected to be completed by the end of 2008.

The department rejected bids from Hewlett-Packard, Telstra subsidiary Kaz, and incumbent provider Unisys, to award the contract to SMS.

It’s understood that the contract will be one the largest private deployments of Gmail in the world.

The win is Google’s second major victory in the academic sector after Macquarie University signed up for Gmail in September last year. It could have massive implications for the Australian software market, as it places Gmail’s online word processing software, Google Docs, in a strong position to challenge Microsoft’s Office software suite in the education sector.

Byte Into It - 18th Jun 08

Geek Girl Dinners Melbourne can be found on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=15128236963

OLPC Australia is located at:
http://www.olpc.org.au/

New Trojan targets business bankers - Security - iTnews Australia

Security provider RSA is reporting a new and unfamiliar Trojan attack that exploits business bank account holders’ heightened awareness of security and uses it against them.
Customers receive an email claiming to be from their bank and are asked to download a “certificate” under the guise of a security update.
The certificate contains a Trojan that proceeds to launch a multi-staged attack, looking for not just usernames and passwords, but chat room credentials, secure downloads, and anything the attackers believe may be useful.
“The attackers are targeting the top sectors of banking customers, so they can find much more secure information than they would with retail customers,” said Geoff Noble, RSA’s Banking and Finance Specialist.

AMD says new graphics chip makes games seem real | Technology | Los Angeles Times

the new family of graphics card, which AMD code-named the RV770. AMD says it will sell two models starting June 25: The ATI Radeon HD 4850 will cost $200 and the more powerful ATI Radeon HD 4870 will cost $300. AMD’s Cinema 2.0 site has a few more details.

Second, you wanted to see the clip.

Groklaw - Red Hat Makes History With Patent Settlement - Compatible with GPLv3

there is news about a patent settlement between Red Hat and Firestar and DataTern in the JBoss litigation. It’s because I wanted to be positive I was correct that this is the first known settlement involving patents that is harmonious with GPLv3. It is.

It’s also harmonious with GPLv2, of course, but this is history in the making, friends. They settled a lawsuit brought against them in a way that licenses patents without violating the GPL. I’ll show you how, but first, so you know I’m not just dreaming, here’s the answer I got from Richard Fontana, Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel, Red Hat, to my question about whether this is the first known GPLv3 patent agreement that works:

Most patent settlements and similar agreements are confidential, but to my knowledge this is the first patent settlement that satisfies the requirements of GPL version 3. Indeed, it really goes further than GPLv3 in the degree to which upstream and downstream parties receive safety from the patents at issue here. (And this is not a case of trying to find a loophole in the GPL, but rather a desire on our part to reach an agreement that provided broad patent protection for developers, distributors and users, while complying fully with the conditions of the licenses of the software we and our community distribute.)

You know what this means? It means that those who claim the GPL isolates itself from standards bodies’ IP pledges are wrong. It *is* possible to come up with language that satisfies the GPL and still acknowledges patents, and this is the proof. That means Microsoft could do it for OOXML if it wanted to. So who is isolating whom?

BBC NEWS | Technology | ‘Darlings’ of UK games honoured

Two of the pioneers of the UK video games industry have been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

David and Richard Darling, co-founders of game developers Codemasters, were both made Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

They built up their company from a bedroom enterprise into one of the best known games developers in the world.

The firm is behind well established titles including the Colin McRae Rally series and Sensible Soccer.

More recently the firm has ventured into online games, releasing Lord of the Rings Online.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Behind the scenes of Firefox 3.0

Alongside the speed improvements goes the “Smart Location Bar” - a feature known as the “Awesome Bar” internally at Mozilla.
Mr Schroepfer calls this novel feature: “The biggest user experience change… since tabbed browsing.”

The feature gives the browser’s address bar a mechanism for quickly returning to web pages without bookmarking them, even if a user doesn’t remember the address. It can also search “tags” - keywords that users associate with a particular page.

“Arms race”

Security was also high on the development team’s list of improvements for the new version.

Mr Schroepfer told the BBC: “It’s an arms race between the good guys and the bad guys. This is not scare tactics or boogie man kind of stuff.

“We have seen a huge uptick in malware attacks because they are financially motivated,” he said.

“This is billions of dollars a year. There are clear incentives for people to do this because they make money so you need some good guys on your side to block them out.”

Included in Firefox 3.0 are malicious software spotters that tell users when they are on a website that has been compromised. A red box will pop up in the middle of the screen warning users of the danger.

security
Firefox 3.0 warns when users stray on to a booby-trapped page
Mr Schroepfer said: “This new type of attack where people are hijacking legitimate websites and using them as mechanisms to try and install software on your machine is truly worrying.

Behind the warning system is a list of infected sites that is updated every 30 minutes to keep up with the pace of web attacks.

Hands on: Flock 2 steps up the social browser game

As the Flock 2 beta is based on the shiny new Firefox 3 code base just released today, it inherits new features and stability while presenting some of the typical bugginess found in betas. Probably Flock 2’s most significant enhancement is Firefox 3’s revolutionary and responsible memory management.

Since Flock is such a media-intensive browser, Flock 1.x can quickly gobble up 300-400MB of RAM (or more) after just a couple hours of medium-to-heavy usage. Browse your friends’ social timelines, peruse some photos at Flickr, open half a dozen tabs, and watch a YouTube video or two, and Flock 1.x joins nearly every other browser in hogging what has always felt like way, way too many CPU and RAM resources.

With Firefox 3 under the hood now, Flock 2 is a far more responsible resource citizen after heavy usage. Flock 2 also feels generally snappier and more responsive, even on my comparatively slow MacBook Air with 2GB of RAM.

“Cubit” P2P search protocol could one day sink The Pirate Bay

In popular perception, BitTorrent is a decentralized protocol; after all, all that data is coming from other peers and not from a central server, right? But because searching for particular files on BitTorrent networks can be a dodgy proposition, most BitTorrent users rely on torrent indexes like those provided by, ahem, The Pirate Bay, giving the system a central choke point. Shut down the torrent aggregators and files become much more difficult to find, so it’s no surprise that content owners have recently targeted aggregators like Demonoid, OiNK, and the aforementioned The Pirate Bay. Now, a new project out of Cornell hopes to provide good quality, approximate keyword searching directly through BitTorrent networks—a truly decentralized system that doesn’t rely on aggregators.

iDisk now unsupported by Firefox 3, Safari for Windows

With all the discussion of the new MobileMe service that will be arriving on July 11, it’s easy to forget that .Mac will be hanging around until that time. Since many of .Mac’s features will simply be renamed and rolled over into MobileMe features, changes to .Mac in the coming weeks may offer some insight into what’s coming up. The MacObserver has pointed out one recent change to .Mac that may be significant, such as the introduction of browser requirements for accessing iDisk.

In the past, Apple hasn’t been too picky about the browser used to access the iDisk web interface, but now users of unsupported browsers are being sent to a page listing out specific browsers browsers. Both Firefox 3 and OmniWeb are curiously absent from the list, but Camino, OmniWeb, Firefox 2, Opera, and most versions of Safari still work. Over on the Windows side, Safari for Windows is mysteriously missing from the supported browsers list, but people using most versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer should be good to go.

The requirements seem to be confined to the iDisk web interface for the time being, but are fairly similar to the list of suggested browsers for MobileMe that can be found hiding at the bottom of the migration page. Safari for Windows does appear on the MobileMe browser list, though, so it’s unclear why the browser can’t be used to access iDisk right now. As the .Mac to MobileMe changeover progresses, the browser requirements will be appearing for other services, so hopefully Apple will add Safari for Windows (and perhaps Firefox 3) compatibility soon.

Adobe still hanging on to Flash on iPhone thread

this spring, at the annual shareholder’s meeting, Jobs panned Flash, saying the full version was far too slow for the iPhone (if you ask me, it’s too slow on the desktop as well) and that Adobe’s Flash Lite just isn’t the “real” web. Jobs lamented, “There’s this missing product in the middle.”

Adobe’s comments don’t specify if the company is working on such a middle product or what kind of support, if any, it is getting from Apple. For its part, Apple has continued to push using current web standards, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for browser-based interaction, and continues to work on defining and supporting future standards, like HTML5. If Apple intends to support any version of Flash in the iPhone, neither its words nor its actions point in that direction.

Acrobat gets ‘Flashier’ - Upgrade - Reviews - Technology - theage.com.au

The biggest advancement in Adobe Acrobat 9 is that Flash is now baked into the entire Acrobat family, including the free reader. This opens all kinds of possibilities, such as embedding audio and video into a PDF document without relying on third-party software to play back. Acrobat is now so feature-rich that it’s moving towards the look and feel of Microsoft’s Powerpoint. It lets you create Powerpoint-like interactive multimedia presentations, such as training materials.

Adobe has also created a new document-sharing format known as “PDF Portfolio”, a Zip-like container which can hold a variety of document formats including JPG, DOC, SWF, PPT, XLS, CAD and PDF. Previously you would have attached the documents to an email (perhaps zipped into one file). PDF Portfolio lets you embed all those documents in one file and create a menu to display them. You can create an intro screen and add extra details to present an organised overview of a project rather than just a collection of documents. Acrobat Pro users can create customised PDF Portfolio templates to maintain corporate branding. PDF Portfolio files can be read with the free Acrobat Reader 9.0 and are backwards compatible with Reader 8.x, although some of the polish is missing. Recipients with Reader 9.0 can open and edit documents within the portfolio and save changes back into the portfolio.

SproutCore: rich web apps in JavaScript, no Flash needed

One session at last week’s WWDC featured featured a JavaScript application framework called SproutCore, which has generated quite a bit of buzz since then. The framework was used by Apple to develop .Mac’s Web Gallery feature and is likely being used to develop the web-based applications that are part of Apple’s MobileMe service. With Apple standing up for web standards—supporting standards in WebKit, working with W3C and WHATWG to develop next-gen standards, even remaking its web site in pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—SproutCore is being promoted by Apple as a recommended framework for creating rich, standards-based web applications that have a “native look-and-feel.”

The developers at Sproutit originally came up with SproutCore, a complete framework for building rich Internet applications, because they wanted to rewrite their first application, Mailroom, to run completely via the browser. Since the framework is open source, anyone can freely take advantage of the framework to build desktop-quality applications that run in all major browsers. Anyone, including Apple.Apple’s interest also lies in being able to deliver a rich applications without relying on proprietary plug-ins, like Flash. Roughly Drafted’s Daniel Eran Dilger wrote yesterday that Apple is also adopting the framework for its MobileMe service set to launch in the next few weeks. The MobileMe service will include an e-mail client, address book, calendar, web gallery, and web disk apps that all run cross-platform in all modern browsers. These apps are almost identical to the native Mac OS X apps they mimic, all without the use of Flash. This same technology makes it possible to create iPhone-optimized versions, which has no way to access Flash content.

Spore Creature Creator for Mac OS X

The premise of Microcosmic God Spore is both simple and complex: life from start to finish. Will Wright of Sims fame has created a game so sweeping that you really have to wonder if it can be pulled off. Broken into five distinct phases of game play: tide pool, creature, tribal, civilization, space, you play god—though it’s more the watchmaker than the Zeus-type throwing lightning bolts and taking the shape of animals to have sex.

Spore has also been in the news for the Mac this year. A mobile component of the game was previewed for the iPhone as part of the Apple Event in March. Before that, at Macworld Expo 2008 the Creature Creator was up and running, and now it’s available as a demo to download. That’s the good news. The bad news is the system requirements will be keeping more than a few Mac users from playing iGod.

* Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
* Intel Core Duo Processor
* 1024 MB RAM
* ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
* At least 260MB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for created creatures.

PPC Graybeards, no Spore for you. And not for you Mac mini owners, and anyone who purchased a MacBook before late last year, as “this game will not run on the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.” For those left, you can run the Spore demo

Byte Into It - 11th Jun 08

Engadget WWDC coverage
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/steve-jobs-keynote-live-from-wwdc-2008/

MacTalk Australia
http://www.mactalk.com.au/

KeyNote in 60 seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGY28Qbj76A

Apple Snow Leopard
http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/snowleopard/

Apple MobileMe
http://www.apple.com/au/mobileme/

Apple iPhone 3G
http://www.apple.com/au/iphone/

Optus iPhone offer
http://www.optusiphone.com.au/home.aspx

Vodafone’s as yet inactive site
http://iphone.vodafone.com.au

Alphababy (Mac):
http://alphababy.sourceforge.net/

Baby Smash (Windows):
http://www.hanselman.com/babysmash/

Byte Into It - 5th June 08

It’s raining cheap laptops

Two major Taiwan computer sellers have launched low-priced mini laptops at Asia’s biggest computer show on Tuesday, both forecasting the shipment of millions of units this year.

Asustek Computer announced improvements to its successful “Eee PC” family at the opening of the five-day exhibition better known as Taipei Computex.

“We’ve made some adjustments following the suggestions of users over the past year,” Asustek chief executive officer Jerry Shen told reporters, referring to specifications including 23-25cm screens, compared with the 18cm screen of the previous versions.

Intel’s Atom chip to ride portable PC wave

Intel says the market for smaller, low-cost personal computers, some of which can fit in one’s pocket, could be as big as $US10 billion, driven by demand from emerging and matured markets.

The world’s largest semiconductor maker has launched its smallest ever processors - the Atom range - to power what it calls mobile internet devices, as well as ultra-small PCs, called Netbooks and Nettops.

Byte Into It - 28th May 08

Microsoft surrenders libraries to Google - Business - iTnews Australia

Writing in his blog, Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s search and advertising group said Microsoft would kill off two sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals.

Live Search will send Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites.

Instead, Microsoft will be focusing on “verticals with high commercial intent”.

Microsoft has been scanning books since 2005 and has been giving information to the Open Content Alliance.

It will give publishers copies of the 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles it has scanned in.

Microsoft sees Windows Mobile unit sales up 50 pct - Mobility - iTnews Australia

Microsoft expects global unit sales of its Windows Mobile software for cellphones to grow at least 50 percent per year in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 as demand for smartphones rises rapidly.

“Fifty percent growth is the minimum,” Eddie Wu, the software company’s managing director of OEM embedded devices Asia, told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference on Tuesday.

He said Microsoft expects to sell 20 million units in its 2007/2008 fiscal year ending in June, and expects to grow at least 50 percent annually over the next two years. It sold over 11 million units of its Windows Mobile software in its 2006/2007 fiscal year ended June.

Just in time for Apple? AT&T wrapping up 3G network upgrade

AT&T announced yesterday that it plans to roll out its High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) in six more US markets by the end of June, completing its deployment of HSPA. Once the rollout is complete, the company says that the beefed-up 3G service will offer uplink speeds of between 500 and 800Kbps, which will complement the roughly 1.4Mbps downlink already offered through AT&T. AT&T’s timing doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, as it appears to coincide with the widely-expected launch of Apple’s rumored 3G iPhone.

HOWTO use TOR to enhance your privacy - Boing Boing

a HOWTO on TOR, The Onion Router, a technology for increasing your privacy and anonymity when you look at the web, and for getting around censorwalls.

Games need MORE sex in order to end the controversy over sex in games - Boing Boing

In this ~9-minute video, Daniel Floyd, a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design, convincingly advances the theory that the major problem with sex in video-games is that there isn’t enough sex in video games — that video-games’ failure to come to grips with sex as part of the artistic message and aesthetic in games (in addition to the hypersexualized juvenile Lara Croft/Duke Nukem stuff), it can’t convincingly argue that games are an actual artistic medium that deserves to be considered on the same terms as painting, literature, sculpture, film, and other media that often feature sexual material.

Why the “mobile Internet” is a poor investment - Boing Boing

Joi Ito, a shrewd Japanese/American venture capitalist, has written a great little blog-post about why he’s not so hot to invest in the “mobile Internet.” Basically, when a heavily regulated, big stupid phone company controls your “internet,” then your ability to innovate and do cool stuff and make money is entirely predicated on the regulator’s or the stupid phone company’s willingness to allow that to happen. So if you’re making money by disrupting something that matters to the phone company or one of its entrenched partners, forget about it.

HOWTO Lie to authority figures - Boing Boing

Instructables has just posted the latest installment in its ongoing series of HOWTOs. This week, they tackle the all-important skill of lying to authority figures.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft demos ‘touch Windows’

Microsoft’s next operating system (OS) will come with multi-touch features as an alternative to the mouse.

It is hoped the successor will have a better reception than the much-maligned Vista OS, released last year.

Scheduled for release in 2009 the new fingertip interface lets users enlarge and shrink photos, trace routes on maps, paint pictures or play the piano.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web users ‘getting more ruthless’

Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.

The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Nokia responds to gamers’ anger

Nokia has said it is “working on a solution” to allow people to transfer N-Gage games between handsets.

The announcement was made following anger by gamers who found out that titles bought for a handset were locked to the device forever.

Nokia said it had made the decision to lock down the system to prevent piracy and guarantee revenue for games makers.

The mobile phone maker said it was now working on an intermediate solution until a final one could be deployed.

Firefox 3: Firefox 3 Add-on Compatibility Report

The hard-working developers over at Mozilla issue a status update on which popular Firefox extensions still need to get updated for Firefox 3. Here’s 20 add-ons that are Firefox 3-compatible, and seven that aren’t yet. If you’re testing the Firefox 3 Release Candidate, you can force Firefox to use incompatible extensions with a configuration tweak, but to avoid possible wonkiness, it’s better to wait for officially-compatible releases. In other Firefox 3 news, a second release candidate is slated for early June.

Featured Windows Download: CloseWin Instantly Closes All or Select Windows

Windows only: Freeware application CloseWin is a single-use app that instantly closes either every window on your desktop or any window matching specific criteria. That makes CloseWin a perfect tool for setting up a Boss Key or something similar; just create a list of apps you’d want to get rid of at the click of a button, add them to CloseWin’s profile, then choose the Close all windows in list option when you want to quickly close everything. On the other hand, the Close All Windows button is a perfect last-ditch tool for not just hiding, but getting rid of all of your open windows at once. CloseWin is freeware, Windows only.

Featured Windows Download: Desk Drive Creates Desktop Shortcuts to Your Removable Media

Windows only: Freeware application Desk Drive monitors your computer for new media—like a new CD, DVD, or thumb drive—then automatically creates a desktop shortcut pointing to your newly mounted media. Disabling autoplay is safer and less annoying than leaving it enabled, but that means you have to open up My Computer every time you plug in a thumb drive or insert a new disc. Desk Drive gives you quick and easy access to that media from your desktop as soon as you plug it in, similar to the default (and arguably better) behavior found on Macs. The downside: Desk Drive takes up way too much memory (around 17MB in my test), so it may not be worth it unless you’ve got boatloads of RAM.

Featured Windows Download: HomeCamera Turns Your Webcam into a Surveillance Camera

Windows only: Web site and software HomeCamera turns your desktop webcam into a web-enabled surveillance camera. Just sign up and download their desktop software to get started. In just a few minutes, you can check an image or video from your webcam in real-time from any browser. Even better, you can set up motion-detecting alerts that will email you with a shot or short clip of what triggered the alert. The Windows-only HomeCamera is completely free during their beta and will remain free with limitations once they leave beta.

Exclusive Lifehacker Download: Belvedere Automates Your Self-Cleaning PC

Windows only: Keep your desktop or any other folder on your hard drive organized and under control with Belvedere, an automated Windows file management tool. Use Belvedere’s friendly interface to create advanced rules to move, copy, delete, rename, or open files based on their name, extension, size, creation date, and more.

Featured Windows Download: Some PDF to Word Converter Does What It Sounds Like

Windows only: Freeware application Some PDF to Word Converter takes your PDFs and—as the name implies—converts them to Microsoft Word documents. It’s always been a cinch to print Word documents as PDFs, but going the other way around is generally more difficult. Many online tools can handle PDF-to-DOC conversions, but most of us don’t want to upload our sensitive docs to the web for third-party conversion, so desktop tools are preferable.

Featured Download: Snackr RSS Ticker Keeps You on Top of News

Windows/Mac/Linux: Freeware Adobe Air application Snackr runs a news ticker of your RSS feeds at the bottom or top of your monitor, or as a scrolling sidebar. The application is very customizable, allowing you to add feeds individually or import an OPML file of feeds from your current reader of choice. If you like to keep an eye on all the latest updates to your newsfeeds, Snackr is an excellent option. The attractive Snackr is freeware, cross-platform, and requires Adobe Air.

Byte Into It - 21 May 08

Free Scheduling Software | Integrate Outlook, Google Calendar & Exchange Availability - TimeBridge

TimeBridge’s free scheduling software helps you share availability and schedule meetings easily with individuals or groups across time zones

Napster goes DRM-free MP3 - Boing Boing

“It’s great that we have finally gotten here,” said Chris Gorog, Napster’s chairman and chief executive. “It is really the beginning of a level playing field, which I think is essential for Napster, but also for the health of the digital music business in general.”

Tracks downloaded as part of Napster’s subscription service will continue to have copyright restrictions.

For much of the decade, major record labels refused to license their music for downloading as MP3s. But steep annual declines in CD sales and the growing dominance of Apple Inc.’s iPod music players and its iTunes Music Store led the labels to ease that position last year to remain competitive.

BBC - Newsbeat - Technology - Facebook set for major facelift

Designers are planning some widespread changes to the way the core profile page is organised, aimed at making it “simpler, cleaner and more relevant”.

The site is consulting its users on the changes ahead of a gradual roll out starting next month.

Tabbed browsing…and more…

BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft mulls fresh Yahoo deal

In a statement, Microsoft said it “is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative”.

It issued the statement, it said, “in light of developments” since the company withdrew its bid two weeks ago.

Microsoft stressed that a deal may or may not follow from Sunday’s statement.

After Microsoft’s statement, Yahoo confirmed it was looking at a number of “value maximising” alternatives with Microsoft, and would assess offers made by the firm.

CeBIT 08: Finance Minister heralds australia.gov.au revamp - Internet - iTnews Australia

Finance Minster Lindsay Tanner today revealed that the Rudd Government’s ICT plans will provide Australians with a “one stop shop” for online government services.

The Government will redesign australia.gov.au to serve as the single site for Australians to seek out government services, with an anticipated relaunch for the first quarter of 2009.

Speaking at an eGovernment forum at CeBit in Sydney, the Minster said that with 24 percent of Australians contacting the Government over the Internet in 2007, now is the time to provide citizens with an easier way to have their voices heard.

802.11n Wi-Fi to ’surpass wired Ethernet’ - Networking - iTnews Australia

Enterprise adoption of next-generation 802.11n Wi-Fi technology is “unprecedented”, according to a new report, despite the standard being ratified only as a draft.

“Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n will eventually surpass wired Ethernet as the dominant enterprise Lan access technology,” said Paul DeBeasi, senior analyst at the Burton Group, who prepared the report for the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Firefox 3 RC1 put out for fiddling with - Software - iTnews Australia

Firefox 3 release candidate 1 has been released in to the wild. Mozzerella reckons it’s seen some 14,000 updates including some major reworking on improving performance, stability and code simplification

Firefox 3: Five Extensions You Won’t Need with Firefox 3

# NoSquint: Never have to enlarge the text on that web page with the teeny tiny font size again. Firefox 3’s new “Text Only” zoom feature doesn’t enlarge images, and is smart enough to remember your text size setting on a per-site basis when you visit again.
# Google Gears: While offline web application support is still a ways off, Firefox 3 does have support built-in and ready for webapp authors to turn it on, effectively making Google Gears unnecessary. It will be very interesting to see Gears’ fate in the face of Firefox 3 offline webapp support, and which webapps support which. Overall, it’s great news for users who want their data whether they’re online or not.
# Resize Search Box: Sometimes, it’s the little things that make us happy, like a search box that can be as big or as small as you want without having to hand-edit CSS. In Firefox 3, just grab the separator between the address bar and search box and drag and drop to the width you desire. It doesn’t auto-expand as you type, however, like Searchbar Autosizer does; perhaps in Firefox 4.
# DownThemAll: Ok, so Firefox 3’s improved download manager definitely does not have ALL the features DownThemAll offers, but it does include dTa’s key feature, which is the ability to resume downloads even after you’ve restarted your browser or lost your network connection. We still do love dTa for all the other download acrobatics it can do; see more on how to supercharge your Firefox downloads with DownThemAll.
# Better Gmail and other Mailto: handler add-ons:

Firefox 3: Set Firefox 3 to Launch Gmail for mailto Links

By default, the Firefox RC 1 only comes with Yahoo! Mail as a possible mailto: link handler, which leaves Gmail users out in the cold—unless you know how to set it up by hand. Here’s how to configure Firefox 3 to use Gmail as your default mailto: application handler.

Microsoft previews Windows Essential Server - Networking - iTnews Australia

Microsoft is inviting customers and partners to begin evaluating pre-release versions of Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008..

Due for general release later this year, Microsoft has overhauled its licensing terms following customer feedback on its current Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 offering.

The new licensing terms mean that customers will be able to purchase single client access licences, allowing them to pay only for the exact number of employees using the product.

Windows to run on One Laptop Per Child computer - Operating Systems - iTnews Australia

Microsoft reached an agreement to make available its Windows operating system software for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s XO Laptop, the company said on Thursday.

Microsoft was not part of the project started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte to develop an inexpensive laptop computer for elementary school children in developing countries.

In recent months, the two sides have engaged in more serious talks and started testing the XO Laptop’s Sugar software package on Microsoft’s Windows operating system

OpenSSL bug found in Debian Linux - Linux & Open Source - iTnews Australia

The vulnerability only exists in Debian and Debian derived Linux systems, but those also include the Ubuntu versions of Linux that have lately become quite popular among casual desktop Linux users.

The problematic OpenSSL code appeared in the Debian unstable distribution on September 17, 2006 and has since been propagated into the current stable and testing distributions named Etch. The previous stable Debian distribution named Sarge is not affected.

Many Debian Linux desktop users shouldn’t be affected by this Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) bug unless they’ve generated cryptographic keys for Secure Shell (SSH) access between systems or digital signing or authentication certificates.

However, techies who administrate Debian based Linux systems that traffic in certificates might be scurrying about somewhat in coming days as they apt-get the upgraded OpenSSL package and regenerate and roll over cryptographic keys and certificates.

Featured Download: Alliance Creates Private P2P File-Sharing Networks

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Alliance, a free, open-source, cross-platform peer-to-peer application, takes nearly all of the security and privacy concerns out of peer-to-peer file sharing by putting you in charge of your own network. The dead-simple interface lets you add Alliance-using friends to your network and files on your system to share, and you can search, chat, and download like any other peer-to-peer app. The traffic between clients is encrypted at a low level, but you can apply an experimental SSL layer if you’d like a bit more protection from snooping. For trading files with co-workers or friends, it’s a nice no-overhead solution. Alliance is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems.

Featured Download: ReadAir Brings Google Reader to Your Desktop

Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe AIR): Free, open source application ReadAir syncs your Google Reader feeds to the comfort of your desktop. ReadAir—whose three-pane interface looks and feels much more like a desktop newsreader than Reader—also retains a lot of Google Reader features, like starring items and adding and tagging feeds. The biggest missing feature in ReadAir is its lack of keyboard shortcuts; you won’t be j/k-ing your way through your unread items in ReadAir the same way you can on the web—at least not in this version. That said, the app’s to-do list includes offline mode and keyboard shortcuts, so if you’d prefer Reader had that desktop look and feel plus a killer web interface when you need it, ReadAir is a great option. ReadAir is free, all platforms, requires Adobe AIR.

XBMC For Mac: XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center

You don’t have to mod your classic Xbox to run the best free media center application around anymore: Dedicated developers have ported the Xbox Media Center (XBMC) software to the Mac, and its killer features will convince you to abandon Front Row forever. The latest XBMC on OS X beta dropped last week, and it’s as stable and useful as ever. Dubbed the “throw out your Xbox” release, XBMC for Mac 0.5 beta 1 adds the key feature that finally puts your media center Mac under the TV where it belongs: remote control support.

Xbmc: XBMC for OS X 0.5 Beta 2 Chock Full o’ Fixes

The busy folks working on XBMC for OS X just dropped beta 2, which fixes several bugs

Parallels: Parallels Adds Windows Service Pack Support

The Windows on Mac virtualization arms race continues: On the heels of a new VMware Fusion 2.0 beta, Parallels Desktop issues a software update that adds support for XP Service Pack 3 and Vista Service Pack 1 for Boot Camp partitions.

Report: Apple’s focus on “premium” computers is paying off

According to NPD’s numbers recounted by Apple Watch, Apple snags a much larger share of the market when you focus on brick-and-mortar sales of “premium” PCs; desktops and notebooks that cost $1,000 or more. It is an admittedly narrow scope when you consider the big picture—a world where businesses and enterprise order cheap PCs in bulk via the web from giants like HP and Dell. Speaking of cheap PCs, retail shelves aren’t exactly bursting at the seams with $1,000 boxes either. Typically, you’ll find one of these premium PCs alongside at least three to five cheaper or bargain-bin brethren.

Still, in this space, Apple enjoys a 70 percent share in desktops and 64 for notebooks. Combined, that’s a 66 percent ownership of the US market for premium brick-and-mortar PC sales.

3G iPhone launch “confirmed,” will be available at launch

the so-called “3G iPhone” finally has a “confirmed” launch date: June 9 at WWDC. Gizmodo has sources “close to the launch” who say the iPhone will be available immediately after its announcement, with no lengthy lead time like your soon-to-be-eBay’d iPhone did. Other details surrounding the launch say that Apple will finally adopt more flexible sales terms with the iPhone 2.0.
.

First Look: Cyberduck 3 is a great, free FTP client for Mac

Cyberduck, a free and open-source FTP client made just for Mac OS X, announced a major update to version 3.0.

The latest version of Cyberduck adds support for WebDAV servers and Amazon’s S3 storage service to its support of FTP, SFTP, FTP/TLS, and SCP protocols. Version 3 also adds a feature to quickly open a file via its http URL in a web browser. And, extending Cyberduck’s excellent Mac OS X integration—which includes support for Keychain, Spotlight, Bonjour, and iDisk—the latest version adds very slick integration with Leopard’s Quick Look feature, allowing Quick Look to work with remote files.

Mac BU talks Office 2008 SP1, VBA’s triumphant comeback

Adopting the Windows update convention and calling the update SP1, the update brings Office 2008 to version 12.1 and offers “over 1,000 fixes and improvements,” Software Design Lead Erik Schwiebert writes in his blog. Significant improvements were made to all Office apps, including improved printing and file compatibility as well as general performance and stability improvements. Academic and business users will appreciate that Excel brings back custom error bars and tick marks to chart formatting. PowerPoint has also gained object access to its AppleScripting support, and Entourage has received the lion’s share of improvements–in particular, improved compatibility with ever-important Exchange servers.

Time Capsule and Airport Extreme top sellers in their class

“For the last five or six months [AirPort Extreme] has been the number one or number two product, trading places with Linksys,” NPD’s Stephen Baker told Macworld. And it makes sense. Airport Extreme makes setting up a wireless network brain-dead simple, and the Airport configuration utility is far easier to use than most routers built-in web-based configuration.

Time Capsule builds on this by adding a 500GB or 1TB drive inside what is essentially an Airport Extreme for a zero-configuration file server. Apple mainly targets it as a wireless backup solution that works with Leopard’s Time Machine. This brings automated wireless network backups into the realm of mere mortals, sysadmin certification not required.

Featured Mac Download: Name Mangler Bulk Renames Files

Mac OS X only: Rename large groups of files—like that batch of photos fresh off your camera’s memory card—using simple or complex rules with Name Mangler. Simple options include numbering files sequentially, adding a prefix or suffix, or changing case. In advanced mode, you can script any number of those actions and save them. Name Mangler also produces reusable droplets you can add to Finder; then, whenever you want to batch rename a set of files, simply drag them onto the droplet without even starting up the application. Name Mangler is a free download, donations requested, for Macs running Leopard only.

Quick Look: Tape Deck, simple audio recording on the Mac

Tape Deck isn’t bloated with features or totally unnecessary eye-candy, and best of all, anyone who has ever used a tape recorder will be able to use it right away. When the application is launched, you are met with the face of an
old-fashioned portable tape recorder and a tape drawer. To get started,
all you have to do is push the record button, causing both the record
and play button to be pressed down simultaneously, and the app begins
recording; you even have the click sound you would hear from a real
tape recorder. One of the nice features of Tape Deck is that you can’t
accidentally record over a tape. Every time you activate the record
feature, a new tape is created and the old one is put into the tape
drawer to the right.Recordings are done in compressed MP4-AAC audio and can easily be
exported to iTunes, e-mail, or disposed of easily via the File menu.
Furthermore, Tape Deck can be minimized and controlled via a menu item
or through system-wide hotkeys. There is also a handy search pane that
allows you to search through tapes titles and notes. Each recording
even takes on an icon representing the tape with the labels that you
set in the application.

The software goes for $25, but users can play with a demo before committing. .

Byte Into It - 14 May 08

Ed’s interview with Martin Krafft - one of the lead Debian developers - available in Ogg Vorbis format (20MB):
http://www.rrr.org.au/archive/byte/MartinKrafftInterview.ogg

For more from Martin:
http://debiansystem.info/
http://madduck.net/
BBC NEWS | Technology | Virtual telescope opens night sky

Microsoft has launched WorldWide Telescope, a free tool that stitches together images from some of the best ground- and space-based telescopes.

Collections include pictures from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, as well as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

The web-based tool also allows users to pan and zoom around the planets, and trace their locations in the night sky.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google helps the web to go social

Google has joined the drive to make the web more social by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends.

Friend Connect follows plans announced last week by the world’s two biggest social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook.

Data Availability and Connect let users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.

At the heart of Google’s service is the use of Open Social which will allow third parties to build and develop applications for the site.

The company says with Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. This will run the gamut from invitations to member’s gallery and from message walls to reviews.

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft boosts XP on budget PCs

Microsoft is cutting the cost of putting Windows XP on low cost laptops.

The price cuts will only be available for ultra-portable laptops that meet a strict set of specifications.

The move is widely seen as an attempt by Microsoft to bolster its market share in one of the PC industry sectors showing growth.

Low-powered laptops, such as the Asus Eee PC, are proving hugely popular in developed nations and in projects trying to bridge the digital divide.

BBC NEWS | UK | Facebook users warned about ads

Credit companies are using the Facebook social networking site to target young people, a debt charity has warned.

Credit Action says adverts promising cheap loans for people with poor credit ratings are appearing on the site and many break advertising regulations.

In particular, they are promoting two new products - payday loans secured against a salary or logbook loans secured against a car, it says.

The charity has made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading.

Credit Action says many of the adverts contravene UK credit advertising regulations, usually by failing to give details of interest rates.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Adobe opens up Flash on mobiles

Adobe has announced a plan to try to get its Flash player installed on more mobile devices and set-top boxes.

Dubbed Open Screen the initiative lifts restrictions on how its multimedia handling software can be used.

Adobe will stop charging licencing fees for mobile versions of Flash and plans to publish information about the inner workings of the code.

In taking this step Adobe hopes to repeat on mobiles the success its Flash technology has enjoyed on the web.

NNDB mapper lets conspiracy theorists connect the dots between powerful people - Boing Boing

The NNDB Mapper is a visual tool for tracking the connections of more than 32,000 famous people- linking them together through family relations, corporate boards, tv shows, political alliances and shadowy conspiracy groups.

Creating a map with the NNDB Mapper tells a story about the world through connecting the lives of billionaire executives, scientists and inventors, politicians and activists, writers and musicians, and even Hollywood stars.

Analog switchoff == DRM screwjob - Boing Boing

Fred sez, “Nice article explaining how the end of analog TV in the U.S. in Feb. 2009 is going to unleash DRM troubles on a lot of unsuspecting consumers.”

This is great for the studios, but it’s not how the audience thinks (or should think) of their product. Paying for some form of content should directly connect to real received value: a performance of a movie in a theater. A DVD with additional commentary and deleted scenes. And yes, convenient on-demand availability, when appropriate. But too often, the “value” is based upon an indirect conspiracy to make it difficult or impossible to use the media you’ve already paid for, making the end result a tax on the technological have-nots.

SMS data rate is 4x more expensive than data from the Hubble - Boing Boing

A space scientist from Leicester has calculated that SMS data is four times more expensive than receiving data from the Hubble space telescope.

He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble – and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text.

He said: “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.

Macworld | Mac 911 | Alphabetizing Firefox bookmarks

Here’s the trick:

Choose Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks. Select a folder full of bookmarks in the left pane of the Bookmarks Manager window. The right pane will fill with that folder’s contents. If you want to sort all the items in the right pane by name, just Control-click on an item in the right pane and choose Sort By Name from the contextual menu. Firefox will first organize folders alphabetically, and then follow those folders with alphabetized items that carry URLs. For example, in my Bookmarks toolbar, choosing Sort By Name puts my Apple, Favorites, and Mac Stuff folders first in line and then Google News, Latest Headlines (an RSS feed with a URL), and Rhapsody follow after that.

If the right pane includes folders of its own—you’ve chosen the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder, for example—click the triangle next to one of the folders in the right pane, select an item within that folder, and perform that Control-click/Sort By Name trick again. The items within the folder will be sorted alphabetically. And yes, the alphabetical sorting will carry over into Firefox’s Bookmarks toolbar as well as submenus in the Bookmarks menu

10 Useful Gadgets for Mobile Computing | Six Revisions

If you’re a web worker, mobile computing is either a necessity of the job or something you choose to do to get away from the monotonous confines of your office work station. Along with your laptop and (most probably) your iPhone/Blackberry/[insert handheld here], there are a plethora of useful devices that you can tag along with you to enhance your computing experience. Here’s a round-up of 10 cool gadgets that can supplement your remote workspace. Including (amongst other): The USB Port Blocker prevents data thieves from plugging in USB devices to grab your precious data or injecting malware when you’re not looking. The Solio Solar Charger is a multi-compatible device charger that uses stored solar energy to charge up your other gizmos. It works with the iPhone, iPod, and most other portable handhelds. A fully charged Solio can charge two standard cell phones, and can charge as fast as any wall chargers (according to the maker) and Adding an extra layer of protection to your data is made easy with the STYSEN E08 RFID Security Mobile Disk. It works by locking your hard drive which you can then unlock using an RFID key.

SME’s get more Web choices with MYOB - Internet - iTnews Australia

Business solutions company MYOB announced today it will expand its range of products to offer online Web hosting services to its SME customers.

MYOB will now offer domain registration from $35 for two years, email hosting from $14.95 per month and Web hosting from $29.95 per month.

MYOB has always focused primarily on small to medium enterprise (SME) clients, and has tailored their new web offerings to benefit anything from young start-up companies to fully established SMEs.

Sun open sources Mac OS X virtualisation tool - Operating Systems - iTnews Australia

Sun Microsystems has unveiled a useful update to its xVM VirtualBox, open source desktop virtualisation, which now has support for both Solaris and Mac OS X.

The update means that Sun is now officially the first firm to have launched open source virtualisation for those particular two operating systems.

Sun is seeking a niche in the big-business virtualisation market. Its Virtual Box, which was developed by German company Innotek, bought by Sun this February, can run as an application on a host operating system, allowing several guest OSs to run on top of it.

The software comes in a free, open source version as well as in a licensed version sporting advanced features, which is also free, but only for individual use. Any business users who want the software have to cough up for the purchase licenses.

Sun claims that as well as supporting Solaris and Mac OS X as hosts, its new and improved VirtualBox 1.6 now also comes with seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests, SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per VM and a programming interface for Web services. Solaris is also supported as a guest OS, but Mac OS X is not as yet.

XP SP3 crashes some AMD machines - Hardware - iTnews Australia

The long-awaited and much-delayed update to Windows XP, Service Pack 3, is giving owners of machines with AMD hardware headaches aplenty it seems.

The problems, which first arose just one day after the push, have been causing lots of noise on Microsoft support sites and angry user blogs.

One user reported, “I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to load the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again.”

Angry users have also reported that, after the installation, it is not even possible to boot in safe mode, usually the last resort before setting up a repeated forehead/screen interface.

Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft and a well respected blogger has provided some pointers as to where the problem might lie.

ADC Round 1 Winners! | Android Phone Fans

Google has contacted the Round 1 winners of the Android Developer Challenge and here are the results. Listed are 46 of the 50 Winners… the remaining 4 opted not to disclose their project!

Video games don’t create killers, new book says - Software - iTnews Australia

It was a different approach than most other studies, which have focused on laboratory experiments that attempt to use actions like ringing a loud buzzer as a measure of aggression.

“What we did that had rarely been done by other researchers was actually talk to the kids. It sounds bizarre but it hadn’t been done,” Kutner said.

They found that playing video games was a near-universal activity among children, and was often intensely social.

But the data did show a link between playing mature-rated games and aggressive behavior. The researchers found that 51 percent of boys who played M-rated games — the industry’s equivalent of an R-rated movie, meaning suitable for ages 17 and up — had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28 percent of non-M-rated gamers.

The pattern was even stronger among girls, with 40 percent of those who played M-rated games having been in a fight in the past year, compared to just 14 percent for non-M players.

One of the most surprising things was how popular mature games were among girls. In fact, the “Grand Theft Auto” crime action series was the second-most played game behind “The Sims”, a sort of virtual dollhouse.

Kutner and Olson said further study is needed because the data shows only a correlation, not causation. It is unclear whether the games trigger aggression or if aggressive children are drawn to more violent games.

Adobe CS3 subscription offer for Aussies - Software - iTnews Australia

From May 1 resellers will stock Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Subscription Edition, which will cost customers $129 per month for a 12-month contract. Australia will be the first and currently only country that has been offered the subscription service, claimed Cokes. The suite will also be available for AU$199 month-to-month.

Byte Into It - Apr 30 08

http://www.webware.com

http://www.webware.com/8300-1_109-2-0.html?keyword=Webware+100+2008

http://www.thornsoft.com/ - makers of clipmate

BBC NEWS | Technology | Loopholes keep Windows XP alive

PC makers are finding ways to keep selling Windows XP despite Microsoft efforts to remove it from sale.

Dell, HP and Lenovo are exploiting loopholes in Microsoft’s licensing terms to extend the operating system beyond a 30 June end of life date.

XP is being phased out in favour of Windows Vista which has, so far, got a lukewarm welcome from many firms.

The news comes as Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer hints that XP could live longer if enough customers demand it.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft unveils its web vision

Microsoft has lifted the lid on a new web service called Live Mesh, designed to connect a multiplicity of devices and applications online.

The service is seen by many as a key plank in the company’s vision for the future of the web.

Live Mesh is designed to blur the lines between running software and storing data on a desktop and “in the cloud”.

Microsoft’s Amit Mital said Live Mesh would “connect and bring devices together… to work in concert”.

Live Mesh pits Microsoft against companies like Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com which are already offering different varieties of so-called software-as-a-service systems.

EFF to Ballmer: You owe MSN Music customers an apology, a refund and more - Boing Boing

In an open letter sent to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer today, EFF outlines five steps Microsoft must take to make things right for MSN Music customers — including a issuing a public apology, providing refunds or replacement music files, and launching a substantial publicity campaign to make sure all customers know their options.

“MSN Music customers trusted Microsoft when it said that this was a safe way to buy music, and that trust has been betrayed,” said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. “If Microsoft is prepared to treat MSN Music customers like this, is there any reason to suppose that future customers won’t get the same treatment?”

Malware gets a EULA - Boing Boing

It’s obviously difficult for the manufacturers of an illegal product to threaten legal sanctions against an infringer, but the Zeus authors give it their best shot. According to the EULA, “In cases of violations of the agreement and being detected, the client loses any technical support. Moreover, the binary code of your bot will be immediately sent to antivirus companies.” Frankly, “We’ll blow your kneecaps off and feed them to you,” might be a bit more effective as a threat, but I suppose it’s a bit hard to carry out that threat over the Internet.

Microsoft releases the long-anticipated Windows XP SP3 (updated)

With SP3, Microsoft has back-ported four Vista features to XP, including Network Access Protection (NAP) in order “to help organizations that use Windows XP to take advantage of new features in the Windows Server 2008 operating system.” The four features that are no longer Vista-specific are as follows:

* NAP is a policy enforcement platform meant for enterprise use that blocks systems attempting to access a network until they meet whatever security criteria the corporation has in place.
* “Black Hole” Router Detection helps detect and protect end users from a router that drops packets without returning the specified Internet Control Message Protocol response.
* Microsoft Kernel Cryptographic Module incorporates cryptographic algorithms in a single module other kernel mode drivers are capable of hooking into and accessing.
* The new Product Activation module allows users to install XP without entering a product key at installation.

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails: Page 1

A federal magistrate judge on Thursday chastised the Bush administration for failing to fully answer questions related to a long-running dispute over missing White House emails. The White House is facing lawsuits from two public interest groups, Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive at George Washington University, demanding that the White House restore the missing e-mails and put in place systems to prevent further e-mail losses. Administration officials were ordered to provide detailed information about the burdens involved in taking immediate actions to preserve copies of hard drive, tapes, and other media that may contain copies of the missing e-mails.

New Microsoft law enforcement tool bypasses PC security

Microsoft revealed its development of a digital forensic analysis toolkit at a security conference yesterday as part of a wider discussion of how technology can be used to fight crime. The Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, or COFEE for short, is a USB thumb drive that contains software capable of executing approximately 150 separate commands. Once plugged in, COFEE can be ordered to decrypt system passwords, display a history of internet activity, and search the system for evidence.

Details on precisely what the device can do have been kept vague, probably on purpose, but the Seattle Times reports that Microsoft has been distributing the devices to law enforcement agencies around the world since last June. Currently, about 2,000 people in 15 countries world-wide have access to the devices, which allow police to gather dig for data immediately onsite, thus avoiding the wait involved in offsite analysis COFEE also allows law enforcement to snapshot any data that might be lost when a system is shut down for seizure and transport.

Microsoft: Office Genuine Advantage released “inadvertently”

As part of Microsoft’s continuous efforts to reduce piracy, the software giant released update KB949810, also known as the Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) Notifications application, through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). The update was meant to notify companies in Chile, Italy, Spain, and Turkey whether or not their copies of Office XP, Office 2003, or Office 2007 were genuine. Microsoft has acknowledged that the release did not go as planned: “but because of WSUS publication, it became available to WSUS managed clients inside and outside of these intended countries.”

The problem with the update in question, which was “marked critical for WSUS,” does not end with a mistaken worldwide release. Not only did the update appear to be a patch for a security problem by being marked as “critical”, it did not always detect genuine software as genuine. As a result, many computers with legally purchased software began to spit out errors and productivity ground to a halt.

Cory Doctorow: How to stop your inbox exploding | Technology | guardian.co.uk

a few tips and hacks that never fail to surprise and delight:

• Sort your inbox by subject,
• Colour-code messages from known senders,
• Kill people who make you crazy,
• Half-resign from mailing lists,
• Keep a pending list

See also Merlin Mann’s take on Inbox Management in a presentation given to Google staff

http://www.43folders.com/izero/

The ABCs of securing your wireless network: Page 1

Ars Technica’s original Wireless Security Blackpaper

Digg - All the rage in Europe: Firefox marketshare climbs higher

Month by month, Firefox continues to make gains in Europe, where the browser approaches a 50% marketshare in some countries, and shows stronger use on weekends, when people get to use the browser of their choice.

Skype tests mobile VoIP app - Mobility - iTnews Australia

Skype has released a mobile version of its VoIP application, giving owners of Java-enabled handsets access to the communication service while out and about..

The product is still in beta, but is freely available to download and offers most Skype features, including chat, group chat, presence and receiving calls through SkypeIn.

Universal: EFF SLAPPed us with dancing toddler DMCA lawsuit

The anti-SLAPP statute allows critics to get such cases tossed out of court quickly, and it allows the target o