HEY JOE! A message for you

Hey guys, it appears your link to the podcast is:

http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

Can you fix that so my itunes can pick it up?

Thanks,
ksn

TEST? TEST?
note to ksn: I did forward your comment to Joe in email, and that didn't work, so I'm trying a different option.
We want to make sure nobody misses a single episode of On Computers.


--MissM

Chip maker is setting up an innovation center in India

From Infoworld. For some reason this caught my eye.

Taiwanese chip maker Via Technologies announced Monday that it is setting up an innovation center in Mumbai, India, that is focused on developing computing and communications appliances designed for rural markets in India and other countries

Sunbelt BLOG: Google helps to fund an antispyware site

Alex Eckelberry says the following:

According to an article by Ryan Naraine in eWeek, “Web search powerhouse Google has joined with Sun Microsystems to fund a new anti-spyware coalition that is on tap to launch on Jan. 24…”. It will be operated by the Berkman Center at Harvard and the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University.

Apparently, the site is going to be an information clearinghouse and help center for consumers. In an article in the Christian Science Monitor, the group’s co-director was quoted as saying “the coalition will act like a "neighborhood watch" for the Internet, relying on citizens to report problems.”

The new site, “StopBadware.org” will be up tomorrow. The domain is owned by Google.

He has links to all the articles, so go check it out. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out in practice, my first impressions are good, but I'm posting this before reading all the links, myself [full disclosure, eh? ;) ]

--MissM
[for RSS readers]Sunbelt BLOG: Google helps to fund an antispyware site

EFF: DeepLinks

You say you want the power to time-shift and space-shift TV and radio? You say you want tomorrow's innovators to invent new TV and radio gizmos you haven't thought of yet, the same way the pioneers behind the VCR, TiVo, and the iPod did?

Well, that's not what the entertainment industry has in mind. According to them, here's all tomorrow's innovators should be allowed to offer you:

"customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law."

PDF of the Draft Legislation

--MissM
Thanks Joanne for the link to Big Content would like to outlaw things no one has even thought of yet
EFF: DeepLinks

Supreme Court rejects BlackBerry patent appeal

The high court’s refusal to hear Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd.’s appeal means that a trial judge in Richmond, Va., could impose an injunction against the company and block BlackBerry use among many of its owners in the United States.

Technorati link, cause I know there will be a great deal of discussion about this, since so many in government rely on this.

--MissM

Supreme Court rejects BlackBerry patent appeal

The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet

If you don't have a log on for wapo use bugmenot because this article is a must read, for anybody on the internet. Which includes you! :)

ISPs are trying to get content providers to subsidize the bandwidth, and Congress is considering overhauling the Telecommunications act of 1996. An example is a nickel PER iTunes download from Apple. Another potential example, yahoo pays the pipe owner, to "optimize" the connection from the ISP customers, and then google loads slowly. This is something that definitely needs to be kept an eye on.

Just looking at who's on which side, leads me to believe this is a classic David and Goliath (except we have google, and Apple maybe? on David's side). The ONLY way I'd consider this, is if it reduced my cable bill, SERIOUSLY. But, I have to wonder how bittorrents would be affected. By the way, I was getting over 800KB downloaded with 2 twit video feeds!!! Nice!

--MissM
article link here (for RSS ;) )

Update: I was reminded of Doc Searle's essay about keeping the internet pipes consumer friendly and the perils of not, its long, but important. Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 01-22-06

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 01-22-06. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.



-- Edited on 1/28/06 by Aaron to correct link.

Confirmed: Gmail dot bug sends your email to other users!

Gmail doesn't recognize dots in usernames, so to Gmail, digg.user@gmail.com and digguser@gmail.com are the same. So while you can create a Gmail username with a dot, if an identical name exists without the dot, he'll get your email! Users have reported this weirdness for many months already, now it's confirmed by Google, albeit, not yet fixed.

I've run into this myself. I got user.name@gmail.com when I've registered username@gmail.com

Have you?

--MissM


read more | digg story

A 3fer day for google. Feel the luv????!?!?!!?!!?!? ;)

Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition

To: Google Inc.

We, the undersigned, ask Google Inc. to "do no evil" and follow their mission statement to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" by promptly adding accessibility to their visual word verification scheme so that the blind and visually impaired are allowed to fully participate in all products and services offered by the company on terms of equality with our sighted peers.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Go, sign it! And don't forget to hit approve at the end, or your signature won't count. As I mentioned here, paypal.com does have a system that works for visually impaired.

--MissM
kudos go to Mike @ MikeTechShow for making me aware of the petition.
Experiment: I'm trying to make this rss friendly by including a direct link to the petition, hopefully, it'll be clickable in my reader.
Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition

Feds want Google search records

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google Inc. to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases...Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort "vigorously.''

Gonzales v. Google, Inc. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court seeking a court order that would compel search engine company Google, Inc. to turn over “a multi-stage random sample of one million URL’s” from Google’s database, and a computer file with “the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query.”

If that paragraph above does not raise the hairs on your neck, I suggest you re-read the first amendment to the Constitution. What are they thinking? This is no way to survey porn use.[Peter S. Kastner]

Go Google Go!
But, this is one of the reasons I don't have google desktop installed, if its not available, there's nothing to search....

--MissM

Update: Yahoo caved in to the record request.
America, United States, Sunday Times Yahoo has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its search engine's databases this summer, as a battle develops over the right to privacy in cyberspace.
Update2: The reason for the request was :

The lawsuit is the government's attempt to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on grounds it violated the First Amendment. COPA was enacted by Congress with the aim of protecting minors from potentially harmful effects of sexually explicit material on the Internet. (Courtesy of CNN.com

It occurs to me (and I apologize if its not techie enough for you) that they aren't even trying to prosecute anybody, just eliminate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

FBI: Most Companies Get Hacked

If this one doesn't give you pause about the businesses you deal with, nothing will.

Some security researchers take issue with the study, saying the numbers are simply wrong. No one disagrees with the basic conclusion, though. Major security incidents are the norm, not the exception.

The survey really is a little goofy. It equates spyware infections with genuine intrusions and several other assumptions are equally strange. I suspect this was done to simplify the form in order to not burden those responding unduly.

The point is that there is a lot more of this sort of thing going on than was generally acknowledged.

Jack

Update: Inside the WMF Backdoor [Mark's Systinternals Blog]

Some of the latest info:

Mark received several requests to look into the WMF vulnerability and he believes it is merely bad design, not a deliberate backdoor. Steve Gibson has released another security now podcast which apparently "close[s] the backdoor" on the WMF vulnerability, but I haven't listened yet, so go check it out, there are a variety of ways to access the podcast listed, from audio to text to PDF.


--MissM

Gonzales v Google: the study methodology is flawed

The text below was sent to Joel McElvain at the Department of Justice:

Sir,
I have read and considered your motion to force Google to comply. May I humbly suggest that you may win the battle and lose the war. I have no stake in this dispute, but I do know a few things about computer technology. Yes, you will find me with a Google search.

Assuming you get the data requested from Google and its competitors, what kind of picture can you paint with the data obtained for the Supreme Court? The answer is not enough that is useful in setting United States law and policy. Internet search providers such as Google have search servers spread throughout the world, largely to handle queries in local geographies. The search engines must comply with local laws such as Arabic bans on indecency, China's ban on "democracy" and France's ban on Nazi memorabilia auctions.

For various reasons, Internet data that is searchable and available in one part of the world may not be available in or accessible from the United States, and vice versa. Therefore, it appears to me that a random set of data from Google's query servers around the world cannot say whether the query made in, say, China can also return the same results if made from the United States -- and therefore be controlled by U.S. law. Your subpoena will drag in worldwide data without identifying the query limits of the source data server.

As a citizen, I am interested in seeing that the Supreme Court's remand re COPA is met with a study that is accurate and defensible as it relates to U.S. law and citizens. I fail to see how the methodology implied in the Google motion is going to achieve a "national" set of data when a "world" net is being cast.

Regards,
Peter S. Kastner

New Linux license takes aim at DRM and Hollywood | CNET News.com

"At a two-day event here to launch the General Public License version 3, which governs use of countless free and open-source programs, Moglen said the license includes anti-DRM provisions that could put it in conflict with movie studios and even digital video recorder maker TiVo"

Next XP Service Pack is Far in the Future

Apparently Microsoft has much less interest in service packs for XP than they do in releasing Vista. While that is understandable, it seems to indicate they are not terribly concerned with problems that exist in XP now.

Here is Microsoft's roadmap for service packs.

I frequently get the idea that Microsoft simply does not have enough people to deal with all the updates and upgrades they need to be putting out. With all their billions, one would think they could and would hire enough good people to do what they and their customers need done.

Jack

Researcher: Sony BMG "rootkit" still widespread

As we have hinted during the show; the damage and flap over Sony/BMG's behavior is far from over. This Security Focus article makes that perfectly clear.

Be afraid;

Jack

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 01-15-06

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 01-15-06. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

Speaking of Trustworthy computing....

The link in the title goes to the latest Security Now podcast with Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson. Steve releases his current information about the WMF Vulnerability. He says that the WMF exploit was a deliberate backdoor, by somebody at Microsoft, and there's no way that it was unknown. One does have to go to a website that could take advantage of the exploit though.

He came to this conclusion while trying to determine if 95, 98 and WinME were vulnerable or not to the wmf exploit, and had to come up with a file that would test the exploit in the earlier Operating Systems. Steve gets into a bit of an arcane discussion re: bits of data in wmf files, when all of a sudden he says it had to be deliberate. That woke me up! It'll be very interesting to see what happens on this issue, in the next week or so.

--MissM
P.S. At first, I assumed that the MS patch had been forced on his machine, since this was so public (referring to Jack's post below).
P.P.S. I assume the fix, fixed the exploit, er backdoor?

UPDATE: 'Windows backdoor' theory causes kerfuffle |CNET News.com

Further UPDATE: Microsoft Security Response Center Blog! : Looking at the WMF issue, how did it get there?

PCWorld.com - Symantec, Kaspersky Criticized for Cloaking Software

More companies are using Root-Kits now!Mark Russinovich, chief software architect with systems software company Winternals Software, says that the techniques used by Symantec's Norton SystemWorks and Kaspersky's Anti-Virus products are rootkits, a term usually reserved for the techniques that malicious software uses to avoid detection on an infected PC.

Anti-Spyware Coalition Risk Model Description

The link above is not to the Anti Spyware Coalition's home page, but to their definition of "risk modelling" in relation to these programs.

I have no idea whether the ASC can actually make a difference and to be perfectly honest, I have my doubts. No matter that; they're trying to do well by users and that must be applauded.

Check it out. Send them feedback if you think you can be of help. Anything is worth a shot to make this plague upon users better.

JacK