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24
April 2009 |
A Vietnamese security company has detected what it believes is a new worm that thwarts Google's security protections in order to register new dummy Gmail accounts from which to send spam.
Bach Koa Internetwork Security (BKIS) said the worm was discovered earlier this week in one of its honeypots, the term for a computer set up to catch samples of malicious software. BKIS has named the malware "W32.Gaptcha.Worm."
Once a computer is infected with Gaptcha, the worm launches the Internet Explorer browser ... |
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23
April 2009 |
Oprah Winfrey’s effect on book sales when she supports a new title is legendary. She may have even contributed to the election of the nation’s first black president with her endorsement of Barack Obama. So what happened in Twitterland after Winfrey started Tweeting, and used her TV show as a platform to announce her online Twitter presence?
According to market tracker Hitwise, traffic to Twitter went up 43% in a before and after survey of the Oprah Effect.
Additionally, on April 17th, the day of Winf... |
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22
April 2009 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said today that it's designing a server processor with up to 16 cores, which would quadruple the count in the company's existing quad-core Opteron chips.
But the new chip, which is code-named Interlagos and slated to support between 12 and 16 processor cores, will be a long time coming. The processor won't be released until 2011, AMD officials said during a webcast press conference. They added that Interlagos will be a follow-up to a 12-core processor code-named Magny-Cours th... |
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17
April 2009 |
A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor (�2.4m) in damages.
In a Twitter posting, Mr Sunde said: "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media."
Mr Sunde went on to say that he "got the news last night that ... |
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16
April 2009 |
Microsoft has reached an agreement to move forward with a new campus pub -- reversing course after having second thoughts and surprising the bar owner with a lease termination last week. Under the compromise plan, the Spitfire pub will serve beer and wine in the afternoons and evenings, after 3 p.m., but it will be open during those hours only for scheduled gatherings and catered events.
"I feel great," said pub owner Jonathan Sposato. "This is really cool. Ultimately it worked out. I thought it was real... |
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16
April 2009 |
If you were wondering how bad things have gotten for the mobile handset market, just take a look at Nokia, the world's largest maker of cell phones.
The company on Thursday reported a 90 percent fall in first-quarter net profits as the global recession took a big bite out of demand for mobile devices.
For the first quarter, which ended March 31, Nokia said that net profits fell to 122 million euros ($161.3 million). A year earlier the company reported net profits of 1.22 billion euros. Analysts had ex... |
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16
April 2009 |
Broadband operator Bahnhof has begun destroying the IP address details of its customers in an open and fully legal bid to undermine Sweden's new anti-file sharing laws.
Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on April 1st, has said he is determined to protect the company's clients.
The new file sharing law is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and allows courts to order internet operators to hand over det... |
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14
April 2009 |
Need your kids to pick their grades up? Tell them to spend less time on Facebook.
A new study released by Ohio State University shows that college students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grades than students who don't use the popular social networking site. But don't count on the Facebook users admitting the problem. The university report noted that 79% of them said that using the social networking site was not interfering with their studies.
"We can't say that use of Faceboo... |
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14
April 2009 |
Internet security vendor, F-Secure says that it has detected the first known SMS based worm for mobile phones. In its quarterly update on the security issues faced by computer and smartphone users, the company noted that the biggest malware story of 2009 so far has been the Conficker (aka Downadup) worm. It is a classic worm exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, of the type that has not been seen in the past few years.
However, the first quarter was also historical as it saw the birth of the f... |
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11
April 2009 |
Mininova, one of the world’s most visited BitTorrent sites, broke another download record today. Just a few hours ago the download counter displayed a staggering 8,000,000,000 downloads. That’s enough for everyone on planet earth to have one - and then some.
mininovaFounded in January 2005, Mininova quickly became one of the most successful torrent sites. With millions of daily users the site is now listed among the top 100 most frequently visited websites on the entire Internet, and its traffic stil... |
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8
April 2009 |
Just a few months after its fifth anniversary, Facebook Inc. today is set to welcome its 200 millionth user.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post this morning that the social networking site is on track to welcome its 200 millionth user before the day is out. To celebrate, the company has hooked up with 16 charities and advocacy groups that have created virtual gifts that users can buy for one another. Zuckerberg noted that 90% to 95% of the proceeds go to the charities, with the rest going t... |
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7
April 2009 |
At long last, the iPhone and iPod touch have a Skype client all their own. This is a momentous turn of events, particularly for iPhone users who haven't opted for AT&T's unlimited voice plan and want to save their precious minutes. iPod touch users will, of course, welcome the chance to add any sort of calling capability to their mobile device.
This mobile version of Skype looks and acts like the iPhone dialer--it might even cause some users to do a double-take. Quick chat sessions, powerful integration ... |
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4
April 2009 |
Google has said it sees voice search as a major opportunity for the company in building a presence on the mobile web.
The company's vice president of engineering made the comments during a wide-ranging discussion at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.
"We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business," said Vic Gundotra.
SearchEngineLand editor Greg Sterling agreed: "If done right, it could be a valuable strategic feature for Google."
Mr Gundotra acknowledged t... |
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3
April 2009 |
Google Inc may be in talks to buy internet start-up Twitter, the free micro-blogging service that allows people to send short text messages to a network of friends, the TechCrunch website said late on Thursday.
TechCrunch's article by Michael Arrington said the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine.
Google would pay for Twitter in cash or stock or a combination of the two, the website reported.
Industry experts say Arrington has a mixed record but w... |
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2
April 2009 |
Nokia has dismissed WiMAX as a failed idea and likened it to the Betamax video format which lost the video tape war in the 1980s. Nokia's head of sales and manufacturing, Anssi Vanjoki told the Financial Times that he doesn't "see that WiMax is taking hold anywhere in a big way,"
"I don't think the future is very promising [for WiMax]. This is a classic example of industry standards clashing, and somebody comes out as the winner and somebody has to lose. Betamax was there for a long time, but VHS dominat... |
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