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CWmike writes "The first person ever appointed as the CIO of the federal government, Vivek Kundra, is resigning after two and a half years on the job, the White House said Thursday. There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT. Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard. Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately outlined an agenda that emphasized cloud adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of big IT contracts that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing."

CWmike writes "The first person ever appointed as the CIO of the federal government, Vivek Kundra, is resigning after two and a half years on the job, the White House said Thursday. There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT. Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard. Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately outlined an agenda that emphasized cloud adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of big IT contracts that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing."

CWmike writes "The first person ever appointed as the CIO of the federal government, Vivek Kundra, is resigning after two and a half years on the job, the White House said Thursday. There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT. Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard. Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately outlined an agenda that emphasized cloud adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of big IT contracts that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing."

CWmike writes "For the second time in nine days, Adobe has patched a critical vulnerability in Flash Player that hackers were already exploiting, Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports. Adobe also updated Reader to quash 13 new bugs and several older ones the company had not gotten around to fixing. The memory corruption vulnerability in Flash Player could 'potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,' Adobe said in an accompanying advisory. 'There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via malicious Web pages.' Adobe last issued an 'out-of-band' emergency update on June 5, when it fixed a critical flaw that attackers were exploiting to steal Gmail login credentials. Those attacks were different from the ones Google disclosed the week before, when it accused Chinese hackers of targeting specific individuals, including senior U.S. and South Korean government officials, anti-Chinese government activists and journalists. Google, which bundles Flash Player with Chrome, also updated its browser Tuesday to include the just-patched version of Flash."

CWmike writes "For the second time in nine days, Adobe has patched a critical vulnerability in Flash Player that hackers were already exploiting, Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports. Adobe also updated Reader to quash 13 new bugs and several older ones the company had not gotten around to fixing. The memory corruption vulnerability in Flash Player could 'potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,' Adobe said in an accompanying advisory. 'There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via malicious Web pages.' Adobe last issued an 'out-of-band' emergency update on June 5, when it fixed a critical flaw that attackers were exploiting to steal Gmail login credentials. Those attacks were different from the ones Google disclosed the week before, when it accused Chinese hackers of targeting specific individuals, including senior U.S. and South Korean government officials, anti-Chinese government activists and journalists. Google, which bundles Flash Player with Chrome, also updated its browser Tuesday to include the just-patched version of Flash."

CWmike writes "For the second time in nine days, Adobe has patched a critical vulnerability in Flash Player that hackers were already exploiting, Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports. Adobe also updated Reader to quash 13 new bugs and several older ones the company had not gotten around to fixing. The memory corruption vulnerability in Flash Player could 'potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,' Adobe said in an accompanying advisory. 'There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via malicious Web pages.' Adobe last issued an 'out-of-band' emergency update on June 5, when it fixed a critical flaw that attackers were exploiting to steal Gmail login credentials. Those attacks were different from the ones Google disclosed the week before, when it accused Chinese hackers of targeting specific individuals, including senior U.S. and South Korean government officials, anti-Chinese government activists and journalists. Google, which bundles Flash Player with Chrome, also updated its browser Tuesday to include the just-patched version of Flash."

dcblogs writes "President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. In 2009, the US produced 126,194 engineering graduates for bachelor's and master's degrees and for Ph.D.s. The US had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%. 'We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations, but we still don't have enough engineers,' said Obama. He's counting on the private sector to help expand the number of graduates."

CWmike writes "Recent break-ins at high-profile targets like the International Monetary Fund demonstrate just how proficient hackers have become at so-called spear phishing, researchers said on Tuesday. 'Today's spear phishing is not only more prevalent but also much more technically proficient,' said Dave Jevans, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group. 'They're not going for a password, anymore; they're getting people to install crimeware on their computers.' The trend highlights the need for defenses against such targeted threats, requiring companies to look beyond security strategies focused purely on dealing with traditional network threats, analysts said. Increasingly, companies also need to focus on approaches such as continuous monitoring of networks, databases, applications and users, outbound traffic filtering and whitelisting."

CWmike writes "Recent break-ins at high-profile targets like the International Monetary Fund demonstrate just how proficient hackers have become at so-called spear phishing, researchers said on Tuesday. 'Today's spear phishing is not only more prevalent but also much more technically proficient,' said Dave Jevans, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group. 'They're not going for a password, anymore; they're getting people to install crimeware on their computers.' The trend highlights the need for defenses against such targeted threats, requiring companies to look beyond security strategies focused purely on dealing with traditional network threats, analysts said. Increasingly, companies also need to focus on approaches such as continuous monitoring of networks, databases, applications and users, outbound traffic filtering and whitelisting."

Lucas123 writes "The change over from a medical coding system in use since the 1970s to an updated version that adds more than 50,000 new 7-character codes is being compared to Y2K as an IT project that is nearly impossible to complete on time. ICD-10, which replaces ICD-9, adds far more granularity to medical diagnosis and treatment. For example, ICD-9 has one code for a finger amputation. In contrast, ICD-10 has a code for every finger and every section of every finger. An 'unfunded mandate,' the change over to ICD-10 codes is a multi-year project for hospitals, state Medicaid organizations, and insurance providers. The effort, which affects dozens of core systems, is taxing IT operational budgets at a time when shops are already under the gun to implement electronic health records."

Lucas123 writes "Apple has leaped two spots to become the world's largest consumer of semiconductor technology, including NAND flash, NOR flash and microprocessors. Apple spent $17.5 billion on semiconductors in 2010, an increase of 79.6% over 2009. Sixty-one percent of Apple's semiconductor budget in 2010 was spent on wireless products such as the iPhone and iPad, while second place HP spent 82% of its semiconductor budget on computer products like desktops, notebooks and servers."

CWmike writes "The US Supreme Court has let stand a $300 million patent infringement ruling against Microsoft, granting a victory Thursday to i4i (PDF), which filed the lawsuit back in 2007. The legal battle already forced Microsoft to modify certain functionality in its Word application in 2009, when the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i and told Microsoft to stop selling Word in the US. At issue was an i4i patent that covers technology that lets users manipulate the architecture and content of a document, which i4i alleged Microsoft infringed upon by letting Word users create custom XML documents. Microsoft removed the feature. 'This case raised an important issue of law which the Supreme Court itself had questioned in an earlier decision and which we believed needed resolution. While the outcome is not what we had hoped for, we will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation,' Microsoft said in a statement."

CWmike writes "He was hired to fix their computers, but police say that Trevor Harwell instead installed spyware software that took candid photos of his clients in various states of undress. Harwell had been a Macintosh specialist with a Los Angeles-area home computer repair company called Rezitech. That's how he allegedly had the opportunity to install the spy software, called Camcapture, on computers. While working on repair assignments, the 20-year-old technician secretly set up a complex system that could notify him whenever it was ready to snap a shot using the computer's webcam, according to Sergeant Andrew Goodrich, a spokesman with the Fullerton Police Department in California. 'It would let his server know that the victim's machine was on. The server would then notify his smartphone... and then the images were recorded on his home computer,' he said. Police say they've found thousands of images on Harwell's computers and have identified dozens of victims, all of them women in Los Angeles and Orange County. Harwell was arrested Wednesday by Fullerton police." But was he a good repairman?

CWmike writes "A former student at a suburban Philadelphia high school has sued his school district for allegedly spying on him and his family using a school-issued Mac laptop, according to court documents. The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. was first sued in February 2010 by another student using similar charges. That case, dubbed 'Spygate' in some reports, was settled last October when Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs. On Monday, Joshua Levin, a 2009 graduate of Herriton High, charged the district with violating his civil rights and privacy by remotely activating the notebook's built-in camera to take photographs and screenshots. On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.' Levin begged to differ. According to his lawsuit, Lower Merion used his laptop to take more than 8,000 photographs and screenshots between September 2008 and March 2009. A district report uncovered more than 30,000 photographs and 27,000 screenshots taken. Last June, lawyers made photos and screenshots available for viewing by the 76 affected students. 'Plaintiff opted to view the recovered images, and was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw,' Levin's lawsuit stated."

CWmike writes "A former student at a suburban Philadelphia high school has sued his school district for allegedly spying on him and his family using a school-issued Mac laptop, according to court documents. The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. was first sued in February 2010 by another student using similar charges. That case, dubbed 'Spygate' in some reports, was settled last October when Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs. On Monday, Joshua Levin, a 2009 graduate of Herriton High, charged the district with violating his civil rights and privacy by remotely activating the notebook's built-in camera to take photographs and screenshots. On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.' Levin begged to differ. According to his lawsuit, Lower Merion used his laptop to take more than 8,000 photographs and screenshots between September 2008 and March 2009. A district report uncovered more than 30,000 photographs and 27,000 screenshots taken. Last June, lawyers made photos and screenshots available for viewing by the 76 affected students. 'Plaintiff opted to view the recovered images, and was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw,' Levin's lawsuit stated."

CWmike writes "A new document in a year-old patent lawsuit filed by Oracle against Google over Android intellectual property suggests Oracle could be seeking huge damages from Google. The damages owed to Oracle, if granted by federal Judge William Alsup for the US District Court for Northern California, would 'far exceed any money Google has ever earned with Android' and could lead to a rewrite of Android's Dalvik virtual machine, considered integral to Android and used by Android device manufacturers and potentially thousands of Android app developers, wrote one blogger, Florian Mueller, who writes about intellectual property issues involving the software industry."

CWmike writes "A new document in a year-old patent lawsuit filed by Oracle against Google over Android intellectual property suggests Oracle could be seeking huge damages from Google. The damages owed to Oracle, if granted by federal Judge William Alsup for the US District Court for Northern California, would 'far exceed any money Google has ever earned with Android' and could lead to a rewrite of Android's Dalvik virtual machine, considered integral to Android and used by Android device manufacturers and potentially thousands of Android app developers, wrote one blogger, Florian Mueller, who writes about intellectual property issues involving the software industry."

CWmike writes "With recent news of a possible link between cell phone radiation and risk of brain cancer, you may have a new-found interest in knowing how much radiation your mobile handset is giving off — or, more importantly, how much your body might be absorbing. The FCC's legal limit for mobile phones is 1.6 Watts of radiofrequency energy per kilogram, using a measure called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The Environmental Working Group, which tracks SAR data for more than 1,300 cell phone and smartphone models, notes that several factors besides your handset affect your actual level of exposure. Look up your phone's SAR; or see a full chart of phones." And relax — have a coffee.

CWmike writes "With recent news of a possible link between cell phone radiation and risk of brain cancer, you may have a new-found interest in knowing how much radiation your mobile handset is giving off — or, more importantly, how much your body might be absorbing. The FCC's legal limit for mobile phones is 1.6 Watts of radiofrequency energy per kilogram, using a measure called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The Environmental Working Group, which tracks SAR data for more than 1,300 cell phone and smartphone models, notes that several factors besides your handset affect your actual level of exposure. Look up your phone's SAR; or see a full chart of phones." And relax — have a coffee.

On Wednesday we discussed news of Google's accusation that sources originating in China were interfering with Gmail using malware and phishing techniques, targeting Chinese political activists, US government officials, military personnel, and others. In response to the accusations, a Chinese official denied government involvement in the attacks, while the US government indicated they would investigate the matter. The attacks were more sophisticated than a typical phishing attempt, they involved Yahoo and Hotmail as well, and they have likely been going on for months. Now, according to a CBS report, "The Chinese military accused the US on Friday of launching a global 'Internet war' to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western targets originating in China."

CWmike writes "In what appears to be the latest bid by a government to throttle access to news and information amid growing civil unrest, the Syrian government Friday shut down all Internet services. Internet monitoring firm Renesys reported that starting around 7 a.m. EDT today, close to two-thirds of all Syrian networks were suddenly unreachable from the global Internet. In just 30 minutes, routes to 40 of 59 Syrian networks were withdrawn from the global routing table, Reneys' chief technology officer James Cowie said in a blog post. The shutdown has affected all of SyriaTel's 3G mobile data networks as well as several of the country's ISPs, such as Sawa, INET and Runnet. Also down are the Damascus city government page and the customs web site. The only networks that appear to be somewhat reachable are a handful of government-owned networks such as one belonging to Syria's Oil Ministry, Cowie noted. 'We don't know yet how the outage was coordinated, or what specific regions or cities may be affected more than others,' Cowie wrote. 'If Egypt and Libya are any guide, one might conclude that events on the street in Syria are reaching a tipping point.'"

CWmike writes "Apple released an update for Snow Leopard on Tuesday that warns users that they've downloaded fake Mac security software and scrubs already-infected machines. Chet Wisniewski, a security researcher with Sophos, confirmed that the update alerts users when they try to download any of the bogus MacDefender antivirus software. Wisniewski had not yet tested the malware cleaning functionality of the update, but was confident that it would work. 'It's reasonably trivial to remove MacDefender,' said Wisniewski. 'It's not burying itself in the system, not compared to some of some of the crap that we see on Windows.' The update, labeled 2011-003, adds a new definition to the rudimentary antivirus detection engine embedded in Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, and also increases the frequency with which the operating system checks for new definitions to daily."

CWmike writes "Apple released an update for Snow Leopard on Tuesday that warns users that they've downloaded fake Mac security software and scrubs already-infected machines. Chet Wisniewski, a security researcher with Sophos, confirmed that the update alerts users when they try to download any of the bogus MacDefender antivirus software. Wisniewski had not yet tested the malware cleaning functionality of the update, but was confident that it would work. 'It's reasonably trivial to remove MacDefender,' said Wisniewski. 'It's not burying itself in the system, not compared to some of some of the crap that we see on Windows.' The update, labeled 2011-003, adds a new definition to the rudimentary antivirus detection engine embedded in Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, and also increases the frequency with which the operating system checks for new definitions to daily."

CWmike writes "Apple released an update for Snow Leopard on Tuesday that warns users that they've downloaded fake Mac security software and scrubs already-infected machines. Chet Wisniewski, a security researcher with Sophos, confirmed that the update alerts users when they try to download any of the bogus MacDefender antivirus software. Wisniewski had not yet tested the malware cleaning functionality of the update, but was confident that it would work. 'It's reasonably trivial to remove MacDefender,' said Wisniewski. 'It's not burying itself in the system, not compared to some of some of the crap that we see on Windows.' The update, labeled 2011-003, adds a new definition to the rudimentary antivirus detection engine embedded in Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, and also increases the frequency with which the operating system checks for new definitions to daily."

BogenDorpher writes "According to statistics generated by Microsoft's new free malware scanning and scrubbing tool, Safety Scanner, one in every twenty Windows PCs are infected with malware. Microsoft's Safety Scanner was downloaded 420,000 times in just one week of availability and it cleaned up malware or signs of exploitation from more than 20,000 Windows PCs, according to statistics generated by Microsoft's Malware Protection Center. This resulted in an infection rate of nearly 5%." That seems an awfully low number, based on how quickly Windows machines are scanned for plunder after going online; though it's a few years old, here's a report that suggests (as of 2007, at least) a grace period of less than 10 seconds. That was just one instance, and an intentionally vulnerable machine, but have improvements in security software software, and in Windows itself, made things so much better since then?

CWmike writes "Amazon launched a Mac-specific application download store on Thursday that will compete with Apple's nearly five-month-old Mac App Store. The new subsection of Amazon's massive online store, dubbed 'Mac Software Downloads,' kicked off quietly Thursday. Amazon has long offered software downloads for both Windows and Mac customers, but this was the first time that the company called out its Mac-centric 'store.' The retailer, however, apparently did not want to goad Apple into another legal battle by mimicking its rival's 'App Store' moniker: The two companies are already in court over Amazon's 'Appstore for Android,' which Apple claims violates its trademark. Unlike the Mac App Store, which Apple opened in early January, Amazon's includes the popular Office for Mac line from Microsoft."

CWmike writes "Amazon launched a Mac-specific application download store on Thursday that will compete with Apple's nearly five-month-old Mac App Store. The new subsection of Amazon's massive online store, dubbed 'Mac Software Downloads,' kicked off quietly Thursday. Amazon has long offered software downloads for both Windows and Mac customers, but this was the first time that the company called out its Mac-centric 'store.' The retailer, however, apparently did not want to goad Apple into another legal battle by mimicking its rival's 'App Store' moniker: The two companies are already in court over Amazon's 'Appstore for Android,' which Apple claims violates its trademark. Unlike the Mac App Store, which Apple opened in early January, Amazon's includes the popular Office for Mac line from Microsoft."

tekgoblin writes "AT&T is looking to get a piece of the 4G LTE pie that Verizon has a firm grasp on. They have announced today that they are going to roll out 4G in Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio this summer and another 10 markets yet to be determined later in the year."

CWmike writes "As the 2010 U.S. census results arrived, Los Angeles County's politicians started ramping up for redistricting — the once-a-decade, computing-intensive, often contentious process of geographically carving up the populace into discrete parcels of voters. In the past, such decisions were made by politicians using expensive computer systems and software. Participation in the process was limited to an elite few who could afford experts who understood redistricting's arcane rules and GIS technology well enough to game them. This year, however, it won't just be the politicians and special interest groups poring over the data and tweaking boundary lines. All 4.5 million registered voters in LA County have access to a cloud-based redistricting application called the Public Access Plan that lets voters view and modify existing maps and boundaries, submit comments, and even create and submit their own plans from scratch. LA County is among the first government entities to consider providing Web-based tools that allow for direct public participation. 'This notion of public access has changed quite dramatically,' says Tim Storey, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures. 'Throwing that wide open is a big step.' The big question now is whether the public will use it."

c0lo writes "The Canadian town of Mission, BC has a bylaw that allows the town's Public Safety Inspection Team to search people's homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day. There have allegedly been reports floating in IRC of two different cases of police showing up at a Bitcoin miner's residence with a search warrant. Ohio police and the DEA file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected of running an indoor pot growing operation. DEA Agent Anthony Marotta said high electricity usage does not always mean the residence is an indoor pot farm and has surprised federal agents. 'We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers. I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home.'"

mcgrew tips news that security firm F-secure has found a live phishing site running on Sony's Thailand servers. "Basically this means that Sony has been hacked, again. Although in this case the server is probably not very important." This comes alongside news that a point service run by So-net, a Sony subsidiary, was accessed by an unknown intruder, who stole about $1,200 worth of virtual tokens. "The intrusions are believed to have taken place on May 16 and 17. So-net discovered the breach on May 18, after receiving consumer complaints. So-net halted the point redemption service following the discovery of the breach. The latest breaches are relatively minor in scale compared to the massive breach at PSN and Sony Entertainment Online. Even so, it only adds to the company's embarrassment."

CWmike writes "With a new $2 billion device successfully installed Thursday, the International Space Station has become a dark matter hunter. Two robotic arms worked in tandem to lift the 15,251-pound instrument, called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, out of space shuttle Endeavour's payload bay and then attached it to the backbone of the space station. The instrument will orbit the Earth, sifting through cosmic particles and providing data that it is hoped will help find the answers to fundamental questions of physics related to antimatter and dark matter."

CWmike writes "After years of dominance in computer chips, Intel now is chasing the mobile chip market and trying to redefine its future. During Intel's financial analyst meeting Monday, CEO Paul Otellini announced that he is refocusing the company, moving its 'center' from PC processors to processors for the burgeoning mobile market. 'I think Intel recognizes that they absolutely have to get a win here,' said analyst Rob Enderle. 'All the activity is in mobile. A post-PC era would be a post-Intel era if they don't get a beachhead established.' Earlier this month, Intel made a move in this new direction when it unveiled its new 3D transistor technology that is expected to position the chip maker to grab a piece of the mushrooming tablet market."

CWmike writes "After years of dominance in computer chips, Intel now is chasing the mobile chip market and trying to redefine its future. During Intel's financial analyst meeting Monday, CEO Paul Otellini announced that he is refocusing the company, moving its 'center' from PC processors to processors for the burgeoning mobile market. 'I think Intel recognizes that they absolutely have to get a win here,' said analyst Rob Enderle. 'All the activity is in mobile. A post-PC era would be a post-Intel era if they don't get a beachhead established.' Earlier this month, Intel made a move in this new direction when it unveiled its new 3D transistor technology that is expected to position the chip maker to grab a piece of the mushrooming tablet market."

CWmike writes "Microsoft will release the first service pack for Office 2010 in late June, when it will for the first time support Google's Chrome running the suite's online applications using SharePoint 2010, the company said on Monday. Google and Microsoft have repeatedly knocked heads over each others' online applications. In May 2010, Matthew Glotzbach, Google's enterprise product management director, kicked off the public battle by urging companies to forget about upgrading to Office 2010 and calling on them to instead add Google Docs to their mix. 'Google Docs makes Office 2003 and 2007 better,' Glotzbach said at the time. Microsoft quickly countered by saying that Google Docs' integration with Office was inferior to Office Web Applications' and that its rival's claims were 'simply not true.'"

CWmike writes "Several Google security engineers have countered claims that a French security company, Vupen, found a vulnerability in Chrome that could let attackers hijack Windows PCs running the company's browser. Instead, those engineers said the bug Vupen exploited to hack Chrome was in Adobe's Flash, which Google has bundled with the browser for over a year. Google's official position, however, has not changed since Vupen said it had sidestepped not only the browser's built-in 'sandbox' but also by evading Windows 7's integrated anti-exploit technologies. But others who work for Google were certain that at least one of the flaws Vupen exploited was in Flash's code, not Chrome's. 'As usual, security journalists don't bother to fact check,' said Tavis Ormandy, a Google security engineer, in a tweet earlier Wednesday. 'Vupen misunderstood how sandboxing worked in Chrome, and only had a Flash bug.' Chris Evans, a Google security engineer and Chrome team lead, tweeted, 'It's a legit pwn, but if it requires Flash, it's not a Chrome pwn.'"

dcblogs writes "The US Department of Justice remedies supervision in the Microsoft antitrust case ends Thursday, closing the landmark case, which began in 1998. But the questions posed by trial federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's attempted remedy remain: Did tech innovation suffer over the last 10 years because Microsoft wasn't broken up? 'Not really,' said Vinton Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, 'It has to do with the fact that open source has become such a strong force in the software world.'"

CWmike writes "Three years ago, the world's 27 million business servers processed 9.57 zettabytes, or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information. Researchers at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the San Diego Supercomputer Center estimate that the total is equivalent to a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of books stretching from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about 20 times. By 2024, business servers worldwide will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, the scientists say. The report, titled 'How Much Information?: 2010 Report on Enterprise Server Information,' (PDF) was released at the SNW conference last month."

CWmike writes "LastPass on Friday rescinded its day-old order that all users of its online password management system reset their master passwords due to a database breach. In a blog post this morning, the company said it won't allow users to change master passwords 'until our databases are completely caught up and we have resolved outstanding issues.' In an e-mail to Computerworld, LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist said the company changed its plan in response to demands from users asking they not be required to reset their passwords. However, comments posted on a LastPass blog suggest that the company's decision may also be related to trouble some users appear to be having with the password reset process. The blog post acknowledged that it had 'identified an issue' with roughly 5% of users that reset their master passwords. The company said it would be contacting those users about a fix for the problem LastPass said earlier that passwords for its Xmarks bookmark sync, which it acquired last December, were not affected."

CWmike writes "LastPass on Friday rescinded its day-old order that all users of its online password management system reset their master passwords due to a database breach. In a blog post this morning, the company said it won't allow users to change master passwords 'until our databases are completely caught up and we have resolved outstanding issues.' In an e-mail to Computerworld, LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist said the company changed its plan in response to demands from users asking they not be required to reset their passwords. However, comments posted on a LastPass blog suggest that the company's decision may also be related to trouble some users appear to be having with the password reset process. The blog post acknowledged that it had 'identified an issue' with roughly 5% of users that reset their master passwords. The company said it would be contacting those users about a fix for the problem LastPass said earlier that passwords for its Xmarks bookmark sync, which it acquired last December, were not affected."

CWmike writes "LastPass on Friday rescinded its day-old order that all users of its online password management system reset their master passwords due to a database breach. In a blog post this morning, the company said it won't allow users to change master passwords 'until our databases are completely caught up and we have resolved outstanding issues.' In an e-mail to Computerworld, LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist said the company changed its plan in response to demands from users asking they not be required to reset their passwords. However, comments posted on a LastPass blog suggest that the company's decision may also be related to trouble some users appear to be having with the password reset process. The blog post acknowledged that it had 'identified an issue' with roughly 5% of users that reset their master passwords. The company said it would be contacting those users about a fix for the problem LastPass said earlier that passwords for its Xmarks bookmark sync, which it acquired last December, were not affected."

CWmike writes "Advanced Micro Devices has shot down rumors that it is pursuing an ARM license, saying it will stick to developing chips for tablets around the x86 architecture. 'We've made a big bet on APUs, which are x86,' said John Taylor, a marketing director at AMD, referring to accelerated processing units. AMD has been criticized for a lethargic approach to entering the fast-growing tablet market, which is dominated by ARM."

CWmike writes "Google patched 27 vulnerabilities in Chrome on Wednesday as it boosted the stable build of the browser to version 11 on Windows, Mac and Linux. The company paid out a record $16,500 in bounties to researchers who reported a majority of the bugs, beating the previous biggest payday by several hundred dollars. While Google listed more than 3,700 changes in Chrome 11, the only one it highlighted was the speech input feature. The combination of Chrome and Google Translate isn't flawless. In several quick tests by Computerworld, the browser and service transcribed most phrases accurately, but in one instance heard 'Good morning, sister ship' when the line was actually 'Good morning, Mr. Smith.'"

Lucas123 writes "Greg Chamitoff, a computer programmer who wrote software for NASA's Endeavour spacecraft, will be blasting off on shuttle's final 15-day flight as a mission specialist on Friday. Chamitoff, who created software focused on spacecraft analysis and maneuver optimization, will operate the space station's robotic arm, and he'll also take part in two spacewalks."

CWmike writes "Federal authorities will remotely uninstall the Coreflood botnet Trojan from some infected Windows PCs over the next four weeks. Coreflood will be removed from infected computers only when the owners have been identified by the DOJ and they have submitted an authorization form to the FBI. The DOJ's plan to uninstall Coreflood is the latest step in a coordinated campaign to cripple the botnet, which controls more than 2 million compromised computers. The remote wipe move will require consent, and the action does come with warnings from the court that provided the injunction against the botnet, however. 'While the 'uninstall' command has been tested by the FBI and appears to work, it is nevertheless possible that the execution of the 'uninstall' command may produce unanticipated consequences, including damage to the infected computers,' the authorization form reads. FBI Special Agent Briana Neumiller said, 'The process does not affect any user files on an infected computer, nor does it ... access any data on the infected computer.' The DOJ and FBI did not say how many machines it has identified as candidates for its uninstall strategy, but told the judge that FBI field offices would be notifying affected people, companies and organizations."

CWmike writes "Federal authorities will remotely uninstall the Coreflood botnet Trojan from some infected Windows PCs over the next four weeks. Coreflood will be removed from infected computers only when the owners have been identified by the DOJ and they have submitted an authorization form to the FBI. The DOJ's plan to uninstall Coreflood is the latest step in a coordinated campaign to cripple the botnet, which controls more than 2 million compromised computers. The remote wipe move will require consent, and the action does come with warnings from the court that provided the injunction against the botnet, however. 'While the 'uninstall' command has been tested by the FBI and appears to work, it is nevertheless possible that the execution of the 'uninstall' command may produce unanticipated consequences, including damage to the infected computers,' the authorization form reads. FBI Special Agent Briana Neumiller said, 'The process does not affect any user files on an infected computer, nor does it ... access any data on the infected computer.' The DOJ and FBI did not say how many machines it has identified as candidates for its uninstall strategy, but told the judge that FBI field offices would be notifying affected people, companies and organizations."

Lucas123 writes "When cloud storage providers shut down, as four have done in the past year, users are left wondering how they'll get their data back and whether they'll be able to migrate it directly to a new service provider. More importantly, analysts say, what guarantees do they have that the data stored offsite will be deleted after the shutdown. Currently, there is no direct way to migrate data to another provider, and there are no government rules or regulations specific to data managed by cloud storage providers."

Pigskin-Referee writes "Microsoft has expanded its vulnerability disclosure policy to include not only those in its own products, but also flaws in third-party software that runs on Microsoft operating systems. These will follow the same practices as the advisories issued for Microsoft's products, and it makes sense, because many users look to Microsoft to ensure that their computers are secure, even when the problem lies with a third-party program. The company will contact and coordinate with the third-party vendor before an advisory is issued."

CWmike writes "It's a matter of opinion which company makes the better operating system or is likely to grow its smartphone market share. But numbers don't lie — or exaggerate. A little less than a year ago, Wall Street reached a Microsoft vs. Apple milestone: for the first time, Apple's corporate value surpassed Microsoft's. What has happened since? With Apple due to report its latest quarterly earnings on Wednesday — Microsoft reports its numbers next week — we look at some recent numbers, as well as data over time."

CWmike writes "It's a matter of opinion which company makes the better operating system or is likely to grow its smartphone market share. But numbers don't lie — or exaggerate. A little less than a year ago, Wall Street reached a Microsoft vs. Apple milestone: for the first time, Apple's corporate value surpassed Microsoft's. What has happened since? With Apple due to report its latest quarterly earnings on Wednesday — Microsoft reports its numbers next week — we look at some recent numbers, as well as data over time."