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Thursday the 24th of December 2009

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Thursday the 24th of December 2009

1. Virus Warnings
2. Daily Technology News
3. Latest Shareware and Freeware
4. FAQ for the day
5. Advice of the day
6. Internet Advice

This is a free service provided by Helpforce.com, to unsubscribe please visit http://www.helpforce.com
For free technical support, visit us at http://www.helpforce.com

1. Latest Virus Alerts From Sophos
---------------------------------------
Troj/Agent-MBA on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmba.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MBB on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmbb.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Banker-EOM on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbankereom.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Inject-LG on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojinjectlg.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/JSRedir-AK on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojjsredirak.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/PWS-BFU on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojpwsbfu.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/VB-ELU on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojvbelu.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/VBInj-B on 24 December 2009 10:55:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojvbinjb.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/Agent-R on 24 December 2009 05:22:35 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malagentr.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/FakeAl-B on 24 December 2009 05:22:35 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malfakealb.html?_log_from=rss

2. Latest Technology News From Slashdot
-----------------------------------------------

-- Next-Gen Glitter-Sized Photovoltaic Cells Unveiled
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/bsTVsYSpDaI/Next-Gen-Glitter-Sized-Photovoltaic-Cells-Unveiled)
MikeChino writes "Sandia National Laboratories recently announced a new breed of glitter-sized solar cells made from crystalline silicon that use 100 times less material to generate the same amount of electricity as standard solar cells made from 6-inch square solar wafers. Perfect for soaking up the sun’s rays on unusual shapes and surfaces, the tiny solar cells are expected to be less expensive, more efficient, and have promising new applications in textiles, clothing, and building facade installations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Hulu and Warner Music Sign Deal For Music Content
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/X2gLRLEb1KQ/Hulu-and-Warner-Music-Sign-Deal-For-Music-Content)
adeelarshad82 writes "A month after signing a deal with EMI for music video content, Hulu has reached an agreement with Warner Music Group to add its content to the video site as well. The deal will allow Hulu to post music videos, artist interviews, live concerts, and behind-the-scenes footage from artists on WMG labels like Atlantic Records, Rhino Records, and Warner Bros. Records."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Helping Perl Packagers Package Perl
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/1AV3jBwV1ZM/Helping-Perl-Packagers-Package-Perl)
jamie writes "chromatic has a great post today on the conflict between OS distributions and CPAN's installations of perl modules, along with some suggestions for how to start resolving this maddening problem: '[Though Debian has] made plenty of CPAN distributions available as .debs, I have to configure my CPAN client myself, and it does not work with the system package manager. There's no reason it couldn't. Imagine that the system Perl 5 included in the default package... had a CPAN client configured appropriately. It has selected an appropriate mirror (or uses the redirector). It knows about installation paths. It understands how to use LWP...' The idea of providing guidelines to distros for how to safely package modules is a great one. Could modules request (a modified?) test suite be run after distro-installation? Could Module::Build help module authors and distro maintainers establish the rules somehow?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- BBC's Plan To Kick Open Source Out of UK TV
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vlobBxEuH3U/BBCs-Plan-To-Kick-Open-Source-Out-of-UK-TV)
bluec writes "Generally speaking, the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts: the license fee payer pays for these broadcasts. But the BBC has tried to get around this, asking Ofcom for permission to encrypt the 'metadata' on its broadcasts – including the assistive information used by deaf and blind people and the 'tables' used by receivers to play back the video. As Ofcom gears up to a second consultation on the issue, there's one important question that the BBC must answer if the implications of this move are to be fully explored, namely: How can free/open source software co-exist with a plan to put DRM on broadcasts?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- The Best Robots of 2009
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/7RymLV5QB9I/The-Best-Robots-of-2009)
kkleiner writes "Singularity Hub has just unveiled its second annual roundup of the best robots of the year. In 2009 robots continued their advance towards world domination with several impressive breakouts in areas such as walking, automation, and agility, while still lacking in adaptability and reasoning ability. It will be several years until robots can gain the artificial intelligence that will truly make them remarkable, but in the meantime they are still pretty awesome."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- NASA and Space Station Alliance On Shaky Ground
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Y8CjtufzNOs/NASA-and-Space-Station-Alliance-On-Shaky-Ground)
coondoggie writes "Even as the latest shift of astronauts arrived at the International Space Station, challenges with the orbital outpost on the ground are threatening its future. Those challenges include the pending retirement of the space shuttle but also the way NASA and the ISS are managed. A report issued this week by the Government Accountability Office said NASA faces several significant issues that may impede efforts to maximize utilization of all ISS research facilities."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Girl Gamers More Hardcore Than Guys
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/zAYPCYonGY4/Girl-Gamers-More-Hardcore-Than-Guys)
TheClockworkSoul writes "Scientific American reports on a study published this month in the Journal of Communication, which found that women who engage in a role-playing game online actually commit more time on average than the male players do. The authors surveyed 7,000 players logged in to EverQuest II (PDF), and found that the average age of the gamers surveyed was 31, and that playing time tended to increase with age. Interestingly, however, the female gamers not only tended to log more time online (29 hours per week versus 25 for the males), but were also more likely to lie about how much they really play."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Best Filesystem For External Back-Up Drives?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/dwFkO7zySW0/Best-Filesystem-For-External-Back-Up-Drives)
rufey writes "I've recently embarked on a project to rip my DVD and CD collection to a pair of external USB drives. One drive will be used on a daily basis to access the rips of music and DVDs, as well as store backups of all of my other data. The second drive will be a copy of the first drive, to be synced up on a monthly basis and kept at a different location. The USB drives that I purchased for this are 1 TB in size and came pre-formatted with FAT32. While I can access this filesystem from all of my Windows and Linux machines, there are some limitations." Read on for the rest, and offer your advice on the best filesystem for this application.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- AT&T Wins Gizmodo 3G Bandwidth Test
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gkmhVCQ8BQE/ATampT-Wins-Gizmodo-3G-Bandwidth-Test)
ink writes "Gizmodo has completed a 12-city test of 3G cellular bandwidth speed. Verizon won four of the twelve, however AT&T scored higher with six: 'Let's get this straight right away: We didn't test dropped voice calls, we didn't test customer service, and we didn't test map coverage by wandering around in the boonies. We tested the ability of the networks to deliver 3G data in and around cities, including both concrete canyons and picket-fenced 'burbs. And while every 3G network gave us troubles on occasion, AT&T's wasn't measurably more or less reliable than Verizon's.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- VLC Team Announces Video Editor In the Works
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vOFaz8YGzhA/VLC-Team-Announces-Video-Editor-In-the-Works)
eldavojohn writes "Despite news that VLC might not have anyone to work on the Mac release, Lifehacker brings word of a video editor that the VLC team is working on dubbed VideoLAN Media Creator. It hasn't been released yet (git clone git://github.com/VLMC/vlmc.git) but a pre-release is due out soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- OLPC Unveils Plans For Tablets By 2012
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/WS414cqimeY/OLPC-Unveils-Plans-For-Tablets-By-2012)
adeelarshad82 writes "The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative outlined its product roadmap for the next three years, a plan that includes the release of tablet-based OLPC by 2012. During the next three years, OLPC plans on releasing two laptops, the first two years' priced around $200 and $150 respectively, before launching a tablet in 2011 for less than $100."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Why Coder Pay Isn't Proportional To Productivity
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mkaN1WKdlfM/Why-Coder-Pay-Isnt-Proportional-To-Productivity)
theodp writes "John D. Cook takes a stab at explaining why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity. The basic problem, Cook explains, is that extreme programmer productivity may not be obvious. A salesman who sells 10x as much as his peers will be noticed, and compensated accordingly. And if a bricklayer were 10x more productive than his peers, this would be obvious too (it doesn't happen). But the best programmers do not write 10x as many lines of code; nor do they work 10x as many hours. Programmers are most effective when they avoid writing code. An über-programmer, Cook explains, is likely to be someone who stares quietly into space and then says 'Hmm. I think I've seen something like this before.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- An Open Source Compiler From CUDA To X86-Multicore
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_CXUZPoCJIs/An-Open-Source-Compiler-From-CUDA-To-X86-Multicore)
Gregory Diamos writes "An open source project, Ocelot, has recently released a just-in-time compiler for CUDA, allowing the same programs to be run on NVIDIA GPUs or x86 CPUs and providing an alternative to OpenCL. A description of the compiler was recently posted on the NVIDIA forums. The compiler works by translating GPU instructions to LLVM and then generating native code for any LLVM target. It has been validated against over 100 CUDA applications. All of the code is available under the New BSD license."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Demo For NASA MMO Coming In January
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/cBokqskNDTY/Demo-For-NASA-MMO-Coming-In-January)
News of the upcoming NASA MMO, Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond, has been scarce since its announcement in 2008, but NASA recently revealed that a "mini demo game" is coming in January that will show off some of what they've completed so far. "Moon Base Alpha utilizes actual NASA Constellation program design details developed by NASA for mankind’s return to the Moon in 2020. Timelines in the much anticipated Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond MMO will be set even farther in the exciting future (2035+), but the ability to explore our own near-future moon missions is also planned for in the forthcoming game facilitated by the NASA Learning Technologies and Innovative Partnerships Programs." They're provided a slideshow and a brief video, and one of the developers spoke about the game with Edge last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Typing With Your Brain
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/FpWB2K0KSEQ/Typing-With-Your-Brain)
destinyland writes "This article asks, 'Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters?' A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can 'type' using just their minds. The study involved electrocorticography — a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull. ('We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy,' explains one Mayo clinic neurologist.) And besides typing, there's new brain wave applications that can now turn brain waves into music and even Twitter status updates — by thought alone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

3. Latest Shareware from Planet-Shareware
-----------------------------------------------

4. FAQ of the day from Helpforce
-----------------------------------------------

-- My monitor settings are all messed up, help!
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: One of my kids changed the settings on my monitor and now everything is way off. i have tried eveything in the display setting!!! I dont know the name of my monitor, and the book for ity only says multiscan color. i have a 14' and right now the settings are on for the adapter on standard vga, and for monitor it is on standard vga 640-480, 16 bit color.(i also tried putting the setting on super vga0 now the problem is everything is soo big, and the color is very weird.I hope im making sense here, its hard to explain, i hope someone can help before i throw this puter and kids out the window. lol

Answer: It is a possibility that degausing the monitor will help - if a magnet etc has been put near the monitor then it usually causes the image to be off centre. There should be a button to degause (but some are unable to do this.)Or, go through control pannel, display, settings, advanced and make sure the correct monitor is selected and the drivers are there. Usually, if though control pannel, you go to system, device manager and click the properties of your monitor, it will tell you the name and other details about it. When you get these try visiting the manufacturer's website (either search on a search engine or maybe try and find it eLinks at http://www.helpforce.com/main/elinks.html) Then, try to download the most upto date drivers (this may reset the settings), search for an FAQ about it or even contact them. If you have tried almost everything you can think of, then its possible that the problem is specific to that type of monitor and the manufacturer will know how to fix it. Reply Posted on 6/9/2002 Hi Chris:Try the following...Right click on a clear area of your desktop.Traverse the menu that has appeared and left click on "properties"On the dialog box, left click on the "appearance" tabLeft click on the "color scheme" or "scheme"and choose windows standard. It may have been set to windows large or windows extra large.Click on the "font" drop down box, set it to normal.

5. Advice of the Day from ask-leo
-----------------------------------------------

6. Internet Advice
-----------------------------------------------

-- Send a Last Minute E-Card Before Christmas(http://netforbeginners.about.com/b/a/258232.htm)

Electronic greeting cards are splendid. They are usually free, and offer some tremendous visuals and music as part of the greeting. Best of all: they are delivered within...

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