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Monday the 4th of January 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Monday the 4th of January 2010

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

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/AdClick-FX on 4 January 2010 10:51:55 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojadclickfx.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MAZ on 4 January 2010 10:51:55 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmaz.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-AND on 4 January 2010 10:51:55 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavand.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-ANE on 4 January 2010 10:51:55 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavane.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/NyteM-A on 4 January 2010 10:51:55 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojnytema.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autoit-BP on 4 January 2010 10:51:55 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autoitbp.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/Afcore-D on 4 January 2010 05:46:11 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malafcored.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/EncPk-MS on 4 January 2010 05:46:11 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malencpkms.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/EncPK-MU on 4 January 2010 05:46:11 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malencpkmu.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MAX on 4 January 2010 05:46:11 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmax.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- Jaron Lanier Rants Against The World of Web 2.0
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/bBLa3W-L93I/Jaron-Lanier-Rants-Against-The-World-of-Web-20)
hao3 writes "In his new book, You Are Not A Gadget, former Wired writer Jaron Lanier bemoans what the internet has become. 'It's early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons,' it begins. The words will be 'minced into anatomized search engine keywords,' then 'copied millions of times by some algorithm somewhere designed to send an advertisement,' and then, in a final insult, 'scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers.' Lanier's conclusion: 'Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases.' He goes on to criticise Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, open-source software and what he calls the 'hive mind.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Core i5 and i3 CPUs With On-Chip GPUs Launched
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/-aVho4_E9sY/Core-i5-and-i3-CPUs-With-On-Chip-GPUs-Launched)
MojoKid writes "Intel has officially launched their new Core i5 and Core i3 lineup of Arrandale and Clarkdale processors today, for mobile and desktop platforms respectively. Like Intel's recent release of the Pinetrail platform for netbooks, new Arrandale and Clarkdale processors combine both an integrated memory controller (DDR3) and GPU (graphics processor) on the same package as the main processor. Though it's not a monolithic device, but is built upon multi-chip module packaging, it does allow these primary functional blocks to coexist in a single chip footprint or socket. In addition, Intel beefed up their graphics core and it appears that the new Intel GMA HD integrated graphics engine offers solid HD video performance and even a bit of light gaming capability."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Net Users In Belarus May Soon Have To Register
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/3Yx1oljWW3k/Net-Users-In-Belarus-May-Soon-Have-To-Register)
Cwix writes "A new law proposed in Belarus would require all net users and online publications to register with the state: 'Belarus' authoritarian leader is promising to toughen regulation of the Internet and its users in an apparent effort to exert control over the last fully free medium in the former Soviet state. He told journalists that a new Internet bill, proposed Tuesday, would require the registration and identification of all online publications and of each Web user, including visitors to Internet cafes. Web service providers would have to report this information to police, courts and special services.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- World's Tallest Building To Open Monday
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vcguUw3LI2s/Worlds-Tallest-Building-To-Open-Monday)
dtmos writes "The Burj Dubai ('Dubai Tower' in Arabic) is scheduled to open to the public on Monday. Its height, claimed to be 824.55m (2,705.2 feet), but believed to be 818m (2,684 feet) — either way, more than half a mile — makes it far taller than Taiwan's Taipei 101, which had been the world's tallest skyscraper at 509m (1,670 feet)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- The Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/G2fpLvFI-lE/The-Top-5-Technology-Panics-of-2009)
destinyland writes "An A.I. researcher lists the Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009 — along with the corresponding reality. There's exploding iPods, the uproar over 'bombing' the moon, and even a flesh-eating robot. But in each case, he supplies some much-needed perspective. 'These incidents are incredibly rare ... the rocket stage weighs around two tons, while the Moon weighs in at a 73,477,000,000,000,000,000 tons... and desecration of the dead is against the laws of war — and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- At Current Rates, Only a Few More Years' Worth of IPv4 Addresses
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/eUgedjecw54/At-Current-Rates-Only-a-Few-More-Years-Worth-of-IPv4-Addresses)
An anonymous reader excerpts from an interesting article at Ars Technica, which begins "There are 3,706,650,624 usable IPv4 addresses. On January 1, 2000, approximately 1,615 million (44 percent) were in use and 2,092 million were still available. Today, ten years later, 2,985 million addresses (81 percent) are in use, and 722 million are still free. In that time, the number of addresses used per year increased from 79 million in 2000 to 203 million in 2009. So it's a near certainty that before Barack Obama vacates the White House, we'll be out of IPv4 address[es]. (Even if he doesn't get re-elected.)"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Bono Hopes Content Tracking Will Help Media Moguls
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/2wLBC48hzwI/Bono-Hopes-Content-Tracking-Will-Help-Media-Moguls)
Khalid Baheyeldin writes "In his New York Times op-ed column, Irish singer Bono, otherwise noted for his humanitarian efforts expressed dismay at losses music artists incur from internet downloads. He notes that 'we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content.' He then goes on to wonder 'perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Is Early Childhood Education Technology Moving Backwards?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/h6sUhCuqByo/Is-Early-Childhood-Education-Technology-Moving-Backwards)
theodp writes "Four decades ago, the NSF-sponsored PLATO Elementary Reading Curriculum Project (pdf) provided Illinois schoolchildren with reading lessons and e-versions of beloved children's books that exploited networked, touch-sensitive 8.5"x8.5" bit-mapped plasma screens, color images, and audio. Last week, the Today Show promoted the TeacherMate — a $100 gadget that's teaching Illinois schoolchildren to read and do math using its 2.5" screen and old-school U-D-L-R cursor keys — as a revolution in education. Has early childhood education managed to defy Moore's Law?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- How Norway Fought Staph Infections
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Qqe91qGCJMo/How-Norway-Fought-Staph-Infections)
eldavojohn writes "Studies are showing that Norway's dirtiest hospitals are actually cleaner than most other countries', and the reason for this is that Norwegians stopped taking antibiotics. A number of factors like paid sick leave and now restrictions on advertising for drugs make Norway an anomaly when it comes to diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). A Norwegian doctor explains, 'We don't throw antibiotics at every person with a fever. We tell them to hang on, wait and see, and we give them a Tylenol to feel better.' Norway is the most MRSA free country in the world. In a country like Japan, where 17,000 die from MRSA every year, 'doctors overprescribe antibiotics because they are given financial incentives to push drugs on patients.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Ideas For Exploiting NASA's SRTM Data
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Kl4NQixI2eE/Ideas-For-Exploiting-NASAs-SRTM-Data)
MaxTardiveau writes with an excerpt from an article where the pictures are worth clicking through for: "Ten years ago, in February 2000, NASA mapped the entire world in eleven days. It's true: the mission was called the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and over the course of eleven days, it used a big radar attached to the space shuttle to get elevation data from the vast majority of solid Earth; practically all land between 60 degrees North and 56 degrees South was included, with a resolution of 30 meters (90 feet). Over 9 terabytes of data were captured. It then took two years to process that data and make it usable (and it is still being refined to this day). This data is freely available to anyone, and the number of possible applications is almost infinite. It's been used in GIS, cartography, environmental planning, weather modeling (weather patterns are enormously influenced by the topography), flight simulators, Google Earth, and the list goes on. In this short article, I would like to give you a quick tour of the kinds of things this data can reveal. My hope is to get you thinking about what else could be done with this incredible resource."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Building Complex Circuits With Carbon Nanotubes
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/TUuciiXIwiA/Building-Complex-Circuits-With-Carbon-Nanotubes)
Lorien_the_first_one writes "MIT's Technology Review reports that carbon nanotubes are being used to fabricate complex circuits. From the article, 'The first three-dimensional carbon nanotube circuits, made by researchers at Stanford University, could be an important step in making nanotube computers that could be faster and use less power than today's silicon chips. Such a computer is still at least 10 years off, but the Stanford work shows it is possible to make stacked circuits using carbon nanotubes. Stacked circuits cram more processing power in a given area, and also do a better job dissipating waste heat.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Do IT Pros Abuse Their Power?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/h5tEMV5rlkY/Do-IT-Pros-Abuse-Their-Power)
An anonymous reader writes "I have noticed that many airports and hospitals I've visited have some kind of internet usage policy in place. Some use software similar to Websense, which effectively blocks sites based on blacklisting them by category. A commonly used blacklist prevents users from accessing 'forums or discussion boards,' yet I find that often these networks allow users to access sites like Fark, Slashdot, Digg and other message boards that appeal to the technical culture one might find in the IT world. In your experience, do IT administrators abuse their supervisory powers? Has there ever been a backlash from users or management for doing so?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Scientists Measure How Quickly Plant Genes Mutate
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/aP7rQUvZzwA/Scientists-Measure-How-Quickly-Plant-Genes-Mutate)
eldavojohn writes "A recent study puts observed numbers on genome mutations in plants. This kind of research is becoming more popular in understanding evolution. The research 'followed all genetic changes in five lines of the mustard relative Arabidopsis thaliana that occurred during 30 generations. In the genome of the final generation they then searched for differences to the genome of the original ancestor.' A single generation has about a one in 140 million chance of mutating any letter of the genome (which has about 120 million base pairs). Sound like bad odds? From the article, 'if one starts to consider that they occur in the genomes of every member of a species, it becomes clear how fluid the genome is: In a collection of only 60 million Arabidopsis plants, each letter in the genome is changed, on average, once. For an organism that produces thousands of seeds in each generation, 60 million is not such a big number at all.' The academic paper is available in Science, though seeing more than the abstract requires a subscription."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- VC Defends Farmville, Touts Virtual Tractor Sales
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/JNih7ZbI8Ps/VC-Defends-emFarmvilleem-Touts-Virtual-Tractor-Sales)
theodp writes "In a blog post, venture capitalist Fred Wilson gives his thoughts on ripe areas for tech investment in 2010 — mobile, gaming, new forms of commerce/currency, Cloud platforms/APIs, education and energy/environment. Asked to comment on scams and social gaming (he is an investor in Zynga), Wilson defended Zynga's Farmville: 'Zynga makes almost all of its revenue on virtual goods. I said in my etsy/san telmo post the other day that more tractors are sold every day in Farmville than are sold in the US every year. That's where the money is in social gaming. The "scammy ads" thing is total red herring that everyone got excited about but is almost entirely irrelevant.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- 2016 Bug Hits Text Messages, Payment Processing
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/VHZzOACT7sE/2016-Bug-Hits-Text-Messages-Payment-Processing)
An anonymous reader writes "It seems some systems are suffering from a Y2K16 bug. When 2009 ticked over to 2010, some Australian EFTPOS machines skipped to the year 2016. Coincidentally, some Windows Mobile users are also having issues with their new year SMSes coming from 2016. What function could cause this kind of error?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- I've tried to do a quick restore on my computer and O/s is not recognised
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I have a presario 7470 computer. I am trying to do a quick restore on my computer and now the computer doesn't recogonize the operating system. I have a bootdisk but I can't get the quickrestore discs to start up. help!

Answer: In order to restore your Compaq PC, you need to take the following steps:1. Boot your computer from a windows 98 boot disk (do not use a boot disk from any other windows version.)2. At the command prompt, type "fdisk"3. Delete all partitions on your main hard drive only, following fdisk's instructions.4. Create one "Primary DOS partition" on the hard drive, using all available space.5. Set this partition to active.6. Reboot your computer using the Windows 98 boot disk once more.7. Reboot your PC again with your blue Compaq Restore CD in the drive. NB: Do not have any floppy disks in the drive when you reboot unless compaq have provided you with a boot disk to go with your CD.8. You should be at the Compaq Restore screen. Follow the on screen instructions to restore your computer.9. At the end of the process, remove the Compaq CD and any disks from the computer and reboot once more. You should be presented with Windows 98 Setup & Welcome screen.Hope this helps.If you require any further assistance, please reply to this email. Please include all previous corrispondance so that we may more easily track your problem.

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

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