Helpforce | Providing Free 24/7 Computing Technical Support on the Internet

Helpforce provides free technical support 24 hours a day, to the Internet. We support all problems, errors, crashes and aim to answer all questions.

View today's Daily Briefing

Helpforce » Back Issues of Daily Briefings

Send this page to a friend or colleague!

Technical Support

eHelp Support

eTalk Community

eLinks Database

Helpforce FAQ

Downloads

Bootdisks

Other Resources

UNIX Guides

About Helpforce

	Corporate Site
	Headlines
	Contact Us
	eHelp login

	Previous Daily Briefings
	Remote eHelp
	v:Book

Join Helpforce!

Recognize these logos?

Helpforce needs you!

Click Here to sign up and become a Helpforce member

Tuesday the 5th of January 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Tuesday the 5th 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
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/Bredo-V on 5 January 2010 09:35:30 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbredov.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Buzus-CC on 5 January 2010 09:35:30 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbuzuscc.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Dloadr-CYF on 5 January 2010 09:35:30 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdloadrcyf.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-ANS on 5 January 2010 09:35:30 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavans.html?_log_from=rss
W32/AutoIt-HM on 5 January 2010 09:35:30 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autoithm.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/VB-AX on 5 January 2010 06:14:03 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malvbax.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/PSW-HM on 5 January 2010 06:14:03 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojpswhm.html?_log_from=rss
W32/MarioF-Gen on 5 January 2010 06:14:03 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32mariofgen.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-ANR on 5 January 2010 03:07:38 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavanr.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/JSRedir-AK on 5 January 2010 03:07:38 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojjsredirak.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- DVD-CSS's Encryption Not Enough? Here Comes DECE
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MGg1krdEro0/DVD-CSSs-Encryption-Not-Enough-Here-Comes-DECE)
An anonymous reader writes "Studios digitally restricting (drm) or locking down content with DVD-CSS not enough for you? Well, get ready, here comes the entertainment cartel's Holy Grail, all-hardware encryption, via 'DECE.' And let's not forget this little issue."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Kodak Wireless Picture Frames Open To Public
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wxYH5SejUz8/Kodak-Wireless-Picture-Frames-Open-To-Public)
Jaxoreth writes "The Kodak Easyshare Wireless Digital Picture Frame displays images via a per-frame RSS feed hosted by FrameChannel. Each frame's URL is identical except for a parameter matching its particular MAC address, enabling public browsing of users' feeds. And worse, if you reach the feed of a not-yet-activated frame, it gives you the code to activate it, allowing you to preload it with whatever content you choose."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Whatever Happened To Second Life?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hsCiPFoU11k/Whatever-Happened-To-emSecond-Lifeem)
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Australian Net Filter Protest Site Returns
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/J1-dXF8WBEo/Australian-Net-Filter-Protest-Site-Returns)
An anonymous reader writes "The Stephen Conroy 'Minister for Fascism' website, whose stephenconroy.com.au domain was forced offline by the Australian Domain Name Administrator, has now reclaimed the name after the initial 14-day injunction expired. During those 14 days, the protesters managed to comply with the Australian domain name registration criteria. However, contrary to auDA's own rules and contrary to public quotes by the auDA CEO, the protesters were continually refused the domain. Now, however, it seems that they have unequivocally shown that they have the right to the domain and have re-registered it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- New Pi Computation Record Using a Desktop PC
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tV7pCeUvLtA/New-Pi-Computation-Record-Using-a-Desktop-PC)
hint3 writes "Fabrice Bellard has calculated Pi to about 2.7 trillion decimal digits, besting the previous record by over 120 billion digits. While the improvement may seem small, it is an outstanding achievement because only a single desktop PC, costing less than $3,000, was used — instead of a multi-million dollar supercomputer as in the previous records."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers)
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/fwZbe42r_xE/emEVE-Onlineem-Battle-Breaks-Records-And-Servers)
captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Testing a Pre-Release, Parallel Firefox
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/2iCIapBYWqw/Testing-a-Pre-Release-Parallel-Firefox)
Firefox, in its official version, still lacks support for multi-threading (running on different processors), though Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 both have this feature. A Firefox project called Electrolysis is underway to close this gap. A blog author tested a pre-release version of Firefox that loads different tabs in parallel, and he chronicles his findings, including a huge speedup in Javascript vs. Firefox version 3.5 (though the pre-release still lags Chrome in many of the tests).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- HP Patents Bignum Implementation From 1912
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KKUTuphF2C8/HP-Patents-Bignum-Implementation-From-1912)
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The authors of GMP (the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) were invited to join Peer-to-Patent to review HP's recent patent on a very old technique for implementing bignums because their software might infringe. Basically, HP's patent claims choosing an exponent based on processor word size. If you choose a 4-bit word size and a binary number, you end up working in hexadecimal. Or for a computer with a 16-bit word and a base-10 number, you use base 10,000 so that each digit of the base-10,000 number would fit into a single 16-bit word. The obvious problem with that is that there's plenty of prior art here. Someone who spent a few minutes Googling found that Knuth describing the idea in TAOCP Vol. 2 and other citations go back to 1912 (which implemented the same algorithm using strips of cardboard and a calculating machine). None of this can be found in the 'references cited' section. Even though the patent examiner did add a couple of references, they appear to have cited some old patents. The patent issued a few months ago was filed back in October of 2004, and collected dust at the USPTO for some 834 days."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Kepler Finds Five More Exoplanets
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/05jHu_wX6kk/Kepler-Finds-Five-More-Exoplanets)
Arvisp was one of several readers to send news of five new exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. In addition to the new "hot Jupiters" — the easiest targets to find — Kepler's early data has turned up some oddities, including something that is too hot to be a planet and too small to be a star. And one of the exoplanets is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam." The real news is that Kepler works as designed, and the scientists running it are fully confident that it will find Earth-like planets in some star's habitable zone, if they are out there to be found. Here is NASA's press release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Android Phone Demand Up 250%, iPhone Down
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/JWF0Ma461Iw/Android-Phone-Demand-Up-250-iPhone-Down)
CWmike writes "A 'monstrous' jump in demand for Android-equipped smartphones has turned the market upside down, according to a retail pollster. Of the people who told ChangeWave Research in a mid-December survey that they planned to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 21% said they expected to purchase an Android phone. That number represented a 250% increase over the 6% that pegged Android as their mobile OS of choice when ChangeWave last queried consumers' plans in September. 'That change rivals anything that we've seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,' said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research, adding that the sudden surge in consumer interest in Android had 'roiled' the market. 'This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,' added Carton, who cited the recent advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid smartphone as the reason why interest in Android has skyrocketed. Android's leap translated into good news for Motorola and HTC, the most prominent makers of Google-powered handsets, with the former reaping most of the benefit. Motorola's share of smartphone purchases in the next 90 days shot up from 1% in September to 13% in December. Carton tagged the company's Droid as the reason. '[It's] the first increase for Motorola we've seen in three years,' Carton said." Here is the ChangeWave report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- INTERPOL Granted Diplomatic Immunity In the US
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/P0NGPtND7bM/INTERPOL-Granted-Diplomatic-Immunity-In-the-US)
ShakaUVM writes "A couple of weeks ago without any fanfare or notice in the media, President Obama granted INTERPOL full diplomatic immunity while conducting investigations on American soil. While INTERPOL has been allowed to operate in the US in the past, under an executive order by President Reagan, they've had to follow the same rules as the FBI, CIA, etc., while on American soil. This means, among other things, the new executive order makes INTERPOL immune to Freedom of Information Act requests and that INTERPOL agents cannot be punished for most any crimes they may commit. Hopefully the worst we'll see from this is INTERPOL agents ignoring their speeding tickets." Update: 01/05 02:57 GMT by KD : Reader davecb pointed out an ABC News blog that comes to pretty much the opposite conclusion as to the import of the executive order.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Constitutionality of RIAA Damages Challenged
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/juCUxeBrlsE/Constitutionality-of-RIAA-Damages-Challenged)
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the defendant has filed a motion for new trial, attacking, among other things, the constitutionality of the jury's $675,000 award as being violative of due process. In his 32-page brief (PDF), Tenenbaum argues that the award exceeded constitutional due process standards, both under the Court's 1919 decision in St. Louis Railway v. Williams, as well as under its more recent authorities State Farm v. Campbell and BMW v. Gore. Defendant also argues that the Court's application of fair use doctrine was incorrect, that statutory damages should not be imposed against music consumers, and that the Court erred in a key evidentiary ruling."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- DARPA Kick-Starts Flying Car Program
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/k6HfjxsbGkE/DARPA-Kick-Starts-Flying-Car-Program)
coondoggie writes to share that DARPA is finally trying to make good on the promise of flying cars for our future with the new "Transformer" (TX) project. "DARPA said the vehicle will need to be able to drive on prepared surface and light off-road conditions, as well as support Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) features. The TX will also support range and speed efficiencies that will allow for missions to be performed on a single tank of fuel. DARPA said the TX will 'provide the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats by providing the operator unimpeded movement over difficult terrain. In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Best Buy $39.95 "Optimization" At Best a Waste of Money
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_Fw5QdnuyeM/Best-Buy-3995-Optimization-At-Best-a-Waste-of-Money)
DCFC writes "The Consumerist deconstructs the appalling 'optimization service' that Best Buy has been pushing on consumers in recent weeks. The retailer charges 40 bucks to give you a slower PC, and make bizarre claims that it makes it go 200% faster. 'We ran the 3DMark 2003 graphics benchmark on each laptop, comparing optimized and non-optimized settings. For two of our samples, the Gateway and Toshiba, performance changes were negligible. On the Asus laptop, however, optimized tests actually scored about 32% worse than the non-optimized setup. We have been unable to isolate the source of this performance change. On none of the three tested laptops did the optimized settings give a performance boost in our test.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Astronomers Discover 33 Pairs of Waltzing Black Holes
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jQSIingYidc/Astronomers-Discover-33-Pairs-of-Waltzing-Black-Holes)
Astronomers from UC Berkeley have identified 33 pairs of waltzing black holes, closing the gap somewhat between the observed population of super-massive black hole pairs and what had been predicted by theory. "Astronomical observations have shown that 1) nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole (with a mass of a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun), and 2) galaxies commonly collide and merge to form new, more massive galaxies. As a consequence of these two observations, a merger between two galaxies should bring two super-massive black holes to the new, more massive galaxy formed from the merger. The two black holes gradually in-spiral toward the center of this galaxy, engaging in a gravitational tug-of-war with the surrounding stars. The result is a black hole dance, choreographed by Newton himself. Such a dance is expected to occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy in about 3 billion years, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- How do I remove reminants of applications from a re-installed computer?
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I had to reinstall windows xp and now I have a copy on boot up that is no good and would like to uninstall it instead of selecting it every time windows loads. Also, after the install over the old one, programs are not in the start -> program files menu but are on my c:\ drive. Some of these programs are no good and they are not listed for uninstall. How may I clear out these programs without reformatting? Is there a specific program to find system files not needed anymore?

Answer: Hi Mike,As I understand your question you re-installed Windows which left fragments of programs lying around which you no longer want and wish to remove. Please let me know if I've misunderstood.There are indeed several programs to remove the "entrails" of programs.The best of these are McAfee QuickClean 3 and Norton SystemWorks 2003.Unfortunately, both of these programs cost money and are a lot cheeper if you buy them bundled with the Norton/McAfee virus Scanner too, but they do seem to be well worth it.If you are just after a single clean-up of your computer, it is worth downloading the demo of either program just to clean your PC once.The McAfee QuickClean demo is available at: http://www.mcafee.comThe Norton SystemWorks demo is available at: http://www.norton.com.There are a number of free programs for cleaning PC's available but these do seem to be un-trustworthy in some cases.A trip to http://www.download.com might help you to find a 3rd party application for free to solve your problems.Hope this helps!Please feel free to reply to this message if you require further assistance.Regards,-Lawrence Stromski, Helpforce.

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

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

-- The Web's 10 Most Influential People of the Decade(http://netforbeginners.about.com/b/a/258220.htm)

These people created Craigslist, bittorrents, Facebook, RSS, the Internet Archive, and more. Usually, celebritydom doesn't shine its light on the technology world. But considering that the Internet is...

Thank you for your continued support, please do not reply to this email address as emails will not be answered.

Content copyright by its' respective owners

Search Helpforce

From eTalk

There are a total of 1673 posts on eTalk (501 topics and 1172 replies)

There are 0 guests and 2 members making a total of 2 users on eTalk.

Click Here to enter the eTalk Community.

Advertise Here!

Your Link Here?
Give your website the exposure it deserves!

Click Here For Details

Technology News

Stay up to date with technology, with a free, short daily briefing on current happenings

Alternatively visit here for more information

To view our back issues, click here

Members - eHelp Login

Click here for technical details about Helpforce's site

Kindly Hosted by:

Please visit www.asis.com for more details on Internet Access, Web Hosting and Computer Repair.Skydive North East