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Monday the 18th of January 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Monday the 18th 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
---------------------------------------
Mal/VBNam-A on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malvbnama.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MDD on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmdd.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MEK on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmek.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MEL on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmel.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/DwnLdr-HZT on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdwnldrhzt.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-APS on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavaps.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Iframe-DN on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojiframedn.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/JS-B on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojjsb.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/JSRedir-AK on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojjsredirak.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/VBInjec-D on 18 January 2010 11:06:50 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojvbinjecd.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- NVIDIA Previews GF100 Features and Architecture
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ojnM3Z02_yQ/NVIDIA-Previews-GF100-Features-and-Architecture)
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has decided to disclose more information regarding their next generation GF100 GPU architecture today. Also known as Fermi, the GF100 GPU features 512 CUDA cores, 16 geometry units, 4 raster units, 64 texture units, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface. If you're keeping count, the older GT200 features 240 CUDA cores, 42 ROPs, and 60 texture units, but the geometry and raster units, as they are implemented in GF100, are not present in the GT200 GPU. The GT200 also features a wider 512-bit memory interface, but the need for such a wide interface is somewhat negated in GF100 due to the fact that it uses GDDR5 memory which effectively offers double the bandwidth of GDDR3, clock for clock. Reportedly, the GF100 will also offer 8x the peak double-precision compute performance as its predecessor, 10x faster context switching, and new anti-aliasing modes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Microsoft Bots Effectively DDoSing Perl CPAN Testers
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/75k_Vff9GJg/Microsoft-Bots-Effectively-DDoSing-Perl-CPAN-Testers)
at_slashdot writes "The Perl CPAN Testers have been suffering issues accessing their sites, databases and mirrors. According to a posting on the CPAN Testers' blog, the CPAN Testers' server has been being aggressively scanned by '20-30 bots every few seconds' in what they call 'a dedicated denial of service attack'; these bots 'completely ignore the rules specified in robots.txt.'" From the Heise story linked above: "The bots were identified by their IP addresses, including 65.55.207.x, 65.55.107.x and 65.55.106.x, as coming from Microsoft."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/R970j7_Wiqg/Police-In-Britain-Arrest-Man-For-Bomb-Threat-Joke-On-Twitter)
An anonymous reader writes "A British man was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for making a bomb joke on Twitter. Paul Chambers, 26, was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006). His crime? Frustrated at grounded flights over inclement weather, he made a joke bomb threat on the social networking site Twitter."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Next Linux Kernel Due Early March
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hvthtPRyw9Y/Next-Linux-Kernel-Due-Early-March)
swandives writes "The Linux.conf.au is in full-swing in Wellington, New Zealand, and Computerworld Australia has an interview with Jon Corbet in the leadup to his Kernel Report. The latest kernel release is due early March and will include reversed-engineered drivers for Nvidia chipsets."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- HandBrake Abandons DivX As an Output Format
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/XbrK_eF5Vg4/HandBrake-Abandons-DivX-As-an-Output-Format)
An anonymous reader writes "DivX was the first digital video format to really win mainstream acceptance, doing for movies what MP3 did for music (both good and bad). Eventually even Sony, the king of proprietary formats, caved into pressure and added DivX support to its DVD players and the PlayStation 3. Now HandBrake's developers have made an interesting choice for version 0.9.4 — they ditched support for AVI files using DivX and XviD. Your only option now is to convert DVDs and other media to MKV or MP4 files, with the option to save as Apple-friendly M4V files. So why is HandBrake ditching AVI and XviD support when it's a format that's won such widespread acceptance? In the words of the developers, 'AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- ChromeOS Zero Released
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_RgnVE0RZOM/ChromeOS-Zero-Released)
charliesome writes "Hexxeh, a student from the United Kingdom, has been the source for ChromeOS builds since the release of the Google operating system. He's just released ChromeOS Zero, a small build designed for speed and aesthetics. He recently did an interview with The Chrome Source."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- NY Times To Charge For Online Content
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gOcne_fAsu0/NY-Times-To-Charge-For-Online-Content)
Hugh Pickens writes "New York Magazine reports that the NY Times appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of debate inside the paper, the choice has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system. The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership. The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year's financial crisis, the argument that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper's high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Wii Balance Board Gives $18,000 Medical Device a Run For Its Money
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ngTGb-gETVg/Wii-Balance-Board-Gives-18000-Medical-Device-a-Run-For-Its-Money)
Gizmodo highlights a very cool repurposing effort for the Wii's Balance Board accessory. Rather than the specialized force platforms used to quantify patients' ability to balance after a trauma like stroke, doctors at the University of Melbourne thought that a Balance Board might serve as well. Says the article: "When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of 'excellent' quality. 'I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up.'" Games controllers you'd expect to be durable and at least fairly accurate; what's surprising is just how much comparable, purpose-built devices cost. In this case, the Balance Board (just under $100) was compared favorably with a test platform that costs just a shade less than $18,000.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Truth Or Dare — What Is the Best US Cell Company?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/54_17ml_nF8/Truth-Or-Dare-mdash-What-Is-the-Best-US-Cell-Company)
Epsilon Eridani writes "I am returning to the US after an extended time overseas and upon my return I need to jump head first into the data enabled phone bandwagon. I have to admit ... I am lost as to what is the best company to choose. Before I left the US I used a Sprint HTC phone running Windows with the 'simply everything' plan to communicate and stay organized and a Sprint Wireless Card to connect my laptop to the world. Coming back several generations of technology later, what is the best set up technology-wise to link phone and laptop or two to the Internet? (Open source solutions accepted too!) Can the Slashdot community verify some of the claims on quality of service before I give my first born up when I sign a service contract?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Is Gawker's "Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt" Illegal?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/OepMC06CqRc/Is-Gawkers-Apple-Tablet-Scavenger-Hunt-Illegal)
theodp writes "Not too surprisingly, Apple was not amused by Valleywag's announcement of an Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt, which offered cash prizes ranging from 10K-100K for info about the much-anticipated new Apple device. The promo prompted a threatening cease-and-desist letter from Apple's lawyers, which Valleywag deemed the most concrete evidence yet that there may indeed be a tablet in the works. But is the Scavenger Hunt really illegal, as the attorney claimed? The jury's still out, but Slate concludes Apple's got a pretty good case, although it notes that Valleywag's unconventional Scavenger Hunt 'stunt' may not really be all that different from 'reporting' practiced by mainstream publications like the WSJ."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Lacking Buyers, NASA Cuts Prices On Shuttles and Old Engines
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ocVDo4_IbbY/Lacking-Buyers-NASA-Cuts-Prices-On-Shuttles-and-Old-Engines)
Hugh Pickens writes "Russia's Space Shuttle, Buran, ended its days at a theme park in Moscow and was once offered for sale on the Internet for 3 million dollars. Now the NY Times reports that when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration put out the call in December 2008 seeking buyers for US shuttles from museums, schools and elsewhere, the agency didn't get as much interest as expected, so now NASA has slashed the price of the 1970s-era spaceships, available for sale this fall once their flying days are over, from $42 million to just $28.8 million apiece. 'We're confident that we'll get other takers,' says agency spokesman Mike Curie. The Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum but the Atlantis and the Endeavour are still up for grabs and it is possible that the Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, will also be available. The lower price is based on NASA's estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to a major airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them in December 2008 for $400,000 to $800,000 each, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Google Phone Could Drive Apple Into Allegiance With Microsoft
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/BzvLvRNp8l4/Google-Phone-Could-Drive-Apple-Into-Allegiance-With-Microsoft)
rsmiller510 writes "A BusinessWeek report suggests that the Nexus One release marks the latest volley in an escalating war between Google and Apple, one that could force Apple into working more closely with Microsoft. 'When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it's both. Separated by a mere 10 miles in Silicon Valley, the two have been on famously good terms for almost a decade. ... Now the companies have entered a new, more adversarial phase. With Nexus One, Google, which had been content to power multiple phonemakers' devices with Android, enters the hardware game, becoming a direct threat to the iPhone. With its Quattro purchase, Apple aims to create completely new kinds of mobile ads, say three sources familiar with Apple's thinking. The goal isn't so much to compete with Google in search as to make search on mobile phones obsolete. ... Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum's Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple's engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Options Dwindling For Mars Spirit Rover
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gyJxmmNxnO0/Options-Dwindling-For-Mars-Spirit-Rover)
coondoggie writes "NASA says it is narrowing a short list of things its scientists can do to extricate its stuck Mars Spirit rover. They are exploring a couple remaining options, such as driving backwards and using Spirit's robotic arm to sculpt the ground directly in front of the left-front wheel, the only working wheel the arm can reach. The amount of energy that Spirit harvests each day, however, is declining, as autumn days shorten on southern Mars. 'At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice.' NASA is currently analyzing results of a Jan. 13th attempt to move the spacecraft that involved a very slow rotation of the wheels. Earlier drives in the past two weeks using wheel wiggles and slow wheel rotation produced negligible progress toward extricating Spirit, NASA stated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- What Clown On a Unicycle?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nFrEWgWKte8/What-Clown-On-a-Unicycle)
R3d M3rcury writes "The New York Times has an article about walking and using a cellphone. 'The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.' But the interesting part was an experiment run by Western Washington University this past fall. There was a student who knew how to ride a unicycle and a professor who had a clown suit. They dressed a student up as a clown and had him ride his unicycle around a popular campus square. Then they asked people, 'Did you see the Unicycling Clown?' 71% of the people walking in pairs said that they had. 51% of the people walking alone said that they had. But only 25% of the people talking on a cellphone said that they saw the unicycling clown. On the other hand, when asked 'Did you see anything unusual?' only about one person in three mentioned a unicycling clown. So maybe unicycling clowns aren't enough of a distraction at Western Washington University..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- James Cameron On How Avatar Technology Could Keep Actors Young
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/-RL7AxaqIVA/James-Cameron-On-How-emAvatarem-Technology-Could-Keep-Actors-Young)
Suki I writes "An article at EW discusses another use for Avatar's sophisticated motion-capture technology: 'Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes — like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"' The article goes on to quote Cameron as saying you would still need actors to play the roles, and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- I am building my own computer and it wont startup
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: Recently I built my own computer.The relevant specs (I think) are:CPU: AMD AthlonXP 2100Motherboard: Shuttle AK35GT2PS: Allied 400WRAM: Multiwave 512MB PC2700 DDRVideo card: PNY Geforce3 Ti200Sometimes my computer starts sometimes it does not. When it does work, everything works properly. When it does not work, there is nothing displayed on the screen and no beeps are made. All fans spin, the hard drive light lights and goes out, and the CD drive light lights and goes out. All connections are secure and were checked numerous times. Clearing the CMOS seems to help the computer work, but not immediately. The computer seems to work the least in the morning, and tends to stay working all day if it starts working. The video card is not the problem, as I tested it numerous times while the computer was down (both the new video card in an old PC, and an old video card in the new PC, the old video card failed in the new PC although it works in the old PC).

Answer: hi there, i have built many many computers and this is a common problem, generaly i think that will find that the problem is related to an earth loop, dont laugh or say 'I havnt changed anything' becuase i would put money on this being the problem, the solution is to take everthing back out the case (sorry!) and set it all up on a table (net metal :-) ) and try running the computer like that to see if it then works!If / when it does, check all the screw holes in the case to make sure that nothing is sticking up, then put everything back in again, dont screw the motherboard in to tight, but enough to hold it in place.Hope this helps and let us know if it works or you need more help.

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

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

-- How Exactly Do I Create a Good Password?(http://netforbeginners.about.com/b/a/257514.htm)

Every day, we log into our Windows XP or Vista, our email, our eBay and PayPal accounts, our bank accounts, our Hotmail accounts, and more. These passwords never seem to end! Well,...

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