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Friday the 22nd of January 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Friday the 22nd 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
---------------------------------------
JS/ScrLd-B on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/jsscrldb.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/TDSSRt-A on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/maltdssrta.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MDP on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmdp.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MGI on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmgi.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Backdr-BD on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbackdrbd.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Fudge-A on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfudgea.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/PcClien-WI on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojpcclienwi.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/RKProc-K on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojrkprock.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Zbot-LM on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojzbotlm.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autoit-II on 22 January 2010 11:05:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autoitii.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- For GUIs, Just the Right Degree of Realism
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_T5Tbbo_-Ls/For-GUIs-Just-the-Right-Degree-of-Realism)
mr crypto writes "User interfaces make copious use of pictures and symbols, but how abstract should images be? Lukas Mathis has an interesting blog entry on where to draw the line."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Pen vs. Keyboard vs. Touch vs. Everything Else
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/oYUTEiE9jE0/Pen-vs-Keyboard-vs-Touch-vs-Everything-Else)
benz001 writes "In the run-up to everyone's favourite tablet, Phil Gyford goes back through his gadget collection and compares text entry speeds to see which one comes out on top. It's not what you'd call a rich data set, and of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps, but the iPhone virtual keyboard came in a surprisingly close second, just edging out the Treo — and all the keyboard solutions regardless of how small and fiddly beat real pen and paper. This probably matches most people's experience (when was the last time you had to handwrite more than a bullet point in a meeting?) and gels pretty well with Macworld's predictions but I'm still hoping for sub-vocal voice recognition. (Jump straight to the final results here)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Grinds "Cool" Rock
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/rTR5w4dbvc8/NASA-Mars-Rover-Opportunity-Grinds-Cool-Rock)
coondoggie writes "While its sister rover Spirit has garnered most of the attention lately, NASA's other Mars traveler, Opportunity, is chewing up Martian dirt and unearthing the mineral and chemical makeup of the red planet. NASA scientists said this week the rover uncovered 'one of the coolest things Opportunity has found in a very long time:' a dark, basketball-sized rock known as 'Marquette Island.' According to NASA, the Marquette Island rock is a coarse-grained rock that indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. Such composition suggests it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture, NASA stated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- OnLive Gaming Service Gets Lukewarm Approval
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/RwECLyB1KHI/OnLive-Gaming-Service-Gets-Lukewarm-Approval)
Vigile writes "When the OnLive cloud-based gaming service was first announced back in March of 2009, it was met with equal parts excitement and controversy. While the idea of playing games on just about any kind of hardware thanks to remote rendering and streaming video was interesting, the larger issue remained of how OnLive planned to solve the latency problem. With the closed beta currently underway, PC Perspective put the OnLive gaming service to the test by comparing the user experiences of the OnLive-based games to the experiences with the same locally installed titles. The end result appears to be that while slower input-dependent games like Burnout: Paradise worked pretty well, games that require a fast twitch-based input scheme like UT3 did not."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Motorola Takes Android To China, With Or Without Google
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ypsKpdjBORk/Motorola-Takes-Android-To-China-With-Or-Without-Google)
An anonymous reader writes "Google's spat with China could affect Motorola as it vies to crawl back into the mobile market, but recent partnerships will allow it to pursue the Chinese mobile market alone. Circumventing the fallout, Motorola on Thursday introduced its own Android app store for China and a deal with Baidu, the leading search provider in China."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Game Developers Note Net Neutrality Concerns To FCC
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/xmIs2xvHyRA/Game-Developers-Note-Net-Neutrality-Concerns-To-FCC)
eldavojohn writes "A list of notes from game developers (PDF) was sent in a letter to the FCC which represented a net neutrality discussion between the developers and FCC representatives. Game Politics sums it up nicely, but the surprise is that developers are concerned with latency, not bandwidth, unlike the members of many other net neutrality discussions. One concern is that each and every game developer will need to negotiate with each and every ISP to ensure their traffic achieves acceptable levels of latency for users. 'Mr. Dyl of Turbine stated that ISPs sometimes block traffic from online gaming providers, for reasons that are not clear, but they do not necessarily continue those blocks if they are contacted. He recalled Turbine having to call ISPs that had detected the high UDP traffic from Turbine, and had apparently decided to block the traffic and wait to see who complained.' It seems a lot of the net neutrality discussions have only worried about one part of the problem — Netflix, YouTube and P2P — while an equally important source of concern went unnoticed: latency in online games."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Vimeo Also Introduces HTML5 Video Player
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MLrs17tzqns/Vimeo-Also-Introduces-HTML5-Video-Player)
bonch writes "Following in YouTube's footsteps, Vimeo has now introduced its own beta HTML5 video player, and like YouTube, it uses H.264 and requires Safari, Chrome, or ChromeFrame. The new player doesn't suffer the rebuffering problems of the Flash version when clicking around in the video's timeline, and it also loads faster. HTML5 could finally be gaining some real momentum."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Tor Users Urged To Update After Security Breach
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/a1_Psc_RRc4/Tor-Users-Urged-To-Update-After-Security-Breach)
An anonymous reader writes "If you use Tor, you're cautioned to update now due to a security breach. In a message on the Tor mailing list dated Jan 20, 2010, Tor developer Roger Dingledine outlines the issue and why you should upgrade to Tor 0.2.1.22 or 0.2.2.7-alpha now: 'In early January we discovered that two of the seven directory authorities were compromised (moria1 and gabelmoo), along with metrics.torproject.org, a new server we'd recently set up to serve metrics data and graphs. The three servers have since been reinstalled with service migrated to other servers.' Tor users should visit the download page and update ASAP."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Nokia To Make GPS Navigation Free On Smartphones
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KyAp2Cx86W8/Nokia-To-Make-GPS-Navigation-Free-On-Smartphones)
mliu writes "In what is sure to be a blow to the already beleaguered stand-alone GPS market, Nokia, the global leader in smartphone market share, has released a fully offline-enabled free GPS navigation and mapping application for its Symbian smartphones. Furthermore, the application also includes Lonely Planet and Michelin guides. Unfortunately, the N900, which is beloved by geeks for its Maemo Linux-based operating system, has not seen any of the navigation love so far. With Google's release of Google Navigation for Android smartphones, and now Nokia doing one better and releasing an offline-enabled navigation application, hopefully this is the start of a trend where this becomes an expected component of any smartphone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- 75% of Linux Code Now Written By Paid Developers
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/FxIV4CoVjEs/75-of-Linux-Code-Now-Written-By-Paid-Developers)
i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "During a presentation at Linux.conf.au 2010 in Wellington, LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'" It's not clear from the article why anyone should perceive a contradiction between having high ideals and getting paid to do something you enjoy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Affordable and Usable Video Conferencing?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/pCVCohwLkYU/Affordable-and-Usable-Video-Conferencing)
Sabalon writes "I work at a state university with remote sites, minimal space, and all the other usual bits. We used to have some dedicated-circuit video conferencing tools but those have fallen into disuse. The administration is now interested in being able to stream a class from site to site, or at least have a student at one site have visual interaction with a person at another site. My thought is that if Skype, uStream and others can do live video, there has to be some things out there that don't cost a fortune but work effectively. Key things would be the ability to use commodity web cams as a source, viewable on a PC (preferably all the main OSes) and the ability to add in other devices (say H.323 encoders) or desktop/application sharing. Are there decent products and solutions out there for us mere mortals?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Microsoft Patches "Google Hack" Flaw In IE
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/eJVRjhKnvdU/Microsoft-Patches-Google-Hack-Flaw-In-IE)
An anonymous reader writes "As expected, Microsoft has issued an out-of-band security patch to address a remote code execution hole in Internet Explorer that was used in the recent Chinese attacks disclosed by Google. Ars Technica has all the download links you need."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- MIT Offers Picture-Centric Programming To the Masses With Sikuli
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/fPNfv7kn8Vg/MIT-Offers-Picture-Centric-Programming-To-the-Masses-With-Sikuli)
coondoggie writes "Computer users with rudimentary skills will be able to program via screen shots rather than lines of code with a new graphical scripting language called Sikuli that was devised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a basic understanding of Python, people can write programs that incorporate screen shots of graphical user interface (GUI) elements to automate computer work. One example given by the authors of a paper about Sikuli is a script that notifies a person when his bus is rounding the corner so he can leave in time to catch it." Here's a video demo of the technology, and a paper explaining the concept (PDF).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Researchers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/VQsj1GaT_OU/Researchers-Pooh-Pooh-Algae-Based-Biofuel)
Julie188 writes "Researchers from the University of Virginia have found that current algae biofuel production methods consume more energy, have higher greenhouse gas emissions and use more water than other biofuel sources, such as switchgrass, canola and corn. The researchers suggest these problems can be overcome by situating algae production ponds behind wastewater treatment facilities to capture phosphorous and nitrogen — essential algae nutrients that otherwise need to come from petroleum."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Supreme Court Rolls Back Corporate Campaign Spending Limits
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/pHCRK0aOofE/Supreme-Court-Rolls-Back-Corporate-Campaign-Spending-Limits)
lorenlal writes "The Supreme Court of the United States must have figured that restrictions on corporate support of candidates was a violation of free speech, or something like that." From the AP story linked above: "By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- What is PHP and MySQL and should my web host have them?
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I am thinking of making a web page and they have a requirement of my Web Server to have "PHP software and MySQL database" I have no idea what this is.Does Asis have this?Thank you,Joyce

Answer: Firstly, webpages are generally written in HTML, which is the language which you would be writting in (or generating with Frontpage etc...) HTML is generally enough initially to create a good looking webpage, although it does have its limits, which become more apparent when you start doing more advanced things, which is what PHP tries to address.PHP (which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor) allows for dynamic generation of HTML. So, for example if you have users entering data, then PHP can be used to process this data and incoperate it into another page.... it could be used for a forum, to allow for users buying items etc... There are another other languages which perform similar functions, but PHP is one of the more powerful ones yet easy to learn, and so has become very popular. Its website can be found at www.php.netMySQL is a database system. If you wish to store data, such as forum postings, user names, customer addresses etc... then a database is the way to go, as it allows for easy storage and organisation of the data. Im not sure if you have heard of Microsoft Access, in the Office suite - that is a common database too. However, MySQL is a lot more designed for the internet and can be used with PHP to easily save and retrieve data.As far as the need for them goes, they are prety much standard on all good hosts (although the free ones such as yahoo, angelfire etc do not provide them) and Asis does provide them when you sign up. You may not think you require them at the moment, but as your skill increases you may find you do, and a number of installable scripts (such as forums) can often require them.

5. Advice of the Day from ask-leo
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