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Friday the 12th of February 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Friday the 12th of February 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
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1. Latest Virus Alerts From Sophos
---------------------------------------
Troj/ZAccess-A on 12 February 2010 10:45:30 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojzaccessa.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/FakeAV-CN on 12 February 2010 08:39:43 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malfakeavcn.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Banker-EWB on 12 February 2010 08:39:43 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbankerewb.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/VB-EMX on 12 February 2010 08:39:43 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojvbemx.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/EncPk-NT on 12 February 2010 04:59:52 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malencpknt.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-AVF on 12 February 2010 04:59:52 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavavf.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Hiloti-AB on 12 February 2010 04:59:52 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojhilotiab.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Bacalid-A on 12 February 2010 04:59:52 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32bacalida.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Lovgate-W on 12 February 2010 04:59:52 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32lovgatew.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-AVD on 12 February 2010 02:51:43 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavavd.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- How Easy Is It To Cheat In CS?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/b5TfkufrHQw/How-Easy-Is-It-To-Cheat-In-CS)
Pinky3 writes "The New York Times has an article on cheating in CS at Stanford. Here is a classic quote from one student: 'I wasn't even thinking of how it [sic] easy it would for me to be caught,' he said. One interesting strategy discussed is for the professor to make the final count for more of the final grade each time cheating is discovered. Share your experiences as a student and/or as an instructor."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Is Google Planning To Fibre Britain?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sHsznnK8mas/Is-Google-Planning-To-Fibre-Britain)
Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Google has emerged as a surprise contender to invest in Britain's fibre broadband network. The search giant yesterday announced plans to build a gigabit fibre broadband network in the US. The test network will see Google deliver fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections to up to half a million US homes. The move raises the possibility that Google is behind the Conservative Party's ambitious plans to deliver nationwide 100Mbits/sec connections by 2017. Parliamentary sources have told PC Pro that the Tories' plans were based on foreign investment in the UK broadband network."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- France Votes Tuesday On Net Censorship
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/JwogPXrkyrE/France-Votes-Tuesday-On-Net-Censorship)
angry tapir writes "French lawmakers will vote next Tuesday on a proposal to filter Internet traffic. Part of a new security bill, the measure is intended to catch child pornographers. However, once the filtering system is in place it will allow the government to censor other material too. Slashdot has previously discussed Australia's proposed ISP-level filter."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Facebook Now Supports Jabber/XMPP
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sm3lOYHCMmQ/Facebook-Now-Supports-JabberXMPP)
supersloshy writes "Facebook Chat has so far only been meant to be used in a web browser, and instant messaging applications have had a hard time implementing it's undocumented protocol. Today, Facebook is making this job much easier by enabling support for XMPP to access its chat service. AOL's AIM and the Empathy Instant Messenger are also including pre-set Facebook options, due to already supporting XMPP."

Here are instructions for setting up XMPP Facebook chat with popular instant messaging clients, including Pidgin and Adium.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Google Buys AI Social Search Service Aardvark
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tLaZkOPdWy8/Google-Buys-AI-Social-Search-Service-Aardvark)
eldavojohn writes "MIT's Tech Review is covering an acquisition it finds very interesting. Google (which recently announced Buzz) has acquired Aardvark. The review covered Aardvark and the artificial intelligence it uses in its searches in 2009."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- EU Overturns Agreement With US On Banking Data
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/qjW4a2P5ASU/EU-Overturns-Agreement-With-US-On-Banking-Data)
Following the lead of the civil liberties committee which last week recommended dropping it (against the wishes of the US), qmaqdk writes "The EU parliament overturned the previous agreement with the US which allowed US intelligence agencies to access EU banking data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- FAA Data Shows Exploding Batteries Are Rare, Small Risk
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/APyQIk7G_NY/FAA-Data-Shows-Exploding-Batteries-Are-Rare-Small-Risk)
ericatcw writes "While the US government is intent on adding new rules around the shipment and carrying of Lithium-Ion batteries on passenger and cargo planes, data from its own Federal Aviation Agency show that the risk of being on an airplane where someone — not necessarily you — suffers a minor injury due to a battery is only one in 28 million, reports Computerworld, which analyzed the data (skip to the chart here) using the free Tableau Public data visualization service. Getting killed in a car accident, by contrast, is 4,300 times more likely. Opponents say the rules could raise the cost of shopping online and add hassles for fliers and consumers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Windows Patch Leaves Many XP Users With Blue Screens
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/H3WjF_Fvw2w/Windows-Patch-Leaves-Many-XP-Users-With-Blue-Screens)
CWmike writes "Tuesday's security updates from Microsoft have crippled Windows XP PCs with the notorious Blue Screen of Death, users have reported on the company's support forum. Complaints began early yesterday, and gained momentum throughout the day. 'I updated 11 Windows XP updates today and restarted my PC like it asked me to,' said a user identified as 'tansenroy' who kicked off a growing support thread: 'From then on, Windows cannot restart again! It is stopping at the blue screen with the following message: 'A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.' Others joined in with similar reports. Several users posted solutions, but the one laid out by 'maxyimus' was marked by a Microsoft support engineer as the way out of the perpetual blue screens."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- European Credit and Debit Card Security Broken
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sbHgSKKgnzw/European-Credit-and-Debit-Card-Security-Broken)
Jack Spine writes "With nearly a billion users dependent on smart banking credit and debit cards, banks have refused liability for losses where an idenification number has been provided. But now, the process behind the majority of European credit and debit card transactions is fundamentally broken, according to researchers from Cambridge University. The researchers have demonstrated a man-in-the-middle attack which fooled a card reader into accepting a number of point-of-sale transactions, even though the cards were not properly authenticated. The researchers used off-the-shelf components (PDF), and a laptop running a Python script, to undermine the two-factor authentication process on European credit and debit cards, which is called Chip and PIN."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Brain Surgery Linked To Sensation of Spirituality
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wss5C_-Chdw/Brain-Surgery-Linked-To-Sensation-of-Spirituality)
the3stars writes "'Removing part of the brain can induce inner peace, according to researchers from Italy. Their study provides the strongest evidence to date that spiritual thinking arises in, or is limited by, specific brain areas. This raises a number of interesting issues about spirituality, among them whether or not people can be born with a strong propensity towards spirituality and also whether it can be acquired through head trauma."

One critic's quoted response: "It's important to recognize that the whole study is based on changes in one self-report measure, which is a coarse measure that includes some strange items."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Why Apple Doesn't Market Squarely To Businesses
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/FdTcbMCgGHI/Why-Apple-Doesnt-Market-Squarely-To-Businesses)
snydeq writes "Despite feature enhancements that suggest otherwise, Apple remains lukewarm to any Mac and iPhone success in business environments. 'Apple has intentionally created a glass ceiling it has no intention of shattering. My conversations with Apple employees over the past decade have always been off the record when it comes to the topic of Macs in the enterprise. The company has had no intention of signaling any active plans to serve the enterprise,' InfoWorld's Galen Gruman writes. 'In a sense, Apple views enterprise sales as "collateral success" — a nice-to-have byproduct of its real focus: individuals, developers, and very small businesses ... likely because to do otherwise would greatly increase the complexity Apple would have to deal with.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Document Management For Research With Annotation?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/FPJvuhuixx4/Document-Management-For-Research-With-Annotation)
msimm writes "I'm currently looking for a document management system for personal and research-related use. Having looked at Alfresco and KnowledgeTree along with a slew of similar open source document management systems they seem to have a common set of features including version control, archiving, document permission/ownership and search/indexing. What I'd like, in order to help me manage my own continually growing collection of pdf/doc/odf/rtf/txt files, would be something that allowed me to view and annotate documents (and possibly collaborate/share notes) without requiring me to download, edit and re-upload each document. Obviously there are plenty of capable document management systems out there, so I really suspect I've simply missed something and am hoping someone can point me to a better way to index, search, collaborate and keep and share notes on the ever increasing glut of useful information I seem to use and collect."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- OpenOffice 3.2 Released
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/dcqULfm99Zo/OpenOffice-32-Released)
harmonise writes "Version 3.2 of the OpenOffice.org office suite is now available. This marks the tenth anniversary year of the office suite, with over three hundred million downloads recorded in total. The new features include faster start up times; improved compatibility with open standard (ODF) and proprietary file formats; improvements to all components, particularly the Calc spreadsheet, with over a dozen new or enhanced features; and the Chart module (usable throughout OpenOffice.org) has had a usability makeover as well as offering new chart types."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Feds Push For Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mv5kt33R_Ds/Feds-Push-For-Warrantless-Cell-Phone-Tracking)
An anonymous reader writes "An article at CNET is reporting on the Obama administration's push for warrantless tracking of the location of cell phones (Verizon Wireless stores location data for one year, for instance). The Justice Department says no warrant is necessary: 'Because wireless carriers regularly generate and retain the records at issue, and because these records provide only a very general indication of a user's whereabouts at certain times in the past, the requested cell-site records do not implicate a Fourth Amendment privacy interest.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Anti-Piracy Windows 7 Update Phones Home Quarterly
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/fRWF6ziswZs/Anti-Piracy-Windows-7-Update-Phones-Home-Quarterly)
Lauren Weinstein sends in news of a major and disturbing Microsoft anti-piracy initiative called Windows Activation Technologies, or WAT. Here is Microsoft's blog post giving their perspective on what WAT is for. From Lauren's blog: "The release of Windows 7 'Update for Microsoft Windows (KB71033)' will change the current activation and anti-piracy behavior of Windows 7 by triggering automatic 'phone home' operations over the Internet to Microsoft servers, typically for now at intervals of around 90 days. ... These automatic queries will repeatedly — apparently for as long as Windows is installed — validate your Windows 7 system against Microsoft's latest database of pirated system signatures (currently including more than 70 activation exploits known to Microsoft). If your system matches — again even if up to that time (which could be months or even years since you obtained the system) it had been declared to be genuine — then your system will be 'downgraded' to 'non-genuine' status until you take steps to obtain what Microsoft considers to be an authentic, validated, Windows 7 license. ... KB971033... is scheduled to deploy to the manual downloading 'Genuine Microsoft Software' site on February 16, and start pushing out automatically through the Windows Update environment on February 23. ... [F]or Microsoft to assert that they have the right to treat ordinary PC-using consumers in this manner — declaring their systems to be non-genuine and downgrading them at any time — is rather staggering." Update: 02/12 02:08 GMT by KD : Corrected the Microsoft Knowledge Base number to include a leading 9 that had been omitted in the pre-announcement, per L. Weinstein.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- My computer keeps freezing up
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: My computer keeps freezing can you make some suggestions please

Answer: Check system resources, if < 60% stop extra programs running in the background.Look for memtest on the internet and check your ram modules for errors.Clean out temp files, caches and recycle bin.Make sure all cards are securely in their sockets.Makes sure fans are running on Power supply and the cpu.What Os, CPU, Ram amount, HDD space, Age of machine do you have? Reply Posted on 22/11/2002 I´d suggest two things more:1.- Run Scandisk (complete).2.- Defragment you HDD.

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

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