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Saturday the 13th of February 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Saturday the 13th 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
6. Internet Advice

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/QbotZip-A on 13 February 2010 05:08:43 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojqbotzipa.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/Maher-A on 13 February 2010 02:06:53 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malmahera.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Capa-Gen on 13 February 2010 02:06:53 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojcapagen.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Qbot-I on 13 February 2010 02:06:53 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32qboti.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Runesc-B on 12 February 2010 23:44:57 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojrunescb.html?_log_from=rss
W32/ChirMem-B on 12 February 2010 23:44:57 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32chirmemb.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MMH on 12 February 2010 18:52:23 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmmh.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MMJ on 12 February 2010 18:52:23 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmmj.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-MMK on 12 February 2010 18:52:23 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentmmk.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Dloadr-CYO on 12 February 2010 18:52:23 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdloadrcyo.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- Yale Switching To Gmail, Not Without Opposition
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_f9zw080O0Q/Yale-Switching-To-Gmail-Not-Without-Opposition)
PwnSnake writes "While it makes sense for small (and large) corporations to move to Gmail, something seems amiss when a top private university decides to hand everything over to Google. Although most in that community seem to welcome the change, several organizations on campus have joined forces to call for a transparent process and get students and faculty thinking about the downsides of the switch. The problem is choice (users can already forward mail to Gmail; it doesn't make sense to force that option and not have a backup or opt-out mail server)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Ex-Pirate Bay Admin Launches Micropayment Service
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QbJLhjCTENM/Ex-Pirate-Bay-Admin-Launches-Micropayment-Service)
spyrochaete writes "Peter Sunde, formerly 'brokep' of The Pirate Bay, recently launched a beta version of Flattr — a micropayment service enabling internet users to tender cash payments to any participating content publisher. Its model enables users to divvy monthly subscription fees as donations awarded to the musicians, bloggers, photographers, or other publisher of their choice.
Sunde tells the BBC, 'We want to encourage people to share money as well as content,' and asserts, 'people love things and they want to pay.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Google Tweaks Buzz To Tackle Privacy Concerns
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/VdRfrtH_H-c/Google-Tweaks-Buzz-To-Tackle-Privacy-Concerns)
CWmike writes "Just two days after launching its Buzz social networking tools, Google said Thursday night that it had tweaked the technology to address early privacy concerns. Google said in a blog post that the quick updates makes it easier for users to block access to their pages and eases the path to finding two privacy features. 'We've had plenty of feature requests, and some direct feedback,' wrote Todd Jackson, a product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, in the blog post. 'In particular there's been concern from some people who thought their contacts were being made public without their knowledge (in particular the lists of people they follow, and the people following them). In addition, others felt they had too little control over who could follow them and were upset that they lacked the ability to block people who didn't yet have public profiles from following them.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Are Silicon Valley's Glory Days Over?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/g1KfEIiSvjc/Are-Silicon-Valleys-Glory-Days-Over)
Hugh Pickens writes "Pete Carey writes in the Mercury News that there are 'clear warning signs' that Silicon Valley has entered 'a new phase of uncertainty' in which its standing as a tech center is at risk and that decisive action by business, government and education is needed if the region is to retain its standing as the world's center of technical innovation. 'It could be that Silicon Valley has a different future coming,' says Russell Hancock. 'It's not a given that we will continue to be the epicenter of innovation.' Among the troubling indicators in the Silicon Valley Index (PDF): 90,000 jobs lost in the last two years; the influx of foreign science and engineering talent has slowed; venture capital funding has declined; per capita income is down 5 percent from 2007; and the number of people working as contractors rather than full-time employees is rising. Adding to the valley's problems is a malfunctioning state government that is shortchanging investment in education and infrastructure."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Booster
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Rx3p9TbzK5U/-Porsche-Unveils-911-Hybrid-With-Flywheel-Booster)
MikeChino writes "Porsche has just unveiled its 911 GT3 R Hybrid, a 480 horsepower track vehicle ready to rock the 24-hour Nurburgring race this May. Porsche's latest supercar will use the same 911 production platform available to consumers today, with a few race-ready features including front-wheel hybrid drive and an innovative flywheel system that stores kinetic energy from braking and then uses it to provide a 160 horsepower burst of speed. The setup is sure to offer an advantage when powering out of turns and passing by other racers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Learning and Maintaining a Large Inherited Codebase?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yfpwi-2JtjQ/Learning-and-Maintaining-a-Large-Inherited-Codebase)
An anonymous reader writes "A couple of times in my career, I've inherited a fairly large (30-40 thousand lines) collection of code. The original authors knew it because they wrote it; I didn't, and I don't. I spend a huge amount of time finding the right place to make a change, far more than I do changing anything. How would you learn such a big hunk of code? And how discouraged should I be that I can't seem to 'get' this code as well as the original developers?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Tiny ARM-Based Sensor System Makes Battery Replacement Obsolete
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/itbyTxRqa74/Tiny-ARM-Based-Sensor-System-Makes-Battery-Replacement-Obsolete)
An anonymous reader writes "University of Michigan researchers have crammed an ARM Cortex microcontroller, a thin-film battery, and a solar cell into a package that is only 9 cubic millimeters in volume. The system is able to run perpetually by periodically recharging the on-board battery with a solar cell (neglecting physical wear-out of the system)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Emmerich Plans Foundation As a 3D Epic
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Km6B2k7AHHY/Emmerich-Plans-emFoundationem-As-a-3D-Epic)
spuke4000 writes "Roland Emmerich, the writer/director/producer behind Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 is planning to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The plans include using technology developed for Avatar including 3D and motion capture technology. When asked about using this technology Emmerich responded: 'It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Opera 10.50 Beta Out, With Competitive JavaScript
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gaU7_6BZxOY/Opera-1050-Beta-Out-With-Competitive-JavaScript)
Opera has released its 10.5 beta (for Windows only; Linux and Mac coming). Opera calls 10.5 "the fastest browser on earth," but the jury is out on this claim. WebMonkey says that the new beta feels snappy in their informal testing. Both CNET and ZDNet ran two quick benchmarks that measure JavaScript performance, SunSpider and V8. ZDNet found Opera beating out Chrome in SunSpider but lagging in V8. CNET found Chrome ahead in both tests. What is clear however is that Opera's Carakan JavaScript engine has made up much of the ground in the performance wars; The Reg estimates that 10.5 is seven times faster in the JavaScript stakes than Opera's shipping 10.1 release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Is Plagiarism In Literature Just Sampling?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0_5AZJY4eqo/Is-Plagiarism-In-Literature-Just-Sampling)
ardent99 writes "According to the NY Times today, Helene Hegemann's first book has been moving up the best-seller list in Germany and is a finalist for a major book prize. While originally this was notable because Hegemann is only 17 and this is her first book, and so earned praise as a prodigy, what's interesting now about this story is that she has been caught plagiarizing many passages in the book. Amazingly, she has not denied it, but instead claims there is nothing wrong with it. She claims that she is part of a new generation that has grown up with mixing and sampling in all media, including music and art, and this is legitimate in modern culture. Have we entered a new era where plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal? Is this the ultimate in cynicism, or is it simply a brash attempt to get away with something now that she's been caught? Is her claim to legitimacy compromised by the fact that she only admitted it after it was discovered by someone else? And finally, if 'sampling' is not acceptable in literature, is this reason to rethink the legitimacy of musical sampling?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Wi-Fi In a SIM Card
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/bSYyYEY6wrI/Wi-Fi-In-a-SIM-Card)
gaijin_ writes "What if, rather than buying a MiFi or using a Wi-Fi router app like those on the Palm Pre Plus, you could stick a SIM in any device and have a shared 3G connection? That's what Sagem Orga and Telefonica are promising: they've developed the SIMFi, a USIM card with an embedded Wi-Fi radio that, when dropped into any standard handset, can share the 3G HSPA connection with various Wi-Fi clients as an instant access point."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitos
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/82WVnkjv7_c/Directed-Energy-Weapon-Downs-Mosquitos)
wisebabo writes "Nathan Myhrvol demonstrated at TED a laser, built from parts scrounged from eBay, capable of shooting down not one but 50 to 100 mosquitos a second. The system is 'so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted.' Currently, for the sake of efficiency, it leaves the males alone because only females are bloodsuckers. Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!" We ran a story about this last year. It looks like the company has added a bit more polish, and burning mosquito footage to their marketing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- IdeaPad U1, What We Wanted the iPad To Be
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/UwdfgOQ8pms/IdeaPad-U1-What-We-Wanted-the-iPad-To-Be)
Xanator writes "With the announcement of the iPad the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid appears to go unnoticed, but maybe we ought to pay it more attention, a netbook with a removable screen that turns it into a tablet (switching OS from Windows 7 to a tablet OS within 3 seconds) looks that it offers what many of us wanted from the iPad, quoting Engadget: 'When docked, the U1 looks and feels like any other laptop, with an Intel CULV processor and a 128GB SSD running Windows 7 Home Premium. You actually wouldn't know there's a slate hiding in there — until you pull it out and watch it switch to Lenovo's Skylight UI, a process that was smooth and quick for us. Lenovo says the goal is for the full switch to occur in under 3 seconds.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Texas Textbooks Battle Is Actually an American War
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/3RuvalzHA6E/Texas-Textbooks-Battle-Is-Actually-an-American-War)
ideonexus writes "I've been lackadaisical when it comes to following stories about Texas schoolboard attempts to slip creationism into biology textbooks, dismissing the stories as just 'dumbass Texans,' but what I didn't realize is that Texas schoolbooks set the standard for the rest of the country. And it's not just Creationism that this Christian coalition is attempting to bring into schoolbooks, but a full frontal assault on history, politics, and the humanities that exploits the fact that final decisions are being made by a school board completely academically unqualified to make informed evaluations of the changes these lobbyists propose. This evangelical lobby has successfully had references to the American Constitution as a 'living document,' as textbooks have defined it since the 1950s, removed in favor of an 'enduring Constitution' not subject to change, as well as attempting to over-emphasize the role Christianity played in the founding of America. The leaders of these efforts outright admit they are attempting to redefine the way our children understand the political landscape so that, when they grow up, they will have preconceived notions of the American political system that favor their evangelical Christian goals."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Silicon Valley's Island of Misfit Tech
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PgP4kgH58CY/Silicon-Valleys-Island-of-Misfit-Tech)
harrymcc writes "For more than 20 years, Sunnyvale's cavernous, aptly-named Weird Stuff Warehouse has sold an amazing array of salvage and surplus computer products. It's like a tech museum where everything's for sale at bargain-basement prices — from shrinkwrapped Atari 1040ST software to used BetaMAX tapes to 1GB hard drives to mysterious printed circuit boards to Selectric typewriters. I paid a visit to this legendary geek temple and snapped photos of some of the fascinating stuff I came across."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
-----------------------------------------------

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

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