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Sunday the 28th of February 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Sunday the 28th 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/Mdrop-CKV on 28 February 2010 11:21:42 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojmdropckv.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-AXT on 28 February 2010 03:00:43 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavaxt.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-AXU on 28 February 2010 01:07:21 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavaxu.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/RedNeck-A on 27 February 2010 21:08:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malrednecka.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/BredoZp-S on 27 February 2010 21:08:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbredozps.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autorun-BAC on 27 February 2010 21:08:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autorunbac.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/Banker-M on 27 February 2010 13:48:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malbankerm.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Bancos-BGU on 27 February 2010 13:48:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbancosbgu.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Banker-EWN on 27 February 2010 13:48:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbankerewn.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/FakeAV-AXR on 27 February 2010 13:48:29 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojfakeavaxr.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- US Gov't. Ending Its Hands-Off-the-Internet Stance
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/LDKEZaCyndk/US-Govt-Ending-Its-Hands-Off-the-Internet-Stance)
Taco Cowboy writes in with a report from The Register about a US policy shift away from keeping hands off the Internet. "According to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce, the US government's policy of leaving the Internet alone is over. Instead, an 'Internet Policy 3.0' approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance." Here is the presentation in which Strickling enunciated these changes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- How Slums Can Save the Planet
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/av9GCoatZwI/How-Slums-Can-Save-the-Planet)
Standing Bear writes "One billion people live in squatter cities and, according to the UN, this number will double in the next 25 years. Stewart Brand writes in Prospect Magazine about what squatter cities can teach us about future urban living. 'The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents,' writes Brand. 'Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density — 1M people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai — and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.' Brand adds that in most slums recycling is literally a way of life e.g. the Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 rag-pickers. 'Of course, fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease, and injustice as much as business, innovation, education, and entertainment,' says Brand. Still, as architect Peter Calthorpe wrote in 1985: 'The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.'" Reader Kanel adds this note of perspective: "Kevin Kelly is another guy who wrote about slums in a very positive light, though he was more interested in self-organisation and why cities are cool, I think. Kelly also reports on the strange trend for slum tourism. What we're seeing here is that the 'slums' have become a vehicle for people to bring out their own ideas about cities, humans, and the universe at large. I have a feeling that we're not really going to learn a lot about slums if we study them through these guys."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Delta Rocket Crashes In Mongolia
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/bo46BmD75wo/Delta-Rocket-Crashes-In-Mongolia)
Dr La writes "Two metal objects, one cylindrical and a smaller round one, crashed near Buren Soum in the Tuv province of Mongolia, in an empty field, on 19 February. They are parts of an American Delta II rocket stage (nr. 35939, 2009-052C) that launched the military STSS Demo 1 & 2 satellites in September 2009. Both articles linked above say that the larger of the two objects is 7.5 meters in diameter, but in this photo it looks more like 7.5 feet. It is marked with the serial number '02728.' (The military STSS program is intended for space-based detection and tracking of missiles.) In the months leading up to the February 19 orbital decay over Mongolia, the fall of the rocket stage was followed by amateur satellite trackers. Based on their final orbit determinations just hours before the decay, the decay must have occurred near 3:32 UTC on February 19."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Unfriendly Climate Greets Gore At Apple Meeting
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Ge9ruiIb9HY/Unfriendly-Climate-Greets-Gore-At-Apple-Meeting)
theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Will the Serial Console Ever Die?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Ezn2fwFNTkg/Will-the-Serial-Console-Ever-Die)
simpz writes "Will the serial port as a console connection ever be displaced — especially for devices such as switches, routers, SAN boxes, etc.? In one sense it's a simple connection. But it is the only current port that, in order to use, you need to know about wiring / baud rates / parity, etc. It has non-standard pinouts. And it is becoming too slow to upload firmware to dead devices, as the firmware updates get larger. Also, the serial port is rapidly disappearing from new laptops — which is where you often really need it, in data centers. Centronics, PS/2, and current loop are mostly defunct. Is there any sign on the horizon of a USB console connection?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- US Government Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/RNnXzb17oeI/US-Government-Poisoned-Alcohol-During-Prohibition)
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Deborah Blum has an article in Slate about the US government's mostly forgotten policy in the 1920s and 1930s of poisoning industrial alcohols manufactured in the US to scare people into giving up illicit drinking during Prohibition. Known as the 'chemist's war of Prohibition,' the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, killed at least 10,000 people between 1926 and 1933. The story begins with ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which banned sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages in the US. By the mid-1920s, when the government saw that its 'noble experiment' was in danger of failing, it decided that the problem was that readily available methyl (industrial) alcohol — itself a poison — didn't taste nasty enough. The government put its chemists to work designing ever more unpalatable toxins — adding such chemicals as kerosene, brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor to stop the poisoning program. But an official sense of higher purpose kept it in place, while lawmakers opposed to the plan were accused of being in cahoots with criminals and bootleggers. The chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, one of the poisoning program's most outspoken opponents, liked to call it 'our national experiment in extermination.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Repo Men Using New Technology To Track Cars
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/S2luJzXDgJk/Repo-Men-Using-New-Technology-To-Track-Cars)
kamapuaa writes "The NY Times has an article about how real-time license plate scanning is changing the car repo business. MVTRAC is one of several companies providing technology to track car license plates automatically, in order to populate private databases. This new tech is used by car repo companies to help banks or other lenders repossess cars; by police to find stolen cars or to locate ticket scofflaws; or really for whatever application MVTRAC and its competitors feel like pursuing, as the new-found industry lacks any kind of government oversight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- How Telescopes Deal With Earthquakes In Chile
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/UvfSTKsQvag/How-Telescopes-Deal-With-Earthquakes-In-Chile)
Reader edgeofphysics provides a technical sidelight on the earthquake in Chile this morning — some details on how the European Southern Observatory protects the mirrors of the Very Large Telescope when an earthquake strikes. "Given that Chile is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, how do astronomers protect their giant telescopes that have been built or are being built in the Chilean Andes? This blog post discusses how Chile's most advanced facility protects its priceless 8.2-meter primary mirrors in the event of an earthquake."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Vermont May Revoke Nuclear Plant License
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QwsiFp58xqY/Vermont-May-Revoke-Nuclear-Plant-License)
mdsolar writes "Following the Vermont Senate's 26-to-4 vote not to approve a 20-year license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, the Vermont Public Service Board will consider revoking its operating license as well. Meanwhile, the plant continues to operate without its Director of Nuclear Safety Assurance, who has been placed on administrative leave; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has merely issued a Demand for Information rather than shutting down a plant that is lacking a full complement of safety personnel. It may be that the NRC is not capable of doing what is needed with regard to Entergy, the plant owner, which is also facing prosecution by the Mississippi Attorney General."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- A New Wi-Fi Exploit, Limited But Clever
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/BY9DQIl2PFI/A-New-Wi-Fi-Exploit-Limited-But-Clever)
eggboard writes "Martin Beck, who in 2008 co-wrote a paper describing a way to inject packets into a secured Wi-Fi system, is back with a more extensive exploit. His 'Enhanced TKIP Michael Attacks' still don't allow extraction of a key, and are limited to TKIP (not AES-CCMP) WPA-protected networks. Still, he's figured out how to put in large payloads, and to extract data sent from an access point to a client — all without cracking the network key. The attack requires proximity to sniff and inject data, but it's another crack in the older key standard (TKIP) that no one with serious security interests should still be using." Here is Beck's paper (PDF) describing the new attacks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- The Difficulty of Dismantling Constellation
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/V26y-FOrQxs/The-Difficulty-of-Dismantling-Constellation)
Last month, we discussed news that President Obama's 2011 budget proposal did not include plans to continue NASA's Constellation program, choosing instead to focus on establishing a stronger foundation for low earth orbit operations. Unfortunately, as government officials prepare to shut down Constellation, they're warning that it won't be a quick or simple process due to the contracts involved. From the Orlando Sentinel:
"Obama's 2011 budget proposal provides $2.5 billion to pay contractors whatever NASA owes them so the agency can stop work on Constellation's Ares rockets, Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander. But administration officials acknowledge that this number is, at best, an educated guess. ... Many inside and outside of the space agency, however, think the number is too low. The agency has signed more than $10 billion worth of contracts to design, test and build the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule that were the heart of Constellation. But government auditors said last year that the costs of some of those contracts had swelled by $3 billion since 2007 because of design changes, technical problems and schedule slips. How much NASA will owe on all those contracts if the plug gets pulled is unclear. Many of the deals are called 'undefinitized contracts,' meaning that the terms, conditions — and price — had not been set before NASA ordered the work to start. That means the agency will need to negotiate a buyout with the contractor — and that can be a long and painful process, according to government officials familiar with the cancellation process."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gm461wvBaeU/The-Awful-Anti-Pirate-System-That-Will-Probably-Work)
spidweb writes "Much virtual ink has been spilled over Ubisoft's new, harsh DRM system for Assassin's Creed 2. You must have a constant internet connection, and, if your connection breaks, the game exits. While this has angered many (and justifiably so), most writers on the topic have made an error. They think that this system, like all DRM systems in the past, will be easily broken. This article explains why, as dreadful as the system is, it does have a chance of holding hackers off long enough for the game to make its money. As such it is, if nothing else, a fascinating experiment. From the article: 'Assassin's Creed 2 is different in a key way. Remember, all of its code for saving and loading games (a significant feature, I'm sure you would agree) is tied into logging into a distant server and sending data back and forth. This vital and complex bit of code has been written from the ground up to require having the saved games live on a machine far away, with said machine being programmed to accept, save, and return the game data. This is a far more difficult problem for a hacker to circumvent.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- UN To Create Independent Panel To Review IPCC
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0IEBL9lV_10/UN-To-Create-Independent-Panel-To-Review-IPCC)
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that an independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the world's top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report that included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, although there is no scientific consensus to that effect. That brief citation — drawn from a magazine interview with a glaciologist who says he was misquoted — and sporadic criticism of the panel's leader have fueled skepticism in some quarters about the science underlying climate change. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, said the review body would be made up of 'senior scientific figures' who could perhaps produce a report by late summer for consideration at a meeting of the climate panel in October in South Korea. 'I think we are bringing some level of closure to this issue,' says Nuttall. One area to be examined is whether the panel should incorporate so-called gray literature, a term to describe nonpeer-reviewed science, in its reports. Many scientists say that such material, ranging from reports by government agencies to respected research not published in scientific journals, is crucial to seeking a complete picture of the state of climate science."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Major Electronics Vendors Accused of Price Fixing
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/xkqmKXgA4go/Major-Electronics-Vendors-Accused-of-Price-Fixing)
Lucas123 writes "After the DOJ launched an investigation last fall into price fixing by major optical disk drive manufacturers, a home electronics retail store filed a class-action lawsuit this week seeking triple damages for what it is claiming to be long-standing collusion among Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, LG Electronics and Hitachi to raise and fix prices on the drives. The suit claims the vendors used trade organization forums as meeting places to discuss the price fixing. 'These are big Asian smoke-stack industries where they're investing in big fabrication plants. You can't have a technology destroy the business,' said the attorney representing the plaintiff. 'If you fire up a big fab plant with CRT tubes, and the next generation technology destroys it, then you have a big fab plant manufacturing buggy whips. So they have to make sure the price points for these [newer] technologies ... don't destroy existing markets.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Defending Against Drones
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/xi8RocSEGNo/Defending-Against-Drones)
theodp writes "The US has not had to truly think about its air defense since the Cold War. But as America embraces the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Newsweek says it's time to consider how our greatest new weapon may come back to bite us. Smaller UAVs' cool, battery-powered engines make them difficult to hit with conventional heat-seeking missiles. And while Patriot missiles can take out UAVs, at $3 million apiece such protection carries a steep price tag, especially if we have to deal with $500 DIY drones."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- Windows Key + E produces Parameter Incorrect error
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: Hello,I have a strange problem with my computer, that seems to puzzle everyone I ask. When I press the Windows Key + E, rather than getting Windows Explorer, I get a little error message "The Parameter is incorrect". There is no title, and there is no information about how and why that error message appears.Any ideas as to whats happening?Thanks very much

Answer: try installing internet explorer ....... latest version, scan for viruses and spyware. also, do a disk cleanup and defragment the pc. if these don't work, run disk checkup with both options checked. Reply Posted on 23/3/2006 Hi, thanks for your email back. I have a number of other suggestions for you - I think I might have tracked the problem down. Id like you to right click on My Computer (on the desktop) and see if there is an explore option in the menu which appears (it will probably be 2nd from the top.) If there is no explore then we have the problem tracked down - when the Winkey and E is pressed it tries to load this shortcut, but if the shortcut does not exist, then thats when the error will occur as there is nothing to load.What I am going to describe below is the steps to take to get the explore back... if this is not the problem, please reply as I have another less likely possible problem it may be and a solution for that too.To get the explore back will require you to edit the Windows registry - as long as you are careful then this will be no problem. I have included a script below to do this, you need to save it to a file called [anything].reg, lets say fix.reg and then run itScript located at http://www.helpforce.com/main/data/winkeyfix.regrun that - if all is correct, you should get the explore option back and then the shortcut will work (although it may require a restart)

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

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

-- 10 Biggest Web Trends of the Decade(http://netforbeginners.about.com/b/a/258240.htm)

The Web has changed dramatically this decade. Advancements like Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and Cloud Computing have changed both the technology and the online culture of the modern Internet....

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

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