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Tuesday the 9th of March 2010

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Tuesday the 9th of March 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
---------------------------------------
Mal/EncPk-OA on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malencpkoa.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/Oficla-A on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/maloficlaa.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/Taterf-B on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/maltaterfb.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/TDSSRt-B on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/maltdssrtb.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/BHO-PL on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbhopl.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/DwnLdr-IBN on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdwnldribn.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/NtRootK-FS on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojntrootkfs.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Smardf-Gen on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojsmardfgen.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Tidola-Gen on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojtidolagen.html?_log_from=rss
W32/BatMapi-Gen on 9 March 2010 11:32:25 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32batmapigen.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- 50% Efficiency Boost From New Fuel Injection System
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/H84x-MFNF8Y/50-Efficiency-Boost-From-New-Fuel-Injection-System)
chudnall notes a Technology Review story on a new gas engine injection system that promises increased efficiency of up to 50%. "The key is heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber, says Mike Rocke, Transonic's vice president of business development. This puts it into a supercritical state that allows for very fast and clean combustion, which in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to propel a vehicle. The company also treats the gasoline with a catalyst that 'activates' it, partially oxidizing it to enhance combustion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Making Sense of CPU and GPU Model Numbers?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/viCjkn9orj0/Making-Sense-of-CPU-and-GPU-Model-Numbers)
b4dc0d3r writes "How do you make sense of the various model numbers or naming schemes for CPUs, graphics cards, and the related chipsets? All I want is something that will run Oblivion and output full 1080 video to a TV. Last time I built my own computer I just went to Pricewatch, made a few easy choices, and everything came to my door. Do I really have to research the differences among Core i5, Core 2 Duo, Pentium 4, Pentium D, Semperon, Athlon, Phenom...? And that's just the processor. Is there a reference somewhere? In short, how do you buy a computer these days?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- NSA Still Ahead In Crypto, But Not By Much
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/to3-_mqBWX8/NSA-Still-Ahead-In-Crypto-But-Not-By-Much)
Hugh Pickens writes "Network World summarizes an RSA Conference panel discussion in which former NSA technical director Brian Snow said that cryptographers for the NSA have been losing ground to their counterparts in universities and commercial security vendors for 20 years, but still maintain the upper hand in the sophistication of their crypto schemes and in their ability to decrypt. 'I do believe NSA is still ahead, but not by much — a handful of years,' says Snow. 'I think we've got the edge still.' Snow added that that in the 1980s there was a huge gap between what the NSA could do and what commercial encryption technology was capable of. 'Now we are very close together and moving very slowly forward in a mature field.' The NSA has one key advantage (besides their deep staff of Ph.D. mathematicians and other cryptographic experts who work on securing traffic and breaking codes): 'We cheat. We get to read what [academics] publish. We do not publish what we research,' he said. Snow's claim of NSA superiority seemed to rankle some members on the panel. Adi Shamir, the "S" in the RSA encryption algorithm, said that when the titles of papers in NSA technical journals were declassified up to 1983, none of them included public key encryption; 'That demonstrates that NSA was behind,' said Shamir. Snow replied that when technologies are developed separately in parallel, the developers don't necessarily use the same terms for them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Jobs Says No Tethering iPad To iPhone
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/DsJqXlDCrfo/Jobs-Says-No-Tethering-iPad-To-iPhone)
tugfoigel writes "Anyone who currently owns an iPhone and was hoping they would be able to use it as a mobile Web access point for a Wi-Fi iPad just got some bad news. Reportedly, Steve Jobs has said this will not happen. Swedish blog Slashat.se claims they e-mailed Jobs directly to ask him whether or not you'd be able to tether your iPad and iPhone and received a terse 'No' in reply. According to the report, the email headers made it plausible that the reply had come from Jobs's iPhone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Why Microsoft Can't Afford To Let Novell Die
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/re2AYeAfc8U/Why-Microsoft-Cant-Afford-To-Let-Novell-Die)
geek4 sends in an analysis indicating that Microsoft may have the most to lose if hedge-fund operator Elliot buys Novell. (The eWeekEurope piece is based on a longer and geekier writeup by Andy Updegrove on how the mechanics of unsolicited tender offers can play out in the tech world.) To avoid meltdown or asset-stripping, Novell can try and find a preferred bidder — a company with some interest in running Novell as a business, and preferrably a tech company. Or another company may make a move independently. But who might that be? A couple of analysts have suggested IBM, Oracle, or SAP. These all have problems... Microsoft is in a similar category, with one added problem. ... Microsoft has staked any open source credibility that it has on Novell's SUSE distribution. If Novell falls to bits, then Microsoft's efforts to gain open source cred pretty much disappear with it. It's something that would have been impossible to imagine a few years back, but if we're looking for someone to prop Novell up, Microsoft would now be a prime candidate."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- AIDS Virus Can Hide In Bone Marrow
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ZF2F7m8s9NY/AIDS-Virus-Can-Hide-In-Bone-Marrow)
suraj.sun writes "The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease. Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells. The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said. In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, Dr. Collins said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Microsoft Giving Rival Browsers a Lift
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/VEdhzWBJMmY/Microsoft-Giving-Rival-Browsers-a-Lift)
gollum123 tips an article at the NY Times on the progress of the European Windows browser choice screen that we have been discussing recently. "Rivals of Microsoft's market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch. Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is the strongest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer worldwide, said that more than 50,000 people had downloaded Firefox via a 'choice screen' that has been popping up on Windows-equipped computers in Europe since the end of last month. ... Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland, and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear. Microsoft said it was too early to tell whether the choice screen might prompt significant numbers of users to change. The digital ballot is being delivered over the Internet with software updates, and it is expected to take until mid-May to complete the process. The browser choice will also be presented to buyers of new Windows computers across the European Union for five years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Major ISPs Help Fund BitTorrent User Tracking Research
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/3PuBHgHOqOw/Major-ISPs-Help-Fund-BitTorrent-User-Tracking-Research)
An anonymous reader writes "I was scanning conference proceedings to come up with ideas for a reading group I run at my workplace, and I noticed an interesting paper from the new IEEE WIFS forensics conference. Researchers from the University of Colorado have published a technique for tracking BitTorrent users (PDF) by joining and actively probing torrent swarms using low-cost cloud computing services. They claim their methods allowed them to monitor the entire Pirate Bay torrent set for as little as $13/mo using EC2. But that's not even the interesting part. Their work appears to have been 'funded in part through gifts from PolyCipher' — a broadband ISP consortium. That's right; three major national ISPs funded this round of BitTorrent tracking research, not the MPAA/RIAA. Could this be evidence of ISP support for ACTA and a global three-strikes law?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Google To Steal Office Web Apps' Thunder?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/DbaJbA51fu0/Google-To-Steal-Office-Web-Apps-Thunder)
Barence writes "Google has stepped up its assault on Microsoft's productivity software with the acquisition of a start-up company that allows Office users to edit and share their documents on the Web. The search giant has acquired DocVerse for an undisclosed sum. Product manager Jonathan Rochelle said DocVerse software makes it easier for users and businesses to move their existing PC documents to the cloud, and that Google 'fell in love with what they were doing to make that transition easier.' Microsoft said in an emailed statement that Google's acquisition of DocVerse acknowledges that customers want to use and collaborate with Office documents. 'Furthermore, it reinforces that customers are embracing Microsoft's long-stated strategy of software plus services, which combines rich client software with cloud services.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Gas Wants To Kill the Wind
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ho3X_gPKFLQ/Gas-Wants-To-Kill-the-Wind)
RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- 8-Core Intel Nehalem-EX To Launch This Month
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/kQyV3x7Q-BE/8-Core-Intel-Nehalem-EX-To-Launch-This-Month)
MojoKid writes "What could you do with 8 physical cores of CPU processing power? Intel's upcoming 8-core Nehalem-EX is launching later this month, according to Intel Xeon Platform Director Shannon Poulin. The announcement puts to rest rumors that the 8-core part might be delayed, and makes good on a promise Intel made last year when the chip maker said it would release the chip in the first half of 2010. To quickly recap, Nehalem-EX boasts an extensive feature-set, including up to 8 cores per processor, up to 16 threads per processor with Intel Hyper-threading, scalability up to eight sockets via Intel's serial Quick Path Interconnect and more with third-party node controllers, and 24MB of shared cache."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Valve Confirms Mac Versions of Steam, Valve Games
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jvtT12ANsEU/Valve-Confirms-Mac-Versions-of-Steam-Valve-Games)
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra:
"Valve will release a version of its Steam digital distribution service for Mac next month, along with Mac-native versions of its own games, the company confirmed today after days of hints — and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions. The Source engine, which Valve uses to develop all its internal titles and also licenses to third-party developers, will incorporate OpenGL in addition to DirectX, to allow Mac support for all Source developers. ... 'We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform, so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360,' said Cook. 'Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- US Eases Internet Export Rules To Iran, Sudan, Cuba
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/b1W3L8fAo34/US-Eases-Internet-Export-Rules-To-Iran-Sudan-Cuba)
coondoggie writes "Looking to facilitate what it calls free speech rights in countries that don't look favorably at such liberties, the US government today said it would ease the regulations around exporting Internet-based applications to Iran, Sudan and Cuba. Specifically, the Treasury Department said it would add general licenses (PDF) authorizing the exportation of free, personal, Internet-based communications services – such as instant messaging, chat and email, and social networking – to those three countries. The amendments also allow the exportation of related software to Iran and Sudan, the department said in a release (the US Commerce Department controls software exports with Cuba). Until now all such exports would have broken federal laws."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Disposable Toilet To Change the World
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/-srwS7QONF0/Disposable-Toilet-To-Change-the-World)
captn ecks writes "A biodegradable and self-sterilizing bag for people of the toilet-disenfranchised world (40% of humankind) to dispose of their bodily waste and turn it into safe fertilizer has been created by a Swedish entrepreneur. It's a dead simple and brilliant solution to a vexing problem. From the article: 'Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces. The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm. “Not only is it sanitary,” said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, “they can reuse this to grow crops.”'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- MIT Produces Electricity Using Thermopower Waves
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mxOUPFwJ7WY/MIT-Produces-Electricity-Using-Thermopower-Waves)
MikeChino writes "MIT scientists have discovered a never-before-known phenomenon wherein carbon nanotubes can be used to harness energy from 'thermopower waves.' To do this they coated the nanotubes with a reactive fuel and then lit one end, causing a fast-moving thermal wave to speed down the length of the tube. The heat from the fuel rises to a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, and can speed along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heat also pushes electrons down the tube, which creates a substantial electrical current. The system can output energy (in proportion to its weight) about 100x greater than an equivalent weight lithium-ion battery, and according to MIT the discovery 'opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- Do I need a system disk to start Windows XP?
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I am building a new computer. I plan on installing XP on it. I am a novice builder. I was wondering with XP if I need a system disk to start with. I thought I read where with XP it does not need DOS. I hope this is not a dumb question. Thanks in advance.

Answer: In the bios you need to make sure that its primary boot device is set to cd-rom, you can then put the cd in the drive and setup will load from the cd.

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

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