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Wednesday the 22nd of October 2008

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Wednesday the 22nd of October 2008

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/ObfJS-BF on 22 October 2008 10:15:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malobfjsbf.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-HZS on 22 October 2008 10:15:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagenthzs.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-HZV on 22 October 2008 10:15:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagenthzv.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-HZW on 22 October 2008 10:15:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagenthzw.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/VBDldr-A on 22 October 2008 10:15:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojvbdldra.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autorun-MN on 22 October 2008 10:15:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autorunmn.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Dloadr-BWT on 22 October 2008 07:05:59 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdloadrbwt.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Zimenok-C on 22 October 2008 07:05:59 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojzimenokc.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Zlob-ALO on 22 October 2008 07:05:59 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojzlobalo.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autorun-MM on 22 October 2008 07:05:59 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autorunmm.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- Indian Moon Mission Launched
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/oPqnJTOATHQ/article.pl)
hackerdownunder writes "India's maiden lunar mission (Chandrayaan-1) got off to a flying start today. Describing the launch as "perfect and precise", the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), G Madhavan Nair, said that it would be 14 days before the satellite would enter into lunar orbit. Chandrayaan carries eleven payloads, five designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from NASA."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Geoengineering To Cool the Earth Becoming Thinkable
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/iWa54-vScXs/article.pl)
johkir writes "As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels might cause 'marked changes in climate' that 'could be deleterious.' Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions. Instead they considered one idea: 'spreading very small reflective particles' over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space — 'a wacky geoengineering solution.' In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe — they were widely perceived by scientists and environmentalists alike as silly and even immoral attempts to avoid addressing the root of the problem of global warming. Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream." We've discussed some pretty strange ideas in the geoengineering line over the last few years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Finding Better Tech Broadcasts?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/B5NRxdnQYoo/article.pl)
BearGrylls writes "As a young lad and aspiring technologist I have found shows like Revision3's 'The Broken' and 'Systm' to be entertaining, informative, and, most importantly, thorough. As time has gone on revision3 has kept some of the tech-related shows, but dumbed them down to appeal to a larger audience. This annoyed me, but I've continued to be a loyal viewer of their tech shows anyway. However, I suspect this trend to continue and my disappointment to grow. Where can I find tech shows that dive deep into projects and discussions instead of simply skimming the surface?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jUUBWAJRsew/article.pl)
Amenacier writes "Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the use of fat stem cells in repairing cardiac damage, or fixing such cardiac problems as holes in the heart. It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle through signals from the rat cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells, without any danger of rejection by the body. Quoting: 'The next step is to implant the human heart cells onto the damaged heart of a laboratory rat to see whether they repair the heart. Then they would be trialled in higher species such as sheep and pigs before human applications could be considered. Clinical application could be five years away ...'" The Age has a multimedia treatment (Flash) of the discovery.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- LucasArts, Bioware Announce Star Wars MMO
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/f34voxr-YxM/article.pl)
LucasArts and Bioware held a press conference today to confirm what has been suspected for a long time: they're working on a Star Wars MMO. It will be called Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it will be a continuation of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise. Further coverage is available at Gamespot, and IGN has some of the concept art. An official website for the game was launched as well. "According to the game's official announcement, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith. That's about 300 years after the events of KotOR, a time frame that, according to Zeschuk, 'is completely unexplored in the lore.' Players can take the role of either a Jedi, a Sith or other classic Star Wars characters -- and, as perhaps can be expected from BioWare, Muzyka says story will be a major component, underlying and driving all of the player's actions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Feds Target "Mongols" Biker Club's Intellectual Property
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/1jI9olyTJr4/article.pl)
couchslug writes in with a Reuters account of a Federal raid on a California-based motorcycle club, the Mongols, on charges "ranging from murder and robbery to extortion, money laundering, gun trafficking and drug dealing." The interesting twist is that the authorities are asking the courts to seize the IP of the biker club — specifically, their trademarked name "Mongols." "Federal agents and police in seven states arrested more than 60 members of the Mongols motorcycle gang on Tuesday in a sweep that also targeted for the first time an outlaw group's 'intellectual property,' prosecutors said. The arrests cap a three-year undercover investigation in which US agents posed as gang members and their girlfriends to infiltrate the group, even submitting to polygraph tests administered by the bikers ... [T]he name 'Mongols,' which appears on the gang's arm patch insignia, was trademarked by the group. The indictment seeks a court order outlawing further use of the name, which would allow any police officer 'who sees a Mongol wearing this patch ... to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back' ..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Why RAID 5 Stops Working In 2009
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sKt2S1OLvFQ/article.pl)
Lally Singh recommends a ZDNet piece predicting the imminent demise of RAID 5, noting that increasing storage and non-decreasing probability of disk failure will collide in a year or so. This reader adds, "Apparently, RAID 6 isn't far behind. I'll keep the ZFS plug short. Go ZFS. There, that was it." "Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives. With a 7-drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an [unrecoverable read error]. So the read fails ... The message 'we can't read this RAID volume' travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected — you thought! — data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Damning Report On Sequoia E-Voting Machine Security
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0OIat8nd9nw/article.pl)
TechDirt notes the publication of the New Jersey voting machine study, the attempted suppression of which we have been discussing for a while now. The paper that the Princeton and Lehigh University researchers are releasing, as permitted by the Court, is "the same as the Court's redacted version, but with a few introductory paragraphs about the court case, Gusciora v. Corzine." What's new is the release of a 90-minute evidentiary video — the researchers have asked the court for permission to release a shorter version that hits the high points, as the high-res video is about 1 GB in size. See TechDirt's article for the report's executive summary listing eight ways the AVC Advantage 9.00 voting machine can be subverted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Robotic Surgery On a Beating Heart
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/WiOKuETmlns/article.pl)
An anonymous reader writes "Serious heart surgery usually involves stopping the organ and keeping the patient alive with a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. But this risks brain damage and requires a long recuperation. Scientists at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston have now developed a device that lets surgeons operate on a beating heart with a steady hand. The 'robotic' device uses 3-D ultrasound images to predict and compensate for the motion of the heart so that the surgeon can work on a faulty valve as it moves. The approach should improve recovery times and give a surgeon instant feedback on the success of the procedure, the researchers say. Here's a (slightly gory) video of the device in action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Learning To Profit From Piracy
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NzD__j4klTU/article.pl)
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired has an interview with Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, which discusses how businesses could make money off of piracy, rather than attacking people in a futile attempt to suppress it. And some of his ideas are gaining traction; work is underway on a TV show called Pirate TV, which he describes as 'two parts Anthony Bourdain, one part Mythbusters.' (Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander is on board.) Also, Mason is pretty good about practicing what he preaches in that you can pirate his book on his own website."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Soaring, Cryptography, and Nuclear Weapons
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Me7PEw0HfAM/article.pl)
Martin Hellman sends in a pointer to his essay that uses analogies from cryptography and the sport of soaring in an attempt to draw people in to thinking about the risks of nuclear weapons. Quoting: "... I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home." Hellman is best known as co-inventor (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, and has worked for over twenty-five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He is also a glider pilot with over 2,600 logged hours. Hellman adds, "Readers needing a break can go to some photos of the Sierra Nevada mountains taken from my glider."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Practical Reasons To Choose Git Or Subversion?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wLWdFDIlOJ8/article.pl)
markmcb writes "I develop Rails applications and recently followed my lemming herd and made the switch to Git after learning some of the practical advantages Git offers over Subversion. As I'm sure there are many die-hard Subversion fans in the Slashdot audience, I'm curious what your key reasons are for sticking with Subversion. If possible, I'd like reasons that apply to 'most of the time' as opposed to arguments based on obscure features that may get used only a few times ever."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- An In-Depth Look At Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4-rBCvpceV0/article.pl)
theraindog writes "More than a year and a half after the first terabyte hard drives became widely available, Seagate has reached the next storage capacity milestone. With 1.5 terabytes, the latest Barracuda 7200.11 serves up 50% more capacity than its peers, and at a surprisingly affordable $0.12 per gigabyte. But Seagate's decision to drop new platters into an old Barracuda shell may not have been a wise one. The Tech Report's in-depth review of the world's first 1.5TB hard drive shows that while the latest 'cuda is screaming fast in synthetic throughput drag races, poor real world write speeds ultimately tarnish its appeal."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Wikipedia's New Definition of Truth
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/z1FKwyYLWSA/article.pl)
Hugh Pickens writes "Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word 'truth.' While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. 'But wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,' says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia's policy of 'No Original Research' also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier's frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia's truth? 'Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Google Opens Up Android Codebase
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Zli2yYv_HPE/article.pl)
rsk writes "It's official: Google has Open Sourced Android. The source code can be downloaded from Android's Git repository. Bugs are handled at the Google Code Android project page with documentation being handled by a collection of Google Site pages. One of the more interesting aspects of Android seems to be the seemingly Eclipse Foundation-like organization of the project, welcoming both Individual and Commercial developers into the Android development pot. One of the benefits of this arrangement is securing the existence of the project by involving commercial interests and their money in the process ... this is also one of the downsides; having commercial entities charter and lead features of a platform that their own commercial offerings provide 'enhanced' versions of, sometimes leaving the free offering always lacking in one obvious way or another. It's hard to say at this point how involved Google will be in this process, or the Open Handset Alliance in general, with managing the health of sub-projects under the Android umbrella as time goes on."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

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

-- I uninstalled Norton 2000 and now cant startup Windows
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I had 2 Antivirus's on my Compac Computer and I deleted one of them which was the Norton 2000 Antivirus. I did it incorrectly and my Computer will only start with my start up disk. At first I got a message saying that I deleted Norton incorrectly and to install it again but I don't have the CD on that version to install; I must have gotten it with another program I purchased. I am not getting that message anymore because I tried so many different things to fix this problem that it went away. I want to put in the recovery disk but when I put it into the CD Drive on the screen it recognizes it, pops it out of the CD drive, and then goes into the screen that gives me 3 options: Normal Safe ModeI don't remember what the 3rd and 4th are. I want to know how to either fix my problem or be able to put my CD in to do a recovery which would put me back to Factory Settings. I am so desperate I would be willing to do that.I did buy Norton Antivirus 2003 and I got Norton Doctor 2002 but I don't really know how to use them. I bought both of these last Sunday thinking this could fix the problem. Please help?

Answer: If you are running Windows XP or ME the safest course of action would be to use 'System Rollback' to roll your system back to a point before these changes were made.Please see Windows Help for details on how to do this.Without the origional Norton CD's used, it would be impossible to restore your PC to a working state. You would need to use your origional Compaq Restore CD to restore your computer to the factory settings.If you have the origional Norton CD's, installing the program again and then uninstalling it should correct the issue.NB: It is unsafe to have two anti-virus program's running on once PC. Anti-virus programs interact with Windows at a very deep down level and can cause problems with each other if they are running at the same time. Usually, one anti-virus program will protect your PC as long as it is kept fully updated from the anti-virus producers web site. Reply Posted on 14/12/2002 It would be best to use the restore feature of Windows XP to take your computer back to the time before you deleted Norton 2002....Or the similar feature of Windows Me.It safe (and wise) to have more than one antivirus program. It is very important to have ONLY ONE running as a real-time or active monitor...The other can be installed and used for manual or schedules antivirus scans. This is reccomended because if one antivirus program (even if kept up to date) may, on occasions, miss a virus. If you have two antivirus programs, keep both up-to-date, and run full system scans with both on a regular basis, you should be able to catch and remove any virus. Personally, I have eTrust EZ Antivirus as my real-time monitor, and run daily scans of my system with it and also with Norton 2002 and Kaspersky Antivirus.I have the original Norton 2002 installation file saved. If you wish, I could e-mail it to you It is a zipped file that when opened will install Norton 2002. It is several months old, so you would need to update it to make it current (as well as enter your registration information). If you do re-install Norton, make sure you disable the "real-time" antivirus scanner that is running first....The Norton "real-time" scanner will be activated by default, and, as stated above, you do not want two real-time monitors running. After installation, you can disable the Norton 2002 real-time monitor and enable the other if you wish. Having Norton 2002 re-installed may allow you to uninstall correctly if that is what you choose to do. I hope this helps

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

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