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Saturday the 8th of November 2008

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Saturday the 8th of November 2008

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

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1. Latest Virus Alerts From Sophos
---------------------------------------
Troj/AdvHack-A on 8 November 2008 05:34:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojadvhacka.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-IEL on 8 November 2008 05:34:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentiel.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-IEM on 8 November 2008 05:34:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentiem.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Bdoor-APS on 8 November 2008 05:34:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbdooraps.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autorun-KO on 8 November 2008 05:34:32 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autorunko.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/EncPk-FX on 7 November 2008 23:46:41 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malencpkfx.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/OnlineG-B on 7 November 2008 23:46:41 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malonlinegb.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-IEJ on 7 November 2008 23:46:41 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentiej.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Agent-IEK on 7 November 2008 23:46:41 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojagentiek.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/BHO-HU on 7 November 2008 23:46:41 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbhohu.html?_log_from=rss

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

-- Should the United States' New CTO Really Be a CIO?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/GpicWAAt_zs/article.pl)
CurtMonash writes "Barack Obama promised to appoint the United States' first Chief Technology Officer. Naturally, the blogosphere is full of discussion as to who that should be. I favor American Management Systems founder and former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti. Richard Koman thinks it should be one of the better state CTOs. John Doerr, going in a different direction, thinks it should be his partner Bill Joy. We can bandy names back and forth all month, but first a more fundamental question needs to be answered: What do we need most — a get-things-done CIO (Chief Information Officer), or a more visionary true CTO? I think it's a CIO, and based on his campaign statements it appears Obama agrees. Management of government IT is a huge, generally unsolved problem, and we need somebody deeply experienced to have a fighting chance. Of course, that doesn't preclude recruiting a visionary CTO in addition, but the highest priority is a CIO. What do you think?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- A Look At the CoreFlood Botnet
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/XhdKpevoszw/article.pl)
CNet is running a story about research from security expert Joe Stewart into the CoreFlood botnet, which has harvested at least "50 gigabytes of compressed data, searchable in a MySQL database," from a group of over 370,000 bot IDs. Stewart explains how the botnet operates and some of the things he's learned about the group that operates it. "Within the 50GB file, Stewart was able to discern how the thieves culled the data. He said they run a test script against that data that will log via a proxy into the bank using the credentials captured, say by a keylogging application. The CoreFlood script will then capture the HTML data on the post long-in page. In most cases, that page also contains the account's bank balance. They do that, he said, so that after running the test they have a picture of what are the highest dollar amounts. 'I don't know whether they steal from all of them. We don't have access to the accounts; the bank is not going to tell us how much was stolen out of any given account. We're not going to get that information, but we know they're actively logging and checking accounts to collect the balance data. The only reason (the script) can see that data is to target the biggest accounts first,' he said."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Simulations Predict Where We Can Find Dark Matter
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ebk-VzKkOp8/article.pl)
p1234 writes with this excerpt from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics: "Simulations by the Virgo team show how the Milky Way's halo grew through a series of violent collisions and mergers from millions of much smaller clumps that emerged from the Big Bang. ... If Fermi does detect the predicted emission from the Milky Way's smooth inner halo, then it may, if we are lucky, also see gamma-rays from small (and otherwise invisible) clumps of dark matter which happen to lie particularly close to the Sun. ... The largest simulation took 3.5 million processor hours to complete. Volker Springel was responsible for shepherding the calculation through the machine and said: 'At times I thought it would never finish.' Max Planck Director, Professor Simon White, remarked that 'These calculations finally allow us to see what the dark matter distribution should look like near the Sun where we might stand a chance of detecting it.'" We discussed a related simulation a few months ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Are Neo-Retro Game Releases a Fad?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/lDrQ8Jun0ww/article.pl)
With modern console technology making it easy to develop and distribute small games, more and more companies are taking advantage of gamers' nostalgia to re-release decades-old hits, and to create entirely new titles in older styles. Gamasutra takes a look at what the retro game fad has become, and where it can go from here. What old games or series do you think would translate well onto today's consoles? "Many gamers who bought Mega Man 9 did so because of the game's inherent nostalgia, or because they never had a chance to enjoy the older games on the Nintendo Entertainment System when they were younger. Mega Man 9 is very much a product of its context. Its gameplay is fantastic, but it too is a product of the time period in which it reigned supreme. It suggests the question: can neo-retro games stand the test of time? Will games that mimic or lampoon the 8-bit era remain relevant and interesting to the masses long after its original audience has disappeared?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Doctorow On Copyright Reform & Culture
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/8AE0zA9qKbo/article.pl)
super-papa sends us to Locus Magazine for an article by Cory Doctorow discussing the conflicts between copyright law and modern culture, and arguing against the perception that copying media is still unusual. Quoting: "Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your office door and you're not violating copyright. Take a picture of your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same co-workers can see it, and you've violated copyright law, and since copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each act of infringement. There's a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- The State of Electronic Voting In the 2008 US Elections
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/i-y3tkmiuEo/article.pl)
Geek Satire writes "Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately. The 2008 US elections have avoided many well-known problems of the 2004 and 2000 elections, but many problems remain. O'Reilly News interviewed Dr. Barbara Simons, advisor to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, to review electronic voting in the 2008 US elections, discussing the physical security of storing and maintaining election machines, the move from electronic back to paper ballots, and why open source voting machines don't necessarily solve problems of bugs, backdoors, and audits."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- ODF Toolkit Announced
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/LJFJ3L9_t_E/article.pl)
Sweetshark writes "IBM and Sun joined at the 2008 OpenOffice.org conference in Beijing to announce the ODF Toolkit Union. The ODF Toolkit project will be independent of the development at OpenOffice.org, and will operate under the liberal Apache license. It goes from small tools that simplify using ODF in the software development process to large ODF Java and .NET libraries that can be used within other projects. 'The future of accessing and distributing software is here today,' said Michael Bemmer, senior director of Collaboration Engineering at Sun. 'It is no longer an acceptable business practice to have silos of office document data stored in proprietary formats. The industry has moved forward and is replacing the silos with business content, such as on-premise business applications, software solutions offered over the Internet and applications supported by mobile devices that are critical in Service Oriented Architectures.' Will this help ODF to make inroads in the business world after the successes on the desktops of users at home?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- "Minority Report"-Like Control For PC
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/piY-nLu5_uw/article.pl)
An anonymous reader writes "A startup named Mgestyk Technologies claims that they have an affordable solution for 'Minority Report'-like PC control. They have released a video in which they use hand gestures to play games like Halo and Guitar Hero, as well as perform 'multi-touch' interactions for applications like Google Earth. Engadget and Gizmodo discuss the potential of the technology but point out that the system has visible lag when used for gaming. Will camera-based interfaces ever meet the low-latency demands of gaming? For how much longer will we still be using keyboards, mice and joysticks?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Scientists Turn Tequila Into Diamonds
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/unMp1CRkzZE/article.pl)
MaxwellEdison writes "Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. '"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Four Google Officials Facing Charges in Italy For Errant Video
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/YzS4TYEAZGw/article.pl)
mikesd81 writes to tell us that four Google employees may be facing charges of defamation and failure to control personal data simply because they didn't remove a video of a boy with Down's Syndrome being harassed and eventually hit over the head with a box of tissue, from Google Video. The video was posted in September of 2006 and was removed by Google within a day of receiving the initial complaints, but apparently that isn't fast enough. "Google maintains charges against the employees are unwarranted, Pancini said. Europe's E-commerce Directive exempts service providers from prescreening content before it is publicly posted, he said. Also, the video was technically uploaded to a Google server in the U.S., not in Italy, Pancini said. 'It was a terrible video,' Pancini said, adding that Google is concerned about the case's impact on censorship on the Internet. The defendants include David C. Drummond, a Google senior vice president, corporate development and chief legal officer. Pancini said Drummond did paperwork to create Google Italy, but has never lived in the country."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Toshiba Launches Laptop With Three GPUs
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0XUhxUzCUVY/article.pl)
arcticstoat writes to mention that Toshiba's latest line of high-powered laptops has three GPUs included. Both the Qosmio X305-Q706 and Q708 come with an integrated GeForce 9400M for day-to-day processing tasks but have a pair of GeForce 9800Ms in SLI that kick in when you need the extra horsepower. "The [Qosmio] X305-Q706 costs $1,999 US (£1,257) in the US, although we haven't seen any UK pricing on the laptops yet. The system comes with a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 and 4GB of RAM, while the costlier X305-Q708 comes with a quad-core 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9300 CPU."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Honda Assists With "Next Steps" For Mankind
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/V9RtupLJYCI/article.pl)
hedonisticaltruism writes "The CBC reports that Honda has just unveiled a new walking-assist device that enhances the walking motion rather than just providing transportation. The device braces and strengthens natural leg movements primarily in walking and crouching. They're looking to market this to rehabilitation cases, the handicapped and industries requiring repetitive crouching and walking movements such as factory work and delivery services."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- How Do You Justify the Existence of IT?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sRUUMbUknC0/article.pl)
bakamaki writes "I work for a small manufacturing company as a SysAdmin. My boss is a DBA. We are the only IT employees. He recently decided to record hours spent on his projects and then evaluate how much time the databases he writes save the employees. Then he translates that into a $ figure. He's asking me to do something similar but I'm kinda at a loss. It seems most of the stuff I do is preventative, IE care and feeding of servers and network infrastructure in addition to all the break fix stuff I do for the user base with their desktops. When in this position what do you folks usually do?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- How To Cut In Line and Not Get Caught
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/R6SY22PdMIo/article.pl)
ewenc writes "A psychology study of hundreds of people waiting for front-row access to U2 concerts points to the best ways to cut in line and not get caught. "Super-fans" are most irked by queue-jumpers. People were equally peeved whether someone cut in front or behind, and cutters who jumped beside a friend were less likely to attract scorn."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Website Optimization
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/GWKQVtlmrFw/article.pl)
Michael J. Ross writes "As Internet users' expectations continue to ratchet upwards, it is increasingly essential that every Web site owner maximize the chances that those users will find the site in question, and, once found, that the site will perform well enough that those visitors become customers or members, and recommend the site to others. Key elements of a successful strategy include optimization for search engines, pay-per-click advertising, and visitor conversion, as well as responsive Web pages and fine-tuning of all the above, using various metrics. These topics and others are explored in Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets by Andrew B. King." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

-- SpiceLogic Document 2 Text Converter
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/SpiceLogic_Document_2_Text_Converter.htm)
SpiceLogic Document 2 Text Converter is a Windows software that provides you an efficient way of converting your document files from various types to plain text The supported conversion types are MS Word doc MS Excel xls PDF HTML and RTF It allows you to convert a lots of files as BATCH PROCESSING by a single mouse click You dont need

-- Hide My Files
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/Hide_My_Files.htm)
Hide My Files is an easy to use folder lock used to hide files and folders from unauthorized use This file and folder security software provides an easy to use interface that allows you to choose the files by selecting the directories in which you choose to block users from viewing

-- NET Document 2 Text Converter DLL
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/.NET_Document_2_Text_Converter_DLL.htm)
NET Document 2 Text Converter DLL is a NET class library that provides you an efficient way of converting your document files from various types to plain text Recommended for Windows application only Not for ASPNET The supported conversion types are MS Word doc MS Excel xls PDF HTML and RTF You dont need MS Office installed to r

-- SPYWIPE
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/SPYWIPE.htm)
SPYWIPE is the fastest scanning techniques in the market It will protect your PC from the thousands of SpyWare and AdWare internet surfers come across In addition SPYWIPE have the ability to manage the infected lists so the user can take an action later without performing a new scan A set of scan options is proviided so the user can highly custo

-- SPYWAREWIPE
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/SPYWAREWIPE.htm)
SPYWAREWIPE is the fastest scanning techniques in the market It will protect your PC from the thousands of SpyWare and AdWare internet surfers come across In addition SPYWAREWIPE have the ability to manage the infected lists so the user can take an action later without performing a new scan A set of scan options is proviided so the user can high

-- Flowers Screensaver
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/Flowers_Screensaver.htm)
A Screen Saver with pictures of different flowers in nice colors It has a black background and the pictures of the flowers change every five seconds This Screensaver can be installed with one click A nice Screen Saver for spring dreams at the computer

-- ReplaceMagic ExcelOnly Standard
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/ReplaceMagic_ExcelOnly_Standard.htm)
Have you ever been in situation that you need to change text header footer comments OLE object links hyperlinks or even more in thousands of files and you had to open each file manually to make changes? With ReplaceMagic you can scan folders for files and by entering search and replace strings let application to do all changes automatically fo

-- Easter Bonus
(http://www.planet-shareware.com/Easter_Bonus.htm)
Love match-three games? Spring into action and play Easter Bonus Slick and addictive and really really cute; this is the latest game from the Xmas Bonus team Fluffy chicks chocolate eggs and the Easter bunnywe know you cant resist A calorie-free treat for players of all ages

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

-- I can get only 16 colors and my screen area is only 640 X 480
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows ME. When I open up display properties, settings, I get only 16 colors and my screen area is only 640 X 480. I went through the help troubleshooter and am still unable to get the right color. Is there something wrong in my BIOS? Or is there another solution?

Answer: Nothing wrong with your bios.If you know the make and mode of your video card, then....Right click on any clear area of your "desktop"Left click on the menu option "Properties"Left click on the "settings" option of the dialog box.Under the monitor in the newly displayed box will be the name of your monitor and video card.If the video card is incorrect, dig out the CD that came with your video card (or possibly your motherboard) and reinstall the video card drivers.If the video card model is correct, check the colors dropdown box. If there is an option for more colors then bump the colors to 16 bit or high 32 bit.***************************************If you can bump the number of colors up, but the video refuses to go any higher, then most likely the video drivers are damaged and just reinstall them.****************************************

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

-- What Security Software do you Recommend?

What anti-virus software should I use? How about a firewall? And
what about spyware? Should I use one of the all-in-one packages that
claim to do it all?

As you might imagine, I get these questions all the time. As a result,
I do have recommendations in various articles on the site.
Here's the short version that sums it all up.

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

-- What is Bloatware?(http://netforbeginners.about.com/b/a/257730.htm)

Sadly, bloatware is commonplace. It is when a software product provides minimal functionality while consuming a disproportionately large portion of your hard disk space and memory. This extra space is...

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