Pc News

[Rasputin]

Kama Sutra virus expected to strike

SAN FRANCISCO- A destructive worm posing as a pornographic e-mail may already have infected hundreds of thousands of computers and could erase many everyday files on Friday, security experts warn.

The "Kama Sutra" worm, which targets popular Microsoft Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and ZIP files, is a threat because many users will not know the virus has infected their computers until it is too late, security experts said.

They also estimate that the worm -- which spreads by e-mailing itself to addresses in an infected computer's mailbox -- may already have slipped onto 275,000 to 500,000 machines and is now simply waiting to obliterate files on Friday.

The virus, also known as Nyxem, Grew.A or MyWife, tricks users by appearing as an e-mail attachment with subject lines such as "Hot Movie," "give me a kiss" and "Miss Lebanon 2006."

Some variations refer to the ancient Kama Sutra guide to elaborate sexual positions in order to attract attention and convince victims to open.

[Rasputin]

Mozilla Fixes Firefox Security Problems

SAN FRANCISCO-Mozilla has released a new version of its Firefox browser containing critical security updates. Version 1.5.0.1 of the browser, released Wednesday, also contains a number of "stability" fixes to address problems that cause the browser to gum up the performance of some systems.

Wednesday's release marks the first time Mozilla developers have used the product's new automatic update mechanism, which was introduced with version 1.5 of the browser. The update is available here.

Staggered Updates

By Thursday some users were complaining on online forums that they had not been automatically notified of the software updates, as expected. But the delay is happening because Mozilla is staggering the updates to prevent its servers from overloading, according to Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering with Mozilla.


Before this week's software release, the updating service had been evaluated with about 500,000 early testers, and it worked fine, Schroepfer says. "There's no need to panic," he says. "I have high confidence that [all users] will get the update."

[Rasputin]

Fake F-Secure E-Mail Contains Malware

Trojan horse has been sent to e-mail addresses disguised as a message from Helsinki, Finland, antivirus software vendor F-Secure, the company said in a statement.

F-Secure said that an unknown attacker sent out thousands of infected e-mail messages crafted so that they appear to be from a nonexistent F-Secure employee, "David Adams, Dept. Research, F-Secure Development."


The addresses used in the attack include press@f-secure.com, info@f-secure.com, and editor@f-secure.com, F-Secure said. The messages were not sent from the company's network but were spoofed to look like they were coming from an F-Secure address, the company said.

[Rasputin]

Apple sued over iPod earphones

NEW YORK- A Louisiana man has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Computer for allegedly putting consumers at risk of suffering noise-induced hearing loss.

The complaint, filed January 31 in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. by John Kiel Patterson, alleges that iPods fail to contain adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss. Patterson claims that the iPods and the accompanying "ear bud" earphones are defectively designed.

The suit notes that in 2002, France required Apple to limit personal listening device output to 100dB. In response, Apple pulled its players from store shelves and upgraded the software in European models to limit output to 100dB. It did not change U.S. models, the complaint alleges.

Apple provides a general warning in its user's manual regarding the risk of permanent hearing loss if earphones or headphones are used at high volume. The complaint alleges that the warning is insufficient because it does not advise the listener of what is a high volume or a safe level.

Patterson claims in the complaint that he would not have purchased his iPod priced at that level had he known he would need to buy different earphones to reduce the risk.

Attorneys in the Seattle and Los Angeles offices of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro filed the suit for Patterson.

Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.

[Hamidjan]

ziyad lazem nist inja zoor bezanam ta befahmam in RedWine az oon zede Microsfti-ha hast va chon Moderator ham hast, dige ma ham bayad ham range jama'at shavim va bezanim too khale Microsoft va az Linux tarif konim tof be in Microsoft ke hamashoon dozdand

[Rasputin]

Networks' iTunes gamble paying off

LOS ANGELES- Television networks took a leap into the unknown when they started selling their shows on Apple's iTunes online store, but even in these early days, it's starting to look as if that faith in digital downloads was well placed.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs welcomed Walt Disney Co. and Pixar Animation Studios content to the service in October. Now there are 40 different series, each episode of which costs a standardized $1.99 to purchase, and more are on the way.

Nobody will disclose numbers for these television downloads. It's easy, however, to keep an eye on the iTunes download chart, which usually shows NBC's "The Office" as the top full-length program, followed by ABC's "Lost" and Comedy Central's "South Park."

Ben Silverman, an executive producer of "The Office," whose ratings have not quite matched the critical acclaim, praised NBC for its willingness to "dive into the iTunes relationship quickly." He credited the download capability with boosting broadcast viewership.

[Rasputin]

Apple launches $149 iPod nano

NEW YORK- Apple Computer Inc on Tuesday launched a new 1 gigabyte iPod nano music player for $149 and said it cut the price of its shuffle music player.

It said the shuffle music player will now go on sale at $69 for the 512 megabyte version and for $99 for the 1 gigabyte model. It said the new 1 gigabyte nano could hold up to 240 songs or 15,000 photographs.

[Rasputin]

Google puts instant message service inside e-mail

SAN FRANCISCO- Google Inc. will introduce over the coming weeks a simpler way for Google users to conduct instant message chats from inside a Web browser window, alongside their e-mail, the company said on Monday.

Google, which is known for its simple way of searching the Web, is hoping that by embedding new instant messaging software it calls "Gmail Chat" into its existing e-mail service it can differentiate itself in a crowded market it was late to join.

The Mountain View, California-based company is struggling to stand out in an entrenched field. Instant messaging was pioneered by America Online more than a decade ago. It, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. now have tens of millions of users each.

Google is fixing a decade-old technical divide between the generic Web browser that can check e-mail, search the Web or perform a host of other activities, and separate software used to converse in quick back-and-forth messages with buddies.

"We are breaking down some of the artificial barriers between e-mail and Web browsing," Salar Kamangar, Google's vice president of product management, said in a phone interview.

"We observed by talking with our users that there is no reason to think of IM as different from an e-mail message."

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Faces First EU Antitrust Fines

BRUSSELS-Microsoft looks more than likely to earn a place in history by becoming the first company to be hit with daily fines by the European Union for failing to respect an antitrust ruling. The EU's highest antitrust official, Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, has given the company until February 15 to comply with the commission's March 2004 ruling or face a fine of up to $2.4 million a day.

Events of recent weeks indicate that the company will not meet the commission's demands by that date, so the procedure will be launched to impose daily penalties. This view is shared not just by Microsoft's rivals and complainants in the case, but also independent analysts.


"I wouldn't be at all surprised if the EU went ahead and fined Microsoft," said Gary Barnett, an analyst covering the company at Ovum in the UK.

Issues in the Case

The key issue is whether Microsoft has done enough to ensure interoperability with its workgroup server software, one of the three elements of the commission's 2004 ruling. The company argues it has gone far beyond what the commission is asking for by offering to open access to the source code for the communications protocols.


"We have done everything we can to respond to the commission's changing demands, even going beyond the decision," a company spokesperson said.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft plans new PC security service for June

SEATTLE- Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to launch a new computer security service in June, marking the world's biggest software maker's entry into the fast-growing consumer anti-virus market.

Microsoft's Windows OneCare Live, a subscription-based, self-updating service, will push the software giant into competition with consumer security providers Symantec Corp., McAfee Inc. and Trend Micro Inc.

The new security product represents one of Microsoft's first steps into its Web services strategy, which aims to deliver software and services over the Internet in competition with rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)

Microsoft said it aims to fill a void in the security market by offering an all-in-one service that includes anti-virus, firewall and anti-spyware software along with backup and computer performance maintenance tools.

[Rasputin]

Google treading on Microsoft turf in Dell tests

SAN FRANCISCO- Dell Inc. and Google Inc. confirmed on Tuesday they are testing a pre-installed package of Google software on Dell computers, in a potential blow to Microsoft Corp.'s dominance of the desktop software business.

Bob Kaufman, a spokesman for Dell, the world's leading personal computer maker, said his company is evaluating Google Inc. software that PC customers could use to search both the public Web and for local information stored on their PCs.

"We can confirm that we are running a test with Google that could include a Google-powered Dell home page, Google desktop search and a Google Toolbar," Kaufman told Reuters.

"We are conducting a test of distribution of some of our software via Dell," Google spokesman Jon Murchinson said.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft May Rebrand MSN Portal

SAN FRANCISCO-Microsoft may be getting ready to rebrand its MSN site as MSN Media Network, according to the blog Liveside.Net and an internal Microsoft Web site.

The LiveSide.net blog reported on the name change Monday, citing several unnamed sources for the information. One of the blog's authors, Chris Overd, said via e-mail on Monday that those sources are Microsoft employees.


The rebranding will coincide with the launch of expanded MSN services for downloading digital media content and is aimed at expanding MSN into more of a digital entertainment content provider, he wrote. Currently, MSN is a Web portal for providing news and video content, as well as services such as music downloading and e-mail.

[Rasputin]

New Google Desktop grabs more of Microsoft's turf

SAN FRANCISCO- Web search leader Google Inc. is introducing an upgraded version of its software for users to organize and find information on any computer and to share it with friends, the company said on Thursday.

Google Desktop 3 poses new challenges to Microsoft Corp.'s dominance of the way people interact with computers, but also demands users place far greater trust in Google's capacity to protect their privacy.

Google Desktop vacuums up data stored on a user's PC and makes it accessible on any other computer in regular use by the customer at home or work or even on an airplane trip, assuming users consent to storing data on Google's central computers.

In addition, Google said it is turning "Sidebar," a system introduced six months ago for viewing live updates of personal information, into a way to share quick notes, news, photos or other tidbits of data with friends or colleagues.

"This is starting to amount to a new operating system, though Google would never describe it as such," Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner said. "It is going to be Microsoft's challenge to offer the same level of flexibility and power for both consumers and content creators."

[Rasputin]

MP3 Inventor Develops Tool to Fight Piracy

Fraunhofer Institute has developed prototype technology to help curb the sharp rise in online music piracy, which, ironically, has been enabled through another invention of the renowned German research group: MP3 audio compression.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute have successfully tested a software system, based on the group's own digital watermarking technology, for tracking pirated audio files in peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, says Michael Kip, a spokesperson for the institute.


Kip referred to the Fraunhofer approach as an alternative to DRM (digital rights management) systems, which he says require special players and are prone to hacking.


While watermarking technology isn't new per se, this is the first time it has been used in a system to automatically track pirating in P-to-P networks, according to Kip.


The system lets content providers, such as music studios, embed a watermark in their downloadable MP3 files. Watermark technology makes slight changes to data in both sound and image files. For instance, the change could be a higher volume intensity in a tiny part of a song or a brighter color in a minuscule part of a picture. Even the best trained human eyes and ears, according to Kip, can't detect the change.

[Rasputin]

UK cable co. NTL signs BitTorrent file-sharing deal

LONDON - UK cable firm NTL is teaming up with BitTorrent Inc., the company behind the popular file-sharing software, to test a new service that will let users purchase movies and music video downloads.

The trial, which will also include technology from Cambridge, England-based CacheLogic Ltd., comes as BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen works to establish the software as a legitimate means of distributing content.

The free software is currently one of the most popular ways to share pirated TV and movies. BitTorrent traffic is estimated to account for roughly a third of all Internet bandwidth, and an even higher proportion on NTL's network.

Cohen started BitTorrent Inc. last year -- well after the software had become a hit with Internet users -- and his company has entered talks with Hollywood and Internet service providers to find ways to use the peer-to-peer software to distribute legal, paid downloads.