Pc News

[Rasputin]

Hosted E-Mail Explosion Forecast

The number of hosted e-mail seats will grow by nearly 40% in the next four years, with small-to-midsize businesses contributing to a portion of the boost, according to a new study by The Radicati Group.

The study shows there are nearly 1.6 billion hosted e-mail seats today and that number by 2012 will hit 2.2 billion, which represents an annual average growth rate of 9%. The numbers include both enterprise and consumer e-mail.

Two sources of fuel for the growth are the evolution of the technology and IT's changing attitude about hosting. The hype around cloud computing also is helping interest in online services.

"E-mail is more of a commodity, and now a lot more things are being outsourced," says Sara Radicati, CEO of Radicati. "And I think a lot of the solutions have been getting better. They are more professional, and more of the providers better understand the customer relationship and how to manage it."

Providers are adding other features as well, including archiving, compliance, security and social-networking tools to make hosted offerings more attractive, Radicati says.

The survey breaks hosting providers into three categories: hosted business e-mail that targets companies with one to 1,000 mailboxes; managed business e-mail, typically used by large enterprises; and ISP- or Web-mail services that are largely free and target consumers.

Smaller businesses are likely to go the hosted route, but large enterprises may find that hosted e-mail is a fit for regional offices, Radicati says.

"All companies are starting to analyze the costs and trade-offs of hosting," Radicati says. "The real trick is going to be which provider can reliably offer this on a worldwide basis. Companies don't want different deals with different providers in different countries and then try to tie the whole thing together."

The survey says that over the next four years, SMBs will switch from standard-based SMTP hosted mail to a more advanced collection of hosted messaging services centered on e-mail.

The hosted business-e-mail market probably will consolidate, the survey says, as Google with Google Apps and Microsoft with Online Services begin to work out the bugs and attract a critical mass of customers.

"But I think it is a totally wide-open space at the moment," Radicati says. "Certainly Google and Microsoft are two giants, and they are going into this with full force."

[Rasputin]

33% of Vista PC buyers "downgrading" to XP

HP admitted at the beginning of this month, that thanks to a loophole, it is selling more copies of the XP operating system than Vista.

And the very same loophole is allowing all of the computer manufacturers - including Dell - to continue to sell the now supposedly defunct operating system.

Well it seems an astonishing third of all of those computer buyers who opt for a Vista PC, are, in fact, then "downgrading" to XP.

The research comes from Devil Mountain Software, which claims that almost 35% of the 3000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP.

"Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine", said Craig Barth, the chief technology officer of Devil Mountain.

"In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista."

The team at Devil Mountain used data uploaded by PC users into its exo.performance.network but has also partnered with Infoworld magazine.

"The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base", Barth added. "People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights."

"Vista's installed base certainly doesn't equal the number of Vista licences [that Microsoft's] sold", Barth said, citing the exo.performance.network data as proof. "We're seeing this a lot in the financial sector."

[Rasputin]

Yahoo's Facebook Rival to Close

Mash, the social-networking site from Yahoo, will close on Sept. 29.

The search engine announced the closure in an e-mail to Mash's members and advised web users to save any data posted on the site they wish to keep.

Mash was launched in September last year as Yahoo's answer to Facebook and MySpace. It differed from other social networking sites by allowing users to edit each others' profile pages and change the layout of their friend's pages.

Once the service has closed, links to Mash will be redirected to Yahoo's website. The company confirmed its other services such as Yahoo 360 will not be affected by the closure.

[Rasputin]

Yahoo Revamps Calendar Service

Yahoo has developed a new online calendar that the company said offers significant improvement over the current product because it makes it easier to share items and has a more interactive interface.

Yahoo will begin to offer the new version of Yahoo Calendar on Wednesday in beta in the U.S., Brazil, India, Taiwan and the U.K. General availability is expected in the coming months.

Although Yahoo Calendar and Yahoo Mail are tightly integrated, only about 8.1 million use the former and about 278 million the latter, said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail vice president.

The situation is similar among other major providers of Webmail and online calendar services, said Matt Cain, a Gartner analyst. Only about 3 to 4 percent of consumers also use their preferred Webmail service's companion online calendar, he said.

There are various reasons for this, including continued use of paper-based calendars at home and of desktop calendar software like Outlook and Lotus Notes in the workplace, Cain said.

However, Gartner sees favorable conditions for significantly boosting the use of online calendars among consumers, from around 4 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2012, Cain said.

The factors that will drive up usage include increasing industry adoption of open standards that make online calendar services interoperable, he said. This is coupled with an increasing realization among consumers of the benefits of subscribing to public calendars and sharing their online calendars with friends and family. In addition, younger users are all growing up using online calendars, he said.

"There's no question that online calendars will emerge as a very important part of portal collaboration software offerings for Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and AOL," Cain said.

"For anyone with a big e-mail population, there's no doubt that the next big battleground will be at the calendar level," Cain said, adding that online calendars will become prime real estate for advertising.

Yahoo is hoping that the new Yahoo Calendar will prompt more Yahoo Mail subscribers to use it. Yahoo Calendar hasn't gotten a facelift of this magnitude in about 10 years, Kremer said.

Among the features Yahoo is highlighting in the new calendar service is its compatibility with competing products from providers like Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, AOL and Google.

This compatibility, which will allow Yahoo users to share calendar data with users of those other services, is possible because Yahoo Calendar is built on open standards like iCalendar (iCal) and CalDAV, Kremer said.

Yahoo hopes that open calendar standards are adopted broadly not only among online service providers but also among makers of business desktop and mobile calendar software, so that Yahoo Calendar will become interoperable with those products, Kremer said.

The new Yahoo Calendar allows items to be dragged-and-dropped into the calendar, as well as to be color-coded, and users will be able to call up calendar views as detailed as a single event and as broad as a month. The new Yahoo Calendar also has a "to do" feature for listing pending tasks and the capability to set up reminder alerts that can be delivered via e-mail, instant messaging or SMS.

Future versions of the new Yahoo Calendar will also sync up bi-directionally with Microsoft Outlook's calendar and let users access Yahoo Calendar when they're not connected to the Internet via integration with Zimbra Desktop. The new Yahoo Calendar is based on technology from Zimbra, which Yahoo acquired last year.

In the future, Yahoo also plans to add further integration with other of its services, such as Yahoo Maps, so that users can call up a map from within the calendar, Kremer said.

Users will also be able to subscribe to receive events from public calendars and event services like Yahoo's own Upcoming.org.

The new Yahoo Calendar will also give third-party developers the chance to build applications and extensions for it via APIs and its standards-based architecture, Kremer said.

[Rasputin]

Netbook sales drive PC growth

Sales of PCs and x86 servers have grown by 15 per cent in the past 12 months, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

The bulk of the growth has been driven by strong interest in the netbook segment. Gartner singled out Acer and Asus as winners, in particular the latter's EeePC which launched the market for such devices.

"The mini-notebook segment experienced strong growth in the global PC market, led by robust growth in EMEA," said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner's Client Computing Markets group.

"In the North America market, the economic crunch created more interest in the sub-$500 segment. Because the mini-notebook is still a new segment, it is too early to determine whether it created new market opportunities or cannibalised lower priced systems."

HP remains the world's biggest supplier of x86 systems, with 18.4 per cent of the market compared to Dell's 13.6 per cent.

Acer showed the strongest growth of any manufacturer, with sales rising nearly 50 per cent to give it 12.5 per cent of the market.

However, Kitagawa warned of tougher times ahead and a global slowdown in sales due to the overall financial situation.

"The global PC market finally felt the impact of the global economic downturn, and the US professional market experienced the biggest hit," she said.

"The US home market saw definite softness in PC sales after a few quarters of strong growth, while the Asia/Pacific PC market was impacted by a slowdown in China.

"PC growth in Latin America was slow relative to historical levels, but was still in line with the forecast."

[Rasputin]

Attack Code for Critical Microsoft Bug Surfaces

Just hours after Microsoft posted details of a critical Windows bug, new attack code that exploits the flaw has surfaced.

It took developers of the Immunity security testing tool two hours to write their exploit, after Microsoft released a patch for the issue Thursday morning. Software developed by Immunity is made available only to paying customers, which means that not everyone has access to the new attack, but security experts expect that some version of the code will begin circulating in public very soon.

Microsoft took the unusual step of rushing out an emergency patch for the flaw Thursday, two weeks after noticing a small number of targeted attacks that exploited the bug.

The vulnerability was not publicly known before Thursday; however, by issuing its patch, Microsoft has given hackers and security researchers enough information to develop their own attack code.

The flaw lies in the Windows Server service, used to connect different network resources such as file and print servers over a network. By sending malicious messages to a Windows machine that uses Windows Server, an attacker could take control of the computer, Microsoft said.

Apparently, it doesn't take much effort to write this type of attack code.

"It is very exploitable," said Immunity Security Researcher Bas Alberts. "It's a very controllable stack overflow."

Stack overflow bugs are caused when a programming error allows the attacker to write a command on parts of the computer's memory that would normally be out of limits and then cause that command to be run by the victim's computer.

Microsoft has spent millions of dollars trying to eliminate this type of flaw from its products in recent years. And one of the architects of Microsoft's security testing program had a frank assessment of the situation Thursday, saying that the company's "fuzzing" testing tools should have discovered the issue earlier. "Our fuzz tests did not catch this and they should have," wrote Security Program Manager Michael Howard in a blog posting. "So we are going back to our fuzzing algorithms and libraries to update them accordingly. For what it's worth, we constantly update our fuzz testing heuristics and rules, so this bug is not unique."

While Microsoft has warned that this flaw could be used to build a computer worm, Alberts said that it is unlikely that such a worm, if created, would spread very far. That's because most networks would block this type of attack at the firewall.

"I only see it being a problem on internal networks, but it is a very real and exploitable bug," he said.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Brings Vista Service Pack 2 Into Beta

Microsoft is preparing a major update to its Vista operating system. Windows Vista Service Pack 2 will enter beta testing next week, the company has confirmed, with a public release date to follow.

As speculated earlier this week, the new Vista Service Pack 2 will incorporate all fixes released since Service Pack 1, along with a slew of new improvements aimed at increasing support for new hardware and technology standards. The highlights:

* The introduction of Windows Search 4.0, said to speed up searching and deliver better keyword relevancy

* The addition of the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, which will support emerging Bluetooth technology

* The added ability to record data to Blu-ray discs directly within the operating system

* Improved WiFi setup with changes to Windows Connect Now, Vista's network configuration tool designed to detect and configure wireless devices.

* Better time zone-safe file synchronization with new support for the exFAT file system, which allows for UTC timestamps.

Beta testers in Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program will get the new service pack next Wednesday, October 29. Microsoft says the final release date will be determined based on the feedback received and any changes required during the testing period. The update will eventually be available for both standard Vista configurations and systems running Windows Server 2008.

The news of Vista Service Pack 2 comes in the midst of a busy month for Microsoft. The company is gearing up to reveal its upcoming Windows 7 system at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles next week. Microsoft also rushed out an emergency Windows patch for all Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003 users on Thursday.

[Rasputin]

HP, Dell, Toshiba Recall Sony Laptop Batteries Again

Three of the biggest laptop computer makers are recalling certain batteries because of a risk they may overheat and catch fire. Sony made the batteries and the recall mirrors -- yet appears a lot smaller than -- a similar one that occurred two years ago.

This time, around 100,000 batteries are affected, a fraction of the 9.6 million [m] recalled in 2006. Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba have already issued recalls for the batteries that were used in their products and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said "consumers should stop using recalled products immediately."

The batteries in question were manufactured between October 2004 and June 2005 and to date there have been about 40 incidents reportedly globally of overheating, Sony said Friday.

Most of the incidents are believed to be due to manufacturing line adjustments made during the period that may have affected some batteries, Sony said. Additionally some may have been due to raw material flaws.

Of the 100,000 batteries affected, around 35,000 were used in laptops shipped in the U.S. By far the greatest number, about 32,000, were shipped with HP laptops.

The maker said it is recalling batteries that have a barcode label beginning with A0, L0, L1 or GC that were shipped with HP Pavilion dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000 models; with Compaq Presario v2000 and v2400 machines and with HP Compaq nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230,nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120 and nx9600 computers.

Toshiba's U.S. recall covers around 3,000 Satellite A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X and M50/M55 laptops and Tecra A3, A5 and S2 computers.

Dell is recalling battery model OU091 in Latitude 110L and Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150 and 5160 computers.

Consumers who believe they have batteries that have been recalled should stop using the batteries and check with their PC vendor.

An additional 2,000 batteries were shipped in the Japanese market and the remaining 63,000 went to consumers in other regions, including Europe and Asia. Recall notices for machines shipped in these other regions are expected to be issued shortly.

[Rasputin]

How Much Ink Is Left in That Dead Cartridge?

You've probably had this experience: Your printer tells you it's time to change the cartridge, but you dismiss the message and keep printing. Days or weeks later, you're still using the same cartridge and thinking to yourself that rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated.

Or perhaps your printer simply shuts down when it decides you've gone deep enough into its ink well, refusing to operate until you replace the cartridge, though you suspect there's plenty of ink left.

PC World decided to do some real lab testing on this issue; and the results confirm what you may have suspected: Many manufacturer-branded (OEM) and third-party (aftermarket) vendor cartridges leave a startling amount of ink unused when they read empty. In fact, some inkjet printers force users to replace black ink cartridges when the cartridge is nearly half full, PC World has found.

Overview
We tested using multifunction printers from four major manufacturers: Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Kodak. (For the top-rated models, see our chart of top-rated multifunction printers.) PC World Test Center results show that models from Canon, Epson, and Kodak reported ink cartridges as being empty when in some cases the tanks had 40 percent of their black ink remaining.

The quantity of unused ink ranged from about 8 percent in an Epson-brand cartridge to a whopping 45 percent in an aftermarket cartridge for a Canon printer. After posting low-ink warnings, those printers wouldn't let us resume printing until we inserted a new cartridge.

Our test printers typically left more unused ink--in some cases significantly more--when using third-party or aftermarket print cartridges than when using the printer manufacturer's own cartridges.

When using ink their own manufacturer's cartridges, the printers displayed several low-ink warning messages before finally shutting down due to low ink. Our HP printer, the Photosmart C5280, was the only one that continued to print even after displaying several low-ink messages, and those messages appeared only when we used an HP print cartridge. When we paired the C5280 with an aftermarket cartridge from LD Products, the printer provided no low-ink warning at all.

It's important to note that our results show the performance of a clutch of single printers, each paired with just one cartridge. Since OEMs and their aftermarket competitors sell dozens of ink cartridges for a wide variety of printer models, you should consider our results as a kind of snapshot of the way each particular unit deals with "remaining ink."

Why So Much Leftover Ink?
There are valid reasons for not draining an ink cartridge completely, printing experts say. "Many inks, if they run dry, can cause significant damage to the printer," says Brian Hilton, a senior staff engineer at the Rochester Institute of Technology who holds 29 inkjet patents. "You always want to leave a buffer in the tank so that the printer never runs dry. There should always be a factor of safety included."

Other observers point out that the quantity of leftover ink is often only a few milliliters. "Printers have generally become more efficient over the years," says Andy Lippman, a printing analyst with Lyra Research. "In the past, you might have seen 40 milliliters of ink in the black cartridge. Today you're going to get the same amount of pages out of 7 or 8 milliliters."

Other people, however--both journalists and independent researchers--have reported very different experiences with ink cartridges. Judging from these findings, printer owners are probably throwing away a lot of usable ink. And that's a problem, when you consider how expensive the precious fluid is. An average black-ink cartridge contains 8 milliliters of ink and costs about $10 which translates into a cost of $1.25 per milliliter (or more horrifyingly, $1250 per liter).

Liquid Gold?
If you bought a gallon of the stuff over the life of your printer, you'd have paid about $4731 for a liquid that one aftermarket vendor told us was "cheap" to make. For some perspective, gasoline costs about $3 per gallon (at the moment), while a gallon of Beluga caviar (imagined as a liquid) costs about $18,000--surprisingly, only about four times as expensive as good old printer ink.

"I personally think that consumers are getting ripped off," says Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit educational and research institute in Washington, D.C. Pociask recently coauthored a 50-page study on the ink jet printer and cartridge market. "In some cases, we found that [the price of] the printer could be 1/8 of the total cost of printing," says Pociask. "Over the life of the printer--and by that I mean three years--you can easily spend $800 for the printer and ink."

How We Tested
We researched both online and brick-and-mortar tech outlets to find printers that are being used now by high numbers of consumers. We didn't test color inks because that would have introduced too many variables that might skew the results. For instance, some printers use separate cartridges for each ink, while others use single, tricolor cartridges. A standardized test might not drain the colors evenly, which might give one printer an unfair advantage.

Tony Leung, Senior Data Analyst in the PC World Test Center, weighed each black ink cartridge (to an accuracy of 0.001 gram) to determine the cartridge's initial weight. We then printed pages until the printer, in response to the low level of ink in the cartridge, prevented us from continuing.

When each printer stopped printing, we removed and weighed its black ink cartridge to determine the cartridge's out-of-ink weight. Then we removed all of the remaining ink from the cartridge (including the small sponges found in some cartridges), put the cartridge on the scale again, and measured it's true-empty weight.

This method allowed us to identify the weight of the ink when the cartridge was full, when the printer announced that it was empty, and when it truly was empty.

[Rasputin]

Shopping for a quality entry-level netbook? You might be interested to hear what Asus has planned for its Eee PC lineup in 2009.

Almost exactly a year ago, Asus launched the netbook revolution with its original Eee PC. Just a year later, according to Asus President Jerry Shen, Eee PC shipments now account for more than 20 percent of the company's revenue. While Shen says Asus wants to claim at least 30 percent of the netbook market in 2009, the company will face stiff competition; at least two dozen other hardware OEMs, including big names like HP, Dell, and Acer, now sell their own Linux- and Windows-based netbook models.

Asus has steadily expanded its Eee PC lineup to include a number of models with different display sizes, operating system options (Windows XP Home or Linux), storage technology -- and, of course, prices. The company's new PCS101 netbook, for example, will retail for around $800, which is almost twice as much as the original Eee PC.

Shen said Asus will simplify its Eee PC lineup in places; models with seven- and nine-inch displays, for example, are on the way out. At the same time, he said, Asus will introduce a new entry-level Eee PC model early next year that will retail for around $200.

Netbook PCs in the $200-$300 price range are nothing new, and netbooks with 10 inch displays are also old news. But a $200 netbook with a 10 inch display from an A-list hardware vendor? Now that would be interesting.

Could a $200 Eee PC with a 10 inch display win Asus the netbook market-share crown? I don't know, but it would certainly raise the bar for pretenders to the throne.

[Rasputin]

تغييرات جديد در اينترنت اكسپلورر


مايكروسافت مدعي است در توليد نسخه جديد اينترنت اكسپلورر از ديگر مرورگرهاي موجود در بازار تقليد نكرده است
شركت مايكروسافت نسخه دوم بتا، يا آزمايشي نرم افزار مرورگر اينترنت اكسپلورر 8 (IE را براي استفاده عموم عرضه كرده است.
در نسخه جديد اين نرم افزار در مقايسه با نسخه اوليه كه در ماه مارس سال 2008 عرضه شد، تغييراتي ايجاد شده است.

از جمله اين مرورگر قابليت بالاتري براي محافظت از اطلاعات شخصي كاربر خواهد داشت، امكانات جستجوي آن ارتقاء يافته است و مي توان توسط آن تغييرات بخش هايي خاص از يك صفحه وب را تحت نظر گرفت.

در حال حاضر نسخه آزمايشي اين نرم افزار را مي توان از سايت آن دانلود كرد، اما هنوز مشخص نيست كه نسخه نهايي آن چه زماني به بازار عرضه خواهد شد.

در نسخه دوم بتا دو قابليت جديد گنجانده شده كه در نسخه اوليه وجود نداشتند. با اين حال بسياري در ميان وبلاگ ها متذكر شده اند كه اين قابليت ها از مدتي پيش در ديگر مرورگرهاي اينترنتي وجود داشته اند.

امكان جستجوي ساده تر

يكي از امكانات نسخه جديد اينترنت اكسپلورر "آدرس بار هوشمند" آن است.

جيمز پرت، مدير ارشد محصولات مايكروسافت در اين باره گفت در 80 درصد اوقات كاربران اينترنت از همان سايتهايي بازديد مي كنند كه قبلا به آن مراجعه كرده اند.

در نتيجه نسخه جديد اينترنت اكسپلورر سايتهاي ديده شده را، هم بر اساس آدرس و هم بر اساس اسم آنها بايگاني مي كند.

به اين ترتيب از حروف و كلمات وارد شده در "آدرس بار" (محل ورود آدرس سايت هاي اينترنتي) هم براي يافتن سايتهاي ديده شده و هم سايتهاي ثبت شده در فهرست سايتهاي مورد علاقه (Bookmark) استفاده مي شود.

همچنين در هنگام استفاده از محل ويژه جستجو (search bar) وارد كردن حروف باعث مي شود مرورگر نتايج احتمالي متناظر با حروف وارد شده را، با مراجعه به سايتهاي جستجويي كه كاربر خود پيشتر تعيين كرده، نشان دهد.

همچنين اينترنت اكسپلورر 8 اجازه مي دهد كاربر با تعيين يك برش (Slice) از صفحه وب، در مواردي همچون صفحات eBay يا فيس بوك كه بخشي از صفحه دائما در حال تغيير است، بجاي مراجعه چندين باره به آن صفحه، تنها "برش" تعيين شده را تحت نظر بگيرد؛ قابليتي كه به مفهوم كليپ هاي وبي (Web Clips) در مرورگر سافاري شركت اپل شباهت دارد.

باريكه هاي رنگي


برش ها به كاربر اجازه مي دهند تنها قسمتي از يك صفحه وب در حال تغيير را تحت نظر بگيرد

در نسخه جديد اينترنت اكسپلورر مفهومي جديد تحت عنوان "گروه" بكار گرفته مي شود كه مشاهده صفحات وب با استفاده از باريكه (Tab) را ساده تر مي سازد؛ به اين شكل كه باريكه هاي باز شده با استفاده از لينك هاي درون يك صفحه، هم رنگ يكديگر خواهند بود تا ارتباط باريكه ها با يكديگر مشخص شود.

همچنين مي توان يك باريكه را از يك گروه [رنگي] به يك گروه ديگر منتقل كرد.

با استفاده از كليك راست نيز مي توان كل يك گروه را بست، اما در قابليتي جديد، كاربر مي تواند گروهي را كه به اشتباه بسته شده، از طريق گزينه اي در اينترنت اكسپلورر دوباره باز كند.

نسخه جديد، همانند نسخه اول كماكان از قابليت iPrivate استفاده مي كند كه مانند گزينه "مرورگري خصوصي" (Private Browsing) در مرورگر سافاري، هيچ اثري از سايتهاي ديده شده را در روي كامپيوتر برجاي نمي گذارد.

"آدرس بار هوشمند" اين نرم افزار هم كاملا شبيه به "Awesome Bar" در مرورگر فايرفاكس شركت موزيلا عمل مي كند، اما مايكروسافت منكر مشابه سازي از روي ديگر محصولات موجود مي شود و مدعي است اينترنت اكسپلورر 8 پس از مطالعه و پژوهش درباره نيازهاي كاربران توليد شده است.

[Rasputin]

Hackers Target China, Microsoft Says

Chinese computer users are the major targets of online attackers, according to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report released last week.

The report revealed that the most common system locale for victims of browser-based exploits was Chinese, accounting for 47 percent of all incidents, followed by US English with 23 percent of incidents, in the first half of this year.

China is dominated by potentially unwanted software that targets the Chinese-language market, notably pop-up advertisement toolbars, like Win32/Sogou, and browser modifiers, like Win32/BaiduSobar and Win32/CNNIC, the report said. Many of the most common families in China are Chinese-language threats that don't appear in the list of top threats for any other location, the report added.

Global trends
According to the software vendor, as reported by its Malicious Software Removal Tool, infection rates tend to be higher in developing countries/regions than in developed countries/regions as a general rule.

In the first half of 2008, the total amount of malware and potentially unwanted software removed from computers worldwide increased more than 43 percent compared to second half of last year, Microsoft said.

In addition, patterns of malware detected and removed by Microsoft security products varied across countries and regions; however, Trojan downloaders and droppers constituted more than 30 percent of all malware, the firm added.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Fixes Critical Web Bugs With Security Updates

Microsoft released two security updates for its Windows operating system Tuesday to patch flaws that could give attackers new ways to install malicious software on a victim's computer.

The MS08-069 update fixes critical flaws in the Microsoft XML Core Services used by Internet Explorer and other programs to render Web pages. The second MS08-068 update fixes a less-critical bug in the Windows Server Message Block (SMB) software used by Windows to share files and print documents over a network.

Hackers routinely use Web bugs such as these XML flaws to infect Windows machines. "Anytime Microsoft updates Web vulnerabilities they're going to rate them as critical," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with security vendor nCircle. For a Web-based attack to work, the victim must first visit a compromised Web page or open an e-mail that displays the malicious code.

Microsoft rates the SMB update as "important" for Windows XP, 2000 and Server 2003 users, and only "moderate" on Vista and Server 2008. But enterprise users should still take it very seriously, said Eric Schultze, chief technology officer at Shavlik Technologies.

While a firewall would block an SMB attack from the Internet, someone who controlled a machine within the corporate network could exploit this flaw to get access to another computer in what's known as an SMB relay attack. "I would label this as critical on a corporate network," he said.

To make matters worse, the SMB flaw was already publicly disclosed prior to Tuesday's updates, Microsoft said.

With just two updates, this is one of the quieter patch releases Microsoft has had this year. But there was some excitement at the end of October when Microsoft took the unusual step of issuing an emergency patch for a bug in the Windows Server service.

Microsoft had spotted this flaw being used in a small number of targeted attacks, and the bug was considered so serious that Microsoft decided to rush out the early patch ahead of Tuesday's regularly scheduled security updates. This flaw has not been used in widespread attacks, however, security vendors say.

[Rasputin]

Economy, Election Inspire Spam

The economy and the U.S. presidential election played a big role in spam messages last month, according to the State of Spam report from security software company Symantec.

The recent economic bailout package and interest rate cuts in the United States have opened the door for spammers to step up their attacks.

In October, Symantec observed a spam attack that contained a message claiming to come from US treasury secretary, Henry Paulson.

The message suggested that Paulson had been instructed by the United Nations to "wire a sum of $1m into your bank account in a legal way." However, in order to claim the money the recipient was asked to provide personal details.

'Barackumentary'
With the U.S. presidential election so prominent during October, it is no surprise that spammers used election content in their campaigns, the report stated.

One election-related spam attack observed in October has been dubbed by spammers as a "Barackumentary", the report added. Spammers offered a free DVD about Barack Obama. However, in order to receive this 'free' video, recipients were asked to provide personal credit card details to the sender.

Symantec also continued to see presidential gift card spam. Recipients were asked to complete a survey on the election with the promise of receiving a free gift card. This gift card spam attack has been used to harvest personal information.

In general, spam levels averaged in 76.4 percent of all e-mail messages last month. This spam level represents a year-on-year increase of nearly six per cent since October 2007, but a decrease since the 80 percent level in August this year, states the report.

[Rasputin]

شرکت آی بی ام اعلام کرده است هدایت یک پروژه مشترک را بعهده خواهد گرفت که هدف آن ساخت مدارهای الکترونیکی است که شبیه به مغز کار می کنند.

این برنامه تحقیقاتی که بودجه آن توسط دولت آمریکا تامین می شود، در قالب شاخه ای از علوم کامپیوتری موسوم به "علم ادراک و شناخت کامپیوتری" (Cognitive Computing) با کمک تیمی از عصب شناسان، روانشناسان و دانشمندان علم مواد و کامپیوتر به اجرا درخواهد آمد.

آژانس "دارپا" وابسته به وازارت دفاع آمریکا بعنوان هزینه اولین مرحله پروژه 4.9 میلیون دلار خواهد پرداخت.

تکنولوژی حاصل از این تحقیقات را بالقوه می توان برای تحلیل اطلاعات در مقیاس گسترده، فرایند های تصمیم گیری، یا رویه های تشخیص تصویر مورد استفاده قرار داد.

دارمندرا مودها، دانشمند شاغل در موسسه ای بی ام که هدایت این پروژه اشتراکی را بعهده خواهد داشت گفت: "مغز این توانایی جالب را دارد که اطلاعات مبهم جمع آوری شده از احساس های مختلف را در کنار هم قرار دهد و بدون زحمت اطلاعات به دست آمده از هر حس را بر حسب زمان، فضا، شیء و رابطه آن با داده های حسی طبقه بندی کند."

"هیچ کامپیوتری وجود ندارد که عملکردی حتی نزدیک به عملکرد مغز داشته باشد."

"هدف کلیدی علم شناخت کامپیوتری مهندسی ماشین های هوشمندی شبیه به مغز توسط مهندسی معکوس ساختار، تغییرات، واکنش ها، عملکرد و رفتار مغز است."

"همگرایی کامل"
آی بی ام در اجرای این پژوهش با پنج دانشگاه آمریکایی همکاری خواهد کرد تا یافته های موجود درباره سیستم های واقعی موجود در محیط زیست را با نتایج شبیه سازی سلولهای عصبی نرون توسط ابرکامپیوترها تطابق دهند.

هدف بعدی این گروه ساختن اولین سیستم الکترونیکی خواهد بود که همانند شبیه سازی ها عمل کند.

هدف طولای مدت تر این برنامه پژوهشی ایجاد سیستمی با سطح پیچیدگی مغز یک گربه خواهد بود.

پروفسور مودها می گوید الان بهترین زمان برای اجرای این پروژه است زیرا تحقیقات از سه جهت درحال رسیدن به یکدیگر هستند.

عصب شناسانی که بر روی حیوانات کار می کنند درباره سازوکار داخلی نرون ها و سیناپس هایی (نقاط اتصال و تبادل اطلاعات نرون ها به یکدیگر) که آنها را به یکدیگر متصل می کنند اطلاعات کافی به دست اورده اند و می توانند "طرح اتصالات" مغزهای ساده را ترسیم کنند.

ابرکامپیوترها هم می توانند عملکرد مغزهایی به پیچیدگی پستانداران کوچک را با استفاده از اطلاعات به دست آمده از تحقیقات بیولوژیک شبیه سازی کنند.

دارمندرا مودها سال گذشته هدایت تیمی را داشت که توانست توسط ابرکامپیوتر BlueGene ساخت شرکت آی بی ام برای شبیه سازی مغز یک موش استفاده کنند که در آن 55 میلیون نرون و حدود 500 میلیارد سیناپس وجود داشت.

اما او می گوید چالش اصلی "مجسم کردن اطلاعات به دست آمده توسط دستگاه های الکترونیک واقعی و به ویژه به وسیله نانو تکنولوژی است."

تکنولوژی ساخت مدارهای الکترونیک به تازگی به مرحله ای رسیده است که بتواند ساختاری با پیچیدگی مشابه با نرون ها و سیناپس های مغز واقعی را، که تعدادشان به 10 میلیارد در هر سانتی متر مربع می رسد، را ایجاد کند.

شبکه های عصبی
پژوهشگران در این راه از برنامه هایی کامپیوتری موسوم به "شبکه های عصبی" برای شبیه سازی ارتباط میان نرون ها استفاده کرده اند.

از این ساختار می توان برای حل مسئله ای خاص استفاده کرد که رفتاری است شبیه به فرایند یادگیری.

با این حال پروفسور مودها می گوید هدف برنامه تحقیقاتی جدید کاملا متفاوت از دستاوردهای فنی موجود است.

او می گوید: "شبکه های عصبی و سیستم های هوش مصنوعی به دنبال ایجاد مهندسی قابلیتهای ادراکی محدود هستند. برای آنها هدف از ابتدا مشخص است و برای رسیدن به آن الگوریتمی تنظیم می شود."


هدف نهایی پروژه ایجاد مداری است به پیچیدگی مغز یک گربه
"اما کار ما 180 درجه متفاوت است؛ زیرا ما می خواهیم اول به الگوریتمی دست پیدا کنیم که می تواند برای چند قابلیت مختلف استفاده شود و بعد از طریق آن مشکل را حل کنیم."

اما مشکل در نحوه سازماندهی مدارهای شبیه به نرون نیست، بلکه قابلیت تطابق یک مغز به قابلیت تنظیم سیناپس ها که اتصال میان نرون ها را ایجاد می کنند بستگی دارد.

اتصال های سیناپسی بسته به علائمی که از طریق آنها عبور داده می شود می توانند مانند یک مدار باز یا بسته عمل کنند یا شدت و ضعف اتصال میان دو نرون را تغییر دهند.

از این رو ساختن ماده ای در مقیاس محصولات تولید شده در نانو تکنولوژی، که بتواند چنین قابلیتی را از خود نشان دهد از اهداف اصلی این پروژه خواهد بود.

پروفسور مودها در تاکید بر اهمیت این موضوع می گوید: "مغز بیشتر یک شبکه سیناپسی است تا یک شبکه عصبی."

نگرانی از ابعاد گسترده طرح
تاکید بیشتر بر قابلیت عام حل مسئله بجای حل یک مسئله بخصوص، تغییری بنیادین است که می تواند موارد بالقوه استفاده از ابزارهایی مجهز به این قابلیت را عملا نامحدود بسازد.

دستگاه هایی که از محدودیت های یک قابلیت برنامه ریزی شده بخصوص رها هستند می توانند اطلاعات نامتجانس را جمع آوری کنند، آن را بر حسب تجربه بسنجند، مجوعه ای از تجربیات را به حافظه ای مستقل بسپارند و قاعدتا شروع به حل مسائلی کنند که تاکنون از آن با عنوان فرایند "فکر کردن" یاد شده است.

کرستین کیزرز، مدیر مرکز تصویربرداری از اعصاب در دانشگاه پزشکی گرونینگن، با وجود استقبال از این پروژه هشدار داد که بودجه تعیین شده برای چنین طرح عظیمی احتمالا کافی نخواهد بود.

اینکه اجرای طرح به تجارب کارشناسان این تعداد از شاخه های متعدد علمی و فنی نیاز دارد حاکی از بی سابقه بودن ابعاد این برنامه است و دکتر مودها اذعان می کند که اهداف این طرح را باید بالاتر از جاه طلبانه دانست.