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A DOCUMENT HAS COME TO LIGHT that details the lengths to which Nvidia has gone to cover up the problems it has been having with its graphics chips. The most recent lawsuit against it by the National Union Fire Insurance Company (NUFI) claims the company has withheld information on the nature of its bad bumps. The very same information it has withheld from us or any other nosy hack or awkward analysts.The story was broken by a certain Mike Magee at TG Daily on Friday, and it has a lot of juicy bits. The short story is that the list...

Windows 7 is less secure out-of-the box than Vista, despite Redmond's protestations to the contrary, a top security firm has claimed. Trend Micro said that the default configurations of Windows 7 are less secure than Vista. Raimund Genes, CTO of Trend Micro, said that Windows 7 had sacrificed security for useability - at least for default configurations. "I'm not saying Windows 7 is insecure, but out of the box Vista is better," Genes told El Reg. The User Account Control (UAC) feature that debuted with Vista was a security safeguard that asked users for permission before allowing applications to run....

With the intention of expanding its server lineup, International Business Machines (IBM), has rolled out a new mainframe system which is specifically designed for Linux, targeting high-end x86 systems. The new server system, which uses IBM’s specialty Linux processors, will either run on Novell SUSE or Red Hat based systems thereby bypassing the z/OS mainframe operating system. Instead, the server includes mainframe management software as well as IBM's z/Virtual Machine system which come together to form IBM’s low-cost integrated stacks for mainframe. Interestingly, the new system is designed to compete directly with large multicore systems used for virtualization consolidation and comes in two...

If the data devoured in the United States last year were converted to text there would be enough books to bury the country under a pile seven feet (two meters) deep, according to a study released Wednesday. US residents consumed about 1.3 trillion hours worth of information from radios, televisions, computers, newspapers, mobile telephones, and other sources, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego.That translated into an average of nearly 12 hours spent daily by each US resident watching television, listening to MP3 players, scouring the Internet or tapped into other sources of data. The information tally...

I don't think about Adobe Flash much. I just use it. I think that's the case for most of us. Almost all the video on the Web is in Flash, and we just take it for granted. That's a mistake. Like any other popular application, it can be an easy way for a cracker to hack into your computer. Take Adobe Flash's latest round of patches. Adobe doesn't say a lot about exactly what it's fixing in its security advisory, but out of the seven security bugs they're fixing, six of the repairs are on problems that "could potentially lead...

A Surrey pastor was sentenced to 15 months in jail for making a sexually explicit video of a young teen girl using photographs from Facebook that also encouraged her rape, RCMP said yesterday. Larry Robert Collins, 45, was pastor at the Guildford Church of Nazarene when the video was created and distributed online. He was removed after confessing about a year and a half ago. RCMP Const. Rosiane Racine said Collins also used photos of the victim taken from Facebook to impersonate her online and encourage people to click on a web link to the video. He also posted the...

AT&T (NYSE:T) is already facing growing dissatisfaction from subscribers over service quality, and it looks like the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier is about to throw some gasoline on that fire. At an investor conference in New York City Wednesday, Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, said the carrier may change the way it bills customers for wireless data usage in response to the heavy load that iPhone users have been placing on its network. AT&T currently charges iPhone customers a flat rate of $30 per month for wireless data. Although a usage-based pricing model isn't coming right...

Hate mail from Nisar. (See posts below)

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), an Amazon.com company, has just released a free iPhone app [iTunes Link] that puts the power of the huge repository of movie facts, fables, and trivia into the palm of your hand. I use IMDb regularly, so when I saw that the app had been released, I downloaded it immediately. Upon launching, the app will ask if you wish to let it use your location -- this is used to display show times and movies for local theaters. While IMDb doesn't exactly have a beautiful interface, it's perfect for navigating the huge amount of information...

Windows 7 is nice, Bing is neat, Sharepoint is solid, and Azure is promising. But does Microsoft scare the crap out of any of its competitors anymore?Quick—when was the last time Microsoft dazzled you with breakthrough thinking and agenda-setting innovation? What was the last Microsoft product you couldn't wait to get your hands on, that would make a huge impact on your enterprise? When you and your team put together your list of Five IT Vendors We Can't Live Without, does Microsoft still make the cut? Now consider Steve Jobs and Apple: They took on the incredibly hidebound and entrenched...

Probably still reeling from all publicity around these shots, Microsoft reportedly told journalists gathered for a company press event in Germany not to use or mention Apple products. Our German is a bit rusty and Google's is even worse, but according to Handelsblatt and our bad translation: "While at a Windows Mobile 6.5 demonstration in Munich, Germany a journalist was warned by a Microsoft spokesman not to mention or use Apple products...since it was a Microsoft event the journalist had previously told everyone that he had never owned an easier to use cell phone than the iPhone." Now, you...

Video Linky

Why Apple succeeds, and always will By Joe Wilcox Published December 9, 2009, 9:45 AM Simply put: Apple doesn't play by the rules. It reinvents them. Apple applies what I call "David Thinking" to its broader business, product development and marketing. Apple is David to Microsoft Goliath -- and other ones, too. Goliath plays by one set of rules. David choses to change the rules, which favor his strengths rather than those of Goliath. David Thinking is most provocative and surprising when Goliath acts like David. After all, David sometimes becomes Goliath; Apple is a giant in music with iPod...

Sorry about the vanity, but, since FReepers are the best out there, I hope one of you will be able to help me out with a vexing computer problem with Skype. Thanks to the massive mishandling of Michigan's and the Nation's economy, I've been forced to move from Michigan to Maryland for a new job. The family is back home and much of our communication is via Skype. Whenever we talk (audio and video) there is a consistent beeping coming from the computer speakers in Michigan. It happen on both their desktop and laptop and only on calls from me....

Just in from our computer tech. Last night/early this morning. MS forced an update patch on all Windows users. We know it affected all running XP. It may have hit Vista and 7 as well. Many users had a forced Windows reboot/restart this morning. Seems the patch is causing havoc in email systems nationwide. Our computer guy normally gets 8-20 trouble calls a day. So far today, it's more than 250. His affiliates across the country report the same. Our internet access is fine (as others seems to be to) but emails are very slow (3 to 5 minutes from...

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. 2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people 3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants or to subject them to military tribunal. 4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state. 5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty. 6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps. 7. We...

Google (finally) released beta versions of its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux on Tuesday, along with over 300 extensions for Windows and Linux. Sorry, Mac users - extensions "aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet", according to a Google blog posting announcing the new-release trifecta. Google offers an introductory video for the long-delayed Mac beta, which notes that the Webkit-based browser integrates Mac OS X's spell-checker and Keychain, plus OS X's built-in sandboxing system. There's also a four-video collection of marketing fluff touting Chrome's speed, stability, and features - if watching cutesy Rube Goldbergian contraptions is your cup of tea....

If you are easily offended, please don't read this.I've found the relatively new autosuggest feature on Google to be a pretty useful heuristic.  When you don't quite know what exactly you're searching for, this feature suggests phrases to complete or refine your query. It's not clear what the properties of the algorithm are that Google utilizes for this feature--i.e., how the phrases magically appear, but it's fair to say that they are correlated with the number of searches performed for the combination of words typed by users at a large scale.

Note: The following threat is a quote: "THIS IS AN OPEN THREAT TO YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION TO STAY AWAY FROM MUSLIMS AND ISLAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU." I've been getting death threats on a more or less regular basis for awhile, but haven't posted them. This one, however, was so over-the-top that I couldn't resist. As always, I've starred out the obscenities. The email comes from Dawood Bhaila, bhaila@telkomsa.net: THIS IS AN OPEN THREAT TO YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION TO STAY AWAY FROM MUSLIMS AND ISLAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU. YOU...

Got an iPhone? If so, you download some apps because they're cool and useful. Others, you get not because you necessarily want them, but because you really do need them. Here's one of each. Dragon Dictation - Free, Nuance. PC users know about Dragon Naturally Speaking, considered one of the best voice recognition programs available. This app uses Dragon's technology to turn speech into text very quickly. It's drop-dead simple: Launch the app, tap a button and start talking, then hit Done. A sound file is sent to a remote server, converted and the text sent back to your phone....

This happened a while ago but every time I re-read this column I become infuriated . . . It was the nicest, neatest, new Apple laptop computer. I'd had it for just six days. So I was treating my new computer with great care. I cradled it in my arms as though it were a six-day-old infant. Although I must admit I have never actually held an infant. Because I'm a klutz, I drop things — so much so that I have been forbidden by my family from holding my children and grandchildren until they reach puberty. I was at...

Unauthorized Mac clone maker Psystar is hoping to keep its Rebel EFI on the market, but if Apple's argument holds any weight, that won't happen. Psystar is working to convince the court that its software for installing Mac OS X on PCs shouldn't be included in a proposed injunction that prohibits it from making and selling PCs with Apple's operating system pre-installed. Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar in Northern California several months ago claiming the small PC maker was violating the Mac OS X end user license agreement, and that it was violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with...

Apple releases MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.8 Apple releases MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.4 Apple releases SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0 Apple releases AirPort Client Update 2009-002 which is recommended for all Macs Click on the Blue or BLack Apple Menu on the upper left of the Menu Bar, then select Software Update. . ." and follow the dialog box prompts to update your Mac if necessary...

"73,804 lines of Mac-specific code and 29 developer builds later, we're excited to finally release Google Chrome for Mac in beta," so sayeth John Grabowski and Mike Pinkerton via the Official Google Mac Blog. "We took a hefty dose of goodness from the Windows version to build a fast, polished browser for Mac -- with features such as the Omnibox (where you can both search and type in addresses), themes from artists, and most importantly, speed." MacDailyNews Take: "Hefty dose of goodness from the Windows version?" Sounds like Word 6. Yuck. "We also took great care to make Google Chrome...

Thunderbird 3 released today! Now with tabs, better search, and email archiving.   Tabs and Search If you like Firefox’s tabbed browsing, you’re going to love tabbed email. Thunderbird 3’s tabbed email lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them. Search results open in a new tab too. New tools like our timeline and filtering tools will help you pinpoint the email you’re looking for, whether it’s the one from yesterday, last month, or several years ago.  Your Mail, Your Way Customize Thunderbird however you want, whether it’s to make you more productive or...

The recent appearance of a racist image of the First Lady Michelle Obama during a search on Google's search engine raises an interesting question: Should search engines have a conscience? Obviously, search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, that rely on highly complex algorithms to determine search results, have no intentional bias or inclinations that influence their searches. To suggest otherwise would be to anthropomorphize what is simply an immense and complicated set of computer code. But that code is a creation of its individual developers and team of developers, each of whom has a conscience. And it is also...

Apple can be copied, but can it be beat? By Jim Dalrymple DECEMBER 8, 2009, 8:15 AM PT Apple has some of the best selling computers in the market, it’s the No. 1 music distributor, it sells movies, TV shows, iPods and it’s changing the mobile space with the iPhone and App Store. It’s also one of the most copied companies in the world, but can anyone beat them? It’s almost funny to watch companies line up to put out products that mimic Apple’s look and functionality. Apple puts out a new iPod and all of a sudden there are...

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow. by Mel Martin on Dec 8th 2009 at 12:00AM Put this into the 'I didn't think they could ever get this to work on an iPhone' category. I'm talking about Dragon Dictation [iTunes link] from Nuance, the developers of the very popular Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance also provides the speech recognition engine for MacSpeech Dictate on the Mac platform. To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the...

Preface to Pulsar: Why Seagate Needs This To say that the SSD revolution caught the HDD makers off guard would be an understatement. With the exception of Samsung, none of the players in the HDD business have an even remotely competitive SSD.Sitting this one out isn’t an option. In the enterprise market, a handful of SSDs can easily outperform dozens of 15,000 RPM hard drives. And when I say outperform, I mean by an order of magnitude. It’s not just about performance, there’s a tremendous power advantage as well. The best SSDs use less than 3W per drive under full...

"In the classroom at Harvard Business School where Dan Bricklin came up with the idea for an electronic spreadsheet, there now hangs a plaque that designates the resulting software program as the 'original killer app of the information age,'" Scott Kirsner reports for Boston.com. "Bricklin and his colleague Bob Frankston formed a company in 1979, Software Arts, which would eventually sell the VisiCalc spreadsheet program for $99. It ran on a new 'personal computer' called the Apple II," Kirsner reports. "Thirty years later, Bricklin is now selling a $1.99 app for the iPhone called Dan Bricklin's NoteTaker," Kirsner reports. "It...

As the world descends on Copenhagen this week for the United Nations Climate Change conference, the city’s police must manage protests, secure world leaders, and handle all the other issues that come with a major global event. Perhaps surprisingly, the force is doing it with Macs.The Danish Police Department isn’t using Apple computers on the go, or keeping in touch with iPhones. No, the entire central command is now run by Mac Pros and Mac Minis, with not a single PC to be seen. The Danish police force has been using Macs since 1996, running NeXTStep. But five years ago,...

Apple Bans Another Developer, 1000+ Apps Pulled by Greg Kumparak on December 7, 2009 As the old mantra goes, “Cheaters never prosper”. In this digital age, it may be time to revise that saying. Granted a veil of anonymity by the Internet, cheaters surely prosper from their cheating; it’s just that when they get caught, they go down hard. Alas, “Cheaters may temporarily prosper – but if they get caught, they’re totally boned” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Such was the case earlier today, when the development company behind over 1,000 iPhone applications was busted scamming the...

Google CEO: Secrets Are for Filthy People Eric Schmidt suggests you alter your scandalous behavior before you complain about his company invading your privacy. That's what the Google CEO told Maria Bartiromo during CNBC's big Google special last night, an extraordinary pronouncement for such a secretive guy. The generous explanation for Schmidt's statement is that he's revolutionized his thinking since 2005, when he blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gleaned from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations. In that case, the married CEO must not mind all the coverage of his various reputed girlfriends; it's...

Fraudsters are targeting webmasters in a massive phishing campaign that attempts to trick marks into giving up credentials needed to administer their sites. The emails are sent to customers of some of the world's most widely used webhosts, including GoDaddy, Hostgator, Yahoo!, and 50Webs. Although the subject lines vary, they all purport to come from the hosting service. In all, admins from at least 90 different webhosts are being targeted. "Due to the system maintenance, we kindly ask you to take a few minutes to confirm your FTP details," the emails state. Those who take the bait are led to...

USB 2.0 is so last millennium. No, seriously. We've had the specification since the year 2000, which is technically the previous millennium. Given how quickly the PC industry moves, though, it might as well have been a full millennium ago. Back in 2000, Intel was pushing Pentium III CPUs, 3dfx was still selling graphics processors, and Windows XP was a year away. Things have certainly changed since the so-called Hi-Speed USB spec was released, and its 480Mbps peak data rate has been grossly inadequate for quite some time now. In the real world, you're lucky to push more than about...

All Hail the iPod touch By Om Malik December 6, 2009 As the competition for smartphone domination starts to heat up, it is becoming increasingly clear that the iPod touch is Apple’s ace up its sleeve, and according to a report by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company, 24 million iPod touches represent about 40 percent of the total 58 million iPhone OS devices. From the time I first laid my hands on the iPod touch, I have been a big fan of it — after all, it is just like an iPhone except that it has more storage, is...

Forget The iPhone: The iPod touch Is Where It’s At Posted 12/07/2009 at 8:33:11am by J.R. Bookwalter Apple may have to fend off a number of competitors for the iPhone’s crown of smartphone dominance, but one area where there seems to be comparatively little competition is the roost ruled by the iPod touch. Based upon a report by Flurry, a San Francisco mobile analytics company, there are 24 million iPod touches in use, which represent 40% of the total 58 million iPhone OS devices, according to Gigaom’s Om Malik. After all, the iPod touch has one big advantage over the...

Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer writes in a post today that the company has decided on a new, cleaner design for the iconic Google homepage: The main feature of the new homepage is that it “fades in” — when the page first loads, it shows only our logo, the search box and the buttons. As we told you back in October, Google has been experimenting with various homepage designs – from just a search box and logo, to the same with “This space intentionally left blank” below it. The final design (and, as we...

SNIPPET: "Let me preface this by saying that I approve of Jarret's method and objective, as he continues to successfully bait members of the English-language as-Ansar forum. In fact his efforts resemble the relationship I had with Irhabi007 & Co. from 2004 to roughly 2007. The problem is that the term jihobbyist conveys the notion that these guys are not serious, that they do not constitute a threat. In fact what these guys are doing is marking time while waiting for the opportunities and associations to appear that will allow them to become real jihadis. My own period of baiting...

"So, if the mohajroon.com forum was shut down..." SNIPPET: "...back in 2007, when the UAE told the forum administrator it was either that or he was going to jail... ...how is it that the same forum administrator was able to turn right around and start the al-Shmokh forum? A forum which - ironically, or not so ironically - has recently become involved in accusing other forums of being fronts for intelligence agencies."

Quote: NO VISA REQUIREMENT FOR TRAVEL FROM TURKEY TO JORDAN I'm pretty sure the brothers think they can use this to their advantage... Posted on 06 December 2009 @ 13:17

Quote: 06 December 2009 "TO OUR BROTHERS STATIONED IN GERMANY..." Click to view archive of thread... Posted on 06 December 2009 @ 13:18

06 December 2009 TAKING THE WAR TO THE ENEMY SNIPPET: "I really don't like the sound of this... [click to read]"

"JARCHIVE.INFO GETS A NEW LOGO DESIGN" SNIPPET: "At least _someone_ on the forums can keep his priorities straight. Who cares how many people you've killed lately - what's important is whether you have a cool-looking logo:"

06 December 2009 A non-random sample of current offerings on jihadi sites clearly designed to keep the fires burning: SNIPPET: "@ al-Faloja" SNIPPET: "@ al-Shmokh" SNIPPET: "@ at-Tahadi

Apple's Base Stations Have Three 802.11n Streams DECEMBER 5, 2009 Apple's October revision to its AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule lets these units run at up to 450 Mbps, 50 percent faster: I knew that Apple had put a 3x3 antenna array into these devices, which could be argued was intended to improve speed-over-range, a common reason to add antennas. (Read the background in my 20 October 2009 article, "Apple Slipstreams 3x3 into Wi-Fi Base Stations.") But I had heard that Apple had built three streams in, making these devices capable of a raw 450 Mbps operation, or...

FYI Freepers, open up your bank statements and look for "MVQ" somewhere in the description, or "privacy matters", I consider myself a tech-savvy guy. Well, I was reviewing my bank statement and found a charge for $23.95 that said this: MVQ*PRIVACYM 888-239-0316 CT I found another one for the previous month. Google'd it and found out it is company that somehow gets your credit card number, and begins charging you for the "privacy protection services", which essentially amounts to them stealing money from your account. This is just a warning to check. Would like some advice from the freeper community...

Today's news can prompt two very different views of Google, based on the announcement of its free Google Public DNS. In one view, Google is our best friend and a noble public servant. In the other, Google may be the darkest force on the Internet. Which is it? We all must decide. Here's the news: Today Google has begun offering an experimental, but stable, Public Domain Name Server (DNS), described in a Thursday post to Google's Official Blog. The goal is for the new DNS to increase browsing speed and improve Internet security. I have read the technical description and...

Is Apple the Mobile Walmart? Gib Bassett - 1:43 pm on December 5, 2009 Yesterday I came across an article on CNET titled, “In mobile, do developers or consumers matter most?” and immediately thought, “Who cares what developers think, at least the ones who want to make money?” The article describes the oft-cited displeasure that developers have with Apple and its policies, and how it may cause defections to other platforms.  Yet the article also says this about the iPhone: “…for most consumers, their mobile device of choice is a lifestyle decision, a personal, ever-present extension of themselves…” With the...

Apple has the opportunity to do in mobile what Microsoft did on the desktop: Own the standard platform upon which every popular application is based.  The irony of this cannot be lost on Microsoft, which has flubbed its own opportunity to do the same. Google's Android could mount a strong charge here because it's hardware agnostic (the same way Microsoft Windows is, ironically).  But otherwise it's Apple's game to lose. Keep reading at the NYT >