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In an attempt to pre-empt computer hackers, Microsoft is developing "virtual" PCs to scour the web for previously unseen attack code. At the software giant's Cybersecurity and Systems Management lab, based in Washington State, US, researchers are building a squad of the virtual PCs - created in software rather than hardware - to explore the darker corners of the world wide web. To any website they visit, the machines appear to be a normal home computer. But the PCs are seeking out code designed to attack a computer and will sound an alarm if any code is executed in contravention...

More than a third of the software installed on PCs worldwide during 2004 was pirated, with losses from unauthorized software increasing by $4 billion from 2003, according to a study released this week by the software trade group Business Software Alliance. Thirty-five percent of all software installed on PCs was pirated, down from 36 percent in 2003, according to the study, conducted by research firm IDC. Estimated losses from software piracy climbed, however, from $29 billion to $33 billion, as both the legal and unauthorized software markets grew from 2003 to 2004. IDC estimated that $90 billion worth of software...

A string of break-ins last month at Lima businesses had police baffled - until a laptop computer disappeared from an insurance office on Cable Court. Tracking software on the stolen machine alerted a Tennessee company to its location, which allowed police to track down the computer and a suspect. Chad Thompson, 32, was arraigned yesterday in Lima Municipal Court on one count of breaking and entering, police said. He was being held in the Allen County Jail on $10,000 bond. Lima police Detective Tim Clark said the tracking software - known as "CyberAngel" - provided the break in a case...

NEW YORK (AP) - A computer problem at an unidentified stock trader caused erroneous, exaggerated prices - some as high as $950 per share - to be posted to the Nasdaq Stock Market Friday morning for 1,680 different stocks, a spokeswoman for the Nasdaq said. The Nasdaq said it continued to review all trades between 9:19 a.m. and approximately 9:40 a.m., when the problem occurred. While the stocks affected represent more than half of the 3,200 companies listed on the Nasdaq, the vast majority of them were among the Nasdaq's most infrequently traded stocks. The problem has been corrected, Nasdaq...

IN A SINGLE Sunday, the New York Times managed to call iPods unhip and denounce high school theater as a “refuge of nerds and spazzes.” Talk about having one’s finger on the pulse of pop culture. With the media in the doghouse according to mainstream America, is it really wise to insult Broadway and Apple in one day? I think we should all go Times Square and listen to “West Side Story,” freshly downloaded from iTunes, Apple’s online music store. That would send the Great Gray Lady straight “Into the Woods” for sure. We could protest all the way to...

DENVER -- Imagine receiving a phone call from a stranger who knew your most private thoughts, knew what you looked like, knew your Social Security number, and even knew how much you make and where you work. That happened to a Colorado woman after she took her computer to a major electronics store. Her situation may be surprising given all the warnings about identity theft. But it's not surprising if you think for a moment about what's on your personal computer. There may be files about your income, business records, taxes, personal e-mails, dirty jokes, pictures and more. It's all...

I think about it all the time. I crave it when I'm not doing it. I wake up and want to do it. No matter how much I do it, I always want more. I can't stop. It's computer games. My name is InHisService, and I am an Acroholic. My favorite computer game in the world is "Acrophobia" which I've been playing for about 6 months. You are given letters, and you make acros; example: WTHIGOWA, What the hell is going on with Acrophobia? The game began freezing all the time, every time you'd go in. There's a chat room,...

Survey results from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (HERI/UCLA) show that the popularity of computer science (CS) as a major among incoming freshmen has dropped significantly in the past four years. Alarmingly, the proportion of women who thought that they might major in CS has fallen to levels unseen since the early 1970s. The percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating that they would major in CS declined by over 60 percent between the Fall of 2000 and 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than its peak in the early 1980s (Figure 1).Freshmen...

Workers distracted by email and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers, new research has claimed. The study for computing firm Hewlett Packard warned of a rise in "infomania", with people becoming addicted to email and text messages. Researchers found 62% of people checked work messages at home or on holiday. The firm said new technology can help productivity, but users must learn to switch computers and phones off. Losing sleep The study, carried out at the Institute of Psychiatry, found excessive use of technology reduced workers' intelligence. Those distracted by incoming...

Was executed American contractor Nicholas Berg's decision to share his computer password with alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui during a 1999 encounter in Norman, Okla., just a coincidence, as Attorney General John Ashcroft assured the nation last week? Or was there more to this bizarre development than meets the eye? Oklahoma City bombing investigator, former NBC reporter Jayna Davis, has been exploring some of the more troubling aspects of the Berg-Moussaoui meeting, especially in light of the role the city of Norman played in events leading up to 9/11. First, says Davis, the official story which had Berg, then a...

Question for my fellow freepers: My laptop recently got hit by something big. Needless to say, I wiped the entire drive, and reloaded Windows XP Pro. Everything went well, but for some reason, I cannot change my monitor settings. I go to display properties, but I cannot move the slidebar to change the screen resolution. DVD's can't play because it comes up with a message saying my screen settings are wrong. Any idea? BTW, I have a Dell Inspiron.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Mechanical engineers at Purdue University have new findings offering promise for modifying household refrigeration technology with small devices to cool future weapons systems and computer chips. The devices, called "micro-channel heat sinks," circulate coolant through numerous channels about three times the width of a human hair. Such devices might be attached directly to electronic components in military lasers, microwave radar and weapons systems, as well as in future computers that will generate more heat than present computers, said Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research. The researchers are adapting refrigeration systems...

Help! My son has changed the settings for the screen magnification--he changed the colors from 256 to 16. Fonts, icons, size of open windows are huge--the overfill the screen to the point that only about 1/4 of an open window can be viewed. Here is the problem--when I try to change the settings I can get the open window to move high enough to allow me access to the bottom of the open window to hit the ok button. Can you offer a solution. Thanking you in advance.

TEN years ago, Microsoft unveiled Windows 95 in a way that suggested that the product's arrival was no less momentous than when humans stood upright for the first time. The company spent about $200 million introducing the operating system. That paid for festivities on the Microsoft campus (with Jay Leno as M.C.), rights to use the Rolling Stones song "Start Me Up" in a global advertising campaign and permission to bathe the Empire State Building at night with the Windows logo. It also loaded The Times of London with Windows 95 advertising that day, making the newspaper a one-day freebie,...

Last week, Michael Kanellos published this FAQ on the 40th anniversary of Moore’s law, which is famously known as the phenomenon that computer processing power will double every 18 months. Actually, Gordon Moore only said that transistor count would double every 24 months and it was David House (a former executive of Intel) who extrapolated that performance would double every 18 months as a result of the increase in transistors. Ironically, it is House’s unofficial reinterpretation of Moore’s law that has become the popular definition of Moore’s law. Over two years ago, Tomshardware released this excellent article showing the historical...

So Your Computer is Running Slow When you first bought your computer, it zinged. It was faster than the computer you replaced. It was "upgraded"! But lately something happened. It slowed to a crawl, taking forever to boot up and net surfing - especially for you dial-up users - became excruciatingly, impossibly slow. It is possible to recapture that lost speed. What happened? There are a few culprits. We personally hate long winded explanations, so we will keep this short. Or, you can forget the explanations and just skip to the fixes. For those of you still with us, here...

Something strange may have just taken control of this OS,until I catch the SOB, and kill it. I could just be over paranoid but,something is surely biting on My butt, and I try not ever to cry Wolf! I have tried all the suggested scans, reckon I need to try some more. Only X rated place I go is a bit of lurking around on DU, never thought I could catch the crabs online.Run Your scans, I'm logging off.

"With eight new variants surfacing in the last week alone, and over a dozen reported since the beginning of March, the Mytob mass-mailing worm appears to be evolving rapidly." On Monday, security software maker Symantec reported two new versions of the virus, labeled as W32.Mytob.R and W32.Mytob.S. Both worms achieved a low or moderate threat rating from Symantec, as have earlier variants of Mytob, but the company is still recommending that people update their security software immediately to protect against the emerging threat.

A number puzzle originating in the work of self-taught maths genius Srinivasa Ramanujan nearly a century ago has been solved. The solution may one day lead to advances in particle physics and computer security. Karl Mahlburg, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US, has spent a year putting together the final pieces to the puzzle, which involves understanding patterns of numbers. "I have filled notebook upon notebook with calculations and equations," says Mahlburg, who has submitted a 10-page paper of his results to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The patterns were first discovered...

Need another reason to get your Gmail account? How about using its generous 1GB storage capacity as a virtual drive to save and retrieve files directly from inside Windows Explorer, accessing it from a new drive you’ll find under My Computer? http://www.googletutor.com/?p=72