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PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday launched an initiative to accelerate innovation in science and computing in Europe. Speaking to journalists in Prague, Gates said the EuroScience Initiative will bring together talented people from universities and research centers all over Europe. "Software has become a key tool for many types of research," Gates said. The initiative also wants to support the Lisbon Strategy, a plan to make Europe the world's most competitive economy by 2010. Within the strategy, EU governments are expected to boost research and development spending, cut bureaucracy and social spending and increase education...

ARMONK, N.Y., November 16, 2004— IBM, along with representatives of the world's leading science, education and philanthropic organizations, today launched World Community Grid, a global humanitarian effort that applies the unused computing power of individual and business computers to help address the world's most difficult health and societal problems. World Community Grid will harness the vast and unused computational power of the world's computers and direct it at research designed to help unlock genetic codes that underlie diseases like AIDS and HIV, Alzheimer's and cancer, improve forecasting of natural disasters and support studies that can protect the world's food and...

Canary Wireless LLC, a Chicago start-up, has launched the first hand-held device that not only detects Wi-Fi hot spots and measures how strong their signals are, but can tell whether they are open for subscribers or available for a free ride to check e-mail. Wi-Fi buff Ben Kern, 34, a technology lawyer with Gordon & Glickson, who founded Canary Wireless, said, "Wi-Fi is booming, and people need an easy way to find hot spots they can use."

Optimal Drive Partitioning Dear Fred; Thank you for your fine newsletter and all the great information you provide. I will definitely renew my Plus subscription.   Now I have a question that I would like to see discussed.  I have read in one or two different publications that if you're formatting a new hard drive or reformatting an older one for some reason, that it is well to set the drive up in three [3] different partitions.  One for your O/S and Drivers, one for your Applications and one for your Data.   Now I can see the advantages...

The Reg launches downloads site By Team Register Published Thursday 16th December 2004 12:05 GMT Site offer We’re absolutely delighted in the run-up to the Festive Season™ to be able to offer our readers a little something from the Vulture Central “get-something-for-free-pay-nothing-ever” department.Indeed, we’re sure that fans of El Reg will find this a refreshing change from the inexorable “buy-now-pay-2020-at-86%-APR” Yule orgy of capitalism which has so sullied the spirit of Christmas.So, with all temptation to utter "bah humbug" pushed firmly from our minds, we direct you immediately to our all-new downloads service, offering a range of gratis and shareware...

Corporate PCs 'riddled with spyware' By John Leyden Published Thursday 2nd December 2004 17:23 GMT Corporate systems are riddled with spyware, according to a study by an anti-spyware firm. Companies voluntarily using Webroot's Corporate SpyAudit tool had an average of 20 nasties per PC, Webroot reports.Most of the items found were harmless cookies. But average five per cent of the PCs scanned had system monitors and 5.5 per cent had Trojan horse programs, the two most nefarious and potentially malicious forms of spyware. The audit - based on scans of more than 10,000 systems, used by more than 4,100 companies...

Researchers Reconstruct Parts Of The Genome Of A Common Mammalian Ancestor A group of researchers has re-created with remarkable accuracy part of the genome of the common ancestor of all placental mammals, a small shrew-like creature that prowled the forests of what is now Asia more than 80 million years ago. By comparing DNA sequences of 19 species of existing mammals, including humans, the researchers have reconstructed a large segment of DNA in the species from which all of today's placental mammals arose. They estimate that the reconstruction is 98 percent accurate. The project, which was led by David...

WEB GURU NEEDED By Michelle Malkin   ·   November 28, 2004 02:13 PM Reader Michael S. Sanders asks if he is "the only one who cannot download any of your graphics on your site." No, Michael, you are not the only one. It's a pretty common problem, unfortunately. Is there anyone out there who can help? If so, my e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.

Phishers tapping botnets to automate attacks By John Leyden Published Friday 26th November 2004 13:55 GMT Computer criminals are making phishing more potent by automating attacks. Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) analysts reckon fraudsters are using automated tools and botnets to ramp up attacks. It estimates attacks grew by an average of 36 per cent a month between July and October.Scam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks often pose as 'security check' requests from well-known businesses. These messages attempt to trick users into handing over their account details and passwords to bogus sites. The details collected this way are...

Microsoft's Google-killer arrives with a 'whuh?' By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco Published Friday 12th November 2004 12:01 GMT Google's executives might be sleeping a little easier this weekend after Microsoft unveiled its much-hyped new search engine. It's fast, slick, and comes with a raft of interesting new features: confounding some expectations as surely as it confirms others. In short, Microsoft has produced a search engine that's better in almost every way than Google, except for one: its search results are terrible. But let's start with the good stuff.Incredibly, MSN Beta Search trumps Google for speed: it's an order of...

Phishing for dummies: hook, line and sinker By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus  Published Tuesday 2nd November 2004 14:55 GMT Recent "phishing" episodes, and two new browser vulnerabilities, show how the bad guys are tricking people into exposing their passwords and bank accounts. Couldn't happen to tech-savvy users, right? Unless you consider how entire nations have been fooled.The art of faking out opponents in a clever, elegant, beautiful way is one that I find fascinating, and I cherish examples of that art. When looking through history for stories illustrating the deliberate use of distractions to obfuscate an intended purpose, I often return...

In less than two years, CoolWebSearch has become the bane of the computing industry. Its programmers have managed to reset Web browsers so that searches get rerouted to the CoolWeb search engine. And any time anti-spyware engineers find a way to stop the hijacking, a new variant pops up, sneakier than its predecessor. There are now dozens. "It's a cat-and-mouse game almost," said Tim Bryan, an InterMute Inc. software developer in charge of fighting CoolWebSearch. There are less pernicious forms of spyware, of course. And there is what's more properly termed adware because many such programs don't actually harvest data...

Gmail accounts 'wide open to exploit' - report By John Leyden Published Friday 29th October 2004 16:50 GMT Google's high profile webmail service, Gmail, is vulnerable to a security exploit that might allow hackers full access to a user's email account simply by knowing the user name, according to reports.The security flaw allows full access to users' accounts, with no need of a password, Israeli news site Nana says . Using a hex-encoded XSS link, the victim's cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of...

80 per cent of home PCs infected - survey By Thomas C Greene Published Tuesday 26th October 2004 19:59 GMT The Internet is well on its way to becoming one vast bot net, a survey by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance suggests.Researchers interviewed, and examined the computers of, 329 volunteers. They found that nearly all Windows PCs are infected with some form of malware, and that a majority of users are unaware of the simplest security basics, such as the difference between anti-virus software and a firewall, for instance. Most users had antivirus software installed, presumably because it's...

  Search US-CERT > Advanced Search National Cyber Alert System Technical Cyber Security Alert TA04-293A Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer Original release date: October 19, 2004 Last revised: -- Source: US-CERT  Systems Affected Microsoft Windows systems running Internet Explorer versions 5.01 and later; previous, unsupported versions of Internet Explorer may also be affected Programs that use the WebBrowser ActiveX control (WebOC) or MSHTML rendering engine  Overview Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) contains multiple vulnerabilities, the most severe of which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running IE.  I. Description Microsoft...

Home | FAQ | Contact | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe from Alerts Search US-CERT > Advanced Search National Cyber Alert System Cyber Security Alert SA04-286A Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Excel Original release date: October 12, 2004 Last revised: -- Source: US-CERT  Systems Affected Microsoft Windows Microsoft Internet Explorer Microsoft Excel, including Macintosh versions  Overview By taking advantage of one or more vulnerabilities in Microsoft products, an attacker may be able to take control of your computer.  Solution Apply updates Microsoft has released security updates for a number of products, including Windows, Internet Explorer, and Excel....

An almost audible sigh of relief arose from Washington last week as Blue Gene/L, a computer built by International Business Machines, claimed the title of the world's fastest supercomputer. Science and technology policymakers have spent the past two years fretting that the US was losing its lead in high-performance computing, with potentially serious implications for national competitiveness. "We believe that to out-compete, we must out-compute," said Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, one of many lobby groups pressing federal agencies to spend more on supercomputer research. The lobbying campaign was sparked by the success of the Earth...

Google is spending some of the cash it raised from its IPO on headhunting staff to build a web browser. Staff have already been poached from Microsoft and Sun.Joshua Bloch, a senior Java developer at Sun, and four people from Microsoft's IE team have all joined the firm in the last few weeks, according to the New York Post. One of the four, Adam Bosworth, was also a lead developer in the development of Access. Joe Beda, a developer working on the user interface for Microsoft's Longhorn, has also joined Google. His blog refers to the NY Post story,...

Pre-patch your XP Setup CD once; never have to install SP2 again. Fred Langa walks you through a 16-step process. Our recent discussions about Windows XP's SP2 show that the huge patch is working fine for most users; and that with caution (make a full backup or image beforehand; read and follow all of Microsoft's pre-SP2 installation tips), even potentially troublesome installations can be handled smoothly. But not swiftly: The update process can take a considerable chunk of your workday, even if you don't count the download time or install from the free SP2 CD. Twenty to 40 minutes seems...

Home | FAQ | Contact | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe from Alerts Search US-CERT > Advanced Search National Cyber Alert System Cyber Security Alert SA04-261A Multiple vulnerabilities in Mozilla products Original release date: September 17, 2004 Last revised: -- Source: US-CERT Systems Affected Mozilla Suite (Mozilla web browser, Mozilla Mail)Firefox web browserThunderbird email client Overview By taking advantage of one or more vulnerabilities in Mozilla products, an attacker may be able to take control of your computer. Solution Upgrade to the latest version Mozilla has released updated versions of the affected products. You can download the latest versions: MozillaFirefoxThunderbird...