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BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- I'm a little more conservative than most tech writers when it comes to hot trends that may not be hot nor be trends. I freely admit to some skepticism when e-readers made their debut highlighted by both the Sony Corp. book reader and the Kindle from Amazon.com Inc. The trend was confirmed by Apple Inc.'s iPad, but I need to be more adept at spotting the trend when it is beginning and in the wild. I missed the signals, twice. You look to the public-at-large to spot trends, not to pundits. Two examples come to mind....

SNIPPET: "Thousands of online banking customers have had their accounts drained by a sophisticated new computer virus, internet security experts say. Around £675,000 was taken from a "large UK financial institution" over the last month with 3,000 customers hit - and the attacks are ongoing. Online security firm M86 Security Labs said the customers were infected with a Trojan virus - which cannot be detected by traditional anti-virus software - while browsing the internet. The Trojan, known as a Zeus v3, copies the passwords and usernames of customers' online details and transfers their funds to a different account. It then...

My Firewall/Antivirus detected an infection of the "Packed.Win32.Krap.hm!A2" and http://www.threatexpert.com/report.aspx?md5=45e98426fafd221ffb7d55ce8a1ae531 says it's: A malicious trojan horse or bot that may represent security risk for the compromised system and/or its network environment. I tried to block it and delete the infected files, but that just set off an attack against my computer, which caused me to reload from backup several times. How do I get rid of this nightmare, and prevent it from coming back?

Genetically modified bacteria that munch on sugar to produce refinable fuels could bring down the cost of switching to cleaner energy. Once the technology is fully developed, the company expects the alkane to cost around $50 per barrel, says del Cardayre. "We have a one-step process to make alkane" in an industrial process, says Schirmer. "Basically, in goes the feedstock – sugar – and out comes the vehicle-ready fuel. The bacteria can be grown on any sugar, including those produced from second-generation cellulose-based sources such as grasses and plant waste, which do not compete for land with food crops.

I installed a new harddrive and new XP pro on my sons computer today. All is fine except it cannot access the internet. When I try to create a network, it says it cannot find network adaptors and devices. It is a new installation, any ideas? Thanks.

Until now, only users of Google's tragically short lived Nexus One had access to Android 2.2 (codenamed Froyo), but according to a communiqué from Verizon, the original Droid will be getting the update next week. This is big news for a large segment of the Android user base as the Droid was a very popular phone.  Android 2.2 brings some useful new features to the platform. For instance, Google's new Jun-in-time compiler speeds up applications dramatically, and the browsers new JavaScript V8 engine makes web pages render much faster. We're going to be very interested to see how Motorola handles...

Motorola's eagerly anticipated Droid X smartphone is expected to hit the hot summer streets in just a few hours. But don't plan on hacking, rooting or modding the Android-powered device anytime soon. 
In addition to locking down the smartphone with an encrypted bootloader, Motorola has instructed its obedient Droid to brick itself if the kernel, bootloader or ROM becomes noticeably compromised.

What can you do with a few gigabytes and a USB port? Quite a lot, with the right software. Learn how to encrypt your work, run whole systems, rescue Windows, and customize your thumb drive with these USB-geared tricks.Photo by Debs (ò‿ó)♪.Note: Gina previously rounded up 10 thumb drive tricks in April 2007, and we've borrowed a few of those ideas here. But many of the apps have updated, some have been replaced with better offerings, and a few totally new cool things (Chrome OS! XBMC!) have made their way into this mix.10. Give Your Drive a Custom Icon An...

My First Week With The Dell Streak Yes, after a couple of years with the iPhone, I figured it was about time I checked out "the other side" and visited Android land. I went the whole hog and decided on a Dell Streak. I figured if I was going to contemplate jumping ship, I may as well do so in spectacular fashion! These are really just my initial thoughts after a week or so with the device. Almost suffice to say I haven't felt the need to use my iPhone once in the past week. In fact, a couple...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Just as Apple fans were at their jitteriest about the impending delivery of their iPhone 4s, FedEx's online tracking system crashed Wednesday afternoon. Customers who pre-ordered the new iPhone 4 are slated to start receiving their devices on Wednesday. But early adopters, take heart: "Package deliveries are proceeding as normal," FedEx (FDX, Fortune 500) said in a statement on its website. "However tracking updates are temporarily being delayed. Please try back later." Some superfans wouldn't settle for "later." On the site MacRumors.com, customers were tracking a flight headed out of Hong Kong in hopes that it...

Dell reckons Ubuntu offers more protection than Windows online as it convinces consumer PC shoppers they shouldn't be scared of Linux. In a statement flagged here by TheVarGuy.com, Dell picked on security as one of ten reasons why people should buy PCs running Canonical's Linux rather than Microsoft's operating system. According to Dell's site (here, and a PDF here (pdf) in case the page is moved): 6) Ubuntu is safer than Microsoft Windows: The vast majority of viruses and spyware written by hackers are not designed to target and attack Linux. Dell does not provide further details, but continues to...

Has anyone in the last week gotten a computer virus from Antispyware Soft? It was a real bear to get rid of. I picked it up over the past weekend, and wondered if I could have possibly gotten it from FR or perhaps the alternate FR site when FR was inoperative sometime over the weekend. When I typed Start/run/msconfig and went to the start menu, there was an item ending in tssd.exe which is the virus. Also in start/run/regedit, there was AV Soft and AV Suite. After many times, restarting and unchecking tssd.exe, and running Microsoft Security Essentials, I believe...

One of the main advantages of OLED is that it can be flexible—so flexible, in fact, that it can be wrapped around a pencil. Taking 2007's .3mm prototype Sony's made a new one just 80μm-thick. That's about ten times the size of a red blood cell, or just a tiny bit thinner than a single hair. The whole OLED measures 4.1-inches in size, and has a 432 x 240 resolution and a contrast ratio of under 1,000:1.

(CBS)  A CBS News investigation last month found that nearly every digital copier built after 2002 stores an image of documents copied, scanned or emailed by the machine on hard drives. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports parents and students at Dos Palos High School in Sacramento found out the hard way recently, when CBS affiliate KOVR pulled hundreds of student names, home addresses, cell phone and social security numbers off the hard drive of an old school copier. "The fact that information that we treat very, very carefully somehow got out of our system and is out...

Some folks just have no respect for other people's property. Especially when they rip parts out of it for their own pet projects. NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thanks!

NEW YORK – In 1998, a hacker told Congress that he could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes by exploiting a certain flaw that sometimes caused online outages by misdirecting data. In 2003, the Bush administration concluded that fixing this flaw was in the nation's "vital interest." Fast forward to 2010, and very little has happened to improve the situation. The flaw still causes outages every year. Although most of the outages are innocent and fixed quickly, the problem still could be exploited by a hacker to spy on data traffic or take down websites. Meanwhile, our reliance on...

Well, that is part one of our Ubuntu 10.04 LTS vs. Windows 7 testing. As much as we would have liked to see Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx handily beat Windows 7, this was not the case, but to some extent the opposite. Windows 7 in some of the tests possessed definitive leads over Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with the OpenGL performance when using the proprietary ATI/AMD and NVIDIA graphics drivers, which have largely shared code-bases between Windows and Linux. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS also had its leads in some areas while in many of the tests the differences between the two operating systems...

Computerworld - Microsoft took steps Tuesday to avoid repeating the debacle two months ago that left Windows XP users staring at the notorious "Blue Screen of Death" error message after they applied a patch. In February, a security update that fixed two flaws in the Windows kernel -- the operating system's most important component -- wreaked havoc when it was applied by users, who almost immediately flooded Microsoft's support forum with reports of crippled computers.

The RIAA and MPAA have submitted a plan to the Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement. It's basically a plan that they want the government to enact, and it's terrifying. Here are some of the lovely things that they're calling for: * spyware on your computer that detects and deletes infringing materials; * mandatory censorware on all Internet connections to interdict transfers of infringing material; * border searches of personal media players, laptops and thumb-drives; * international bullying to force other countries to implement the same policies; * and free copyright enforcement provided by Fed cops and agencies (including the Department...

To continue reading this story, enter your password now. If you do not have a password, please create one. It must contain a minimum of eight characters, including upper- and lower-case letters and one number. This is for your own good. Nonsense, of course, but it helps illustrate a point: You will need a computer password today, maybe a half dozen or more — those secret sign-ins that serve as sentries for everything from Amazon shopping carts to work files to online bank accounts. Just when you have them all sorted out, along comes another “urgent” directive from the bank...