John Lister has reported that “some of America's leading ISPs have reached an agreement with movie and music companies to punish customers who breach copyright laws. But while the sanctions are lighter than rights owners would like, the move could still spark a legal debate.The deal involves AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon, along with industry bodies for Hollywood studios, record labels and TV producers. It's being organized under the newly-formed Center f...
Well, I joined, but like Martin Brinkmann at gHacks.net, I took a look at the privacy settings first thing. I strongly advise you do so also to advise sharing your profile automatically with everyone on the net. There are quite a few settings to go through, and since I wish to make this brief, please go to his excellent (as usual) article and go through it using his “tutorial”. If you’re rushed though, do what he suggests here: ...
In the wake of LulzSec, Anonymous, AntiSec, botnets, phishing and malware, etc., etc., etc. I’m really feeling that the system has let everyone down. I don’t mean I need someone to make the playground a safe place to be in. I’m the first to acknowledge that I am responsible for my computer and browsing habits. I mean that I expect companies, agencies, corporations and IT professionals to take things seriously. They need to protect what we trust t...
Well, assuming there’ll be cell reception and assuming you’re able to send, this app “I’m OK!” is really a wonderful thing. #imok will let your emergency contacts know whether you are o.k. or #need help, not and need help. It will even let them know where you are with the #loc if you need help. “Once you sign up for I'm OK! you'll add your emergency contacts and receive a verification text message from a phone number you'll want to...
TOS’s are pesky critters. An article I was writing had to be changed because it’s source has been taken down over at Neowin.com. The article was about dropbox’s TOS, and it maintained they basically own everything you decide to upload there and can do anything they want with it. On the page I can retrieve on dropbox, here’s what I found : Note the second paragraph. Not to belabor the point, this means anything you ever wrote, drew, painted, ski...
The Nexus File manager and The Nexus Font manager are free for the taking and are both powerful managers which are simple to use. They should not be confused with the Nexus Extreme software from Winstep. The file manager has a nice appearance, and has a multipane (good for moving files), tabbed, FTP (so you don’t need to open another app), advanced renaming, archiver, folder tree, shortcuts, thumbnail views for images, and multi-lingual support. It’s portable and it even has sk...
I just got an email from WindowsSecrets.com and felt it important to inform you of potential Update problems. Now normally, I harp on keeping Security and software/drivers updated but this time Susan Bradley who is a highly regarded writer and reporter has issued a warning about the latest round of updates of .NET from Microsoft: “ .NET is one of the most troublesome updates we deal with. In case you think you need June's .NET security updates, I'm h...
Opera 11.50, codenamed "Swordfish," is now RTM and is going like hotcakes (they put a download counter on the page). The most visible change is an update to the default browser skin. Now the skin is brighter and less “cluttered”. “The "Featherweight" skin sports a newly styled toolbar with borderless buttons, a new icon set, four default navigation buttons (Back, Forward, Reload/Stop, Wand) in the default toolbar, and a more accessible zoom sli...
This is a follow up on I.D.’s article about Corel’s “Summer Deals”. I got this in an email this morning, and thought there might be some folks who might be interested. The deals run until Thursday, 11 a.m. EDT.
John Lister over at infopackets reported that Microsoft has made several changes to its online storage service, SkyDrive. SkyDrive offers users 25 GB of free online storage, meaning files can be accessed from any machine: “Users can decide whether to make files publicly available, in which case the service can be used as a simpler alternative to running a website to host documents or media files, or to make them private and only accessible with a Windows Live log-i...
Razer has added yet another gaming mouse to its catalog of devices for gamers with the Razer Orochi Black Chrome Edition. “The mouse's laser sensor can track up to 100 inches per second, and boasts several features including on-board memory, on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment, and a symmetrical design for both left- and right-handed gamers. The Orochi is also small for on-the-go mobile gaming, measuring approximately 1.4 by 2.7 by 3.9 inches (HWD).” The mo...
Carlos Orlando at infopackets reports that a Silicon Valley start-up company (Lytro) has released a new camera model that allows a user to snap first and focus later. Dubbed 'Lytro', the camera is able to capture light data from many different angles using a specialized sensor. The sensor uses what is termed a "microlens array", which packs the equivalent of many camera lenses into a very small space: Sort of like the sonar “tail” that SSN and SSB...
So cool! We can post pictures on line and have family and friends comment about us, our kids, our pets, vacations, activities… We’ve turned the web into a truly image rich environment: So much so that folks see ways of making money any which way. These are all seven of the image services that Twitter's native app recommends when you first begin using the app: Twitpic , yfrog , img.ly , Posterous , Mobypicture , Lockerz , and twitgoo .
...
Sam Biddle at Gizmodo reports (and confirmed by the Arizona Police) that lulzSec has hacked Arizona Law Enforcement because of Arizona's "racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona". The newest data reveal "hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement." “The release, entitled "Chinga La Migra" (F**k the Border Patrol) is the first t...
The FBI has been working with several other countries have seized servers and bank accounts which netted two scareware gang criminals $74 million. The scareware involved is the MacDefender and its Windows cousin which installed by visiting a phony site and requesting a free scan. This “scan” (better spelled “scam”) would then report phony viruses being on the computer which for a fee ($129 via your credit card numbers) would be “removed”. This scam involved approximately ...