2006 January

If you have Shaw Secure from Shaw in Canada, you have F-Secure and should read this.
Some vulnerabilities have been reported in various F-Secure products which can be exploited by malware to bypass detection or malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system.
Solution: Apply patches (see patch matrix in vendor advisory).

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which takes a dim view of illegal copying of movies, has itself been accused of illegally copying a movie. The movie in question is “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”, directed by Kirby Dick, which is actually a documentary critical of the MPAA’s [...]

Drools……wipes mouth, looks longingly out the window. That’s what happened to me when I caught a glimpse of Samsung’s SP-P300 pocket sized projector with an equally pocket sized price tag of $889. As in under $1,000. Carl Zeis lens. Need I go on?
Read More on The SP-P300ME Projector Here
[tags]realtechnews,alice hill,projector,home theatre[/tags]

The big discussion right now in the blog space is whether the recent comments from Yahoo’s Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker mean that Yahoo has “given up” on the search space and “conceded” it to Google. The problem is, I think everyone’s misinterpreting what Decker said because they’re all succumbing to the “win or die” [...]

It’s starting to look like Intel rushed the Core Duo CPU to market. Processor errata are piling up at the alarming rate of one and a half a day. To date there are 34 known issues, but that’s in less than a month - the Pentium 4 by contrast had 65 over the entire lifespan [...]

In these politically correct times, I just can’t help but thumb my nose at all that now and then– especially when there is an intriguing tech angle to be had. Here’s a kit that will turn an unused drive bay in any desktop PC into a pop out beverage holder and cigarette lighter. Of course, [...]

Jimmy Daniels of RealTechNews Writes:
Once again 180Solutions is in the news, and, as usual, it involves deceptive install practices. The Center for Democracy and Technology, CDT, has asked the FTC to stop 180Solutions from allowing “deceptive and unfair” methods in distributing products that generate online pop-up ads, saying that 180 has responded to it’s complaints, [...]

Welcome to the Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge, the first tobacco lounge in the nation, but sure not to be the last. The Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge is where you can have a smoke while enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper. It’s designed to appeal to all those disaffected smokers [...]

Free registration required to read the story. Sharon Waxman of the New York Times writes:
Hollywood will inch further toward making movies simultaneously available in theaters, on DVD and on home television screens at the Sundance Film Festival this week, as IFC Entertainment unveils a plan to release 24 films in theaters and on [...]

Today’s Warped site comes to us courtesy of the Internet. Since all of the sites we visit are already on the Web, what makes this one so unique or special? For one thing, it is from a country where English is not the native language. Also, just a few short years ago, this type of [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
As we said in our earlier article, word was that Windows XP would not boot on an Intel Mac, due to the use of the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) instead of BIOS. That information hasn’t changed yet, but an enterprising person, who apparently fibbed a little and told his [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
Last year I wrote a story on Stanford on iTunes, a pilot program allowing students to download podcasts of lectures they missed. At the time I indicated Stanford University wasn’t the only college using such techniques. Unfortunately, as more and more students “take advantage” (and if you listen to [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
This is such an old-school worm … not only is it written in Visual Basic, you have to open the attached file to infect your PC. Yet people still have not learned not to open files they’re not expecting.
The worm is also known as Nyxem, but was dubbed the Kama [...]

This one is a tad off topic, but we like to cover “shocking” Internet stories from time to time. I would file this under, Note to self: when trying to sell illegal drugs like cocaine, don’t post an ad on the Internet. Oh…and don’t include your phone number.
Read More on our Tip of the Day [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
A study by Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario indicates that users form an opinion about a website within the first 50 ms. Thus, if you’re still reading this, you’ve already decided that RealTechNews is “visually appealing” to you.
Read More on 50 ms impressions Here
[tags]internet,websites,realtechnews,michael santo[/tags]

Jimmy Daniels of RealTechNews writes:
How’s that for a catchy title? Just saw this on MSN, the Supreme Court refused to hear the patent appeal from the maker of the Blackberry device, Research In Motion Ltd (RIM). The appeal asked the justices to decide whether the company, whose main really station is outside of the US [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
brandchannel.com asked the question “Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2005?” and 2,528 branding professionals and students voted and came up with the answer Google. Google last topped this poll in 2003, losing it to Apple last year, which came in second this year. Skype [...]

Today we leave the world of reality and cross over to a site that puts the WWW in World Wide Web. Only it doesn’t stand for that, in its opinion. To see what I mean, follow the Yellow Brick Cursor over to today’s site.
The site is called SIMP, where, in its own words, experts will [...]

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:
Before anyone says anything, yes, there were plenty of acronyms in the title. The EMI Group is considering a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to review (through reverse engineering) its Digital Rights Management (DRM).
Read More about EMI, EFF and DRM Here
[tags]eff,security,michael santo,emi,drm< realtechnews[/tags]

Chief Gadgeteer of RealTechNews writes:
Google recently announced that its Google Talk service is now fully interoperable with other IM networks which use the XMPP protocol. Google Talk will now be able to communicate with Jabber, the Gizmo Project, GAIM for Linux, Apple’s iChat and many other other IM clients. Any IM provider using XMPP (eXtensible [...]