Archive for January, 2010

How on Earth will all those Turkish internet users find the relief they need with an acne home remedy if they keep blocking sites for arbitrary reasons?

Europe’s main security and human rights watchdog said on Monday that Turkey was blocking some 3,700 Internet sites for “arbitrary and political reasons” and urged reforms to show its commitment to freedom of expression.

Milos Haraszti, media freedom monitor for the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said Turkey’s Internet law was failing to preserve free expression in the country and should be changed or abolished.

Yahoo knew about the attacks and didn’t want people to know they had been a target? Why not? It’s not like they had hemorrhoids or anything and needed some hemorrhoid creams to cure themselves. It was a public attack by a foreign government, people should have been told.

Yahoo Inc knew it had been a target to sophisticated Chinese cyber attacks on U.S. corporations before Google alerted the company to them, a source familiar with the matter said, but chose to remain silent after its bigger rival went public.

The two Internet search and email providers had discussed a highly coordinated attack originating in China prior to Google’s high-profile announcement on Tuesday, the person said.

Google said the hackers’ primary goal was to access Gmail accounts of human rights activists, and that at least 20 other large companies had been targeted. It was unclear whether the attacks on Yahoo were also aimed at grabbing information off emails, or if they had been successful.

Did China attack Google? It sure sounds like it. China censors everything from basic search results to every web directory known to man, why does it surprise anyone that they would attempt to hack into anyone’s business?

Microsoft said Thursday that a security vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser was used in cyberattacks which prompted Google to threaten to shut down its operations in China.

Web security firm MaAfee Inc. said meanwhile that the attacks on Google and other companies showed a level of sophistication beyond that of cyber criminals and more typical of a nation-state.

Python 2.7, expected to be the last major version in the 2.x series of the dynamic language, was released as a second alpha earlier this month by the Python Software Foundation, with the final release set for June.

Two beta version of Python 2.7 and two release candidates are expected in the meantime, said Steve Holden, chairman of the foundation, on Thursday.

I love Python.

Python is one of those scripting languages that you don’t need a heavy dose of lipozene to get through if you’re reading code someone else wrote.

Too bad you can’t get an insurance quote for server issues in foreign countries.

Recent cyber attacks on Google Inc and other businesses exploited a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer browser, according to security firm McAfee Inc.

McAfee’s report came as authorities struggle to crack one of the most sophisticated hacking cases in history.

Google said on Tuesday that in mid-December, it detected an attack on its corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of its intellectual property. It eventually found that more than 20 other companies had been infiltrated.

I plan on getting a new laptop or MacBook in a few months, so this news couldn’t have come at a better time.

Earlier today, WD announced the latest (and fastest) member of its popular My Book external drives, the My Book 3.0. The drive is available now in a 1TB configuration.

As the name implies, this drive features the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface.

USB 3.0, just starting to appear in products aimed at PCs, offers transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but will operate at slower USB 2.0 speeds—rated at 480Mbps.

Here’s an excellent video comparing the two phones, side by side.

It seems there are great apps released for the iPhone every day. Whether for personal use or business use, there really does seem to be an app for everything.

Two new apps aimed at business travelers and several new tech and business news apps are among the latest additions to InfoWorld.com’s iPhone business apps catalog — an interactive listing of iPhone apps of use to professionals, businesses, and IT staff. The two travels apps are USPS Mobile, which helps you track packages and find Zip codes and post offices when on the go, and ETA, which helps you plan your route and estimate arrival when traveling in the U.S. and Canada by car or plane.

Now if I could just find an app to find Outer Banks rentals when I am ready to take a vacation. Is there an app for that too?

They seem to have meters and devices for everything these days. They have them to tell when you are ovulating, they have them to tell you when you’re pregnant, but I doubt they’ll ever come out with one that will automatically send out birth announcements at the exact moment your baby is born.

They do, however, now have one to tell youwhen you eat too much too fast.

A new device aimed at discouraging eaters from bolting their food is a useful tool in combatting childhood obesity, according to a study published online on Wednesday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Doctors carried out an 18-month assessment of a small computer-linked scale called a Mandometer, which has been developed by scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.