Paul O'Flaherty

No updates for the next week – Sorry!

I hate to do this folks, but it will simply be impossible for me to work on
the site for the next week or so… (consider it a holiday for me), but personal
circumstances will make updating impossible.

This will NOT affect TechShout Radio. TechShout Radio will still broadcast
on Friday as always.

If you would be interested in posting news submissions for the site (in my
absence, and when I return) then email me at paul@pauloflaherty.com and
give me a brief description of your areas of interest and a little about yourself.

Once again, I’m sorry folks. I’ll be back in around 10 days, and I’ll be bringing
some interesting new stuff to the site with me.

MIA on Wednessday 28th of July

I will be away on Wednesday 28th of July so will be unable to update the news.
Normal service will return on Thursday 29th of July.

If you have an news or stories that you would like to submit then please use
the this
link.

Cheers,

Paul.

Researchers make debugging simpler.

Ever wondered why your favourite application just BSOD’s for no reason? Are
bugs in your own software driving you barmy because you can’t find them? Ever
just wanted to ask the computer "What the hell is going on?" and get a plain
English answer?

Help is on the way because Brad Mayers, a Carnegie
Mellon University computer science professor, and Andrew Ko, a graduate student, have
developed a debugging program that lets users ask questions about computer errors
in plain English: Why didn’t a program behave as expected?

Read more on Yahoo.

More anti-trust battles for Microsoft

Microsoft is locking horns with the Japanese trade
watchdog’s warning over alleged anti-monopoly law violations in licensing
deals with manufacturers using the company’s Windows software.

The Fair Trade Commission sent an official warning
to Microsoft on July 13, demanding that the software giant drop the clause
in licensing agreements that it suspects helps Microsoft unlawfully infringe
patents.
The clause prevents makers from suing Microsoft
or other licensees over suspected cases of patent and copyright infringement
in which elements of manufacturers’ own software technology may end up in
the Windows system.
Microsoft has dropped the clause, although it
believes the wording is lawful. But the Fair Trade Commission is demanding
that the clause be dropped in contracts that were signed in the past.

Commission officials are not certain any patents
have been violated by Microsoft, the world’s dominant software company, or
other companies who are partners with it. In February, the commission raided
Microsoft’s offices in Japan.

The contract clause, called the “non-assertion
of patents provision,” says companies that sign Windows licensing agreements
will forgo the right to sue over suspected patent infringements linked to
the licensing.

The commission says the clause is “restrictive” by
making it difficult for Japanese electronics companies to obtain royalty
fees even when rivals violate their patents. The commission did not levy
a fine or issue other penalties.

Microsofts European Court Battles Begin

The courts are to have the first informal hearing in Luxembourg to discuss
the first hearing in September. This will be the first step for Microsoft in
attempting to get the sanctions, imposed on it by the European Commission,
lifted. The sanctions include a fine of €497 million and require Microsoft
to retail a version of WinXP without Media Player bundles in the operating
system.

Microsoft
wants the court to waive Commission sanctions until the entire case is completed,
which is likely to take three years or more.

The Commission says that if the remedies are
suspended they will become irrelevant by the time the case is over years
from now, while Microsoft says the sanctions will damage the company in ways
that cannot be undone.

In March, the EU executive ordered Microsoft
to offer a version of its Windows operating system without its Media Player
audiovisual software, to provide more information to rival makers of server
software and to pay a record fine of 497 million euros ($612.3 million).
Microsoft has paid the fine.

The Commission gave Microsoft
90 days to get ready to carry out the remedies, but Microsoft is still negotiating with
the Commission and has said it is not ready to remove Media Player.

MyDoom slows search engines, spreads via email.

Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Lycos were slowed down yesterday
by the spread of the latest version of the MyDoom virus. This variant is MyDoom.O
and uses some new techniques to gather email addresses, such as searching the
major search engines for domains found, and emails within the domains.

This resulted in dome of the major site’s being nearly unreachable for short
periods yesterday. The virus also has improved technologies for spreading through
local peer networks and uses social engineering tricks to entice people to
click on the attachment.

Among other things, the virus poses as an administrative
message from the user’s e-mail server and, ironically, as directions to remove
a virus, and like previous versions of MyDoom, MyDoom.O
arrives in e-mail addresses sent from faked (or “spoofed”) e-mail addresses and
with vague subjects such as “hello,” “error,” and “status.”

Most anti-virus companies issued updates to stop
this variant of MyDoom yesterday, and it is recommended that if you haven’t
downloaded the update you do so immediately. McAfee has given the MyDoom.O
virus a threat level of “medium”.

Windows 98 SE Service Pack 1.5

Microsoft has never released a service pack for Win98 Se, but that doesn’t
mean that there isn’t one out there.

Exuberant
Software have put together a package that includes all the updates from
the Windows Update site and more, including things like 256 colour tray icons.

The package is for Win98 SE English only. You can check it out here.

Real tunes for your iPod

Real Networks is to give away software that allows users to buy and download
music from their online store and load the tunes onto their iPod from tomorrow
onwards.

Real are doing this without consulting Apple for permission, and have developed
the technology by “reverse engineering” Apples software. This could provide
some competition in the market for tunes downloaded by iPOD users and potentially
lower prices across the board. However, we are as yet unsure how Apple will
respond to this. They could accept the competition, or they could conceivably
take action against Real.

Also, there is the matter of Real’s reputation. It has been my experience
that Real distributes bloated, badly coded, advertising laden software, that
is notoriously difficult to remove and hi-jacks your system. This software
would need to be a step above Real’s usual offerings in order to make me move
to it, even if the download were cheaper.

Herbie Rides Again!

Everybody remembers the Herbie movies, don’t they? That little Volks Wagen
Beetle racing around the country side with a mind of it’s own, getting into
all kinds of adventures.

Well, it looks like Herbie might have some competition for being the most
emotive car out there, at least if Kenji
Mori, Naoto Kitagawa, Akihiro Inukai and Simon Humprhies of Toyota have anything to do with it. They’ve patented
a design for a car that can express emotions. Not strictly the cars emotions
but the drivers.

In the patent they describe a car with an antenna that wags, an adjustable
body height, headlights that vary in intensity, and hood slits and ornamentation
designed to look like eyebrows, eyelids and tears, all of which could glow
with coloured lights to create moods and physical features.

The inventors believe these features on cars will make driving more entertaining.
In the patent they write that “as traffic grows heavier and vehicle use increases,
vehicles having expression functions, such as crying and laughing, like people
and other animals do, could create a joyful, organic atmosphere rather than
the simple comings and goings of inorganic vehicles.”

“Such emotive, organic vehicles could also lead occupants to have great affinity
for their vehicles, and make the driving experience more comfortable,” the
inventors add.

The ultimate expression of road rage?

US Military sets phasers to Stun

Okay, so they’re not really phasers, but the New
York Times has run a story on how the US Military is developing a range of non-lethal weapons for actions
such as crowd dispersal and defeating enemies without damaging property or
civilians.

The weapons include everything from guns that fire electromagnetic charges,
bullets that disintegrate in mid-air to deploy a payload, goo that stops people
and vehicles in their tracks. The Active Denial System (no there’s a name!)
has other weapons under development as well, including a very Star Trekish
guns that fire plasma that stuns and disorientates the target.

Bin Laden attacks your computer.

For all news group users (news groupies?) out there, be careful of any postings
stating that they show images of Osama Bin Laden’s suicide.

The posting in fact contains a Trojan, which can be used to to commandeer
your computer. It has been posted to over 30,000 newsgroups, but is not circulating
by email. The virus is actually relatively old, and anti-virus software can
detect it. The distributor has just repackaged it. Still, it’s better to be
safe and stay away from Osama related postings!