The marketing and communications types over at developer Faronics of San Ramon, Calif., very gently informed me a few weeks ago that they have a very well established power management utility for the Macintosh platform. I had despaired of the few choices for the Mac a few months back when...

You can say Microsoft has found a way to crush open source. Or you can say open source has been shown a business model it can use to crack the mass market and gain a sustainable revenue base. by Dana Blankenhorn

A Storm Worm's Independence Day campaign is circulating online using email as propagation vector, attempting to trick users into visiting a Storm Worm infected host, where a multitude of what looks like over five different exploits attempt to automatically infect the visitors next to the malware binary fireworks.exe. Historically, Storm...

Next Tuesday, Microsoft plans to ship four security updates for multiple flaws affecting Windows, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server but the absence of fixes for publicly known Internet Explorer issues is causing raised eyebrows among security professionals. According to the company's advance notice for July's...

"Weekend? What's a weekend?" While the rest of the country is escaping their offices for a leisurely weekend, many in IT could end up back at theirs at the beep of a Blackberry. by Deb Perelman

If you're waiting on iPhone 2 to standardize your business on the awesome new device (yeah, I'll be on line to buy one), you might want to pay attention to the conspicuous absence of iPhone security patches over the last four months. As WaPo's Brian Krebs reports,...

For years, Microsoft has occasionally updated its Windows Update client software automatically on systems that are configured to check for updates. This has been true even when Windows Update is set to simply check for (and optionally, download) updates but not to install them. That decision led...

If you read my blog postings semi-often, you know that I'm very, very critical of problems with airport security.  Nicole Wong of the Boston Globe reported that Boston's Logan International Airport will become the next airport to implement full-body scanners (thanks for the link from the LiquidMatrix guys!) that can see...

Freeware application and Web service Dropbox instantly backs up and syncs your files over the Internet and to any Windows or Mac computer. Once you install the application, it will create a Dropbox folder on your hard drive. Any file you put inside that folder will sync...

Notable headlines: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft: Silverlight content searchable, too Ryan Stewart: Brian Goldfarb talks about Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom with Michael Cot LineRider releases a Silverlight 2 version Microsoft steps up self-policing of its OSI-approved source licenses ...

Guest Editorial by Tiller Beauchamp Earlier this month I had the opportunity to present RE:Trace at the Recon conference, a reverse engineering conference held every other year in Montreal, Canada.  The conference consisted of three days of training and three days of talks in a single track.  Topics...

Microsoft Equipt is a subscription-based combo of Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare, and the cloud-based Office Live Workspace service. It worked great when I beta-tested it earlier this year, and at $70 a year for three PCs it's a good deal for most home users. So how...

Nokia's plan to open source the Symbian mobile OS platform is no threat to mobile Linux, maintains the executive director of the Linux Foundation. Jim Zemlin maintains that mobile Linux will continue to evolve and flourish in spite of Nokia's plans and the formation of the Symbian...

If you ever have cruised on California's Highway 1, you know it offers spectacular views of the Pacific ocean. But several areas of this road are potentially dangerous because they can be affected by landslides. This is why the U.S. National Science Foundation NSF is helping the California Department of...

Sometime in August, Microsoft plans to release Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8. Yesterday, I spoke with Austin Wilson, Director of Windows Client Product Management at Microsoft, about some of the security-related changes due in this milestone, and got a preview of the changes announced today. Here are some details...

Probably not. But it's not a bad thing Microsoft have done, and it really shows that they're committed to this "student malarkey" we have going. Today, they announced that project "Albany", now called Microsoft Equipt, has been released into the wild, for the masses who want an all-round suite of...

The latest high trafficked web site to fall victim into the continuing waves of massive SQL injection attacks courtesy of copycats and the ASProx botnet, is Sony's PlayStation U.S site according to a recent post at SophosLabs's blog : "Researchers at IT security firm Sophos have warned lovers of...

The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Justice Dept. Tuesday for information regarding the use of cellphones as tracking devices. The Washington Post reports that the ACLU had filed, back in November, a Freedom of Information Act request for documents, memos and guidelines on tracking cellphone users. ...

The Openmoko Neo Freerunner, a Linux-based cell phone that "will help enable ubiquitous computing in the 21st century," will be on sale starting July 4, with shipping to begin July 7. According to company specs, the phone utilizes GNU/Linux and comes with core software for dialing, SMS...

Microsoft has given its new Office-based software-plus-service bundle a new name -- "Equipt" -- and a due date (mid-July), company officials said on July 2. by Mary Jo Foley