According to this news post, industry leaders are plotting to highjack the world wide web and setup subscrition fees to stream media and do other activities. The news post reads, “all of us–from content providers to individual users–would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing “platinum,” “gold” and “silver” levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.”

Source: The Nation via Flexbeta

Security researcher Tom Ferris says he has discovered a security vulnerability in the Beta 2 Preview release of Internet Explorer 7. The bug lies in the urlmon.dll file and causes the browser to crash when it encounters a URL with the “file://” protocol followed by a long string of dashes.

Ferris previously discovered security flaws in Firefox, IE6 and QuickTime. He notes that arbitrary code could be executed on a machine running Microsoft’s newest beta browser, but his proof-of-concept code simply crashes the application. The issue has been reported to Microsoft and Ferris says it is only of medium severity.

Source: BetaNews via MSFN

A BOFFIN at Cambridge University says that the Voice over IP system used by Skype is a brilliant tool if you want to carry out denial-of-service attacks.

Jon Crowcroft claims Zombie networks could be controlled by messages hidden in VoIP traffic generated by programs such as Skype.

Currently DoS attacks are shut down by tracing control messages sent by chat and instant messaging programs. But if a hacker were to use a VoIP overlay as a control tool for attacks, it would be much harder to find the zombie computers, he said.

View: Full Story
Source: The Inquirer via Flexbeta

The ‘preliminary’ due date for the next collection of fixes and patches for Microsoft’s desktop operating system is as more than a year later than many company watchers were expecting. Microsoft has gone public with a tentative date for its third service pack for Windows XP. And that date - the latter half of 2007 - is considerably later than many company watchers were expecting.

Source: OSNews via MSFN

South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communications hopes to introduce a series of internet-connected household robots this October. The bots, according to the Ministry, will be able to perform such household tasks as cleaning, monitoring homes, reading to children, and ordering pizza via the Internet.

View: Full Story
Source: Engadgent via Flexbeta

Dispatch from the future:
FROM: Carter Kohl, 34 inches, 30 pounds, 17 months.
TO: Friends and family.
MESSAGE: Feel free to contact me. Even though I cannot read just yet, you can still send me e-mail. My parents will read it to me and will help me respond to all your messages. In advance, thanks for getting in touch. I’ll be reading and replying back to you before you know it!

Young Carter may not know it, but along with a galloping number of tiny citizens, he is already wired. Despite his limited lexicon, featuring the words fish and light (pronounced “ish” and “ite”), Carter possesses his own e-mail address and an inbox filling up with messages from family and fans.
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In the UK, a poll by Developing Patient Partnerships showed more than a third of men and a quarter of women drink a lot to cope with the stress of crashing PC’s and help desks. Also, a lot of them start smoking, or smoke a lot, during their work on PC’s. Though it’s not clear whether it’s asked in the survay, a lot of people said the really needed a drink during this problematic PC times.

Source: BBC and The Inquirer

Mozilla Thunderbird is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. The goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. The intended customer is someone who uses Mozilla Firefox (or another stand alone browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that “plays nice” with the browser. Mozilla Thunderbird has the following other editions available: Mozilla Thunderbird for Linux and Mozilla Thunderbird for Mac OS X.

Download: Mozilla Thunderbird v1.5 (Freeware)
View: Release Notes
Homepage: Mozilla

Symantec has released an update to its popular Norton SystemWorks to fix a security problem that could be abused by cybercriminals to hide malicious software. In the PC-tuning application, a feature called the Norton Protected Recycle Bin creates a hidden directory on Windows systems. The feature is meant to help people restore modified or deleted files, but the hidden folder might not be scanned during scheduled or manual virus scans, Symantec said in an advisory released on Tuesday.

“This could potentially provide a location for an attacker to hide a malicious file on a computer,” Symantec said. The Cupertino, California-based security provider is not aware of any attempts by hackers to conceal malicious code in the folder. “This update is provided proactively to eliminate the possibility of that type of activity,” it said.

View: Full Story
Source: ZDNet via MSFN

Thanks to Softland

novaPDF Pro is a pdf creator for Windows that allows you to easily create high-quality searchable PDF files.
Using novaPDF, everyone from novice users to professionals can instantly create high-quality PDF files, by simply selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application.

Main changes in version 2.5:

- Added optimization of image sequences” in Printer driver
- Added NoInstallIfExists parameter to silent installer (SDK)
- Other bug-fixes in Printer driver and SDK

Download: novaPDF 2.5
Screenshot: Main Window
View: novaPDF Website