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Microsoft Delivers Massive Security Updates
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Microsoft today patched a whopping 64 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer (IE), and other software, including 30 bugs in the Windows kernel device driver and one in IE that was exploited at the Pwn2Own hacking contest last month.
The company also delivered a long-discussed “backport” to Office 2003 and Office 2007 that brings one of the newer security features in Office 2010 to the older editions.
The 17 updates, which Microsoft dubs “bulletins,” tied a record set late last year, but easily beat the October 2010 mark for the total number of flaws they fixed. Altogether, today’s updates patched 64 vulnerabilities, 15 more than in October and 24 more than in the former second-place collection of December 2010.
Nine of the 17 bulletins were pegged “critical,” Microsoft’s highest threat ranking, while the remainder were marked “important,” the next-most-serious label.
Microsoft and virtually every security expert pegged several updates that users should download and install immediately.
“There are three we think are top priorities,” said Jerry Bryant, group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in an interview earlier today. Bryant tagged MS11-018, MS11-019 and MS11-020 as the ASAP updates.
Intel Z68 Chipset Coming
Sources in the tech industry are claiming that the Z68 chipset from Intel is scheduled to debut on May 8th.
The Z68 is specifically designed for high-end Sandy Bridge processors since it is equipped with additional features that are apparently absent on current P67 and H67 boards.
The Z68 is said to have improved overclocking performance, in addition to support for RST SSD caching and a slew of extra enhancements geared towards the high-end markets.
Terror Alerts To Be Issued Via Facebook, Twitter
April 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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The U.S. government may start issuing terror alerts via Facebook and Twitter, according to a news service report.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working to re-design the current color-coded terror alert system. The new system, according to the report, would have only two levels of alerts — elevated and imminent.
Those alerts would be conveyed out to the public in part via social networking sites Facebook and Twitter . The AP article is based on a 19-page draft of the plan that the news service obtained.
“The new terror alerts would also be published online using Facebook and Twitter ‘when appropriate,’” the news agency reported, “but only after federal, state and local government leaders have already been notified.”
The new system is expected to be in place by April 27.
Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research, said the fact that the U.S. government is entrusting something as critical as terrorist alerts to Facebook and Twitter shows how important social networking sites have become to people’s lives.
HTC Profits Rise, Lead By Android Popularity
April 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net, Smartphones
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Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp said first-quarter profit almost tripled, beating forecasts, driven by strong demand for its mobile devices, especially those running on Google’s Android operating system.
The company, which has just overtaken industry giant Nokia in terms of market capitalization, said on Friday that first-quarter net profit was $511 million.
“That its first quarter would be above expectations was well foreseen, Q1 seasonality was better than expected,” said Bonnie Chang, an analyst at Yuanta Securities in Hong Kong.
“For the second quarter everyone is expecting revenue sequential growth in the high teens to 20 percent, shipments will be strong and average selling prices are holding up pretty well.”
Growing demand for phones running on Google’s Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies such as HTC and Samsung Electronics who are betting on the platform.
The smartphone market is likely to grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, according to research firm Gartner.
AMD Debuts GPU
AMD has just unveiled their smallest 6-series graphics card to date. The HD 6450 is based on the Caicos GPU, with a die of only 75mm square, 160 shaders and a 64-bit memory bus.
The graphics card comes in two models one with 1GB of DDR3 memory clocked up to 800MHz or 512MB of GDDR5 up to 900MHz. Furthermore, the GPU runs at different clock speeds, 625MHz on DDR3 cards and 750MHz on the GDDR5 variant. Realistically, AMD should have used two different SKU with different clocks and memory to make life easier.
Intel Outs New Processors
Intel is not letting their Sandy Bridge design go to waste. They will soon release a series of Xeon server chips based on the 32nm Sandy Bridge core.The new chips have a maximum capacity of 10 cores, with hyper-threading and they are expected to deliver a 40 percent performance increase over the previous Xeon 7500 series.
Intel’s Next CPU Faster Than Sandy Bridge
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We hear that Intel is already in discussion with its partners about the 22nm Ivy Bridge CPU, and the talks cover the chips performance. The 22nm processor supposedly offers more performance with a similar thermal design.
Intel is informing its buddies to expect a 20 percent performance increase over Sandy Bridge, which is about the same gain that Sandy Bridge had over Nehalem based CPUs. Keep in mind this is an optical shrink of the existing 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture. Intel traditionally takes a very safe process when it moves from one manufacturing process to another. The 22nm Ivy Bridge comes with the new architecture and will debut in time to take on Bulldozer and Llano from AMD.
Mobile Panic Button Coming Soon
April 4, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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The U.S. State Department is putting its money where its mouth is, according to the Daily Mail. It is funding the creation of an application that will allow pro-democracy activists to delete all incriminating evidence on their mobile phones with a single click while sending out an alert to their fellow activists.
The “panic button” will send out a text message to everyone in the user’s address book, then erase both that address book and the phone’s call history. This will be an important tool, given how thoroughly governments go through dissident’s communications devices as a matter of course these days.
NFC Support Coming to Windows Phone 7
April 3, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Microsoft is adding support for NFC (near field communication) to its Windows Phone mobile operating system, according to a report on Bloomberg Businessweek. NFC technology is a key component to the upcoming mobile payment and mobile wallet systems now reportedly under development at Google, RIM and Apple as well as the new carrier-led initiative Isis, a coalition of three of the four major cellular providers here in the U.S.
Support for NFC technology in Windows Phone 7 will be pushed out in an update to Microsoft’s mobile operating system, sources told Bloomberg reporters. Those updates may arrive sometime this year.
Bloomberg says that the addition of NFC is an effort to close the gap between Microsoft and Google, the latter which is currently the leading smartphone platform here in the U.S., and, according to at least one analyst firm, worldwide.
Google’s Android mobile operating system added in NFC support in the release code-named Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and has incrementally added new capabilities since then to broaden its feature set. In February 2011, for example, an update delivered the ability to both read and write to standard NFC tags, whereas before the NFC support was read-only.
Nvidia Stockholders Mad As Heck
Reports are coming out that stockholders of Nvidia are losing patience with executives as they do not believe the company does not have a sizable share of the smartphone and tablet space.
Analysts were giving warning signs about Nvidia’s share ability to compete against the Apple iPad and iPhone and what appears to be an overall weakness in the PC market. Incidentally, analyst have always speculated that the success of tablets cannibalize PC sales. That said, Nvidia stocks fell around 3.8 percent. Keep in mind there are some who do not want to kick Nvidia to the curb this early in the game.