I have a mixed review with regard to this 1.2 toolbar. I used the beta version of the product so I expected to be happy.

I do not like the tabs though, I do on FireFox. The interface seems very slow flipping between tabs. So I disabled it, hope that this may be corrected.

I like the search bar, and MSN honestly it is one reason I simply did not uninstall it and leave it be. This and the popup blocker are the features I like.

The desktop search is something I seriously do not care for in its current state. I like the concept care for the approach. Seems there is enough going on after a reboot. You do not start building a index here as a default setting. Also I would request a period of time to do indexing. Like when nothing is going on would be good.  The end user should not have to be told that the index will pause so you can work on their machine.

Now with Tabbed Browsing

Transitive Technologies confirmed Tuesday that it is providing Apple with technology that allows old Macintosh software programs to run on computers based on Intel rather than IBM chips. Transitive's technology will be part of software called Rosetta, which will work for current Macintosh OS X programs that run on PowerPC systems but not for older programs that run on OS 8 and OS 9 software, according to Apple.

Rosetta will be important for Apple to hang onto its loyal Macintosh customers at a time when it is making a major switch to new hardware. If Rosetta lives up to its promise, consumers won't have to throw away their old software when they buy a new computer from Apple with Intel chips.

Transitive's technology is the result of years of effort. In 2000, Transitive was formed by researchers at the University of Manchester in England. They had developed a way to do ``binary translation'' at high speeds. Transitive has raised $24 million to date.

The software consists of three parts. One part is a decoder, which takes the code of the older software and converts it into an intermediate format.

The second part is the core processing engine, which Wiederhold calls the ``secret sauce.'' The core takes the intermediate format and figures out how fast it can run the older software in its new form.

The third part is custom-tailored to convert the software into a form that runs on the target computer. This software sits on the computer, in this case an Apple computer that uses Intel chips. Whenever a consumer clicks on an old Apple program loaded onto the computer, the translation software starts. It translates and leaves the final code stored in the system's main memory chips. If the consumer uses that software again, the machine can run the translated code from memory.

Security software maker Symantec Corp's proposed purchase of Veritas Software Corp. should be supported by shareholders of both companies, a top investor advisory group said on Friday.

Symantec, the world's biggest security software maker, and Veritas agreed in December to join forces in an effort to blend security with data management. Shareholders of both companies are scheduled to vote on the deal on June 24.

The companies believe selling their products together will meet growing demand from customers for fewer software vendors and will help firms comply with new regulations requiring many types of data, including e-mail messages, to be archived and secured.

ISS said both companies had not quantified the revenue or market share opportunities their deal represents long term, "which means that shareholders are being asked to make a leap of faith and trust the vision of management."

Symantec's stock is down about 35 percent since news emerged in early December about a possible deal.

The companies have said they expect cost savings of about $100 million in their first 12 months as a combined entity.

Many investors have been concerned about slower revenue growth of the combined company, with Symantec's revenue seen slowing from growth of roughly 35 percent in 2005 to around 18 percent in 2006.

AMSTERDAM - E-mails claiming pop star Michael Jackson, on trial on sex abuse charges, has tried to kill himself are being spread by hackers as a means to break into computers, a British anti-virus firm said on Friday.

The hackers have sent emails with the subject "Re: Suicidal attempt" and the message text: "Last night, while in his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson has made a suicidal attempt", said security software specialists at Sophos.

The email asks recipients to click on a link that takes them to a Web site which secretly installs malicious code on their computers.

"If you click on the link, the Web site displays a message saying it is too busy, which may not surprise people who think it might contain genuine breaking news about Michael Jackson," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at SophosLabs.

It absolutely amazes me that so many people are taken in by this level of scam. Any savvy web people who have been around awhile look at this stuff at a glance and say yeah right. Yet after Dateline did their report on it, I was more than a little nervous about the people who are scammed. It is clear there is one key factor in all of this that rings true. If it sounds too good to be true! RUN... Don't let these people toy with your personal greed. Without your hope of getting something for nothing, the scam simply does not work. Yet it has been years on the web and they are still there. Why? Simple because everyone still thinks they found something no one knows about. Doubt it ! Get real "Wake up!" Go out and breath some fresh air. Whatever it takes but please no one gives money away! Surely your parents clued you on this topic. Things change no doubt, but trust me NOT THIS!

The most familiar Nigerian scam is an e-mail offering lots of free money in exchange for helping someone with a name like Barrister Richard Okoya. The offer varies, but the theme is the same — help a downtrodden victim recover a large sum of money trapped in an overseas bank, and you will be rewarded handsomely.

DateLine Article

Anti Fraud Resources:

CounterSpy 1.0.29 CounterSpy is a powerful anti-spyware tool that detects, deletes and protects your personal computer from a broad range of malicious software. It was chosen as PC WORLD 2005 BEST BUY, and is recommended by Dell. CounterSpy has the best spyware database in the industry and the fastest scan times. CounterSpy also has sophisticated protection against recurring spyware threats. You can think of it as a 'spy-wall' that protects you in real-time.

Following about six months of competitive bidding, VeriSign this week officially retained control of .net, the Internet's third-largest domain.

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the oversight body for the Internet's domain-name system, announced Wednesday that it will enter into a new, six-year contract with VeriSign Inc. for the operation of .net.

VeriSign, whose current contract to run .net expires at the end of the month, had been the front-runner to run .net since March, when an independent evaluation of the five bidders for the domain ranked VeriSign as the top choice.

For the first time since its inception, .net was opened this year to competitive bidding among registries. Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign gained control of .net in 2000 when it acquired Network Solutions Inc., and Network Solutions had run the domain since 1992.

Along with .net, VeriSign is the registry for .com, the Internet's most popular domain. As a registry, VeriSign manages the main database of Web addresses in the domains and works with the so-called registrars, who sell registrations for particular domain names to individuals and businesses.

Discovered on: June 10, 2005

W32.Mytob.EA@mm is a mass-mailing worm that has back door capabilities and uses its own SMTP engine to send an email to addresses that it gathers from the compromised computer. Infection Length: 55,934 bytes    Removal Details   Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

 

The task of selecting a processor platform today can be daunting. While the stats indicate that Intel holds the market share there is no doubt about that. They are in the lead by a considerable margin. After all they are the best right? Personally we build many of both, and I personally am not certain that blind leading the blind approach is correct.

       

While for some people options only mean more daunting decisions personally I like options. It typically means if someone is well informed they may end up with something simply not available with some other selection. The point of this article is that AMD has an edge that few people with Intel could ever enjoy. The three chipset providers for AMD fight to provide new features to support the Core Processor or CPU. In the case of Intel you get the Intel chipset for good or bad that is what you get as a option.

The unique low-latency architecture of the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI MCPs offers one of the industry’s best core-logic solution with outstanding performance and the latest technologies—SLI, PCI Express, secure high-speed networking, and high-performance storage—and ensures that your PC stays ready for the newest games, future applications, and next-generation PC specifications. 
The competition with chipsets has clearly given options you cannot find in Intel based machines. All three Via,SiS, and nVidia offer things like 8 channel SATA, on board hardware firewalls. Yet with Intel you will not find these why simple lack of competition.

DNS poisoning requires elite hacking skills, which is why most analysts believe it falls short of a large-scale threat. But before you get too complacent, take notice of the poor man's pharm, a less sophisticated and far less costly way to hijack Web page requests and forward unsuspecting users to counterfeit sites.

Instead of harvesting requests from a DNS server, the "retail" version of pharming is a desktop affair in which a user unwittingly downloads spyware, a Trojan horse or a virus. This malware simply intercepts Web site requests and shunts the user to a bogus Web site. The rest is the now too familiar game of capturing your personal information and then redirecting you to the authentic site. Some say such low-rent pharming accounts for the vast majority of incidents. "The bad guys are always trying to stay low enough in the food chain to escape notice but high enough to make money,"

Another technique, somewhere between DNS poisoning and desktop hijacking, involves search engines. This scam takes advantage of the fact that users forget URLs -- for a bank Web site, for example. The user conducts a search on Google, gets a page of results, and clicks the first one that looks right. But in fact it's a bogus site.

"If you can tag your site so it shows at the top of a search query result page, you can be in the pharming business," said Jim Stickley, chief technology officer and co-founder of TraceSecurity. "This is what legitimate businesses do all the time -- namely, optimize their sites for various search engines."

Apple on Wednesday posted Security Update 2005-006. The new update is ready for download from Apple’s Web site. Separate downloads are available for Mac OS X v10.3.9 and Mac OS X v10.4.1. Apple said the download is recommended for all affected Mac users.

The security update for Mac OS X v10.4.1 contains those Bluetooth and PHP improvements, as well as a buffer overflow correction and other improvements to AFP Server, correct handling of cleanup of poorly-formatted PDF documents by CoreGraphics and a security improvement to prevent unprivileged users from launching commands into root sessions; more secure folder permissions to protect the cache folder and Dashboard system widgets; removal of a vulnerability in the launchd command; a correction to LaunchServices’ query code; a change to MCX client involving Portable Home Directories; modification of NFS exporting code; and correction of a buffer overflow problem in “vpnd.” More details are available from Apple’s Web site.

New versions of the Mozilla Foundation's browsers have reintroduced a 7-year-old flaw that makes them vulnerable to spoofing attacks, security advisory company Secunia said yesterday.

Secunia first publicized the flaw last summer, warning that a feature built into most browsers for years was a security liability. The firm argued that a feature allowing one Web page to load arbitrary content into a frame of another page could allow an attacker to, for example, substitute his own log-in window on a bank's Web site. The feature was found in Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Safari and Mozilla derivatives such as Konqueror.

"We believe that it is important that Microsoft and the other vendors seriously consider the minor gains from such 'functionality' against the possible consequences for their customers," said Secunia Chief Technology Officer Thomas Kristensen last summer at the time of the flaw. "In our opinion, this is a vulnerability and should be treated as such, whether the vendors implemented this intentionally or not."

The Mozilla Project said it is investigating the report, and a moderator of the organization's online support site said the flaw had not been exploited. "To protect yourself, close all other windows/tabs before accessing a site where you routinely put in a secure password (your bank or PayPal account), or your bank or credit card details (e.g., Amazon), or other sensitive data," the moderator said.

W32.Mytob.DL@mm is a mass-mailing worm that has back door capabilities and uses its own SMTP engine to send an email to addresses that it gathers from the compromised computer.     Type: Worm Infection Length: 52,862 bytes.       Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

W32.Mytob.DJ@mm is a mass-mailing worm that has back door capabilities and uses its own SMTP engine to send an email to addresses that it gathers from the compromised computer.       Type: Worm Infection Length: 42,253 bytes       Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

W32.Spybot.PKC is a network-aware worm that has distributed denial of service and back door capabilities. The worm spreads through network shares protected by weak passwords and by exploiting vulnerabilities. Note: Definitions dated prior to June 6, 2005 detect this threat as W32.Spybot.Worm.     Type: Worm Infection Length: 121,504 bytes.       Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

When Apple Computer announced Monday it was switching to Intel-based processors, one of the first to express support was Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit.

The Mac BU has already started work on developing products to back up that attitude of support, according to a Microsoft spokesperson. Some of the primary projects are the next versions of Office for Mac and Virtual PC for Mac.

Microsoft's Mac team is also busy putting finishing touches on updates to current versions, the company spokesperson said. These include Entourage improvements for Exchange users, new Tiger functionality, and a fresh version of Messenger for Mac due to be released in a few months.

In order to create software that can accommodate the platform shift, the Mac BU has been collaborating with Apple engineers on Xcode to create universal binaries of future versions of Office, so that it will run natively on Apple's future hardware.

Xcode, now in version 2.0, was created as a way for developers to craft Mac OS X applications and take advantage of Apple technology as it got released. Xcode 2.0 puts the operating system together with Unix as well as with a number of development technologies.

Historically, the Mac BU hasn't been known to use Xcode, but the platform shift will give the unit more exposure to and experience with the development tool suite.

We seriously think MS knows exactly what will happen here and is trying to rally all the support they can. Who will be the winner here at the end of the day? This time hands down it is the consumer!

The battle between MS and Mac has clearly heated and this is one we personally enjoy.  These are the two operating systems which have been de-geeked enough for the average user to understand.

We personally set Linux aside here as it takes a completely different thought process. Linux geeks it does not make you smarter! You are just more willing to sit and read rims of nasty looking, poorly formatted Doc's.

In the operating system race thus far, Apple's incremental approach to system releases has paid off compared to Microsoft's strategy of giant leaps at long intervals.

Since Windows XP shipped in 2001, Apple has shipped five major versions of Mac OS X. Apple's Unix-based operating system started out far behind Windows XP, but is now out in front in terms of features, functionality and user interface.

Though MS is working hard at security it is clear that Apple has clearly gained users here with the clear edge. However it all turns out which we personally have no favorite. Though I am have been a PC person for years. We doubt any of this will change MS. Their corporate campus will grow and things will likely not change with LongHorn really anymore than they did with the release of Windows 2003.

If Apple makes a OS version that will run on generic PC hardware they will not be able to print the disks fast enough. The reason is simple everyone likes something different. Though both have their own view of the world. People will then have things they like about both, though at the end of the day I honestly think MAC has the edge and it is doubtful that MS even knows why.

"eWeek's View."

A new version of the Netscape Web browser is being criticized by spyware experts for failing to notify Web surfers when they're visiting Web sites that distribute the noxious monitoring programs.

Netscape 8's Trust Rating System, which warns users about insecure Web sites, gives a "green light" to Web sites that download spyware onto users' machines, according to Ben Edelman, a student at Harvard University Law School and an expert on spyware software.

In a conversation Wednesday, AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein acknowledged that some spyware sites received an "unknown" rating from the browser. The spokesman subsequently confirmed evidence viewed by eWEEK magazine suggesting that other spyware sites received a "trusted" rating. The company is working to correct the problem with the new browser.

The critiques are the latest bump in the road for Netscape 8, which was released this month. It was patched almost immediately to cover a host of known holes in its code, which is based on the popular Firefox browser, and to fix a conflict with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

UPDATED: In an advisory posted by enterprise IM vendor IMlogic Wednesday, officials warned of a new worm (define) spread by old means: getting users to click on a URL (define) that purports to come from a friend on their buddy list.

The latest threat to AOL's instant messaging (IM) platform, AIM, again targets users' penchants to blindly click on links supplied by friends. The Gpic.aol worm comes with a message saying, "damn this looks just like me lol" and a link to what is displayed as pictures.google.com.

In reality, the displayed URL obscures the real Web site at newpeople.no-ip.info, which then downloads onto the user's system, collects the names in the buddy list and sends the same message to all of them.

Gpic.aol is considered a medium-level risk threat; it doesn't actually deliver a payload that allows the malware (define) writer to gain remote access to the computer or corrupt or erase data on the hard drive.

A four-member panel of cybercrime fighters dissected the ominous "phishing without a lure" pharming attacks in an "eCrime Calling" workshop at the InBox e-mail security conference here, co-sponsored by the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

Oliver Friedrichs, security manager at Symantec Corp.'s security response center, said the increase in pharming attacks has produced a steep rise in cybercrime statistics.The company's DeepSight global Internet sensor network recorded a 360% increase in phishing or pharming e-mails during the last half of 2004. DeepSight's 2 million honeypots and 4,000 devices recorded 9 million phishing e-mails for the last half of 2004, dwarfing the 2 million identified in last year's first six months. In a phishing scam, e-mail messages that look like they come from a legitimate Web site, such as a bank, are sent to users to lure them into entering sensitive information.

DeepSight analysis shows that 54% of all malware is designed to harvest confidential information from users, up from 44% in the second half of 2004 and 36% in the first half, Friedrichs said. Once infected, the top targets of the botnets are financial services companies followed by manufacturers. "Full Story"

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will begin technical and commercial negotiations with ICM Registry to launch .xxx, officials announced Wednesday.

ICM Registry claims the Internet community as a whole would be better off with a specified area for the adult industry, making it easier for parents and organizations to filter porn while giving members of the adult entertainment industry a venue for their wares.

The overall effect of a .xxx top-level domain (define) is up for debate.

While the domain extension will give the adult industry a "safe zone" to conduct its business relatively, it's a voluntary effort. Adult sites are not required to pack up their .com or .net Web site and sign up to the .xxx domain extension.

More than 10 percent of all online traffic and 25 percent of Internet searches are oriented towards adult content, officials from the registry company stated on their Web site, with more than 100,000 adult webmasters worldwide and 1 million adult domains.

Microsoft Corp. plans to announce as early as next week that it is ready to ship a Windows 2000 Update Rollup, the final security patch for the 5-year-old operating system.

The Update Rollup, which replaces Windows 2000 SP5 (Service Pack 5), is a cumulative set of hot fixes, security patches and critical updates packaged together for easy deployment.

An announcement could coincide with the company's TechEd conference, scheduled for Orlando, Fla., next week.

The Update Rollup will contain all security-related updates produced for Windows 2000 between the time SP4 was released and the date the update ships. It will also feature a small number of important, non-security updates.

The Update Rollup comes just one month before mainstream support for Windows 2000 client and server releases expires on June 30. Microsoft divides its support lifecycle into two phases: mainstream and extended. Once a product enters the extended support period, Microsoft charges for support.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)— Network computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. said on Thursday it agreed to buy Storage Technology Corp. for $4.1 billion in cash, bolstering its presence in the fast-growing market for data storage.

Santa Clara, California-based Sun will pay $37 per share for Louisville, Colorado-based Storage Technology, also known as StorageTek, and the price includes the assumption of StorageTek employee stock options. The $37 price is an 18.5 percent premium to StorageTek's closing price on Wednesday.

The move by Sun is the company's largest acquisition in recent memory as the one-time Wall Street darling seeks to reinvent itself after falling on hard times since the implosion of the dot-com boom in 2000. The deal could also help shore up Sun's computer server business, where it has lost market share to rivals such as International Business Machines Corp. on the high end and Dell Inc. on the low end.

Sun Acquires StorageTek

02 June 2005 | 5:00am PT
» Audiocast 5:15am PT
» Press Release
» Presentation Slides(.pdf)
» Presentations Slides (StarOffice)

I find it amazing the way in which people think that making a software selection means you have to chose sides. Conspiracy theories about Microsoft's 'dirty tactics.' Here is the ZDNet article you decide. The real humor lies in the posts.

MS used a registry key value, Netscape 8 changed this when it was installed and MS created this problem. This is so sad it is amusing but honestly. It is clear ZDNets technical audience has all but disappeared over time based on these posts.

Got to love the people pointing out how insecure Windows is yet the facts to date do not back up this statement, if we are comparing it to Linux. Nor does the cost difference of keeping a Linux machine patched verses Windows. Though I am sure that Bill Gates hired someone to generate these facts. 

I personally saw this error after installing Netscape and corrected the problem. I may install netscape again after they get it right. But please if MS made this level of mistake they would be in court again. I have to give MAC people Kudo's for not even getting involved in these things.

Acting on detailed information provided by the motion picture industry, federal agents descended on administrators and users of a popular pirate-friendly file-sharing site Wednesday in what the government is calling the first criminal law enforcement action against BitTorrent users.

FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents executed 10 search warrants in nine states in a strike on Elitetorrents.org, a free, members-only BitTorrent aggregator hosted in the Netherlands. On Wednesday, visitors to the site were redirected to a new government-hosted page with a stern warning about the penalties for internet piracy: "Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement."

Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize tells you where precious space has gone to. TreeSize can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize is working. The space, which is wasted by the file system can be displayed and the results can be printed in a report. TreeSize is Mailware for Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP.

See all their offerings.

ServiceManager is a tool designed to allow System Administrators, Power Users and Developers an easy means to view, modify or remove services and their information on Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP platforms.

Download
ServiceManagerv1.00.zip (.zip, 552KB, Updated: 6/3/02)

Read the DriverManager documentation.
ServiceManager_doc.pdf (.pdf, 84KB, Updated: 6/3/02)

Meta Tag Expert

Version: v2.0

Price: Free

Platform: Win9x/2000/ME/XP

Size: 761 KB

Screenshots: 1 | 2 download

Meta Tag Expert is a Meta tag generator for your web pages. Meta tags include relevant information about the content of your pages. Meta Tag Expert makes the generation of these tags simple and easy.

Meta Tag Expert v2.0:

* Now supports 36 meta tags!
* Support for Dublin Core tags
* New HTML to JS Converter tool
* Help button linking to new HTML help
* Right-click on program for QuickMenu
* Statusbar added with Modified and Saved state
* More startup tips
* Beginner Wizard
* Import of text-based files
* Register free online
* Updated document on web promotion (v2.0)