Ben Edelman has again made some damning claims about Yahoo and its relationship with spyware vendors. Have your Overture campaigns seen behavior that looks like click fraud? Tell us more at WebProWorld.

When that click is paid, according to spyware researcher Ben Edelman, Yahoo and the spyware vendor split the revenue. Edelman has followed up his August 2005 research into spyware receiving payments from Yahoo's Overture by noting an increase in this possible syndication fraud.

"In my August syndication fraud examples, an advertiser only pays Yahoo if a user clicks the advertiser's ad. Not so for three of today's examples. Here, spyware completely fakes a click -- causing Yahoo to charge an advertiser a "pay-per-click" fee, even though no user actually clicked on any pay-per-click link. This is "click fraud," Edelman wrote.   "Full Article"

Discover the most cost-effective server virtualization technology engineered for the Windows Server System platform, now available as a free download. A key part of any server consolidation strategy, Virtual Server increases hardware utilization and enables organizations to rapidly configure and deploy new servers.

While all the news today is touting how great virtualization will be for a MAC I have so many questions. If MAC users want XP running on their systems why not buy a PC to start with? I doubt seriously this will ralley many XP users to the MAC camp contrary to all the news people saying how this will make MAC the standard. Please... Article Here or Movie Here

Personally I am not a MAC basher. I think people will use what ever they want and that is that. Seems foolish to spend ones time picking reasons one is better than another really. The facts are the MAC OS has many neat features but I will not die without it. Seems a bit like Dell refusing to do AMD until recently through the alienware purchase.

I have written several articles questioning the logic behind not letting someone who purchases your OS (e.g.) MAC to install it on any machine the person wants to. The logic is simply so tanted, I wonder if the things created at PIXAR have not warped Steve Jobs perspective. While this virtualization software might be a neat toy for the MAC user, I do not think it will suddenly make people run out and buy a MAC. Though it certainly might get those loyal MAC zealouts to understand that XP is not the evil empire. Who knows they might even understand more about a computer.

What is impossible to understand since MAC is now using the Intel platform, why not open the OS to the PC. Why do they work so hard to close the one door that could give millions of computer users, specifically those PC users an option for their OS. Even if they refuse to support anything but the MAC hardware with their OS, it seems one could seriously shakeup the PC world if they did.

Perhaps it is simply a no compete agreement with MS and Apple that is not advertised and they simply will never allow such a thing. Seems to average people as a one way street. I do not think XP users would race to switch, but many would like the same options that are available now to a MAC.

Microsoft is releasing a software update to Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). This update changes the way in which Internet Explorer handles some Web pages that use ActiveX controls. Examples of programs that use ActiveX controls include the following:

After you install this update, you cannot interact with ActiveX controls from certain Web pages until these controls are enabled. To enable an ActiveX control, manually click the control. There are also techniques that Web developers can use to update their Web pages. For more information

If your thinking about hosting your asp.net 2 site on a shared hosting environment there are a few considerations you should know about before you take the plunge. If you have already upgraded you may be wondering why your site that was working fine in version 1.1 but now has problems working in Asp.Net version 2.

Code Access Security

If you receive one of those generic yellow error messages that say something like the following:

Security Exception

Description: The application attempted to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy. To grant this application the required permission please contact your system administrator or change the application's trust level in the configuration file.

Exception Details: System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Net.WebPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.

Full article by John Belthoff  article Using Medium Security MS

The reorientation of hard drives has begun: The first drives to use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to pack more data into less space are out. And our tests reveal that they not only boost storage capacity but perform faster as well.

In tests of the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 and its non-PMR 5400.2 predecessor, the PMR unit showed a modest boost overall, completing its runs in about 7% less time; results just for sustained throughput were even more impressive with a 15% to 17% gain. The PMR drive's greater areal density has little effect on seek speed, a component of many of our tests, but helped when our tasks focused on sustained throughput with sizable files.

PMR aligns the magnetic markers on a hard-disk surface in a different way to increase areal density so you can store more data on every platter. Existing technology was approaching its areal density limits, and drive manufacturers spent several years working to overcome the problem. The result for you is more and cheaper room for your data, which is no small concern in a world moving to high-definition media.

Seagate predicts that relatively soon PMR technology will deliver at least a fourfold increase in capacity. That means 2TB, 3.5-in. single-platter disks for desktops; 1TB, 2.5-in. disks for laptops; and even 50GB for tiny 1-in. drives in MP3 players in the near future.

Headroom for tomorrow is good, but how much do you gain today? The highest-capacity (500GB), 3.5-in. drives currently on the market have an areal density of 125 gigabits per square inch; the PMR Toshiba models and the Momentus 5400.3 have 133Gb per square inch. That's a measurable, if marginal gain, but compared with the average drive's approximately 100Gb per square inch, it's a significant improvement.

With a winning combination of more storage and greater speed, the new drives should be a welcome addition to your storage arsenal. And they cost about the same $2 per GB as current drives -- you'll find the 160GB Seagate drive kit for $320 (list).

While nature allows us to scale down the size of each bit of information, it does not allow scaling to happen forever.

Today, as the magnetic particles that make up recorded data on a hard disk drive become ever smaller, we are approaching a point where the data bearing particles are so small that random atomic level vibrations present in all materials at room temperature can cause the bits to spontaneously flip their magnetic orientation, effectively erasing the recorded data. Magnetic recording scientists and engineers have calculated that this so called "superparamagnetic effect" may become a serious technology issue for new products in only two or three years.

"We want to make sure that as we approach this superparamagnetic effect, Seagate is prepared and has the ability to circumvent it; either go around, over under or through it. Maybe trick it by moving to a different recording technology," Tom Porter, CTO, said.

Four movie snipets came in today, they only missed the darwin awards because they did not go all the way.

Two brain surgeons.  bodyslam.wmv (1.02 MB)

Oops  footswin.wmv (959.12 KB)

Not enough nerve!  insane.wmv (472.38 KB)

Dumb and Stupid Unbeliev.wmv (826.92 KB)

After too many patches to IE 6.0 to remember. Why did MS wait so long to even start to mention IE 7.0? After all what do they have to gain with a browser anyway? In the early days when Netscape was serious competition to the browser wars MS was all over them with new toys and a browser that laced to their OS. Perhaps that was a mistake?

With their press for security of the OS and touting how hard they are working on making Vista the last word in security. I have to ask what about all the customers you are leaving exposed now?

MS has known for sometime the weaknesses in IE 6.0 then why not race to replace it with IE 7.0. You have spent years now patching it. I have to ask, with the fact that FireFox is a browser that is better in so many ways the biggest being security, why have you waited?

With Vista it appears they are taking the position, that we will not deliver anything until we are certain it is secure. You better not be wrong! Making a statement like this, sets yourself up for the hard questions later. The truth is that no system is perfect though it likely will be better.

What happened to the day's when the company actually raced to get something done? Firefox came from no where to the ruling browser on the web in no time. They have proven that security can be done well and they do not even own the API's.

According to an alert issued by Websense Security Labs, in San Diego, excerpts from actual BBC News stories are being used to lure IE users to Web sites that launch drive-by downloads of bots, spyware, back doors and other Trojan downloaders.

One version of the spammed e-mail seen contains a portion of a BBC News item published on March 27 about the Chinese yuan hitting a post-revaluation high against the U.S. dollar. After the legitimate excerpt, the hackers embedded a "read more" link that points to a Web site that contains a spoofed copy of the BBC News story from the e-mail.

Websense researchers found that the rigged site exploits the unpatched createTextRange vulnerability to download and install a keystroke logger without any user action.  The keylogger monitors activity on various financial Web sites and uploads captured information back to the attacker. It appears that this is the work of a well-organized identity theft ring, stealing bank log-ins and other sensitive user information.

The latest twist comes almost a week after the first wave of attacks started dropping a variant of SDbot, a type of back-door attack that gives hackers complete control of infected computers. SDbot allows attackers to control victims' computers remotely by sending specific commands via IRC (Inter Relay Chat) channels.

The earlier exploits were being launched from several legitimate Web sites that were hijacked and seeded with malicious code. These include an airline ticketing system, an insurance sales site and a site that sells e-commerce software.

The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) email protocol is fundamentally flawed because it was never designed to be secure in the first place and lacks any authentication of the source of an email.  Simply put, SMTP is based on the honor system, with no way to confirm the authenticity of the sender let alone track the sender.  What this means is that anyone can send email as any assumed identity from anywhere in the world.  I can say I'm the CEO of your company or I can say I'm the Pope when I send you an email and there is no way to confirm or deny it's legitimacy. 

The only way to level the playing field against spam is to upgrade the SMTP protocol beyond the honor system and make spoofing & Forging headers nearly impossible. We will call the new protocol as SMTP v2 and the existing SMTP protocol as SMTP v1.  Unlike some who are suggesting a new SMTP protocol all together which could never be implemented easily, SMTP v2 should be backward compatible to the existing protocol to facilitate a seamless migration. George Ou "Written 2003"

AOL, Yahoo and Goodmail again are the primary targets here! Since they offer no new way of determining spoofed or forged headers which is a fact they will have to admit. If you offer nothing new except charging money, how then have you realistically changed anything? The fact is without changing the protocol or adding something people would be willing to pay for, what is the point? Since they are charging the sender for an express lane for spam this does not seem like a valid approach to anti-spam.

PIXOH online image editing

Edit pictures online without software or if you are away from your tools. 

Grand Challenge. In 2001, Congress set a goal that by the year 2015, one-third of military combat ground vehicles must be capable of driving themselves autonomously. In other words, only on-board computer control without any human input or assistance is used. Unlike the Mars Pathfinder and Predator Drone that transmit video back to a screen at some remote location and a human then decides what to do, autonomous vehicles must possess all of the sensory and intelligence capability to make their own decisions. The motivation for this Congressional action was simple - to save soldiers' lives. While the entries were no doubt faced with many challenges along the way the fact is the prize was won.

In the months leading up to the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, Sebastian Thrun, the head of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab, could not know whether his team's robotic vehicle, nicknamed Stanley, would triumph. Given the disheartening results of the 2004 Grand Challenge, in which no competitor had even made it through a quarter of the course, Thrun might well have been only cautiously optomistic. Yet when interviewed by NOVA producers Jason Spingarn-Koff and Joe Seamans, this robotics enthusiast was brimming with excitement, confident that the 2005 race would herald a new era of vehicles that drive themselves.

Driverless vehicles compete in a 130-mile race across the Mojave Desert. NOVA site

Microsoft Corp. is releasing new versions of its software packages for safeguarding and archiving e-mails and other corporate messages.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, which was known as FrontBridge Technologies before Microsoft acquired that company, comprise of four products that can help companies do things like minimize spam and viruses and archive messages for legal and regulatory requirements.

The revamped product line will be available April 1 in most countries.

The products are offered as a service over the Internet, rather than as software that companies have to install. Web-based offerings are growing in popularity because they can be cheaper and easier for customers to deploy and less cumbersome for software makers to update. Microsoft, which makes most of its money from desktop-bound software like Windows and Office, is trying to make inroads into that field.

Redmond-based Microsoft says the products, which will be sold directly to businesses, are meant to complement other security safeguards that companies have on their premises.

What is not understood is why any government cannot simply have these sites terminated at once. Why is it that phishing is not viewed as fraud and theft? Oh PayPal is a big company it should be up to them. It is not hard to take a site down however as:AS4657 asname: STARHUBINTERNET-AS descr: Starhub Internet, Singapore. If APNIC is responsible for these IP addresses it seems that a law governing how one is responsible for their AS numbers and routes is not that hard. The contact listed for the domain name is Acidhurt@starhub.net.sg  Acidhurt is right out on front street how then could ignorance of the crime be possible? Visit the site here.. With all the members pictures to see who might be responsible. How hard is this really to figure out? What seems to be clear is that this type of activity is no longer hidden it is right out in the open.

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AjaxWrite is a powerful word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word formatted documents. Anytime you need a word processor, need to open a .doc file or edit a .doc file, simply point your Firefox browser at ajaxWrite.com and in seconds a full-featured program will be loaded. For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to buy Microsoft Word just vanished. This won't make Microsoft happy, but software users should be very excited that software just got cheaper, immediate and modern.

But ajaxWrite is just the start. We have a library of applications we have been working on to replace most of the standard PC software titles. Every week we will launch a new sophisticated program on Wednesday at 12:00 PST on ajaxlaunch.com. These programs will push the boundaries of what people believe is possible today with web-delivered software. These programs look and operate much like their traditional software cousins, but are cross-platform, loaded dynamically, and are available to users at no charge. I'm convinced if you try a few of these products you will understand how the software business will fundamentally change.

Do you trust the "Microsoft insider" that apparently spoke to Australia's Smarthome News? The site claims that the source told them that up to 60% of the delayed Windows Vista's code will have to be rewritten over the next several months. Additionally, the company has apparently pulled developers from the Xbox team in order to meet an internal deadline to launch the operating system at next year's CES in early January. Smarthome also claims that Microsoft will also offer Media Center as an "optional package" with Vista, though we suspect that this isn't a new development, but rather refers to the Vista Home Premium version of the program, which will include Media Center and other goodies. We certainly hope that Smarthome's source is wrong about the 60% rewrite; although Microsoft has reorganized its Vista team, bringing in Steven Sinofsky from the Office group, rewriting that much code would take a lot longer than the nine months between now and CES (unless they're talking about CES 2009, that is). Then again, the company could always hire narf and blanka; they seem to work pretty quickly, and certainly know their way around Windows.

Update: Microsoft's Robert Scoble has checked in with the company's PR people, and says that the Smarthome article is "hogwash." Microsoft's PR agency, according to Scoble, says the article is "absolutely not true," and that, in addition to Vista not requiring a major rewrite, none of the Xbox developers are moving over to the Vista team. Separately, Microsoft said that, although the next version of Office will be done in October, and will be made available to corporate customers before the end of the year, retail versions will ship in January to coincide with the Vista release.

Dojo is the Open Source JavaScript toolkit that helps you build serious applications in less time. It fills in the gaps where JavaScript and browsers don't go quite far enough, and gives you powerful, portable, lightweight, and tested tools for constructing dynamic interfaces. Dojo lets you prototype interactive widgets quickly, animate transitions, and build Ajax requests with the most powerful and easiest to use abstractions available. These capabilities are built on top of a lightweight packaging system, so you never have to figure out which order to request script files in again. Dojo's package system and optional build tools help you develop quickly and optimize transparently.

Dojo also packs an easy to use widget system. From prototype to deployment, Dojo widgets are HTML and CSS all the way. Best of all, since Dojo is portable JavaScript to the core, your widgets can be portable between HTML, SVG, and whatever else comes down the pike. The web is changing, and Dojo can help you stay ahead.

One of the advantages of using a library is that someone else has though about optimisation for you. So for us, the library authors, we need to know which is the fastest way of doing things in our target environments. The best way to get an idea of the speed of things is to benchmark, so introducing a benchmark suite allows us to evaluate the performance of particular ways of doing things.

Dojo makes professional web development better, easier, and faster. In that order. "Get it here"

On Tuesday, an unlikely coalition of more than 50 groups, representing some 15 million people, launched a campaign to fight AOL's new pay-to-send email scheme.

In addition to Free Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation, coalition members include Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, MoveOn.org, Gun Owners of America, the Association of Cancer Online Resources, the Humane Society, the AFL-CIO, RightMarch and others.

Cumulatively, these groups count more than 3 million AOL subscribers as members, or in excess of 15 percent of AOL's customer base.

While the organizations occupy almost every corner of the political landscape, we're united in opposition to AOL's plan to make large group e-mailers pay to bypass the email company's Swiss cheese spam filters and get guaranteed delivery to the inboxes of AOL customers.

AOL's Spam on Spam

AOL's pay-to-send plan is the latest media snake-oil scheme, designed to give users the impression of improved service while serving no one but the company’s bottom line.

In fact, the AOL pay-to-send plan could make spam worse. As AOL turns its attention to revenue generating email it has a cash inducement to let its free-to-send service grow increasingly unreliable.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham presents his company's new regime as a boon to end-users, stating -- misleadingly -- that a certification system will protect user inboxes from spam. This isn't true. AOL subscribers will receive certified email in addition to the regular traffic that clutters most inboxes.

"We continue to provide exceptional service to all email senders who conform to our antispam guidelines," Graham writes in a rebuttal to our campaign. "In fact, CertifiedEmail serves as a valuable, new standard and threshold for the delivery of legitimate email that will serve as a guidepost for other email senders to follow and adhere to."

Nice try, Nicholas. AOL hasn't solved the spam problem at all; they've merely created a second tier for delivery, one favoring those who can afford to pay AOL's express rate. The other tier -- which has been increasingly compromised by AOL's inability to distinguish honest email from spam -- will remain in place. It may get worse, even, as AOL tries to "incentivise" more users to move from the free lane to their toll road.

If you ever wanted a place to organize your playlists and pod casts listen anywhere in the world.

This is absolutely a brillant idea! Though it is currently in beta, we have been playing with it for days and it is seems flawless so far. If the idea even remotely attracts your attention then go sign up for your own portable playlist it is all free.  No ads all over the place, simple well layed out interface which just works. PortablePlaylist.com

The unofficial fix blocks access to the vulnerable component in the Microsoft Web browser, preventing malicious Web sites from taking advantage of the vulnerability, said Steve Manzuik, security product manager at eEye in Aliso Viejo, Calif. Microsoft does not have a fix for the flaw available yet.

Though eEye's patch does protect PCs against attacks that take advantage of the flaw, the company recommends installing the fix only as a last resort. "Organizations should only install this patch if they are not able to disable Active Scripting as a means of mitigation," Manzuik said. Disabling Active Scripting is Microsoft's suggested work-around.

"This patch is not meant to replace the forthcoming Microsoft patch, rather it is intended as a temporary protection against this flaw," Manzuik said.

eEye, which makes an intrusion-prevention product called Blink, crafted the fix at the request of its customers, Manzuik said. "Customers who don't have Blink deployed yet were looking for a temporary solution," he said. However, eEye has made the fix available for anyone, on its Web site.

Microsoft doesn't recommend installing eEye's fix. "We have not tested this mitigation tool," said Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in Microsoft's Security Response Center. "We can't recommend it because we have not tested it...Customers should weigh the risk of applying something like this to their systems."

The vulnerability has to do with how Internet Explorer handles the "createTextRange()" tag in Web pages. Since the flaw was disclosed publicly last week, more than 200 Web sites have been found to exploit it. These sites typically install spyware, remote control software and Trojan horses on vulnerable PCs, according to security company Websense.

Microsoft has also seen the attacks, but Toulouse said "the spread rate appears to be relatively limited." That means there aren't many new attacks being launched. Microsoft is working with law enforcement to take down Web sites that are hosting the attacks, which are often hacked sites, he said.

Providing additional support for agile development on the Microsoft enterprise development tools platform, Conchango has introduced Scrum for Team System. The new tool lets development teams use the Scrum agile development methodology with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team System, or VSTS. Microsoft's recent delivery of the Team Foundation Server component of VSTS enabled London-based Conchango to deliver its solution, which had been in beta.

Scrum for Team System is a free agile software development methodology add-in for VSTS, developed by Conchango, in collaboration with Ken Schwaber and the Microsoft Technology Centre UK. Schwaber co-developed the Scrum process with Jeff Sutherland in the early 1990s and is one of the signers of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, according to the company.

The plug-in, which will be available as a free download from www.scrum-master.com, will provide development teams with deep support for the use of Scrum, a popular Agile Alliance methodology, when using Visual Studio Team System. This will mean that the software lifecycle development product will recognise the best practices that are defined by Scrum, and build them into any work and processes conducted by the development team.

Thermal Quake leads HTPC Case market with Bach case. It has everything for the novice kit builder and all the features and size for the expert.  More Screen Shots and details available here.

Record and watch TV with your PC. Gain control over your entertainment experience. With Beyond TV, you determine what you want to watch and when you want to watch it. With incredible features and extensive setting options, TV is under your control.

More than a DVR, Beyond TV gives you...

• No Subscription Fees. Ever.
• Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows
• Search for shows by actor, director, or title
• Intelligent Electronic Program Guide resolves conflicts
• New! Record HDTV from free, over-the-air digital TV signals
• New! Record in DivX, MPEG-2 and WMV formats
• New! Search for movies and sports, as well as by other categories
• New! Play and pause FM radio stations

Security experts have warned internet users to be on their guard against a new phishing and spyware scam targeting 2006 Fifa World Cup enthusiasts. The fraud is executed using bogus emails claiming to be from MasterCard offering free travel and tickets to the World Cup finals in Germany.

Recipients of the malicious emails are encouraged to click on a link to claim the prize. But doing so results in a key-logger downloading to the user's desktop. When the infected user accesses a variety of legitimate online banking sites, the key-logger mimics the website and captures personal banking information.

The scam has been detected targeting the following banking websites: bradesco.com.br, itau.com.br, unibanco.com.br, bancoreal.com.br, caixa.gov.br and caixa.com.br, according to security firm SurfControl.

InPhase Technologies, the world’s leader in holographic data storage, announced today that it has demonstrated the highest data density of any commercial technology by recording 515 gigabits of data per square inch. Holographic storage is a revolutionary departure from all existing recording methods because it takes advantage of volumetric efficiencies rather than only recording on the surface of the material. InPhase will deliver the industry’s first holographic drive and media later this year. The first generation drive has a capacity of 300 gigabytes on a single disk with a 20 megabyte per second transfer rate. The first product will be followed by a family ranging from 800GB to 1.6 terabyte (TB) capacity.

"IT professionals are experiencing enormous growth in their data archives," said Wolfgang Schlichting, Research Director, Removable Storage, IDC. "InPhase Technologies' announcement is an important milestone in storage density, demonstrating impressive capacity increases enabled by holographic storage. The technology represents a potential alternative to incumbent technologies for archival storage requirements," he added.

Densities in holography are achieved by different factors than magnetic storage. Density depends on the number of pixels/bits in a page of data; the number of pages that are stored in a particular volumetric location; the dynamic range of the recording material; the thickness of the material, and the wavelength of the recording laser.

In this demonstration there were over 1.3 million bits per data page, and 320 data pages spaced 0.067 degrees apart were stored in the same volume of material. A collection of data pages is referred to as a book, and InPhase’s PolyTopic recording architecture enables more holograms to be stored in the same volume of material by overlapping not only pages, but also books. Three tracks of overlapping books were written with a track pitch of 700 microns. The InPhase TapestryTM material was 1.5 millimeters thick, and the laser wavelength was 407 nanometers.

“The latest results from our ongoing tests on holographic data density have surpassed expectations,” said Kevin Curtis, chief technology officer of InPhase. “We are particularly pleased at the rate of improvement. In April of 2005, we demonstrated 200 Gb/in2 data density and - a year later - the density has increased more than 2.5 times. “

The write transfer rate is determined by the time required to position the laser at the correct angular address, the speed of the shutter, the laser power, and the exposure time. In this demonstration the average exposure time per page was 2.7 milliseconds, which translates into a user write transfer rate of 23 megabytes per second.

The impact that these data densities will have on future products is tremendous. For the home video fan, one disk could hold the equivalent of 106 DVD movies. For IT managers dealing with archiving millions of email messages, higher densities mean savings on space, time, and power.

Michael Mangiona, president of offsite storage provider Data Solutions, adds that “with extremely high densities of holographic storage demonstrated by InPhase, IT companies such as Data Solutions benefit, as greater storage density ultimately translates into lower storage costs for us and for our customers.”

InPhase will be presenting several holographic storage papers at the Optical Data Storage Conference from April 23-26, 2006 in Montreal, Canada. In addition, InPhase will exhibit its products at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas next month, from April 24-27 in the Maxell booth C6932, Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. "Inside the box" 

This is our second warning in first wave of attacks against an unpatched flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has already begun, and security experts warn that the threat will grow significantly over the weekend.

Less than 24 hours after Microsoft issued details for IE users, malware hunters have started detecting drive-by downloads on more than 20 maliciously rigged Web sites.

It is already reported that a list of more than 20 unique domains and 100 unique URLs hosting the exploits, which are dropping a variant of SDbot, a dangerous family of backdoors that give hackers complete ownership of infected computers.

SDbot allow attackers to control victims' computers remotely by sending specific commands via IRC (Inter Relay Chat) channels. The backdoors have also been used as a keylogger to steal sensitive user information and spread to local network and to computers vulnerable to exploits.

Some of these attackers are the same people that were exploiting the WMF vulnerability. This will continue to get worse over the weekend, especially if they can figure out how to get the exploits to work efficiently.

One of the interesting things we're seeing is that the shell code doesn't work on a lot of these sites. That suggests they're testing the exploits and getting ready to do some major damage.

In addition to SDbot variants, the sites are dumping spyware and keystroke loggers on machines without requiring any user action. Simply surfing to these sites will hose your machine.

With the acquisition of Alienware, Dell will sell computers with chips from Advanced Micro Devices. The deal closes in about 30 to 45 days.

Alienware will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary, and Alienware CEO Nelson Gonzalez said that the deal will not affect its relationship with AMD. Granted, circumstances can change, but that's the plan now.

The number of AMD PCs Alienware offers rises and falls, but AMD chips are typically always part of the company's active line of computers. Right now, Alienware sells AMD-based desktops, workstations, media centers and a notebook.

The subsidiary nature of Alienware's status means that consumers won't see AMD chips in computers that are primarily branded under the Dell name (instead of being Alienware machines) as a result of this deal. But still, since Dell owns Alienware, they are technically Dell computers.

That leaves Apple as the only major computer maker selling Intel-based, but not AMD-based, computers.

Dell has resisted selling AMD-based computers for years for a number of reasons. The popularity of AMD's Opteron chip for servers, however, has prompted some to speculate that Dell may adopt Opteron.

Dell rarely makes acquisitions. The Alienware buy is only the third or fourth in the company's history.