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BetaNews.Com (6 non lus)

'I remember when the Internet was free' [video]

Publié: décembre 23, 2011, 10:23pm CET par Joe Wilcox

Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is churning up increasing debate as the holidays approach. There's irony here. The very public response about SOPA is freedom the bill, or its Senate sibling PROTECT IP, could take away. Dan Bull's "SOPA Cabana" YouTube music video is example of the grassroots response to the proposed legislation. YouTube is one of the services SOPA would target, likely diminishing freedom of expression like Bull's. The headline to this post comes from his video.

To recap, Senators introduced PROTECT IP in May and House representatives did likewise with SOPA in October. Either bill would give the government broad powers to take down websites, seize domains and compel search engines from indexing these properties. Little more than a request from copyright holders is necessary. It's essentially guilty-until-proven-innocent legislation that would punish the many for the sins of the few, while disrupting the fundamental attributes that made the Internet so successful and empowered so many individuals or businesses to accomplish so much. (Review the bills: PROTECT IP. SOPA.)

BetaNews poll "US Congress is considering two new copyright bills: PROTECT IP and Stop Online Piracy Act. Do you support them?" makes your position clear. Ninety-five percent of the 3,400-plus respondents answer "No". Less than 3 percent support the bills.

Today's strangest SOPA news comes from registrar Go Daddy. I had been pondering moving all my domains off Go Daddy for its support of SOPA and writing a commentary about it (Stop Using Go Daddy Act, SUGA). But the company reversed course today, which I must assume is more about controlling PR damage than anything else.

The press release is clear enough, beginning: "Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' currently working its way through US Congress". That's quite a bit different from "Go Daddy's position on SOPA", which posted to the registrar's support site yesterday. But, whoops, the text has vanished being replaced by: "We’ve listened to our customers. Go Daddy is no longer supporting the SOPA legislation". By chance, I hadn't closed the browser tab opened earlier with the original statement. I saved it as PDF for your review.

If I could afford moving my domains to another registrar, I might still. But that's not a budgetary option.

Circling back, enjoy the video. If you've created something opposing, or even supporting, SOPA please link in comments.
It's Christmas, you can't find your smartphone, where did you leave it?

Publié: décembre 23, 2011, 9:01pm CET par Joe Wilcox
"Why did you lose it?" is the first question to ask.

Last week AVG sent a tickler email about its newest "Lost in Transit" survey looking at what people were doing when they lost their mobiles. I waited until closer to Christmas -- time when likelihood of loss increases -- to post some of the results. AVG provided additional data not disclosed in its blog post or infographic (below).

The holidays aren't just a time for losing valuable tech, but increased security risk. Some of the most damaging hacks or malware releases occurred during the holidays. As such, some companies are extra vigilant. For example, Microsoft's Security Response Center has staff on duty in the event of cyberattack (typically through malware) against its Windows customers.

Smartphones typically contain lots of personal data that cybercriminals could use to steal your identity, or worse breach your employer's network. If you're like most people, you commingle personal and work data and log-ins on your smartphone. Your lost device could compromise the corporate network when IT staff is on holiday. That makes the mobile you casually leave for a few seconds a valuable commodity to cybercriminals.

"With roughly half of owners admitting their devices contain sensitive data (42 percent of smartphone users and 53 percent of laptop owners), losing a mobile device can mean more than simply losing a prized possession," says AVG's Tony Anscombe.

Your lost device could contain a ticking time bomb waiting for a hacker to set it off. Two nights ago, I shopped at Fashion Valley mall here in San Diego. Near the Nordstrom I passed three people looking over a smartphone. The man said to one of the two women: "My password is 'password'. That's simply outrageous, but too common practice. In June, hacktivist group LulzSec released 62,000 account combinations -- with hundreds of instances of "123456" and "password" as password.

US CERT offers advice on choosing passwords that you should take.

Many people travel during the holidays, which increases chances they'll simply leave their mobile device behind somewhere -- "41 percent of owners have them left them behind on a plane, taxi, car or train", Anscombe explains.

Keeping with the holiday security spirit, US CERT issued this alert four days ago:
As the winter holiday travel season begins, US-CERT would like to remind users to be mindful of the security risks associated with portable devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops.

US-CERT would like to encourage users to review the following US-CERT Cyber Security Tips. Following the security practices suggested in each tip will help to keep your portable devices secure during the holiday season and throughout the year.
- Cyber Security Tip ST11-001: Holiday Traveling with Personal Internet-Enabled Devices
- Cyber Security Tip ST05-017: Cybersecurity for Electronic Devices
- Cyber Security Tip ST04-017: Protecting Portable Devices: Physical Security
Sudden surge in tablet sales, mostly iPads, adds to the security risk -- it's another device to be lost, left behind or stolen.

Circling back to the AVG survey, some interesting findings:
- 42 percent of smartphone users don't password protect their devices.
- Britons are most likely to lose a smartphone during a holiday/Christmas party (13 percent) followed by Aussies and Germans (12 percent).
- Eleven percent of Americans lost a smartphone during a holiday/Christmas party.
- Only 15 percent of the more than 5,000 survey respondents were "aware" they had lost their smartphone, when it happened.
- Canadians, Frenchmen (and women) and Italians were most aware when losing their smartphones (20 percent).
- Canadians are most likely to lose their mobiles when "loaded full of shopping" (17 percent) -- Germans least (4 percent).
- Germans and Spaniards are more likely to lose smartphones when distracted or busy -- 45 percent and 44 percent, respectively -- followed by Americans (43 percent).
- Britons are most likely to be intoxicated, and presumably at the pub, too (14 percent), followed by Kiwis (11 percent) and Aussies (10 percent).
- The French are least likely to be intoxicated when losing a smartphone (4 percent) -- or perhaps least likely to admit being so.
Have you lost a smartphone during the holidays? Please share your tragic tale in comments.

Photo Credit: Nate Bolt
Our gift to you: O&O Defrag 12 Professional, but today only so hurry!

Publié: décembre 23, 2011, 5:34pm CET par Mike Williams

Would you like your PC to be faster? A high-end industrial-strength defrag tool could be just what you need to give it an extra performance boost. And while these normally aren’t cheap, our Downloadcrew Giveaway site is today (up until 23:59, Central European Time, December 23rd) giving away the excellent O&O Defrag 12 Professional Edition, normally $29, for nothing at all.

If you like an easy life then O&O Defrag 12 is the perfect defrag tool to have installed. It can monitor your drive’s condition in the background, automatically defragmenting your drive as soon as it spots any problems, so your hard drive is always running at peak performance. And setting this up is as straightforward as running a simple wizard.

If you’re happy to take just a little more control, though, you’ll find the program supports multiple defrag strategies to help you squeeze even more speed out of your system. So O&O Defrag 12 can sort files by name, modification date or last access time; by making, say, your most recently-edited files available first you should they’re then found and loaded more quickly.

And if you need to be master of your own hard drive then you’ll love the Zone Filing scheme, which divides your hard drive into slow, medium and fast areas. O&O Defrag 12 already knows that, say, the contents of your \Windows and \Program Files folders need to be running at the maximum possible speed, while Recycle Bin files can be safely left in the slow line. But you can also fine-tune the program by adding custom rules of your own, freely deciding which files and folders need accelerating, and which are less important.

There is a consequence to all this control, of course: the very first defrag you run can feel very slow. And that’s because the program isn’t just defragmenting files, it’s also reorganizing them to your and its own performance-boosting rules. Once this is done, though, future defrags should be very speedy (and if you have background defragmentation turned on then you may never notice them at all).

If you would like more power, though, you can always upgrade later to O&O Defrag 15 Professional, which delivers faster defragmentation, specific SSD support, improved power management, an easier to use interface, and more. You can upgrade for only $14.50, a chunky 50 percent discount off the usual price, just by ordering from the Downloadcrew store, but be quick – the offer expires December 31 2011.

Your first step should be to download O&O Defrag 12 Professional Edition, though. Just head along to the Downloadcrew Giveaway site, log in (or create a free account if you don’t have one already), grab your copy of the program and get a free serial code – but do it now, the offer is for December 23rd only, and expires at 23:59 Central European Time.

Photo Credit: Raimundas/Shutterstock
US Chamber of Commerce hack shows need for vigilance

Publié: décembre 23, 2011, 5:14pm CET par Steven Sprague

This week’s high-profile hack of the US Chamber of Commerce underscores the inadequacy of today’s security policies and technologies. With the holidays quickly approaching and IT staffs stepping away from offices to spend time with family and friends, we face increased vulnerabilities and security threats. We should be more vigilant than ever, reflecting on national security policies and how we can better protect our sensitive data.

Stories like this continue to point to the fact that we need a broad, across-the-board approach. We need to collaborate and inform when breaches take place. We need diplomatic support to reduce the desire or economic benefit to steal. It is time to have a Y2K approach to cyber protection. That means investment and support from the top down.

The first step should be whitelisting all of the devices that could have accessed the Chambers’ servers. Access should have been restricted to known and trusted devices. The technology to establish trust in the endpoint is already there, with more than half a billion Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) security chips built into PCs. This simple step has worked for many industries to protect the viability of their networks and business models -- from Comcast to Verizon to Apple.

Waiting for IT to do the right thing is killing us. Perhaps they need regulation to prompt them into action. Perhaps they just need leadership. What’s very clear is that the economic growth of the United States in the future can’t wait for us to take steps to protect ourselves.

We are more vulnerable now than we have ever been, and the faster we dispel the illusion that cyber-attacks happen to someone else, the better off we’ll be. It’s nice to remember the way things used to be, but times have changed. Just because our parents never locked the car or the front door of the house does not mean that we can’t learn to lock the car and the front door. RSA, the leading provider of "door locks" lost the master key and still not everyone changed their locks.

This year’s resolution: "NO more passwords for remote access". Let’s make 2012 the year that every user logs into his device and the device logs the user into the network (the device can be a smartphone or a desktop). Auditors need to be our ground troops. There should be no access to manage servers, access databases where the application does not verify that a known machine is being used. Then we need to check on the list of known machines.

We have the technology. The economics make sense. But do we have the will to enact such a sweeping, yet simple, measure? Historians will label 2011 as the year when our IT security infrastructure failed us. The RSA and Sony breaches, attacks by Anonymous and LulzSec, even Wikileaks drove home to the broad marketplace that when it comes to data security, cyber-attackers can take down systems and steal data at will. We must be vigilant in the next ten days and beyond. Let’s learn from the mistakes of the past year and look forward to a safer, more secure 2012.

Photo Credit: Kheng Guan Toh/Shutterstock

Steven Sprague is CEO of Wave Systems. Since taking the company's helm in 2000, Sprague has played an integral role driving the industry transition to embed stronger, hardware-based security into the PC. Sprague has guided Wave to a position of market leadership in enterprise management of self-encrypting hard drives and Trusted Platform Module security chips. His expertise lies in leveraging advancements in hardware security for strong authentication, data protection, advanced password management, enterprise-wide trust management services and more. Mr. Sprague earned a BS from Cornell University in 1987.
Which Firefox is right for you -- 9, 10, 11, 12 or UX?

Publié: décembre 23, 2011, 3:04pm CET par Nick Peers

The Firefox development merry-go-round has moved on again, with Firefox 10 Beta and Firefox 11 Aurora builds being joined by two separate versions of Firefox 12: Firefox 12 Nightly and Firefox 12 UX, the latter build representing the efforts of a team focussed on delivering improvements to the Firefox user interface.

Despite the lack of any major revamps, there’s enough new features and interface tweaks filtering through the various builds to make the next three planned versions worth looking out for. Get a head’s up on what’s coming and discover which build is best for your current needs with our updated guide to what the future holds in store for Firefox.

Firefox 9.0.1 FINAL

This is the latest stable release of Firefox, and as such is recommended for most users, although the number of interesting new features appearing in later builds coupled with the lack of new features in this latest release make it something more experienced and impatient users might be tempted to skip.

Firefox 9 contains only one change of note, and it’s an under-the-hood tweak at that. Nevertheless, support for “type inference” means web pages containing Javascript will load noticeably quicker than before. In addition, OS X Lion users will see another two features -- support for two-finger swiping when navigating, and better integration of Firefox themes -- worth checking out. Ultimately, though, version 9 won’t go down in the annals of major Firefox releases.

Firefox 10 Beta

The most significant change Firefox 10 will bring to most users is its new assumption that most add-ons are compatible with an updated build unless the developer specifically says otherwise. This should lead to a more seamless update to new versions of Firefox, and full details of how the new system works can be read at this Mozilla Wiki article.

There’s also a change to the Launch bar, with the browser forward button disappearing from view.

Web developers will be particularly pleased with Firefox 10, thanks to a number of major new tools, all accessible from the Firefox > Web Developer menu. The most notable of these is an Inspect option that allows developers to visually inspect pages with the help of a Highlighter tool that makes checking a page’s CSS and HTML code that much easier. This feature was originally planned for Firefox 4, but since its postponement has been significantly overhauled.

Firefox 11.0a2 Aurora

Aurora is an “alpha” build of Firefox, which means it’s undergone minimum testing only. As such it’s not suitable for everyday use, which is why Firefox Aurora is installed as a separate build alongside the stable or beta build, allowing you to test its features without affecting your day-to-day browsing. Settings are shared between Firefox Aurora and your other build, however, so again caution should be exercised before installing it.

Version 11 doesn’t exhibit much in the way of major features -- a number slated for inclusion in Firefox 11 according to the Features/Release Tracking page aren’t present in this first alpha build. Those that are present include support for synchronizing Add-Ons in Firefox Sync, partial support for importing data (bookmarks, history and cookies at this early stage) from Google Chrome and two new tools for developers: a Style Editor for tweaking CSS settings on the fly, and a new 3D view (Tilt) for Page Inspector.

Firefox 12.0a1 Nightly

Firefox’s Nightly channel gives users access to code hot off the press, but while you’re looking at the latest bleeding-edge version of Firefox, you’re also venturing into uncharted waters because much of this new code has had no testing at all. Nightly builds update regularly, so once installed you’ll find your build updating on a much more frequent basis than other unstable releases.

At the time of writing, Firefox Nightly exhibits no new features above and beyond that of Aurora - but there are some interesting developments in the pipeline, as revealed on the Features/Release Tracking page of the Mozilla Wiki.

These include a number of features ported across from the UX build (see below), including an integrated download manager instead of a separate pop-up window, plus full integration of Web Apps into the desktop. Also slated is renewed support for inline autocomplete, a feature ditched from version 4.

Nightly is also available as a 64-bit build for compatible versions of Windows and Linux.

We’d recommend all but developers and serious, knowledgeable enthusiasts avoid the Nightly builds of Firefox.

Firefox 12.0a1 UX

Introduced in our last update, Firefox UX (also available as a dedicated 64-bit build for Windows and Linux) provides a parallel Nightly build of Firefox that concentrates on developing a new interface for Firefox. Some of the features previewed here have finally made the transition to the Aurora channel, meaning they will soon appear in the version of Firefox most people have installed on their machines.

Other changes remain exclusive to UX for now, including the integrated download manager widget that appears in the top right-hand corner of the window, a rather rudimentary looking New Tab page, and some other more minor tweaks like the removal of Address and Search bars when running a Web App such as twitter.com via its own button.

For an idea of what else UX may see appearing in the near future, check out this Mozilla UX presentation from August.

In Summary

Which version of Firefox should you try? Stick to the most stable version you feel comfortable with, although there are a number of new features filtering through versions 10, 11 and 12 to tempt even the most casual user into taking a sneak peek into the future and install a less stable build. And despite the lack of new features in version 12 of Firefox UX, if you’ve not yet previewed some of the changes to the Firefox user interface being developed, it still represents a tantalising glimpse into the future.

Back up if you plan to try out Beta or Aurora builds of Firefox. And If you do decide to give the Nightly or UX builds a try, consider using a non-critical machine or virtual setup (try VirtualBox) instead of your main computer, just in case…
When corporate PCs fail, troubleshoot with O&O BlueCon 9

Publié: décembre 23, 2011, 2:00pm CET par Mike Williams

It’s annoying when a personal PC won’t start, and you can’t get online or check your emails. When a corporate PC fails, though, the consequences are often much worse. Employees can’t do their jobs, customers may be impacted, and in some cases there could be knock-on effects right across the business. It’s vital to get the problem solved immediately, then -- and O&O Software’s BlueCon 9, released this week, could be just the tool to help.

The program comes in the form of a bootable Windows PE-based recovery environment. Launch this from a CD or USB flash drive and you’ll find a familiar Windows desktop, which has been enhanced by a host of troubleshooting and diagnostic tools.

So there are programs to repair file system errors, for instance. To recover some critical accidentally deleted file, or restore an entire lost partition. Or maybe the system won’t start because a faulty driver or service? BlueCon can help there, too.

Bundled user management tools can assist if a user has forgotten their password, or perhaps their user profile has become corrupted. There’s an option to recover from a faulty Windows update. And the SRP Manager can use Windows XP system restore points to wind back the system to a previous state.

And as well as these and other task-specific tools, BlueCon provides a raft of general accessories to help you manually address more complex issues. So you can investigate the stricken system’s event logs, for instance, or edit its Registry. You’re able to manually tweak the PC’s service, driver and user account settings. A simple file manager makes it easy to locate files on the target PC’s hard drive (and copy them elsewhere, if necessary). You can work at a command line; accessories like Notepad and a calculator aim to make your life easier; and there’s even a bundled copy of Firefox, so you can research an issue online or perhaps download any additional files you might need.

The price for all this is $1,090, which may leave your eyes watering if you’re a home user. This is a one-off fee, though; if you manage a large business network, and BlueCon can help you get broken systems working again more quickly then it won’t take long to realize return on your investment. But if it’s just too much, then O&O does offer alternatives; their EasyLicensing SMB scheme, for instance, means you can have BlueCon for a monthly subscription from as little as $29.

If this might work for you, then we’d recommend you give BlueCon a look: it’s easy to set up and use, yet is also a very powerful disaster recovery toolkit, with everything you need to solve all the most common PC problems (and quite a few of the unusual ones, too).