War on Error

Pirates built online music so why not eBooks too?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:48:27 GMT

Despite daily hype and devices aplenty (iPad ahem), eBook publishers are a long way behind the music industry when it comes to shifting content and market building, and I think I know why. There just aren’t enough pirates copying and...

The lesson of the Twitter hack: Passwords are pitiful

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:27:17 GMT

Twitter’s advice this week to reset passwords after the latest attack on its users strikes me as not far off throwing a scuba mask at a shark. It works out that you are defenceless and just circles round to come...

The lesson of the Twitter hack. Passwords are pitiful.

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:27:17 GMT

The iPad, Apple's finest hour. Says an Apple hater

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:59:33 GMT

What is it about the Apple iPad thing that has me so smitten? The Mac faithful are said to be disdainful and yet here I am, a hardened Apple sceptic of 20 years about to type a sentence I never...

The iPad, Apple's finest hour. Says an Apple hater.

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:59:33 GMT

What is it about the Apple iPad thing that has me so smitten? The Mac faithful are said to be disdainful and yet here I am, a hardened Apple sceptic of 20 years about to type a sentence I never...

Johnny Depp's demise? True for 15 minutes

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:25:52 GMT

Johnny Depp is alive and well but not in hyperspace, where scammers have been using bogus alerts of his supposed death in a car crash to temporarily but usefully boost the search ratings of malicious sites.There are so many such...

Clinton waves fist at China

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:33:14 GMT

The so-called ‘Aurora’ hack of US company Google and others was fairly unprecedented, or at least hearing about it was. That US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has publically upbraided China for the affair counts as some kind of turning...

Who is to blame for the Google hack? Everyone

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:20:21 GMT

What have Adobe Systems, Microsoft, Google’s employees, China, iDefense Labs, and the French and German governments got in common? They have all been blamed in different ways for the high-profile 'Aurora' hack of Google et al that saw the searchmonger...

Who is to blame for the Google hack? Everyone.

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:20:21 GMT

Who to blame for the Google hack? Everyone.

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:15:29 GMT

What have Adobe Systems, Microsoft, Google’s employees, China, iDefence Labs, and the French and German governments got in common? They have all been blamed in different ways for the high-profile hack of Google et al that saw the searchmonger threaten...

How three vendors screwed up USB stick security

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:25:53 GMT

The security industry strikes again. Sell business users supposedly encrypted (and therefore super-secure) USB sticks and then assume that nobody will ever work out that the security is about as watertight as a paper teapot.Three companies admit they suffered the...

Intel's Core story - more marketing waffle?

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:12:28 GMT

Forty years after it started toiling over microprocessors for devices as epoch-defining as (yes) the digital watch and pocket calculator, Intel has reached a new fork in the road of its own skilful creation.On the face of it, using the...

If Windows is dying, so is Apple's Mac

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:51:03 GMT

Is Windows really getting less popular as recent stories have suggested? Probably, very slightly, but its direct rivals Apple and Linux are going nowhere as well.According to some OS stats from Net Applications, culled from an analysis of browsers, the...

Google is not free

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:45:27 GMT

Here’s a bah humbug story to stoke some cynicism this Christmas. Google’s online services are free, apparently, so the country’s skint citizens shouldn’t complain too loudly about the fact it appears to pay a comically small sum of UK corporation...

Windows' decline could drag others down too

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:35:53 GMT

The technology world has convinced itself that the next decade will be all about the slow decline of Windows and its somewhat disliked monopoly. What will replace it? Where will the money go? What will Microsoft do if not Windows?According...

The 'Ugg boot robbery' tells us the Internet is a mess

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:11:08 GMT

Ugg boots are to footwear what 1970’s kipper ties were to tasteless neck fashion, but let’s celebrate their role in finally opening people’s eyes to what’s been happening to the Internet lately.The great Ugg boot robbery of 2009, to give...

Gary McKinnon: the real enemies of the US are laughing their heads off

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:55:32 GMT

We've said it several times before in the last three years but let's say it yet again. Pursuing UK Gary hacker McKinnon is the biggest time-wasting distraction in the recent history of US computing law enforcement. Our sympathy with his...

Microsoft's free anti-virus - a friend for free or one that won't leave?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:10:20 GMT

Much to the AV community’s surprise (and in some cases, chagrin) Microsoft’s free-to-download Security Essentials turns out to be half decent, a step up from the ‘why would anybody bother’ mediocrity of Windows Live OneCare, which Microsoft could never make...

Windows 7 - a computing tax people are willing to pay

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:10:54 GMT

In the Internet age, operating systems are made little by little, update by update. So why the fuss about Windows 7 upgrade which comes on a DVD inside a cardboard box?Every other bit of software feels like a choice, but...

Getting Windows XP to work with fast Wi-Fi

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:32:46 GMT

The WEP encryption standard fell first in the war against wireless insecurity, discredited by simple hacks. Now, with the arrival of high-speed wireless technology in the form of 802.11n, it is WPA's turn to feel the chill of obsolescence. The...

Getting Windows XP to work with WPA2

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:32:46 GMT

The danger of the 'part-time' application

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:06:58 GMT

No application better typifies the ubiquity of ‘part-time software' than Acrobat Reader. Everyone uses it at some point, but very few use it every day. And that's where the danger starts.It's suffered a consistent flow of vulnerabilities in recent times,...

Fast Wi-Fi's little secret - you have to turn on WPA2 encryption

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:55:58 GMT

Here's what most people know about 802.11n high-speed Wi-Fi: it offers much higher throughput and signal stability over greater distances. Now the bit that hasn't yet sunk in for many: getting that throughput could mean changing the type of encryption...

Thinking of a Windows 7 upgrade? Read this first.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:47:00 GMT

Is Windows 7 a good upgrade for a recent Vista PC that is otherwise performing quite happily? The first timings are in for Windows 7's boot and shutdown performance and the figures aren't that flattering. My test was to compare...

Microsoft's 'free' anti-virus is long overdue

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:13:45 GMT

Microsoft has just thrown the anti-virus industry a problem called Microsoft Security Essentials. The problem is the incredibly obvious one - it's free.What's amazing is not that Microsoft is handing out something for free, but that it has taken them...