IT News HeadLines (HardOCP) 15/09/2010

Google Me to Debut This Fall
Scoot over Facebook, here comes Google Me and its new 'social layer' all up in your face. The rollout of the new addition will be released in stages to refine each phase prior to the next release. "We're trying to take Google's core products and add a social component, if you think about it, it's obvious. With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better," Schmidt said. Comments
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Microsoft Prepping a New Zune for 2011?
Ears to the ground, listening for signs of movement and mix in a rumor or two and you get sketchy details on the possible release of a new, upgraded Zune media player sometime in 2011. Details on the supposed new Zune are as scarce as they could be. For now, there's nothing in the way of possible name for the rumored device (such as, say, the Zune HD2) or features, although Foley's spy says that the player could come in the same three capacities as the current Zune HD, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and that it might dump the Nvidia Tegra processor in the existing HD for an ARM-based chip. Comments
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Google Engineer Dismissed for Spying
Google confirms that they have dismissed a systems engineer for breaking Google's internal privacy policy. The employee used his position to spy and stalk four teenagers through personal chat logs, instant messages and chat transcripts. Disturbing to say the least. "We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls."That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly, which is why we take any breach so seriously." Comments
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Game Center Currently Capped at 500 Friends
Apple's new live Game Center appears to cap your friends and requests at 500. For the majority of gamers this is not a problem, but to some it may be an issue. Choose your friends carefully I guess. I tested this out and experienced the same thing. And since it seems like they're not just capping friends but friend requests at 500, if you get an addition 100 requests, you'll never see them. If you remove one, you get just 1 more request, so you can't even see the others and choose the one who may be your best gaming buddy ever Comments
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72% of Adults Support Gaming Laws? Well, Kinda...
California's video game law will be before the Supreme Court soon and both sides are ramping up their hype for the pros and cons. Common Sense Media is claiming that 72% of adults support the law, opponents claim the poll was weighted in their favor. "The Supreme Court's decision in this case is going to have a huge impact on families and kids across the United States, and what we've learned from this poll is that parents want to be the ones deciding which games their kids play, not the video game industry." Comments
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Linus Torvalds Becomes an American Citizen
Congratulations to Linus Torvalds on becoming a new American citizen this month. Torvalds has been a resident of the United States since 1997. The big question now is what is the status of Tux? Yeah, yeah, we should probably have done the citizenship thing a long time ago, since we've been here long enough (and two of the kids are US citizens by virtue of being born here), but anybody who has had dealings with the INS will likely want to avoid any more of them Comments
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Using 'Free' in Search Attracts Malware
A report released today from McAfee shows that using the word 'free' in a internet search greatly increases the risk of downloading malware. I think we have all suspected this for awhile, but it's kind of like touching the paint next to a Wet Paint sign, you have to test it. To reduce the chances of landing on malicious sites, McAfee recommends avoiding the use of the word "free" in searches for entertainment content, avoiding clicking on links in banner ads on content sites that aren't well established, not clicking on links posted in forums and on fan pages, keeping security software up to date, and using safe search plug-ins like McAfee Site Advisor that warns of potentially risky sites. Comments
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Eleven Hot IT Skills for 2011
The outlook for IT professionals next year is beginning to look up. The future looks brightest for those IT specialists with specific skill sets. After months of staff cuts or hiring freezes, many U.S. companies are planning to hire IT employees with highly valued skills. The percentage of respondents to Computerworld's annual Forecast survey who said they plan to increase staff size in the next 12 months increased slightly, from 20% in last year's survey to 23% this year. Comments
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JPMorgan Chase's Online Banking Site Crashes
"Technical issues" have caused JPMorgan Chase online banking site to lose its online services 'sometime overnight'. The cause of the outage isn't known at this time. It is rare that a major commercial endeavor has an unannounced outage of this duration. The bank, which has $2 trillion in assets, posted a message on its Chase.com portal asking customers to "log on later.". ATMs, branches and telephone call centers are not affected by the outage, though call center volume has increased, said Tom Kelly, a Chase spokesman. Comments
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Mozilla Halts Firefox Security Updates
A bug which causes computers to crash has halted further updates on some versions of Firefox. Mozilla did not elaborate on the timeframe when updates would resume. "We've limited updates to Firefox 3.6.9 and Firefox 3.5.12 at this time as we evaluate some early feedback which indicates that a subset of our user base may be finding the releases unstable," said Michael Shaver, Mozilla's head of engineering, in an e-mail reply to questions yesterday. Comments
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Twitter's 'Big Night' Surprise
Something is going on with Twitter and the secret will be revealed tonight at 4pm PDT. The secrecy of the announcement even has the Twitter employees silent on the subject. None of the Twitter employees tweeting their excitement seem to have spilled the beans about what is actually being launched. There are some vague references to it being an "impressive team effort" and judging from some of the employees tweeting, it seems as if at least a part of whatever it is will exist on Twitter.com Comments
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Steve Jobs: The Ninja?
Bloomberg broke this story of Apple CEO Steve Jobs being stopped in Japan during a security scan for having Ninja throwing stars in his carry on luggage. Jobs was reportedly preparing to board his private jet when the stars were discovered by security. Apple denies the rumor. No one wants to out a Ninja Jobs said it wouldn't make sense for a person to try to hijack his own plane, according to the report. He then told officials he would never visit Japan again. Comments
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Presenting the Rubber Band Gatling Gun
Have you ever been outgunned in a rubber band fight? Fear no more my intrepid elastic loop stretching warriors, your pleas have been heard. You can now be armed with a 100 rubber band clip and take out your entire office all at once. Warning: Before you make plans to destroy your office, please adjust your volume to low. The YouTube audio is a bit high and may tip off your unsuspecting adversaries to an impending attack. Comments
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HDCP Master Key May Have Been Compromised
High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection better known by its acronym HDCP, may have been compromised according to claims from net sources. Details on how and who leaked the master key have not yet surfaced. HDCP was invented by Intel to be a cheap-to-implement, high-performance cryptographic system suitable for use in audio and video applications. Its purpose was to create a secure digital path that could not be eavesdropped, so that pirates would not be able to make high-quality digital copies of high-definition video. HDCP also provides a mechanism for key revocation: if a device's key has been leaked, it can be added to a list of revoked keys, effectively blacklisting it and preventing it from being used for playback of encrypted content. Comments
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Attack of the Killer Gadgets
Gadget multitasking can be a daunting task given the myriad of electronic distractions available. In providing a better quality of life, gadget obsession could be having a negative effect on our psychological makeup. "I sat in bed surrounded by four televisions with three laptops each running a different operating system while trying to get a Nintendo Wii emulator to work," Rodriguez says. "I had a PlayStation 3, an Xbox 360, and a Wii console (one per TV) all running in the background as I fiddled with the emulator settings. I used an iPod Touch as my primary Internet source since the three laptops were each being used toward building the emulator. Simultaneously, I was working on a hacked Nintendo DS and PSP. Basically I was sitting in the middle of a giant mess of electronics." Comments
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