Technology

Malware Redirecting Users To Fake Review Sites

Here is yet another story of maliciousness in cyberspace today.  Turns out there is a bit of malware out there that will detect if you are trying to go to any review sites in a list, it redirects you to a site under the control of the botnet controllers.  See the Ars article below for more details.

“Once redirected, users are served up with what appears to be an actual, legitimate review of Anti-Virus-1 from a reputable source. These reviews appear to be thinly-veiled rips of what has been written about actual anti-virus scanners—in BleepingComputer’s example image, you can see where the words “Norton Antivirus 2009” were presumably removed, with “AntiVirus2010″ substituted. This leads to some odd-looking ad copy—”Win Your Own AntiVirus2010TM2008″—but the swap doesn’t stand out nearly as much as we might like.”

via New malware attempts legitimacy by spreading phony reviews – Ars Technica.

Posted by Chad Dotson in Technology, 0 comments

The Replacement For The Hubble Space Telescope

The replacement for the Hubble is scheduled to launch in 2013.  The James Webb Space Telescope will have the ability to see further than Hubble and feature mirrors over 20 feet in diameter.  Its sunshield alone is bigger than a tennis court.  This new telescope will be situated about a million miles from Earth, putting it beyond our current ability to service it.  However, scientists have taken the problems with Hubble into account and have made the appropriated modifications to allow the telescope to self-correct.

NASA: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

CNN Video: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/tech/2009/02/11/eoj.hubble.replacement.cnn.html

Posted by Chad Dotson in Technology, 0 comments

DTV Transition

Well, the Congress has now delayed the DTV transition from February 17 to June 12.  Let me ask you… What will be different then?  The answer may surprise you.  NOTHING.  That is if you don’t count the amount of tax dollars going into it.  If you ask me this has been the most botched operation in history.  Heck, if it can confuse the tech savvy (and I know it has) it sure confuses the heck out of the general population.  Who do I blame for all the confusion?  Its simple, number one I blame the government.  All these ads they’ve aired are completely worthless and have done nothing but add to the confusion.  The next entity I blame is the very media that is being transitioned.  I’ve listened to months of “In x days TV will change as you know it.”  Ummm how helpful is that?  Of course, the media thrives on ratings reaped from fear mongering these days.  Quite frankly I’m sick and tired of hearing about it.  I mean if people don’t have enough sense to have already prepared, postponing the date a few months isn’t going to change anything.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/04/digital.tv.delay.vote/index.html

Posted by Chad Dotson in Ramblings, Technology, 0 comments

Google Earth 5 and Related Items

Google Earth 5 is now in the wild.  My first impression after maybe 30-40 minutes of tinkering is thumbs up.  Overall it is now alot faster and feels as though the gui has been tweaked for speed.  Occasionally there is some slowness but I’m guessing that is a side effect of some of the optimization stuff they’ve done.  Google Earth remains one great free resource everyone should download.Some KML Files you might want to add:

Posted by Chad Dotson in Technology, 0 comments

Bringing the Internet to the Far Reaches of the World

I found a semi interesting video this morning on CNN.  It has to do with a company’s plan to bring the internet to the farest reaches of the world via satellite.  It is supposed to be low cost and affordable.  Personally, I don’t know what the business model looks like and while this looks interesting, I’d say it might be hard to make it profitable.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/tech/2009/01/07/eod.worldwide.internet.cnn.html

Posted by Chad Dotson in Technology, 0 comments

Ubiquity Prototype

There is a new extension in the works for Firefox called Ubiquity.  It brings natural language command line interaction to any webpage.  Its pretty groundbreaking.  Below is the video from vimeo.  Its really worth watching.

Posted by Chad Dotson in Technology, 0 comments

Mozilla Firefox in Danger

Last night I installed the latest version of Opera (9.63) in response to a bug report.  I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with this version.  The problems I’d noticed with previous versions (primarily it being slow as Christmas) are gone.  Firefox now has something to be concerned about in my opinion.

Posted by Chad Dotson in Technology, 0 comments