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Many Windows 7 users are finding that the latest security updates are causing problems with the functionality of the operating system. After logging on there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or sidebar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window. This has resulted in many users calling the issue the Black Screen of Death, a reference to the ‘Blue screen of Death’ which appeared when other editions of windows crashed.
The update also affects Windows Vista and XP. Millions of people may have been affected by the problems. Some have resorted to reinstalling their windows software. Software firm Prevx, has identified at least ten different scenarios that will cause the problem.
Microsoft have said that users that have encountered the problem should contact their customer service line.

In a story of preferential treatment, there was anger and disappointment when it was discovered that the boss of  BT, Sir Michael Rake,  has the only broadband in the village of Hambleden. The village is on the board of Oxford and Buckinghamshire. When other residents applied to have broadband, they were told that they were too far from the exchange to make it possible.

Many of the residents are angry at this show of favouritism for the boss of the telecoms company. Some residents are even calling for Michael Rake to resign. BT’s explanation is that they were testing new technology and it was not unusual for staff to trial new technology.

As computers become more powerful,their designers face a problem with the design of the chips. To pack more features on the chip make them interact faster they must become smaller and as the density increases they require more power to move  the electrons which represent the states 1 and 0. The switching also produces a lot of heat which must be removed.

The solution to this problem could be spintronics. Instead of switching using the flow  or absence of electronic charge, the state of the individual gate could be determined by the spin of the electron.

Spin is a intrinsic property of the electron like charge. It is helpful to think  about electron spin being like a  top spinning about its axis. It can spin clockwise or anticlockwise.  Spin in an electron can be characterised as being either spin up or spin down and so we can consider  one spin state to represent a one and the opposing state to  represent zero.

However, in order to measure the states and keep them in the state you left them it is necessary to operate the devices at low temperature. The current research has shown for the first time that the electron spins can be detected and manipulated at room temperature. An additional benefit is that this has been done using existing Silicon technology, which is already used in the fabrication of conventional microchip devices.

It remains unclear whether spintronics can overcome the problem of heating found in conventional electronic devices  as the feature density increases.

F-Secure, the anti virus company has discovered a new malicious worm running on iPhones in the Netherlands. To become infected requires several factors, however you must be:

• using an iphone that has been jailbroken so that it can run unapproved applications.
• using the SSH (secure shell)  application
• using the default password in SSH
• living in the Netherlands, although there is always the possiblity that the virus can spread.

The new virus also allows the phone to be controlled remotely allowing hackers to create a botnet or organised network of phones which may be used for a number of criminal activities including sending spam emails, dennial of service attacks and many other nefirious activities.
Only a few days earlier a proof of concept virus, called ‘ikee’ was released to make people aware of the security issues of running SSH software with the default password. The virus was harmless replacing the phone’s wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley. It was only a matter of time before the virus was modified by criminals.

The UK government will soon be debating laws for internet service providers and telecommunication companies to keep records of all internet activity for a year creating concerns by many people over privacy.
These plan are part of a government initiative, called the “Intercept Modernisation Programme.”
The data would be made available to government bodies without the need to be approved by a court judge and would be accessible by 635 public bodies including the police, firebragade, financial authorities and many more.
These measures go against the privacy laws of the European Union would allow only for the storing of data for as long as necessary. (which seems fairly vague and pretty open to interpretaton in my opinion.)
These measures are being introduced under the guise of protection against terrorism, however, any internet savy users and presumably terrorists would know that users could still use Virtual Private Networks VPNs (such as Xerobank and ipredator) which encrypt the data across the network making storing the information useless. The result will be a database where innocent individuals will have their data stored with open access to a wide variety of government organisations without their knowledge. Given the government’s poor record on data security in the past and the number of organisations which will have access to the data, there is also the possibility that the data may fall into the wrong hands. Time to purchase a tinfoil hat I think.

Undoubtedly this would be a great partnership but unfortunately this is very unlikely to happen any time soon. This is mainly due to technical reasons as the iphone uses HSPA/GSM where as the Verizon network uses CDMA/EV-DO making the two devices incompatible with each other. However if Apple wanted too, they could integrate the cellular technology to make the two compatible. But Apple have said they have no plans in the near future to do this as it’s not cost effective to implement the technology required in the short term. However i do think that if in the future Verizon and Apple did partner up this certainly would be very beneficial to home and business users alike.

Google has announced a profound new music related search, making it easy to find previews of the songs you like. If you don’t know the name of the song you want but can remember some of the lyrics, you can enter what you can remember into Google and it will search thousands of listing to find the closest matches to the song. If you want to delve deeper into these new features then there is a video on the Google blog spot to explain all the functions of this new feature. I think this new feature will be good for allot of music fans out there and in some way quite surprised Google has not implemented this before now. What do you think?

Augmented reality applications could be the next big revolution to hit smart phones, which could open large channels for business advertising. Smart phones such as the iphone already come equipped with the base technology to implement augmented reality applications, so if you can imagine pointing your smart phone at a landmark and retrieving all the information about it or maybe making a quick sweep of the area to find and see all the information on local pubs, diners ect, which would be pretty amazing. Watch this space for the next big thing to hit the smart phone systems.

Windows 7 finally launches today after a long anticipated wait. Windows 7 will fix allot of the compatibility issues that plagued windows vista such as forward and backward compatible drivers and performance issues. Windows 7 also boasts a cleaner architecture and is faster than its predecessor making it ideal for home and business users alike, and if that’s not enough it’s also cheaper than Windows XP at $119.99 for the home edition and for just an extra one hundred dollars you can get the full Ultimate edition package. Personally, i can’t wait to grab a copy of the O/S to see if any of the predictions are true.

There have been many reports of fake security software that many users have downloaded or paid for through pop up advertisements or dubious site links called scareware over the last few days. In fact according to Symantec there have been over 250 various forms of the software found on the internet. This is no surprise to as so called scareware has been around for a long time, trying to install, gain access to users computers or just dupe users with fake security alerts or worse steel banking information. However i don’t think the cyber thieves are entirely to blame as some of the responsibility should lay with the user for downloading suspect software that in most cases blatantly are. I think internet users should be educated in the potential threats that are on the internet, and should be the responsibility of the internet user to gain this knowledge. Personally i think if the internet user chooses to ignore the freely available information on viruses, spyware, scareware ect then internet users should not be surprised if they get targeted by cyber thieves. What do you think?