Latest Tech News
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DDoS the Weapon of Choice for Hackers Driven by Politics, Not Profits
Wednesday February 8, 2012 16:03
Politics, rather than good old-fashioned theft, is increasingly the motivation of malicious hackers who attack websites using DDoS techniques. Arbor Networks has found that ideological hacktivism was the motivation behind most distributed denial of service attacks in 2011. Attacks for profit or competitive reasons still happen, but the rise of the political hacker is changing the threat landscape.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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Google Pours Chrome Into Android
Wednesday February 8, 2012 10:03
Google has brought its Chrome Web browser to the Android Market. A beta edition of the browser is available from the app shop now for free, but since its operation is restricted to the latest version of the mobile operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, only about 1 percent of Android's millions of users will be able to take the software for a test drive.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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Radio Tray: Tiny Web Radio Player Is Handy but Picks Up Some Static
Wednesday February 8, 2012 06:00
If you spend a lot of time at your keyboard, no doubt you dabble a lot in listening to Internet radio. Radio Tray is a relatively new Linux app that can make tuning in to your favorite radio stations a new experience. Radio Tray is a streaming player for online radio that sits on the Linux desktop panel. Think of this app as a shortcut that hides the browser interface.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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Wolfram Alpha to Get Brainier
Tuesday February 7, 2012 16:00
How much does a civil engineer in New Orleans make? What is the average temperature there? What are the differences in the trigonometric functions of sin, cos and tan? What is the exchange rate between the U.S. and the UK right now? Throw one of these questions at Siri, the voice assistant in iPhone 4S, and she will speedily reply. Fueling Siri is Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge search engine.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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3D Printer Joins Organ Replacement Revolution
Tuesday February 7, 2012 14:45
They're building people out of 3D printers now -- parts, anyway. LayerWise announced Sunday that it has applied a process called "additive manufacturing" to produce a titanium total lower jaw implant for facial reconstruction. The project was developed in collaboration with partners from medical industries and academia. This is the first complete patient-specific implant for the lower jaw.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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Anon Lets Fly With Symantec Code After Ransom Talks Collapse
Tuesday February 7, 2012 14:45
A hacker who was negotiating a ransom for stolen source code to a Symantec product released the data via peer-to-peer networks on Tuesday after negotiations fell through. The code is for security vendor Symantec's pcAnywhere remote access software.
Source: TechNewsWorld.com
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LOCAL SOLUTIONS
It’s 3:45 pm on Thursday afternoon at a medium sized company. The payroll department is in the middle of printing the paychecks every employee is counting on receiving tomorrow morning. The computer crashes. Thomas gets a frantic phone call and arrives in their office 20 minutes later. The entire office breaths a sigh of relief when he solves the problem and checks are printing again by 4:15 pm. There is plenty of time for the payroll department to finish their task without anyone having to work overtime.
A high exposure attorney begins to gather his supporting documents for the trial set to begin at 8:30 am in the morning. He discovers that all of his supporting document files are nowhere to be found on his computer or in any data backups. There is no time to recreate over 100 hours of work between now and early the next day. The panicked lawyer dials Thomas in a complete frenzy. Thomas calms the man down and arrives on the scene a half hour later. The lawyer is ecstatic when Thomas recovers the missing files and trial begins without a flaw.
Frank Adoption Center relies on Thomas for all of their IT needs. He has been their computer solutions and tech support guy since 2002.
Thomas Forrester also builds custom computers. One woman had him build a special computer in 2004. He has done all needed maintenance on the client’s machine over the years. The client has never needed any type of tech support until the beginning of 2009. Thomas was there right away to provide the solution for her emergency when she called for assistance.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
After spending countless hours preparing a movie to be shown at his parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. The family is leaving for the celebration to be held in Virgina in less than 5 hours. The client gets ready to perform the simple task of writing the movie file to a disc and his computer crashes. He reboots the computer and the computer of course quickly crashes again. With no hope of getting the PC repaired in time, the guy locates our website and sees that I am available for instant chat and remote support.
I give instructions to the horrified client in Kansas (1000 miles away) on how to direct the PC to share itself with me. Then I locate the software glitch causing the crash, fix the problem and remain connected with the client until he has the memorable movie burned to DVD. I have him play the disc in the DVD player to ensure everything is now repaired. The movie plays flawlessly in Kansas! The man can’t thank me enough for coming to his rescue and his parents are overjoyed about the video when it is played at their golden anniversary party.
The mother of a middle school student contacted me through the website worried about her daughter’s Internet habits. It seems the girl is routinely found at the wee hour of 2:00 or 3:00 am chatting online with “friends who should be in bed themselves”. The woman also has two other children and is worried about their Internet use as well. I explain to her that I can put a software lock on the PC that will not allow the computer to access the Web during certain time periods.
The client then instructs each computer to share itself with me and I install the locks appropriate for each child’s bedtime. The woman tests it out that night and can finally get a good night’s rest knowing that her children are sleeping and not surfing the Internet at an indecent hour.
A woman who was assigned the task of giving a Power Point presentation to her office in one week contacted me over the website. Her dilemma is that she has never used Power Point before and she has to make a lot of changes to the basic pre-assembled presentation her boss gave her. Obviously, she has given presentations before, but has never had to use Power Point until this assignment.
We get her PC connected to mine remotely and I give her a basic lesson on editing Power Point slides. Over the course of the next few days, the lady has a few more questions and I am again able to help her with each of them remotely. By Wednesday, she had her presentation completed and I gave her a lesson on controlling the slide show. This allowed her to practice doing her presentation and be completely confident in doing so at work on Friday. She was amazed at how easy it was for me to help her through the entire experience. Friday arrived and her presentation went so well that she was given a promotion. Because of her slide show presentation the company it was prepared for became a multi-billion dollar account for the woman’s employer.