John Lister

Hard drive manufacturer ioSafe has produced what it calls the ultimate range of "disaster proof" external hard drives. It promises the drives can withstand anything short of fire or bullets, though recent testing demonstrated the latter won't ... necessarily destroy data. The drives, which ioSafe says meet "military specifications," serve two main purposes: one is to be able to stand up to extreme environments such as Arctic cold or hot, dusty deserts. The second is for corporate users who want to take every practical step to protect their critical data. Disaster Proof Hard Drives Offer ... (view more)

Security experts are trying to work out why the amount of spam (unsolicited bulk email) distributed worldwide fell dramatically towards the end of 2010. That said, they also suspect it's a situation that won't last long. Post-Christmas Spam a ... Fraction of Summer Totals Security firm Symantec estimates that in August the number of bogus emails sent daily was around 200 billion. Surprisingly, that number slipped dramatically to 110 billion by October, was just 70 billion in late December, and collapsed after Christmas to around 30 billion. (Source: symantec.com ) If you're staggered by talk of ... (view more)

Despite being available exclusively in beta form, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) has been downloaded more than 20 million times, Microsoft reports. It comes as one set of figures puts the browser behind Mozilla Firefox among European users for the very ... first time. Internet Explorer 9 Download Remains At Strong Pace It's tough to know exactly how many people have downloaded the IE9 beta, as the figure Microsoft gives may well include multiple downloads by the same user. But it's likely that the figure runs into many millions of people, which suggests that the audience goes beyond web developers ... (view more)

Microsoft is today warning users of fake security alerts arriving via email. Microsoft is reminding users that it never sends out security alerts with attachments via email and that you should never open such an email if it arrives in your inbox. ... Microsoft Email Security Updates Are a Scam Cyber-criminals have been sending a so-called Microsoft updates that are actually viruses. This scam in particular takes advantage of Microsoft's well-established Patch Tuesday schedule for monthly email updates. Potential victims receive an email purporting to be from Microsoft's Director of Security ... (view more)

Microsoft has revealed that hackers have attempted to exploit a bug in Microsoft Word. The bug was fixed in a security update last month, but the company is also concerned that some users may not have installed the update. The bug involves the way ... MS Word handles rich text format (.RTF) files. This is a format used for text documents that have a very limited degree of formatting information compared to full-blown MS Word documents. The format is most commonly used as a way of moving documents from one word processor to another without altering the text's formatting. RTF Flaw Causes Memory ... (view more)

The British government may request Internet Service Providers (ISPs) block all adult-mannered web content. Users could still access the material, but only by specifically requesting that the block be removed. The idea is to limit the dangers of ... children being exposed to this type of content when they use the Internet. But the plan has attracted harsh criticism, against both the principle and the practicalities of carrying it out. Ed Vaizey, the government's communications minister said this weekend that "I think it is very important that it's the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect [ ... (view more)

A Michigan man could be jailed for up to five years after being charged with illegally accessing his wife's email account. But there are legal questions over the extent of privacy between married couples. The case involves Leon Walker, who shared a ... laptop in his home with his wife Clara, who has been married three times. Walker suspected she was having an affair with her second husband, which he was able to confirm after accessing her Gmail account. He then passed the relevant emails on to her first husband, who is the father of a child living at the couple's home. When the first husband went ... (view more)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has had a private meeting with the head of China's largest search engine, Baidu. It's prompted speculation Facebook is trying to find a way past that country's ban on the site. Zuckerberg had lunch with Robin Li, ... head of Baidu, while making a visit to China officially described ad as a holiday. However, a Baidu spokesman said he thought Zuckerberg wanted to "get the advice of someone who knows the Internet landscape well here." (google.com) The Great Firewall of China At the moment, Chinese users are blocked from accessing Facebook by a government filtering ... (view more)

Microsoft is reportedly working on a brand new edition of Windows specially designed specifically for tablet devices. The goal would be to overcome battery life problems with existing portable Windows machines. The key to the new edition would be ... how it interacts with the processor. The CPU (or "processor") is the the chip in any computing device that carries out calculations and processes information. There are two main types of processors in common use for portable devices: Intel's x86 architecture and the ARM chip. The two chips are very different inside, which means that the ... (view more)

New figures suggest that sales of Windows Phone 7 handsets have effectively flat-lined at a statistically insignificant level. It's led one research firm to suggest Microsoft will have to find a completely different way to make money from the mobile ... market. There have been several indications that sales of handsets running the new system, launched in Europe in October and North America last month, have been disappointing. Statistics from the Windows Phone 7 launch include an estimate that just 40,000 people bought a Windows Phone 7 device on its launch day (the respective figure for iPhones ... (view more)