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Regarding our vote on February 15, 2012 -- I have read approximately 1,000 comments from readers, along with their ballots. I will provide insight with regard to the findings, as well as address some issues. This post is approximately 1,500 words. I ... realize some of you won't want to read all of it and just want the results. So, I would like to begin by saying this: According to the results of the vote, I am pleased to announce that Infopackets will remain online. Moving forward: all users will retain access to everything that they have now and well into the future. This includes free access ... (view more)

Update: Save up to 60%. Offer ends on January 14th. Proceeds support our website and staff of writers. You can click here to go straight to the offer . Otherwise, continue reading below. With every new edition of Microsoft Windows comes new tweaks, ... new menus, and oftentimes no one seems to know where the old features went, which makes optimizing the operating system for a particular PC very difficult. Let's take Windows 7, for example. It's vastly different than Windows XP and offers new visualization features and background tasks (services) that literally rob a PC of its processing power, ... (view more)

A group of German hacking enthusiasts says the country's government is unlawfully spying on people online. It says officials are secretly using a monitoring tool in a way not authorized by the courts. The accusations come from the Chaos Computer ... Club (CCC), a group of hackers who seek to find creative and unconventional uses for technology rather than merely causing disruption by illegally accessing data. Ironically, that's exactly what they say the German government is doing. The claims involve Bundestrojaner, a government-run application that is effectively a Trojan horse, software that can ... (view more)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has come up with an idea to help rural Americans gain access to broadband. It involves an overhaul of the system that currently guarantees telephone service to virtually all of the population. The current ... system, the Universal Service Fund (USF), relies on a 15 per cent levy on telecommunications services revenue. This money is then used to subsidize telephone line provision in areas where suppliers say it isn't commercially viable to install lines and still make a profit. The fund also covers the costs of making sure schools, healthcare facilities ... (view more)

Tests have shown that MacBook Air laptops could perform very differently depending on which model hard drive is installed in the machines. The models in question use Solid State Drives, or SSDs, in place of traditional hard drives. The SSDs work in ... a similar way to RAM (random access memory), or flash drives, as they have no moving parts. Although more expensive, SSDs have several key advantages over traditional drives: they make no discernible noise, are less vulnerable to damage from shocks, can access information much more quickly, and are considerably smaller in physical size. They also ... (view more)

The United States government has offered help after defense contractor Lockheed-Martin suffered a "tenacious" cyber-attack. It appears to be linked to problems with a system used for authorizing access from external locations. Lockheed-Martin, which ... is the leading supplier of IT services to the government, says the attack was the latest in a line of frequent attempts to breach its security, which certainly makes sense given the confidential nature of some of the material it handles. But it has described the latest attack as "significant." As a result, the company has reset all user passwords ... (view more)

In computer science, session hijacking is the exploitation of a valid computer session (commonly known as a "session key") used to gain unauthorized access to information or services in a computer system. For example, when a user logs in to a web ... site, the user's PC is tagged with a session key using a browser cookie (a cookie is a small file stored on the users PC that the browser reads). Any time the user requires access to a restricted area of a website (usually requiring login), the session key is extracted from the users' PC and compared to the key stored on the web server. If valid, the ... (view more)

Website LinkedIn.com has received some tough criticism as of late, after one security researcher revealed that the cookies used on the website leaves user accounts open to an online attack. In a recent blog, independent researcher Rishi Narang ... warned members of the business-oriented social network that the cookies found on the site may continue to remain active for up to one year. Extended Expiry Time Aids Hackers Once a user completes their login procedures, LinkedIn creates a file on their computer which the site uses for quicker access later on (similar to the cookies found on many other ... (view more)

U.S. and Canadian PlayStation Network (PSN) users will soon get access to free game and video downloads as a sort-of reparation payment for this past month's arduous outage. Sony is slowly bringing all of its users back online in the wake of a ... massive hack that left PlayStation 3 gamers without access to the PSN online network. The news comes right from Sony itself, which made the announcement about free games and video downloads on its official PlayStation blog Monday evening. For a period of 30 days following the full reactivation of PSN, Sony will offer both PlayStation 3 (PS3) and ... (view more)

Credible reports suggest Microsoft users will be able to carry a copy of Windows 8 in their pocket. It also appears personal settings can be synchronized to the web to allow remote access when on the move. The details come through leaked screenshots ... of what's formally known as Build 7850, but commonly referred to as Milestone 1: the first full-fledged developmental edition of Windows 8. Windows 8 Build 7850 was released to developers late last year but details have only just leaked. Of course, Microsoft is keeping quiet about whether the leaks are genuine, so there's no cast-iron guarantee ... (view more)