Author Archives: Steven

Apple removes anti-virus advice

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A media storm created by a note on the Apple website has proved to be one in a teacup.

The note urged Mac owners to use anti-virus software which commentators saw as a change in strategy for a firm that had regarded itself as virus-proof.

Media outlets and blogs, including the BBC, saw the advice as a response to the growing and changing cyber threat.

But it emerged the advice was old and Apple has since removed it completely saying it was “inaccurate”.

The note appears to have been an update of one that first appeared on the site in mid-2007.

The advice has now returned to the more familiar Apple mantra.

“The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box,” an Apple spokesman said.

Full artcicle on the BBC News site

Apple Recommends Antivirus Software

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Apple has issued a technical note about Mac antivirus software, and, for the first time, suggests that Macs need such software. The note says: “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.” The note then goes on to mention three antivirus programs, with Intego VirusBarrier X5 listed first.

It is worth noting this, since Apple, especially in its recent “Get a Mac” ads, has always publicly tried to ignore the threat of malware to Macs, as well as other security issues. We can only applaud the fact that Apple has chosen to recognize that Macs face security risks and that they require protection.

News source: Neowin.net

YouTube goes widescreen

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YouTube rolled out an exciting change to all of its users today, by expanding the width of their videos to widescreen (16:9), from the previous standard format (4:3), making the player 960 pixels wide.

A post, in the YouTube Blog, confirmed that all previous 4:3 aspect ratio videos will all still be watchable, and play just fine. This highly anticipated update to go widescreen comes as a surprise to many, as some dislike the change to the player going widescreen, where most think the change was needed to the aging player. This update could be the start of more changes to come, after YouTube announced it will be selling keyword searches to users and businesses.

News source: Neowin.net

Microsoft readying RC of Vista SP2 for February 2009

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Citing a source at Microsoft, Techarp has revealed that Microsoft is targeting a release candidate (RC) version of Windows Vista SP2 for February 2009.

Microsoft sent invites to testers in mid October asking them to take part in the SP2 beta. Build 16489 was released to special group of testers in late October but Microsoft has been quiet since then.

TechArp also believes the RTM of Vista SP2 will be in April 2009. Microsoft is readying SP2 so there are additional incentives for customers to upgrade to Window Vista now, instead of waiting for Windows 7.

Microsoft will include Windows Search 4 in Vista SP2 along with Bluetooth wireless support (including latest BT 2.1 fixes), support for the new VIA 64-bit CPU and additional application compatibility updates.

News source: Neowin.net

New Windows Live Betas – Download Wave 3 Now!

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With the Windows Live Wave 3 beta due to start today, we thought we’d provide our readers with a small headstart on the rest of the world. Here’s the download links for the new Wave 3 suite of applications, including Messenger v9, Windows Live Movie Maker, Mail with Calendar synchronisation, Writer, Photo Gallery, Family Safety and the Outlook Connector. For the paranoid amongst you, yes the files are hosted on download.microsoft.com.

http://tinyurl.com/liveside-wlwave3web (only downloads the applications you select)
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http://tinyurl.com/liveside-wlwave3all (downloads all the applications, you can chose which ones to install)
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Enjoy, and stay tuned for our reviews of the Windows Live Wave 3 beta application coming soon. In the meantime you can check out our previous posts tagged Wave 3 regarding the new applications or subscribe to our RSS feed to be alerted to the new posts coming later today.

Here’s some sample screenshots just to wet the appetite!

messenger M2mail calendar

PS: If you have the Writer CTP or any other Wave 3 products installed, you should uninstall them first.

Read more LiveSide reviews:

Wave 3: Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

Wave 3: Windows Live Mail – Calendar, Calendar, Calendar (and more)

Wave 3: Windows Live Writer – A First Look

Wave 3- Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta – What’s New- A Comparison With 8.5

News source and download links: LiveSide.net

Massive Bug Found in VMWare ESX 3.5U2

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This was first reported yesterday evening on both the VMWare Community forums and on DeployLinux.com. From what anyone can tell, there is a bug in the VMWare License Management code and it is causing any system that is running ESX 3.5U2 to not be able to boot this morning. VMware is attempting to figure out what happened and put out a patch, but the more important question is, "Why wasn’t this caught before it shipped?" As Matt Marlowe posted:
OK, while we’re all remaining calm….just imagine the implications that bugs like this can occur and get past QA testing….5 years down the road, nearly all server apps worldwide pretty much running in VM’s (pretty easy prediction)……some country decides to initiate cyberwarfare and manages to get a backdoor into whatever is the prevaling hypervisor of the day…..boom. All your VM’s belong to us. […]
I’d love to find out what happened here. Don’t they do any regression testing on new releases to check for date based bugs? I thought that would be pretty obvious.
There have been some updates on this situation since it broke last night:

1. Frank Wegner’s suggested workaround:
* Do nothing
* Turn DRS off
* Avoid VMotion
* Avoid to power off VM’s

I’d council against turning DRS off as that actually deletes resource pool settings….instead, set sensitivity to 5 which should effectively disable it w/ minimal impact.

2. VMware has stated they will have fixes available in 36hrs at the earliest.

3. Anand Mewalal’s suggested workaround:
We used the following workaround to power on the VM’s.
Find the host where a VM is located
run ‘ vmware-cmd -l ‘ to list the vms.
issue the commands:
service ntpd stop
date -s 08/01/2008
vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/
service ntpd start

4. It’s reported that there are no easily seen warnings in logs/etc or VC prior to hitting the bug. VC will continue to show the hosts as licensed and no errors will appear in vmkernel log file until you try to start up a new vm, reboot a vm, or reboot the host.

News Source: Neowin.net