Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista, the software giant's first major upgrade of its operating system in five years, is complete and will be available to retail customers on January 30, a senior executive said on Wednesday, November 8th. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061108/tc_nm/microsoft_vista_dc
Most of the time if you see virus and computer or electronics in the same sentence it is bad news. However some researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have created a transistor with very fast switching speeds. They have done this by coating 30-nanometer-long chunks of tobacco mosaic virus with platinum nanoparticles. They say it could eventually be used to make memory chips for MP3 players and digital cameras. A device fitted with such a virus-chip would access data much more quickly than one using flash memory.
Microsoft has released a security advisory concerning the latest exploit discovery in Internet Explorer. This exploit can be used by malicious software to execute code on any computer system running Internet Explorer, as well as cause Internet Explorer to unexpectedly close. You can read more about the exploit at Symantec or Microsoft. Microsoft is releasing a patch for this issue on Oct. 10th.
A computer worms that spreads via instant messaging is being used to build an extensive "botnet" of remote-controlled PCs, a US security firm has warned. Security experts at US company FaceTime identified the worm as "W32.pipeline" and warned that it spreads via AOL's instant messenger program. http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn10119&feedId=online-news_rss20
Activist group Defective By Design is calling for an international day of action against digital rights management (DRM) technology on 3 October. They want to highlight the threat DRM poses to open-source software development, consumer rights, and the way it could be used to control and track consumer viewing habits of future next-generation DVD formats. Via MacWorld
