With the upcoming change to how the United States will calculate Daylight Saving Time (DST), users of digital calendars may find themselves arriving late for appointments. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, expected to be signed into law today, will cause unexpected havoc for electronic calendars, including those in PCs, handheld computers, and even personal digital recorders. Who would have thought?
Microsoft Corporation requires users of it's flagship operating system, Windows XP, to verify the authenticity of their software installation before downloading patches and updates from Microsoft's website. The validation tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), can easily be cracked without much trouble. This allows users of pirated copies of Microsoft Windows to verify their installation and receive the extra bennies offered from the manufacturer.
The SANS Institute reports that 422 new vulnerabilities were discovered in the second quarter of 2005. This is an 11 percent increase over the previous quarter. The increase in the number of security vulnerabilities stems from malicious crackers changing focus from attacking operating systems to webbrowser and other connected applications, such as digital music applications.
RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is attracting the attention of Internet advertisers. Google and Yahoo Search Marketing, among others, are looking for ways to post advertisements in RSS feeds that are becoming a popular alternative to Web browsing. Long a favored tool of the tech savvy, RSS is being used by a broad audience of well-educated, and presumably affluent readers.
D-Wave Systems, a Vancouver-based computer engineering firm has announced it's schedule to build a working quantum computer that will be able to solve physical-simulation problems that currently aren't solvable using available processing tools. The computer is to be ready within three years. While most designs for quantum computers focus on the properties of quantum entanglement to calculate binary functions, the D-Wave system will use quantum tunneling, which enables particles to hop from one location to another without traversing the intervening space.
Google, the leading search engine company in search of itself has again added a new service to its eclectic portfolio. Later this year, Google plans to offer an electronic payment service that will compete directly with PayPal, owned by eBay. Services will, reportedly, include processing payments using consumer credit cards and checking accounts, the mainstay of PayPal's service.
Microsoft Corp. is urging Windows XP users to uninstall the new Netscape 8 webbrowser because it can conflict with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is claiming that the problem is with Netscape, rather than their own browser that invades the operating system like kudzu.