Google has added a new feature to Google Maps, in which the user can click on an added icon which will take them to an approximate location that they are at. I tried the new feature and it was right on the money, showing me a picture of the front of my house.

According to the Google blog they also state:

When you visit Google Maps with a supported web browser, you’ll see a new My Location button in the top left corner of the map. Simply click the button to center the map to your approximate location. If your location can be determined accurately enough, it’s shown with a blue circle, just like on Google Maps for Mobile. Click the button again to remove the blue circle, or to re-center the map after you’ve moved it away.

My Location is a great way to start exploring the map around you, and perfect for working out where you are when you’re away from home. For example, if you’ve just arrived in an unfamiliar city, My Location is a handy way to view the map around you, even if you don’t know the street address. You can find things to do nearby or work out the best way to get where you need to go. Even when you’re somewhere familiar, My Location is a convenient way to open the map ‘on the right page’.

When you visit Google Maps with a supported web browser

Google Chrome 2.0+ (using Gears), Mozilla FireFox 3.5+ or any browser with the latest version of Gears installed.

I tried Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 using Gears and it worked as well.

Comments welcome.

Source.

Amazon is introducing a new web site that is for Wireless plans and phones. The current site is still in beta and only offers services from At&T and Verizon. They will be adding Sprint and T-Mobile services soon.

Here is what their press release states:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 9, 2009– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the beta launch of AmazonWireless  amazonwireless.com), a new Web site offering cell phones and service plans, easy shopping without rebate hassles and FREE Two-Day Shipping on a broad selection of phones from AT&T and Verizon Wireless. In addition to expanding selection and adding carriers during the beta test phase, Amazon will be testing different features and gathering input from customers to ensure the best possible customer experience.

“We’ve taken our eight years’ experience selling cell phones to create a new site that makes a potentially confusing transaction much easier for customers,” said Paul Ryder, vice president of Consumer Electronics for Amazon.com. “The step-by-step purchase process on AmazonWireless makes it easy for customers who already have a plan to upgrade their phones. If you want to establish new cell phone service, we’ve made it simple to find the right phone, service plan and options for your needs. We’ve also eliminated the technical jargon and frustrating rebate paperwork that customers often face when buying a phone.”

No rebates! That is a nice touch. But will people come just because they are building it? I can see this as a handy option to compare plans and phones. Whether the pricing will be lower is unknown.

What do you think? Would you buy a plan from Amazon?

Comments welcome.

Amazon Wireless Site [beta]

Make sure your system is up to date and has the latest protections in place.

1. AVG anti-virus: 07/12/09
2. Avast: 07/10/09
3. Norton anti-virus: 07/08/09
4. McAfee anti-virus: 07/08/09
5. Lavasoft Ad-Aware: 07/10/09
6. Spybot Search and Destroy: 07/08/09
7. Microsoft Windows Defender: 07/08/09
8. Nod32: 07/10/09

Updates as of July 12, 2009 6:00am CDT.

Over at Deals and More [VentureBeat]  they have an article in which a Microsoft VP was interviewed and he expressed his views on the new Google operating system. According to Walid Abu-Hadba who is the Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism [ that's the real title folks - sounds more like a church gathering], he stated that everything that Google does is ‘defensive’.

In his opinion he stated that:

“Most of what Google does is defensive,” Abu-Hadba said.

You may be wondering how Google can be playing defense when it’s entering a market for the first time, but Abu-Hadba said it’s not about operating systems at all; instead, Google is trying to distract competitors from attacking its cash cow, search. He argued that whenever Google enters a new market, like releasing mobile operating system Android, it’s trying to force competitors to focus on existing products, rather than challenging Google in search.

He also gave his opinion about Adobe:

You could argue that Microsoft itself is making a similar move with Silverlight, which is taking on Adobe’s more established Flash platform. Not surprisingly, Abu-Hadba describes things a bit differently. It’s less about taking market share from Adobe, and more about improving Microsoft’s overall platform for the development of software, he said. And as for Adobe, Abu-Hadba said the company’s past focus on designers makes it poorly equipped to compete as a development platform. In fact, he predicted that, in 10 or 15 years, Adobe will have either died or transformed dramatically.

“They don’t know how to deal with developers,” he said.

Interesting take. One that should raise a few eyebrows.

Comments as always are welcome.

Microsoft story is here.

The reason I call it Our GM is if the statistics are correct, we the people of the United States will have a 61% stake in the corporation. I realize that the government has stated it will not dictate the models of vehicles the company will sell, but one can see a problem already for the 2010 model year. It seems that GM is going to introduce some models that may already be niche cars that may have low sales projections and obviously low profit margins.

Here are some of the losers GM is going to try and sell:

2010 CTS SPORT WAGON
This is very much a Eurocentric model. Cadillac initially considered the wagon a niche car for the U.S., with volume in the 3000 to 4000 range. The entire brand sold just 4508 units in Europe in 2007, so even if the Sport Wagon becomes its volume model there, total sales probably will be well below 8000 units worldwide.

You gotta be kidding. Who thought this up? 8,000 units to be sold worldwide? This is crazy!

Pontiac Solstice Coupe
GM will only make about 1,100 of these cars, so expect them to be hard to find and, if you get one, take good care of it.

Only building 1100 ? Why even bother building it?

GMC Terrain
The Terrain is GMC’s version of the new Chevrolet Equinox. The basic idea was to create a small crossover that appeals to people who want a look that GM calls “tailored toughness.” Looking it over, we might suggest a different tailor but, hopefully, buyers will like what they see on the showroom floor.

Why two of the same? I never really understood the difference between a Chevy and a GM model of anything. Isn’t it time to reduce the number of models? This beast comes with a 4 cylinder engine plant for better gas mileage. But will it be enough to even move this off the dealer’s lot? 0 - 60 in two days! LOL

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source

Source #2

For the past few days we have been reading about the new Google Chrome Operating System and I believe many of us thought it would be a full blown operating system similar to Microsoft Windows or Linux. This may not be the case. In what is being described by one of the Google co-founders, it is an anti-operating system.

This is how Larry Page describes the new non operating system:

Mr. Page described the Chrome operating system as a kind of anti-operating system — one that is basically indistinguishable from a browser. Netbooks loaded with Chrome will boot up almost instantaneously and will store data on the Internet instead of a hard drive.

“I wanted the operating system to kind of be out of the way,” Mr. Page said.

“If you live your life in the browser maybe you don’t want all the stuff that came from Eric’s generation,” Mr. Page added, putting his hand on Mr. Schmidt’s shoulder.

Messrs. Schmidt and Page were also careful not to position Chrome as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. They argued that Chrome will expand the market for netbooks, rather than eating into Windows’ share of the netbook market.

“Microsoft is welcome to put Internet Explorer on our operating system,” Mr. Schmidt said, although he conceded that “it’s highly unlikely they would do it. They would have to port it and the port is not trivial…the ball is in their court.”

He added that because Chrome is open source, Google won’t be able to block Microsoft.. “All of it is open,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Even if we had an evil moment, we would be unsuccessful.”

Although Chrome will be free, Mr. Schmidt said it will still boost Google’s business. “We benefit when people spend more of their life online,” he said. “So for us it’s a very straightforward strategic initiative that ultimately results in more revenue.”

I am glad this has been clarified. Google Chrome non OS is going to be what most of us originally envisioned. Here is what i see happening. The Google Chrome non OS will be quick to boot into the browser and get us online immediately. We will be using the cloud to work on stuff and also to store our stuff.

Is this going to be for everyone? It will not. There will still be those that will need a full blown operating system like Windows to do real work on. We will want a hard disk to store our precious stuff and will not entrust our stuff to anyone, no matter what they say about safety and so forth.

With that being said, I can see where a Google Chrome non OS will work on the midget laptops commonly known as netbooks. These pint size computers will be great for those of us who need a light weight device to lug through airports, hotel/motel room and have no need for a 6 lb weight on our shoulders.

So much for the OS war.

Comments welcome.

Source.

Google is touting their Image Search as being an easy way to find images that are licensed as Creative Commons. This will allow you to legally use images in your blog or other purposes, that you find using Image Search. On their blog Google states that:

Today, we’re launching a feature on Image Search to help you find images that you can use for free, while respecting the wishes of artists and creators. This feature allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain.

So give Image Search from Google a try and see what you think.

Comments welcome.

Source.

Google Blogging For Dummies, written by Susan Gunelius, is described by reviewers as a beginning guide for newbies who want to blog. But is it enough to get a person who hasn’t blogged before started in the right direction?

Here is why I am asking. My wife received an email from a nephew who inquired about starting their own blog. They had no specifics on what they wanted to do or how they wanted to go about doing it. They wanted to know if there was a book or something that would help them to get started. So my wife turned to me for answers.

Hmmm….. I didn’t have a clue. So armed only with limited information I ventured out on the Internet and found the Google Blogging For Dummies book, which had fairly good reviews over at Amazon. But before I recommend this book, I wanted to ask if anyone has read this book?

Do you have any other books you would recommend?

Comments welcome.

Amazon source.

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame and CEO Eric Schmidt of rival Google had lunch together today. But before anyone panics and see pictures of a Microsoft - Google alliance, it was at the Sun Valley meeting for moguls that both were attending. There was one awkward moment that Julia Angwin wrote in her article for the Wall Street Journal.

She stated:

Mr. Gates and his former lieutenant Nathan Myhrvold were walking out of the morning session when two reporters, including this one, asked Mr. Gates for a comment on the new Google operating system.

“No comment,” Mr. Gates replied, while walking out the door.

From behind the reporters, Mr. Schmidt materialized. “It would be better if you don’t make that comment,” he said as he came forward to shake hands with Mr. Gates.

The two laughed, shook hands and walked into the private lunch area together.

I must say that was a class act by both men in handling an awkward moment. Kudos to both of them. But I  would of liked to have been a fly on the wall during the lunch itself. LOL

Comments welcome.

WJS article here.

No one has actually used these words at the Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference yesterday, but one could read between the lines. News Corp CEO and media mogul Rupert Murdoch did state he would not be buying Twitter. Why would he? He bought MySpace for a whopping $580 million back in 2005, and so far the social networking site has not had a stellar presence on the Internet. With massive layoffs, reorganizations and so forth, MySpace appears to be heading for extinction. So when Murdoch said he also wasn’t going to sell MySpace, one would have to ask who would want to buy it?

Softpedia states the following information:

News Corp CEO and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch made it as clear as possible with a definite “No,” when asked whether he would buy Twitter and an even clearer “Hell no,” when asked about the possibility to sell MySpace, as Reuters reports. Present at the Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference yesterday, he went on to say that buying Twitter at this point would be hard to justify, even with the site’s increasing popularity, as it had no clear business model and little signs it would come up with one anytime soon.

So with MySpace in trouble, with newspapers losing advertising and with more advertisers heading to the Internet, it doesn’t appear that News Corp. is in a very good position. But can it bail itself out?

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

Best Buy and TiVo have formed a partnership to promote each other in a way that could benefit both companies. On the one hand, Best Buy will expose consumers to the benefits of TiVo compared to DVR services that satellite companies provide. Best Buy will benefit in that they will be able to advertise their products on TiVo. TiVo has had trouble getting consumers to know exactly the benefits that their products have to offer. Best Buy is in a struggle competing against Amazon and now Wal-Mart.

In an article from Silicon Alley Insider they state that:

This deal plugs gaps in both businesses. Best Buy will get visibility outside its stores. TiVo can take advantage of Best Buy’s customer interaction to position itself as more than just a recording device.

TiVo has been struggling to educate customers that they can also use the device to download and stream movies from Amazon and Netflix, watch vidoes on YouTube and buy movie tickets on Fandango.

I went out to the TiVo site to see if I could use their system with DishNetwork. Unfortunately I can’t. But the web site did state that TiVo was in the process of developing their services for Direct TV.

Does anyone reading this use TiVo? What is your opinion of the service?

Comments welcome.

Source.

When Google posted their list of partners on their FAQ site for their new OS, I wasn’t very surprised that the list didn’t include Dell. In fact I don’t believe that the list should of been a surprise to anyone. Here is what Google posted on their blog:

What companies is Google working with to support Google Chrome OS?
The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

You may recall that it was Acer who called Vista the worst operating system ever. [See article here] So Acer take a ride with Google should be a no brainer. Also Acer is go after Dell to try and knock them off of their perch in the #2 spot. [See article here]

ASUS is heavy into netbooks being one of the companies to first introduce the pint sized laptop computers. Both HP and Lenovo have also entered into the netbook markets, in the hope of maintaining their market share. Toshiba and Abobe? Not a clue what their motivation is. But the remaining companies produce cpu’s and could explain why they are going with Google.

So we have left two noticeable exceptions. Intel and Dell. Both of these companies have traditionally been Microsoft partners, even though they have had their spats in the past. But I am sure Microsoft is going to use its influence to try and to corral Google and limit the partners who join in to help to develop the new operating system.

But does Microsoft really have anything to fear from a Google operating system? What do you think?

Share your thoughts.

Comments welcome.

Source.

THESE PHOTOS HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED TO BE

FAKE BY THE AUTHOR!

This morning there was a post over at Techmeme which was from a Worldpress site known as chromeosleak. The writer of the posting indicated the need to be secretive since he/she felt their career could be at risk if they were discovered as providing a preview of the Google Chrome operating system. Others in the tech industry have jumped on the band wagon and are also posting what this person is saying.

But as with most secretive postings it makes one wonder if this is fact or purely fiction? Here is some what has been posted thus far:

I was invited by Acer to come and view the demo.

I can say and give only what I  know and have.

The OS installation was performed on a Acer Extensa 4620Z laptop to show it can install quickly on laptops from late 2007 to early 2008. The install from Vista to Google Chrome OS Dev Beta was only 10 minutes and was very elegant. Only one restart required.

A wizard asks you for basic info on the first boot up. Google was still in progress of developing the wizard so we just skipped most of this. Google at the moment installed only the Google Talk application. They did this because the Rep said “At the current time, Google has not completed compatibility tests with some laptops and netbooks.”.

This beta was extremely stripped down. However, it was amazingly fast. They did one reboot and it rebooted from Desktop to Desktop in about 25ish seconds.

In addition the poster states:

The Chrome Bar also auto hides. It can be brought back up by the Windows key and Space (The Rep Mentioned in Google Chrome OS laptops this key will actually be a fully colored and 3D Chrome Logo in some Netbooks)

The rep also mentioned some of the Linux aspects including the option to have a status bar on the Chrome Bar for Devs.

In addition a search bar can be implemented on the Chrome Bar. Programs appear in a Windows 7 Esque icon fashion.

That is all the time I had with the demo and Rep. Soon after some other Acer employees, affiliates, and the Google Rep went to show some of the capabilities of the OS on a projector for a more elaborate showing of the features to a larger audience.

However, I was the last to leave the room and the Google Rep seemed to forget his privacy. I happened to have my Mini-Cam with me and took these medium quality shots. I am sorry I couldn’t get better. They were all taken in less than 10 seconds. Adrenaline was rushing like crazy.

I hope you enjoy these.

I am putting my career and notability on the line in this!

Hmmm. Interesting if true. But that is for you to decide.  There were also some blurry screen shots posted as well like this one:

Comments as always are welcome.

Source for Chrome OS Is Here.

I have mentioned previously about using online security scanners to check your system periodically. I do this for several reasons. First of all I do not believe that any one product can provide 100% perfect protection all of the time. Second, using more than one program gives me a feeling that my system really, really is clean.

So last evening I decided to use the free scanner at Norton to check my system. I haven’t used the Norton product for well over six months opting instead to use other online scanners. When I went to the Norton free scanner site, I noticed they now have two options. You can still scan your computer on the web or you can also download the scanner to your system.

I tried the download version. The Norton software needed to update its virus definitions after which I ran the quick scan option. My system was clean so I took no further action. Basically what the Norton scanner does is to find bugs, but won’t fix or remove them. I use online scanners once a month or so just to confirm that my AVG software is not missing anything.

You may wish to give Norton’s online scanner a try.

What do you do yo keep your system protected?

Comments welcome.

Source.

When Google announced that it would be introducing its Chrome Operating System next year, it was only a matter of time before questions arose. The Google Chrome Blog team immediately set out to answer some of the most popular questions.

Here are the FAQs as answered by the Google Chrome Team:

Is Google Chrome OS free?

Yes – Google Chrome OS is an open source project and will be available to use at no cost.

What companies is Google working with to support Google Chrome OS?

The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments.

I’m a developer – how can I work with you?

Thanks for your interest. Later this year, the Google Chrome OS code will be open source. We’re looking forward to working with the open source community and making our own small contributions to the great work being done out there. Please stay tuned.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

Though Google is making light of their use of the word ‘beta’, they do admit to over extending the ‘beta’ length on their products. For most of us the word ‘beta’ means test version to iron out bugs. Normally ‘beta’ software becomes RTM software once the testing completes. But for Google they have some products that have been in ‘beta’ for five years.

According to their recent blog posting they state that:

We’re often asked why so many Google applications seem to be perpetually in beta. For example, Gmail has worn the beta tag more than five years. We realize this situation puzzles some people, particularly those who subscribe to the traditional definition of “beta” software as not being yet ready for prime time.

Ever since we launched the Google Apps suite for businesses two years ago, it’s had a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and has met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software. More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps, including Google. We’ve come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn’t fit for large enterprises that aren’t keen to run their business on software that sounds like it’s still in the trial phase. So we’ve focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark.

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk — both enterprise and consumer versions — are now out of beta. “Beta” will be removed from the product logos today, but we’ll continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there’s a small “beta” beneath the logo. Indeed, today we’re also announcing some other Google Apps features that we think will appeal to large enterprises: mail delegation, mail retention and ongoing enhancements to Apps reliability.

Now aren’t excited?

Comments welcome.

Source.

For years Linux has tried to become a viable operating system, but has garnered less than 1% of the market place. Though Mac users proclaim the simplicity of the Apple operating system, the high price of their hardware has kept many of us from making the switch. Microsoft with their Windows system still has a 90% plus market share. No matter how many complaints we hear about Windows, in particular Windows Vista, and how poorly Windows works the majority of us still use it. That was than and this is now. With little fanfare Google made an announcement on their web site last evening, 07-07-09, that a Google OS was coming in mid 2010.

Google states on their blog site the following information:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

First we need to analyze the impact of what the Google Chrome operating system will have on the way we all will compute in the future. This statement:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.

The word initially is a keyword. What this means is that Google is looking at the Netbook computers first, but will eventually port the operating system onto other computers such as laptops and desktop systems.

Next is this statement:

And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

This says it all folks. We have been pounding on Microsoft for years asking for a operating system that just works. An operating system that is impervious to attack by viruses, malware and other stuff that can attack our computers. An operating system that doesn’t need a ton of updates that can and has rendered some computers to not function after an update is applied.

Google also states the following as well:

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

This strikes home, Especially this statement:

They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.

Wouldn’t this be nice. We have all experienced the slow down that happens using Windows. You can blame any number of things that can cause a system to slow. Anti-virus programs from Symantec and McAfee are notorious for bringing systems to a crawl. We throw more and more RAM on our systems trying to keep them from slowing down. But overall, this added weight of Windows and the programs we need to run in order to protect the OS takes its toll.

Having access to your data, not having to worry about backing up your stuff, all of this coupled with all of the above is going to knock Windows for a loop. Our systems will run better, run faster, be immune to attack while offering us the ability to store our stuff in a cloud environment. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The bottom line is this. Thank you Google. I look forward to using your new operating system.

Comments welcome.

Source.

PS There was one other sentence in the Google announcement:

However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.

I wonder who Google is talking about? LOL

Oh, goody. There is a report out in which it states that, using an algorithm formula, it is possible to guess anyone’s Social Security Number. One only needs to know the date of when the person was born and also the city where the birth took place. The smaller the state, the easier it is to guess the number.

According to an article over at Ars Technica is also states that:

The irony of their method is that it relies on two practices adopted by the federal government that were intended to reduce the ability of fraudsters to craft a bogus SSN. The first is that the government now maintains a publicly available database called a Death Master File, which indicates which SSNs were the property of individuals who are now deceased. This record provided the researchers with the raw material to perform a statistical analysis of how SSN assignments related to two other pieces of personal information: date and state of birth.

The second is that the government has centralized its handling of SSN assignments and provided documentation of the procedures. The first three digits are based on the state where the SSN was originally assigned, and the next two are what’s termed a group number. The last four digits are ostensibly assigned at random. Since the late 1980s, the government has promoted an initiative termed “Enumeration at Birth” that seeks to ensure that SSNs are assigned shortly after birth, which should limit the circumstances under which individuals apply for them later in life (and hence, make fraudulent applications easier to detect).

The accuracy of these algorithms is positively disturbing. Using a separate pool of data from the Death Master File, the authors were able to get the first five digits right for seven percent of those with an SSN assigned before 1988; after that, the success rate goes up to a staggering 44 percent. For a smaller state, like Vermont, they could get it right over 90 percent of the time.

Getting the last four digits right was substantially harder. The authors used a standard of getting the whole SSN right within 10 tries, and could only manage that about 0.1 percent of the time even in the later period. Still, small states were somewhat easier—for Delaware in 1996, they had a five percent success rate.

That may still seem moderately secure if it weren’t for some realities of the modern online world. The authors point out that many credit card verification services, recognizing the challenges of data entry from illegible forms, may allow up to two digits of the SSN to be wrong, provided the date and place of birth are accurate. They often allow several failed verification attempts per IP address before blacklisting it. Given these numbers, the authors estimate that even a moderate-sized botnet of 10,000 machines could successfully obtain identity verifications for younger residents of West Virginia at a rate of 47 a minute.

Interesting. There doesn’t appear to be a way to avoid this guessing of SSN. Our only protection is to try to keep our personal information as safe as possible. This is getting harder to do with the advent of the Internet.

Comments welcome.

Source.

Microsoft is warning users that there is a vulnerability for users of Internet Explorer, who also are using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. They have a temporary fix available which you should get.

Here is what Microsoft has available on their site:

Microsoft has released a Microsoft security advisory about this issue for IT professionals. The security advisory contains additional security-related information. To view the security advisory, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/972890.mspx  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/securit…)

To have us fix this problem for you, go to the “Fix it for me” section. If you’d rather fix this problem yourself, go to the “Let me fix it myself” section.

Source.

Back in 1974 when AT&T was the only phone company in the United States, the company was split into a bunch of baby bells in the hopes they would provide competition in the market place. One must recall that back when AT&T had their monopoly, phone calls were expensive compared to what we pay today. As I recall a long distance call back than was about 25 cents a minute, compared to the 5 cents or lower we pay today. But now it appears that AT&T is being looked at again for their lock in to the Apple iPhone.

According to the Silicon Valley Insider article it states:

Obama’s anti-trust cop Christine Varney is dusting off the Sherman Act and reviewing wireless companies’ exclusive handset deals–most notably AT&T’s monopoly control over Apple’s iPhone.

One suspects that Google lobbyists are somehow involved.

In any event, maybe there’s hope for Sprint and Verizon customers yet:

Amol Sharma of the WSJ: The Department of Justice has begun an initial review to determine whether large U.S. telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communcations Inc. have abused the market power they’ve amassed in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.
The review of potential anti-competitive practices is in its very early stages, and it isn’t a formal investigation of any specific company at this point, the people said. It isn’t clear whether the agency intends to launch an official inquiry.
Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people. In recent weeks lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T’s exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.’s popular iPhone in the U.S.

There you have it. It makes one wonder why there is a need to have governmental regulations.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.