In today's daily news podcast, we look at the greatest software ever written, as well as how Windows measures on the scale of greatness. In other news, experts ratchet up Windows worm warnings, the newest Symantec beta comes with a painful catch for Norton users, VMware and XenSource join virtualization forces for Linux, GoDaddy launches a podcast service, and we review JotSpot's "less nerdy" wiki and tell you why it still needs a little work.

Today's In Depth is about corporate ethics, and our editorial comments are about the story behind our "greatest software" package.

Your host today is Johanna Ambrosio.

In the days following Steve Jobs' keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, a number of online publications expressed concern that Steve Jobs was sick.

This isn't simply wild speculation brought on by lack of a world-shaking product announcement: Two years ago, Jobs underwent a successful operation to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

And having attended the keynote, it did seem odd to me that a showman as accomplished as Jobs would delegate so much of the presentation time to capable but less compelling Apple speakers.

So I e-mailed Katie Cotton, Apple's VP of worldwide corporate communications, to inquire about Jobs' health.

Her response: "Steve's health is robust and we have no idea where these rumors are coming from."

(I'm just guessing here, but perhaps the Zune marketing group?)

As I made my way up the long escalator from the ground floor of Caesar's Palace on the first day of Black Hat, I continued to wrestle with my agenda for the next few hours. I'd already made the tough decision to catch Ofir Arkin's promising NAC attack session rather than sit in on either of my second two choices: David Litchfield's database security discussion, and the VoIP hacking talk being conducted by David Endler and Mark Collier. The second slot that morning was much more troubling, and wouldn't you know it, I made the wrong choice. Dropping anchor at Hendrik Scholz's "SIP Stack Fingerprinting and Stack Difference Attacks" would have made life so much easier this week as I covered Cisco's recent spate of vulnerabilities, including the PIX problem Scholz slipped into his presentation at the end. Instead, I was elsewhere and missed being an eyewitness to one of Black Hat's biggest stories. Not to worry, the pieces are starting to come together.

Continue reading "Blinded By The Glare Of Facial Piercings At Black Hat (Or, The One That Got Away)..."