InformationWeek Daily Archives
05/22/2013 08:26:53 Daily, October 16MacBook Owners Organizing Class-Action Suit Against Apple
In This Issue:
1. Editor's Note: Firefox 2.0: You'll Like It If It's The Kind Of Thing You Like
2. Today's Top Story
- Microsoft To Link To Rival Security Software In Vista
Related Story:
- Microsoft Advises Users To Run Update Again
3. Breaking News
- MacBook Owners Organizing Class-Action Suit Against Apple
- Yahoo Pyramid Time-Capsule Plans In Ruins
- Review: Four GPS Devices That Will Drive You Sane
- McAfee Acquires Leak Prevention Developer
- Stern Takes Satellite Radio Show Online
- Reuters To Open Virtual News Bureau In Second Life
- Judge OKs Sale Of 'Bully' Game
- Toshiba May Ask For More Sony Recall Damages (Reuters)
- AMD Seen Strong This Year; Intel Next (Reuters)
- App Server Powers Race To Embed Java EE 5 Support
- New Technique Promises To Speed Up Bug Discovery In Applications
- Compellent Adds 'Thin Replication' To Storage Center
4. Grab Bag
- Rise Of Online Communication Means Decline Of Mailbox (Baltimore Sun)
- Web Site That Tracks 911 Calls Ignites Concerns About Security (Seattle Post Intelligencer)
- The Internet In 1993 (Break.com)
5. In Depth: AT&T's BellSouth Bid
- Concessions To FCC In BellSouth Bid
- Critics Fighting Approval Of AT&T's BellSouth Acquisition
- FCC Postpones Vote On AT&T-BellSouth Deal
6. Voice Of Authority
- Spamhaus Needs New Lawyers
7. White Papers
- Why One Virus Engine Isn't Enough
8. Get More Out Of InformationWeek
9. Manage Your Newsletter Subscription
Quote of the day:
"The future is just as much a condition of the present as is the past." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
I've been using Firefox 2.0 since release candidate one came out a couple of weeks ago, and I'm pretty satisfied with it. There are no major new capabilities to the browser, but there are a couple of nifty, new minor features. Combine that with Firefox's improved stability, and that means existing Firefox users will want to upgrade right away, as soon as the version hits final release.
However, because there are no big new capabilities, I don't think the new version will win Firefox much new market share.
What's new in Firefox 2.0? Improved stability: RC2, the current version, is already significantly more stable than the current final release, which was itself pretty stable. The browser seems faster as well.
Firefox 2.0 spell-checks the text you write in the text input fields for online forms (these are known to developers as "textarea" fields). This is very handy when entering a message in Web mail, or posting to a blog or an online message board or forum.
I'm an RSS junkie, and I really like the way Firefox 2.0 handles subscriptions to new feeds. With the 1.x versions, you handle subscriptions by clicking an icon next to the address bar, which allows you to subscribe using Firefox's own LiveLines RSS feature.
With Firefox 2.0, when you click the RSS icon, you get a choice of subscribing to the feed in LiveLines and a few desktop and Web-based RSS readers.
The RSS feed itself is previewed in the browser in a human-readable format. Previous versions of the browser showed RSS as raw code, which is confusing to everybody but the 11 people in the whole world who regularly hack RSS code by hand.
Mozilla.org is touting a bunch of other new features for Firefox 2, but none of them is all that interesting to me. It says it's got a "visual refresh"--a whole new look. I don't see any significant difference. It says there's built-in phishing protection—an alarm goes off when you access a suspicious Web address. I've found that kind of thing useless in other browsers and mail clients, and I see no reason to believe it'll be any more useful in Firefox. Enhanced search? Search was just fine before, and it's still just fine. There are some improvements to tabs, but they really apply to people who keep a dozen or more tabs open at once—I generally only use two or three tabs at a time.
So far, I've been talking from the perspective of an end user. But what will Firefox 2.0 and its competitor, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, mean to enterprise IT managers? That's the subject of this week's article by Nick Hoover.
Now that Firefox 2.0 is nearly here, I'm eager to learn about what's coming up in Firefox 3. If you know anything about it, please leave a message on the InformationWeek Weblog.
Mitch Wagner
Microsoft To Link To Rival Security Software In Vista
Related Story:
Microsoft Advises Users To Run Update Again
MacBook Owners Organizing Class-Action Suit Against Apple
Yahoo Pyramid Time-Capsule Plans In Ruins
Review: Four GPS Devices That Will Drive You Sane
McAfee Acquires Leak Prevention Developer
Stern Takes Satellite Radio Show Online
Reuters To Open Virtual News Bureau In Second Life
Judge OKs Sale Of 'Bully' Game
Toshiba May Ask For More Sony Recall Damages (Reuters)
AMD Seen Strong This Year; Intel Next (Reuters)
App Server Powers Race To Embed Java EE 5 Support
New Technique Promises To Speed Up Bug Discovery In Applications
Compellent Adds 'Thin Replication' To Storage Center
Protecting Customer Data
Subscribe To Your Favorite Authors
-----------------------------------------
Rise Of Online Communication Means Decline Of Mailbox (Baltimore Sun)
Web Site That Tracks 911 Calls Ignites Concerns About Security (Seattle Post Intelligencer)
The Internet In 1993 (Break.com)
Concessions To FCC In BellSouth Bid
Critics Fighting Approval Of AT&T's BellSouth Acquisition
FCC Postpones Vote On AT&T-BellSouth Deal
Spamhaus Needs New Lawyers
Why One Virus Engine Isn't Enough
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InformationWeek Daily Newsletter
1. Editor's Note: Firefox 2.0: You'll Like It If It's The Kind Of Thing You Like
mwagner@cmp.com
www.informationweek.com
Microsoft changes its tune and says it will post links to rival security software makers in the welcoming screen for Windows Vista.
If you want to be protected against one of the vulnerabilities Microsoft warned about last week, just one update might not do the job.
Users are steamed about a bug that causes the notebooks to shut down at random, losing data that wasn't saved before the shutdown.
Preservationists put the kibosh on Yahoo's plan to project the contents of a digital time capsule via laser onto an ancient pyramid in Mexico. Yahoo still plans to beam the digital time capsule into space.
If cost has kept you from trying GPS, take heed: The latest navigation systems offer more features and (mostly) lower prices.
Onigma makes software that monitors and protects information, including trade secrets, intellectual property, legal and financial documents, client communications, and personal information.
Sirius Satellite Radio jock Howard Stern will host a free, uncensored four-hour program on the Internet airing Oct. 25 and 26.
The Reuters Atrium, scheduled to launch this week, offers Second Life's hundreds of thousands of "residents" a community center where they can hold discussions and see the latest news images and videos.
A Miami judge tossed out a complaint by attorney Jack Thompson stating that the game violated a Florida law that prohibits activities that can injure the health of the community.
Besides replacement costs for the batteries themselves, Toshiba could request money to cover damage for its product and brand images and potential loss of sales opportunities, a spokesman said.
Momentum is definitely favoring AMD at the moment, analysts say—but don't count Intel out just yet.
Java EE 5 aims to simplify development, but most shops aren't using it yet because of lack of software support. Help is on the way; many of the top application vendors expect to have compatible updates shipping by early next year.
Beyond Security is using a hacker method called "fuzzing." The idea is to take a certain request—between a Web browser and server, for example—and modify it so that it's slightly different from what one side expects.
The technology creates volumes at the remote site based on actual written data without needing space to be allocated beforehand.
----- The latest research, polls, and tools -----
Learn how your peers are protecting customer data and managing privacy issues in the InformationWeek/Accenture Global Information Security Survey of more than 2,000 technology and security professionals.
Are you a fan of Fred Langa? Are there other InformationWeek authors that you view as must-reads? Then check out our author's directory; each author has his or her own page and RSS feed.
Have you noticed how pay-phone booths are becoming scarce? Similarly, the familiar blue mailbox is about to disappear from tens of thousands of street corners as the U.S. Postal services faces the reality of the wholesale replacement of traditional letters and means of paying bills with electronic communications.
Seattle911, an online service that took publicly available real-time feeds of 911 calls to the Seattle Fire Department and displayed them graphically using Google Maps, has been effectively shut down because of claims of security concerns.
A video news broadcast from the early days of the Internet that breathlessly reports on the "new phenomenon," complete with a demonstration that uses a dial-up connection and classic text interface.
5. In Depth: AT&T's BellSouth Bid
Members of the Federal Communications Commission have stalled the merger, seeking additional consumer safeguards.
The U.S. Department of Justice approved the deal, and the Federal Communications Commission plans to vote Thursday. But critics say the acquisition hurts competition.
The FCC chairman agreed to seek public comment for 10 days and is said to be hopeful that at the end of that period, the two commissioners who have been holding out will vote for the merger.
Eric Hall says that although the judge in the Spamhaus Project case is stretching the bounds of "reason and temperance," a legal "out" he left for Spamhaus should be pursued by the nonprofit spam-fighting organization.
In addition to reducing the average response time to a virus outbreak, using multiple virus engines enables security administrators to implement a vendor-independent security policy and use best-of-breed products.
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