Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Secunia launched a free online Software Inspector last December, and since then over 350,000 inspections have been completed. As we’ve discussed before, the service scans your computer looking for specific applications (Acrobat, QuickTime, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Firefox, Thunderbird, Internet Explorer, Opera, and more) to make sure that you’re running the latest version.

I ran the scan myself to see how well I keep my programs up-to-date, and it turns out that I do a pretty good job:

However, Secunia is reporting that not everyone cares so much about updating their software. Out of the 350,000 scans that they have done, here are the percentages of people running out-dated versions of the applications:

In response to those numbers Secunia said that on average 28% of the applications were out-dated:

Most people using Windows and Microsoft products are usually aware of the monthly “Patch Tuesday” routine that Microsoft has set up, which can explain why the patch level for MS products are relatively high. These numbers also indicate that many people using Firefox and Opera are concerned about security and remember to keep their products updated.

But when it comes to other applications that don’t immediately seem that exposed, people tend to wait for an extended period of time before patching.

This constitutes a significant problem because many of those applications, like WinAMP and Quicktime, are readily used whenever users encounter media files of various kinds. Most people wouldn’t hesitate to open an .mpg, .jpg, .mov, or .mp3 file from any source if it seems the least bit interesting and relevant. It’s easy to embed a movie in your homepage, for example, and all it takes is one unpatched Quicktime vulnerability and a provocative video title to compromise a lot of visitors.

As you can see the updates are very important for more than just the browser, but users typically shrug them off as not necessary. So while you’re sitting there right now why don’t you open a new tab in your browser and run Secunia’s Software Inspector to make sure you are completely up-to-date (it does require that you have Java installed).

Source: Secunia Blog [via PC Advisor]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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If you’ve never seen the rise and fall of humanity as told by a series of pulleys, levers, and CO2 rockets, now’s your chance — a team of Purdue engineers have built a contraption that not only tells the history of the world through the end of days, but is also a contender for the world’s largest Rube Goldberg machine. The Purdue team’s “Time Machine” catalogs a history of dinosaurs, war, and rock ‘n roll before finally culminating in a cataclysmic inferno and efflorescent renewal in 232 steps — narrowly beating out the previous record of 230 set by Ferris State University in 2010. Impressive, but not officially the “world’s largest” just yet– the team is submitting a video of a flawless run to Guinness World Records to certify the historic thingamajig, hopefully eking out a victory with its two step lead.

Rube Goldberg Machine to set new world record, bring forth apocalypse originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 19:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Micron’s RealSSD C300 came out, there were no competitors in sight — 355MB / sec read speeds and a SATA 6Gbps interface made for an unbelievably spritely (though also finicky) solid state drive. Today, that’s simply not the case, as Intel’s SSD 510 and OCZ’s Vertex 3 are furiously fighting for the crown in the high-end consumer SSD space. On or about April 26th, the C300’s successor will hit the market branded as the Crucial M4, but this time it won’t be the cream of the crop, as even though it’s assuredly a speed demon, it’s actually shown up by its predecessor in a few tests. In particular, AnandTech noted that the drive seems to have sacrificed sequential read performance in exchange for faster write speeds — and was worried slightly about Crucial’s delayed garbage collection routine — but overall, reviewers are coming away fairly happy with the speedy performance they’re seeing. Still, the most crucial variable, price, has yet to be revealed — over a year later, the C300 remains an expensive drive, but the new C400 uses Micron’s 25nm NAND flash, which could make solid state storage cheaper.

Read – AnandTech
Read – The Tech Report
Read – Hardware Heaven
Read – Tom’s Hardware

Crucial’s M4 / C400 SSD reviewed, hitting store shelves in late April for an undisclosed sum originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know that pseudo-tactile feeling you get when you fondle your mouse’s clicky scroll wheel, the one that satisfies your obsessive need to touch everything? Logitech wants to give you more clicks, and smoother scrolling to boot. This M325 wireless mouse’s new “micro-precise” scroll wheel features 72 tiny ratchets, making our self-counted 22-ratchet mouse wheel seem downright barbaric by comparison — not that we ever really considered the number of teeth our mice had before now. The rodent’s 18-month battery life won’t quite live up to your 2-year Couch Mouse, but at least they can share a Logitech Unifying Receiver. Your scroll wheel of tomorrow can be had for $40 later this month, or £30 right now for lucky folks in the UK.

Logitech ratchets up the competition with M325 wireless mouse originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 15:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It was really difficult not to include some of the videos we’ve already seen this week in this week’s roundup, like the hilarious April Fool’s Day videos from ThinkGeek, and the Angry Birds: The Movie clip posted earlier – they definitely qualify for the title “best.” Still, there were a lot of great videos this week, including a gnome with an agenda and some zombie butt to kick, an Angry Birds take on US foreign policy, and YouTube’s own April Fool’s Day gag, which pokes fun at just about everything else that appears on YouTube.