Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on September 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

It was just a few days ago that Google unveiled their idea to come out with a central market for Android developers to share their latest creations, and now Microsoft is hot on their tail. The istartedsomething blog noticed a few job postings that Microsoft made regarding something called Skymarket.

The details are sparse, but the launch of Skymarket will be done alongside that of Windows Mobile 7, which is currently slated for early 2009. The job descriptions, however, say that the marketplace will be available for developers as early as this fall. Whomever gets the position at Microsoft will have to draw up a “product offering, pricing, business model and policies that will make the Windows Mobile marketplace ‘the place to be’ for developers wishing to distribute and monetize their Windows Mobile applications.“

One thing I can’t wait to see is how much of the cut Microsoft decides to take from developers for the sale of their applications. Steve Ballmer always kind of shrugged off Apple’s App Store because he thought developers wouldn’t want to give up 30% of their revenue to Apple. Well, as it turns out some developers are still able to make a good chunk of money since they are exposed to a lot more users than they would ordinarily be.

By the time 2009 comes to an end we will have three application stores/markets that will be heavily competing for users, and it will be interesting to see which of them comes out on top. Will it be Apple, Microsoft, or Google?

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By now you’ve probably seen Microsoft’s latest ad featuring Lauren, a woman who claims to be neither cool nor rich enough for a MacBook. Well Lauren, one of our readers has a gift for you.

Mitch Gewirtz of Michigan would like to give you his 17-inch PowerBook. For free. From Mitch:

Subject: I AM UP FOR THE CHALLENGE!

To whom it may concern,

I recently watched the new PC ad on television the other night about “Lauren” purchasing a laptop for under $1000.00. It was a great advertisement targeting everyday PC users. My only concern is that I feel the computer “Lauren” chose will not provide an overall positive experience. I am asking for your assistance to help me locate “Lauren”. I am willing to give her my 17″ Mac laptop “FOR FREE” so she can decide which laptop is superior without putting a price tag on it.

I do believe everyone on this planet is “cool enough to be a Mac person”.

Sincerely,
Mitch Gewirtz

We of course wrote back to Mitch to gauge his level of seriousness in this matter. His response:

Absolutely! I am serious!

I believe my 17″ G4 powerbook is still more advanced than any PC out there today. It is a very healthy laptop that has given me a wonderful experience the last couple of years. I truly believe if “Lauren” had a chance to use this laptop she would change her mind.

Can you help me locate her?

While Apple fanboys are a dime a dozen, we like Mitch’s attitude, a guy willing to put his money where his mouth is (even if that money is invested in an older machine he may be planning to replace). So Mitch, Gizmodo would like to support you on your quest to gift Lauren your PowerBook. We’ve got your back, buddy.

Lauren, where are you? Drop us a line (you can find my email on the side of the page). Let’s make this love connection happen.

It’s lurking in millions of PCs around the world. It’s incredibly sophisticated and resilient, with built-in p2p and digital code-signing technology. It revels in killing security software. On April 1, the Conficker worm will activate.

The scariest thing about the Conficker worm is that literally millions of infected Windows PCs could be linked together to do its bidding. The second scariest thing is that no one really knows what its creator is going to do with this virtual army on April 1, when it’s scheduled to contact a server for instructions. It’s so bad, Microsoft has a running $250,000 bounty for the author, dead or alive. (Well, they probably want him alive, but they hate his guts.)

The New York Times’ John Markoff rounded up some of the more ingeniously evil possibilities in a compelling article, the most sinister being a “Dark Google,” postulated by University of California at San Diego researcher Stefan Savage, that would let bad people scour zombie machines all around the world for data to sell to other bad people.

But let’s back up a bit. Conficker—whose weird name is a combination of “configuration” and a slightly more polite word for f***er, according to Urban Dictionary—actually began life as a lowly, “not very successful” worm in November, says Vincent Weafer, VP at Symantec Security Response. Weafer told us it exploited a Microsoft remote server vulnerability that had already been announced and patched the previous month, so the only systems that were vulnerable were the ones that weren’t up to date.

The B release, pushed in December, on the other hand, was “wildly successful,” says Weafer, infecting millions of unpatched computers because it’s an aggressive little bastard—the first worm in years on a scale like Blaster. It has built-in p2p capabilities, and brute forces its way into open shared folders or printers, so it can crawl an office network quickly. It also piggybacks onto USB flash and hard drives. On top of all that, it’s designed to be incredibly resilient, killing security software, disabling Windows Update, and digging down deep.

The C release came out this past month. It doesn’t go after new machines—it’s actually a payload for computers already infected with B. It transformed Conficker from a sneezing pandemic into a seriously nasty plague. With C, its p2p powers are extended further, with digital code-signing, so it only accepts trusted code updates from itself. That means security experts can’t simply inject code to neutralize it. The patch also made Conficker better at killing security software. And it expanded the scope of the domains it tries to contact for instructions from 250 to 50,000, completely neutralizing security experts’ previous tactic of seizing the domains. There’s effectively no way to the cut the head off of this demon snake. The stage is set: On April 1, Conficker will reach out for the millions-strong zombienet’s next set of instructions.

So what will happen? Well, no one knows for sure. Conficker’s creator can do whatever he wants with his army. Launch massive denial-of-service attacks, setup the “Dark Google” syndicate, target millions of new machines, or generate a tidal wave of spam that’ll crash against servers all over the world.

Most likely though, Weafer told us, Conficker’s creator is motivated by money—they’ll rent it out. And if Conficker’s used as a massive doomsday tool, they’ll “quickly lose the ability to make money” with it. A low key operation harnessing the power of computers that are mainly located in developing nations may not have a big impact, though it would certainly set a terrible precedent: Whatever Conficker’s results, they will lead others to develop this idea in frightening new directions.

Conficker’s innovative approach that utilizes p2p, code-signing and a distributed domain setup will very possibly serve as inspiration to other malware writers, who Weafer said “you can bet” are watching Conficker’s success very closely, just as Conficker’s creators have clearly learned from past malware. It’s like evil open source.

That doesn’t mean April 1 will be a “digital Pearl Harbor.” If your machine is patched and up to date, the Microsoft Report’s Ed Bott tells us, you’ll probably be totally fine. And yes, you can get rid of it if you happen to be infected. There is an outside chance Conficker could turn into a massive parallel computer that borders on self-aware, come April 1, but more than likely, the day will come and go without you noticing anything weird, just some extra spam in your box for some V@ltr3xxx.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about worms, V14GRA, or Jason Chen’s pants to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

This article was written on November 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

Both Windows Vista and Office 2007 have been sent to the manufacturer but before they get released to businesses at the end of November Microsoft will be making them available to MSDN subscribers next week. Vista is expected to be released on Friday, November 17^th while Office 2007 should be Sunday, November 12^th. 

Several sites  have reported that Office 2007 is already available via the Volume Licensing site which means that it will probably be leaked soon. Then after it gets leaked the hackers will be on it and I’m sure it will be cracked in no time. I wonder if I should start a timer from the moment it gets leaked to the time a crack is released?

How long does everyone think it will take Office 2007 and Vista to get cracked, about a week?

News Source: Neowin Forums

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This article was written on February 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Vista’s Successor, Windows Vienna is currently planned for release in 2009.  Originally, Windows Vista was planned for release in 2003, and was to be a “stepping-stone” between XP and Vienna. Instead, Vista was set-back over 3 years, and actually ended up with many of the features that Vienna was to have.

Microsoft has had Vienna in the works for quite some time now, so a release date in 2009 may actually be realistic and attainable. Rumors are already floating around about what will be the next “wow” feature of the next version.  Ben Fathi who is the corporate vice president of development with the Windows Core Operating System Division was talking with PC World and says, “We’re going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s a new user interface paradigm for consumers.”

According to Download squad, Vienna will have a new file system, as well as a new user interface which would eliminate the start menu and toolbars. If those features are really part of Vienna, this would make it the most unique, re-defined version of Windows yet.

Just a few thoughts: First, don’t get too excited over 2009, afterall, it could end up being 2012. Secondly, if it really is just a  few years until Vienna, is it worth making the upgrade to Vista?

Sources: PC World, Download Squad

Thanks for the tip CoryC!

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