Top Tech Stories from Around the World Issue Number 1,766 Friday, 4 May 2012

9 Days Till Mother's Day

24 Days Till Memorial Day

44 Days Till Father's Day

61 Days Till Independence Day

Our Daily Bit of the U. S. Constitution. Law Makers and Police, Ignore This Like Always

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

Article IV

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

A Spammer Update from Antispammer.org

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Our spammer of the day is godaddy.com with Per spam cost is $16,000.00 You have sent 14 spams. Your total bill is $ 224,000.00
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Our spammer of the week is Brandmile with Per spam cost is $16,000.00 You have sent 94 spams. Your total bill is $ 1,504,000.00
H and R Block theft of the week

Right after I ordered the H and R Block software, I got a debit charge from a homo porn site. I called the phone number on the bill,1-800-935-5771, I got some one in India and I did not understand him too much, but he said the charge was for 'Adult Entertainment, Internet find it says it is a homo video web site.

I think the same India Tech support company that H and R Block uses is the same one has the homo site.

Can Spam Act says spammers must pay $16,000 per (spam) email. SNAFU
Hey BX, help line1-800-527-2345, I don't do business with Spammers! Not even the BX.
Worst Spammers
All Spammers
Incurable Verizon Virus 940-641-0076.

Geico is a bigger Ponzi scheme than Social Security.

There's a Supermoon Rising on Saturday

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By Katherine Noyes
TechNewsWorld

"The highest and lowest tides occur when the sun, Earth and moon are aligned," as in a full moon or new moon, noted Scott Austin, associate professor of astronomy at UCA. Since the moon will be at its closest approach during this upcoming full moon, the tides will be more extreme than average, he predicted: "People living in coastal areas will notice the difference."

may have been a "bad moon" rising in the famous 1969 song by Creedence Clearwater Revival, but this weekend's full moon could well inspire predictions for trouble of a similar kind.

That's because it's this year's "supermoon" -- the full moon that occurs when the moon is closest to Earth -- and supermoons are often believed to wreak even more havoc on our planet than ordinary full moons do.

Along with the higher tides that are known to follow, dire warnings about supermoons can range from natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to the inadvisability of practicing yoga.

Is there's any truth behind the concerns? That's another story.

'It Is Brighter'

"At 'supermoon,' the full moon is at its closest approach to Earth in its orbit," Mario Livio, a senior astrophysicist with the Space Telescope Science Institute, told TechNewsWorld. "Consequently, it is brighter than a regular full moon."

Not only is that fun to watch, but tides can be stronger as well, he noted.

"However, as far as I am aware, all claims that a 'supermoon' results in an enhanced risk for earthquakes have been shown to be dubious," Livio added. "Claims for other types of disasters can be dismissed altogether."

A 'Perigee-Syzygy'
Astrologer Richard Nolle claims credit for having coined the term "supermoon," which he defines as a full moon that occurs when the moon is at or within 90 percent of its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.

"In short, Earth, moon and sun are all in a line, with moon in its nearest approach to Earth," Nolle explains.

It's known as "perigee" when the moon is at that closest spot to Earth on its elliptical orbit; accordingly, a supermoon of this kind is also known tongue-twistingly as a "perigee-syzygy."

"The moon's distance from the Earth changes over the course of a month since the orbit of the moon is slightly elliptical," Scott Austin, associate professor of astronomy and director of the astronomical facilities at the University of Central Arkansas, told TechNewsWorld. "Perigee and full moon happen every month, but only rarely do they occur at the same time."

The opposite of perigee is apogee, which occurs when the moon is at its greatest distance from Earth.

There's even an online calculator that can be used to figure out when a supermoon will occur in any given year.

'30 Percent Brighter'
Last year's supermoon occurred on March 19, when the moon was roughly 356,577 km from Earth, causing widespread speculation -- now largely discounted -- that it played a role in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan.

This year's supermoon will take place on May 6 at 03:35 UT, or 10:35 p.m. Central Daylight Time on Saturday in North America, according to NASA. At that point, the moon will be some 356,953 km away from Earth -- its closest point for the year, but not as close as last year's supermoon was.

"This full moon will appear about 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than the average full moon," Austin said.

That may sound striking, but "the casual moon observer probably won't notice these differences," he added.

'You Would Need a Good Instrument'
Of course, it's not that the moon actually gets bigger, Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at St. Louis University, told TechNewsWorld.

It may appear that way due to proximity, but even then the difference is too small to discern with the naked eye, Czysz said.

"You would need a good optical instrument to measure the difference," he asserted.

'People Will Notice'
Those who likely will notice a change, however, are those living in coastal areas, Austin pointed out.

"The primary physical significance of having the moon's monthly perigee occurring at the same time as the full-moon phase is that the ocean tides will be nearly as extreme as possible," he explained.

"The highest and lowest tides occur when the sun, Earth and moon are aligned," as in a full moon or new moon, Austin noted. "The gravitational pull of the sun and moon act together during those phases, causing the highest high tides and the lowest low tides."

Since the moon will be at its closest approach during this upcoming full moon, the tides will be more extreme than average, he predicted: "People living in coastal areas will notice the difference."

Looking Ahead to 2016
Next year's supermoon will take place on June 23, 2013, when the moon will be about 356,989 km away from Earth. Perhaps even more notable, though, is the one that will take place on Nov. 14, 2016, when that distance will fall to just 356,511 km -- even closer than the one last year.

Should we start planning now for the possibility of fresh disasters? Probably not.

"There's a lot of myths that go back thousands of years as to how the Earth is influenced by all these things around us," Czysz noted, adding that in this case they're just that: myths.

Then again, as Livio added, "the psychological effects on humans are hard to predict."

Katherine Noyes has been covering business and technology for more decades than she cares to admit, but all those years watching Star Trek and Dr. Who left too big an impression to ignore. You can find her on Google+ and Twitter.

Current Activity Reported by the US-CERT

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Adobe Releases Security Advisory for Adobe Flash Player

Adobe has released a Security Advisory for Adobe Flash Player to address a vulnerability affecting the following software versions:

Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.233 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems
Adobe Flash Player 11.1.115.7 and earlier versions for Android 4.x
Adobe Flash Player 11.1.111.8 and earlier versions for Android 3.x and 2.x
This vulnerability may allow an attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition or take control of the affected system.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review Adobe Security Bulletin APSB12-09 and apply any necessary updates to help mitigate the risk.

Microsoft Releases Advance Notification for May Security Bulletin

Microsoft has issued a Security Bulletin Advance Notification indicating that its May release will contain seven bulletins. These bulletins will have the severity ratings of critical and important and will be for Microsoft Windows, Office, .NET Framework, and Silverlight. Release of these bulletins is scheduled for Tuesday, May 8, 2012.

US-CERT will provide additional information as it becomes available.

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Daily Installment of Coffee Joe, By Jim O'Connor

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The one thought that did occur to me was to use the government�s method of getting rid of all records of a particular subject by massive file destruction. This was used to rid our society of old movies that had sexual content or movies that showed people smoking cigarettes or other records that the government deemed unfit for public view. I always felt very nostalgic about Humphrey Bogart movies, but they have all been wiped from the databases. The only problem with this, is one would need to have massive access, and that was something reserved to only the highest-ranking government officials.

Hell, I don't even know why I started to think about ideas. Because even when I thought I had an idea with only a slim-to-none chance of working, I would start working out the exact details of a plan. But I knew damn well there is no way to pull this off.

I think for now I had better be content with getting the operation going again. At least that would ease Ahsu's mind a little.

I got home around nine that night. I saw a message on the terminal that read, "I'm sorry about today, I shouldn't dump my problems on you. The emotion of the moment just got the best of me. Sleep well Hun, I'll see you in the morning. Ahsu."

The one question I kept asking myself was how did a nice lady like Ahsu, get stuck in this situation? The answer that kept coming to mind was. "She just wanted to do good for the folks around her."

"Robot!" I yelled. "Bring me a beer." The robot proceeded to the kitchen. When the robot came back, it asked, "Working late today Sir?" I said, "Mind your own business." the robot replied "Sir, I am programmed to assist humans in a way that makes them feel at home. Inquiring as to why one breaks from his normal routine is customary of humans, is it not? So keeping that in mind, I ask again, working late today, Sir?" Just what I needed, my walking, talking, microchip psychologist, analyzing what it thinks is normal human behavior. I asked the robot "Would you risk going to prison for something you believe in, but was illegal?" it replied. "Sir, robots only follow instructions, therefore if any law is broken, the human that issued the instruction would be guilty of the crime in question." "Good night robot" I said. I got ready for bed.

Techjim Press Release

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Friday, 04 May 2012
Your privacy is our guarantee! Even if it is illegal. One size fits all is so wrong!

The Great Software Give Away Continues at TechJim Software in Gainesville, Texas.

We are giving unlimited copies of Software to everybody.
This is TechJim, made in Gainesville by Jim O'Connor.
Download at,

http://techjimsoftware.com/unlimited/unlimitedh.htm

This includes every program TechJim has ever done.
Make as many copies as you like.
There is no Product Activation.
No serial numbers.
No upgrade compliance.
This is 440 programs.

The TechJim Top Tech Stories Archive starts with Sunday, 19 December 2004 and continues thru Thursday, 03 May 2012 , over 7 years.

Total Files 1766 on the complete Top Tech Stories archive.

Modified Antispammer, Auto List to Clipboard, Coffee Joe, Daily Reading, DJ MP3, Recent Software, School, Top Tech Stories Archive, Web Browser, and Web Store.

Adobe Patches New Flash Zero-Day Bug with Emergency Update

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In-the-wild attacks target Windows' Internet Explorer, says company
By Gregg Keizer

Computerworld - Adobe today warned that hackers are exploiting a critical vulnerability in its popular Flash Player program, and issued an emergency update to patch the bug.

"There are reports that the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in active targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking on a malicious file delivered in an email message," the Friday advisory said.

Although all editions of Flash Player contain the vulnerability and should be patched, the active exploit is targeting only users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).

Flash Player for IE is an ActiveX plug-in, the Microsoft-only standard; other browsers, including Firefox and Chrome, use a different plug-in structure.

The update was pegged with Adobe's priority rating of "1," used to label patches for actively-exploited vulnerabilities or bugs that will likely be exploited. For such updates, Adobe recommends that customers install the new version within 72 hours.

Adobe disclosed relatively few details about the vulnerability -- its usual practice -- other than to label it an "object confusion vulnerability," note the Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures ID of CVE-2012-0779, and acknowledge that triggering the bug "could cause the application to crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system."

It's unclear how extensive the active attacks are, although Adobe's calling them "targeted" hints at a low volume of attempts aimed at specific individuals or companies.

Today's Flash Player update was the fourth this year -- the latest before Friday was on March 28 -- putting the frequently-patched program on about the same pace as last year, when Adobe issued a total of nine Flash security updates.

In March, Adobe addressed the frequent updating pain point -- at least for Windows users -- by shipping Flash Player 11.2, which uses a silent, background update mechanism. The silent update is supposed to kick in in some situations to automatically patch the plug-in in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera on Windows without notifying or bothering users.

At the time, Adobe said it would switch on silent updates " on a case-by-case basis," but hinted that the service would primarily be used to distribute patches for zero-day vulnerabilities, such as today's.

Friday, Adobe confirmed that it has, in fact, enabled Flash silent updates for Windows in this instance.

A Computerworld Windows 7 system, however, was not silently updated to 11.2.202.235, the patched version within an hour of booting the PC, the interval the tool uses to check for new updates. Adobe's explanation: It did not begin serving Flash Player via silent update until about 10:30 a.m. PT, after the Windows 7 machine had pinged Adobe's servers. If the silent updater receives no response from Adobe, it waits 24 hours before trying again.

The current stable version of Chrome -- Google's browser is the only one that includes the Adobe software in its updates -- reports running the patched 11.2.202.235 edition of Flash Player. Google shipped that version of Chrome, 18.0.1025.168, on Monday, April 30, giving it a four-day jump on Adobe's plug-in patching.

It was Chrome's largest-ever lead: previously, Google has beaten Adobe to Flash Player patching by hours, or at most a day.

Adobe today again explained Chrome's faster Flash patching by noting that it hands Flash updates to Google as "soon as we updated the code," but needs more time on its part to test fixes on scores of operating system and browser combinations before it's confident enough to ship the update to all users.

Microsoft's vulnerability research group reported the Flash vulnerability to Adobe.

The patched versions of Flash Player for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris can be downloaded from Adobe's website. Windows users can wait for the silent updater to kick in, run Flash's update tool or wait for the software to prompt them that a new version is available.

Android users will be able to download the new version from Google Play, formerly the Android Market, later today, said Adobe.

To determine which version of Flash Player is running in any particular browser, users can steer to this Adobe page.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Malware and Vulnerabilities in Computerworld's Malware and Vulnerabilities Topic Center.

Ubuntu and Android: A Match Made in Open Source

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Canonical's Ubuntu for Android shows how open source can foster new ideas
By Simon Phipps | InfoWorld

An old idea about open source -- that it's all about cheap knockoffs of proprietary ideas -- has been turned on its head. Today's open source communities, where it's easy to build on the work of others without constantly seeking permission, offer the most fertile soil for seeding new ideas and growing innovation.

Among open source projects, the Ubuntu operating system in particular has shown a propensity for experimentation in this tradition. Ubuntu's parent company Canonical has a history of bold choices and innovations. As you may know, the company's vision is now broader than end-user desktop Linux; for example, Canonical announced a partnership with Hewlett-Packard last week to put Ubuntu's cloud server edition on HP's ProLiant server range. And the company is working on a variety of phone and tablet operating system ideas.

[ Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog and Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Canonical's main offices in London to check out Ubuntu for Android. This software development opens up a new vista of lower-cost and multipurpose devices in the enterprise. By sharing the Linux kernel that's running in the phone between a full copy of Android and a full copy of Ubuntu, it's possible to carry your desktop in your pocket.

That phrase has been used before to describe thin client desktops, referring to the identity token used to access a remotely executing desktop, but in this case it's real. The full Ubuntu GNU/Linux desktop is indeed running in the phone, just waiting to be connected to a screen, keyboard, and mouse. I asked Canonical's product manager, Richard Collins, to give me this explanation and demonstration:

Richard told me that the Ubuntu for Android he showed me is a proof-of-concept, but Canonical is in negotiations with both manufacturers and carriers that might conceivably see a product on the market before the end of the year. There are many potential enhancements possible, including native Ubuntu applications that exploit the phone hardware directly and applications with both Android and Ubuntu variants that collaborate through the shared kernel and storage of the phone.

This clever idea opens up amazing alternative visions for BYOD. An employee device might gain an alternative role and capability when docked at the office, allowing full enterprise integration and data control at the same time as a fully functional and normal device experience. It doesn't have to just be for phones; tablets and laptops could also have this full dual personality. Open source already offers unprecedented flexibility, but the potential to have a single device playing multiple roles adds another dimension.

I don't think any of this would've been possible without open source. You just saw Google's Android operating system and Canonical's Ubuntu operating system hacked to work together and executing the LibreOffice desktop productivity suite. Three completely different software threads were woven together by someone with a great idea, without any need to ask permission in advance from anyone: no licensing agreements, no corporate politics, and no financial commitments beyond the innovation itself.

That would have been impossible with proprietary systems. It was Bill Joy who once pointed out it's impossible to hire all the smart people. Open source allows you to work and innovate with all the smart people. By delivering the freedoms to use, study, modify, and distribute software to anyone for any purpose, open source unlocks innovation. No wonder the 20th century's proprietary dinosaurs are scared of it and want to use patents and API copyrights to kill it!

This article, "Ubuntu and Android: A match made in open source," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of the Open Sources blog and follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor

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The Great Software Give Away Continues at TechJim Software in Gainesville, Texas.

DJ MP3

DJ MP3 plays radio stations.
Some of my favorites are:
KSEY, Classic Country, Midnight Mystery Shows. Seymour, Texas at
http://stream101.com/mcp/tunein.php/ksey/playlist.asx
NPR 5 minute update at
http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?getNewsCast=true&NPRMediaPref=WM
Top Tech Stories, from techjimnews.com at
http://techjimnews.com/anews.asx
The Verizon Channel at
http://verizonchannel.net/item0000003/a.asx
The Geico Channel at
http://companyaa.com/item0000089/a.asx

WCOA 1370 AM, News Talk Pensacola, Florida
mms://live.cumulusstreaming.com/WCOA-AM
KLUX 'Good Company' Easy Listening Corpus Christi, Texas at
http://www.klux.org/stream/listenlive.asx
KTEP 88.5 FM, NPR El Paso, Texas at
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/ktep/ppr/ktep.m3u
When Radio Was KQV Pittsburgh at
http://www.kqv.com/kqv.asx

You can go to the radio stations directly.

You can go to the radio stations web site directly.

You can hit the Exit button to finish the current song playing, then exit.

You can hit the End button to fade out and exit now.

You can put in a Recent Path so it is easy to synchronize your music and play lists on all of your computers automatically.

For timed play, you can put a command to run after the play list is done. This is the Run After text box. In our example we put "C:\exe\pcbackup2.exe /shutdown", so PC Backup runs and then shuts down the computer.

DJ MP3 Plays MP3 Files MP3 Player Software.

You can listen to your own news sites or you can use one of our many preloaded (over 100) news sites and radio station web streaming.

Software to play on line radio and mp3 files.

Software to play on line news and music on the computer.