Top Tech Stories from Around the World Issue Number 1,346 Friday, 3 September 2010

wait for CD to finish

So we are sneaking all kinds of illegal goods right under Verizon's and GEICO's watchful eye. What kind of 'big-brother' idiots at Verizon and GEICO would miss such a large target of contraband? Doesn't the Verizon and GEICO submergible robots catch the movement? She told me "not so far". She went on to say she didn't think the Verizon and GEICO robots were very smart technology.

This was quite a story. I asked her why did someone on the Nevada side of the lake take it upon them self to install this massive cable. I would think that would have been very expensive. Ahsu said, "I really don't know for sure, but I think it simply had something to do with Americans helping Americans. Besides they make a pretty good profit off the stuff they sell."

"So how are the goods normally transported from the lake to here?" I asked. "Well first off, some stuff in put into fake containers. For example, if coffee would be put into a can that would normally contain decaffeinated coffee. However, they purposely damage the can so that it can be identified by anyone in the chain. These types of items can be directly delivered to anyone, because they are so well hidden. If you try to get too much stuff through this way, someone will catch on. Besides that, with items such as fresh meat, you wouldn't be able to put them any real kind of fake container. So, this stuff is trucked directly here from Lake Tahoe. The cover here is the person in Tahoe makes a run to San Francisco every couple of weeks. We used to schedule this to time it for when our street cameras were out for maintenance, so the truck could make a quick stop here without being detected, then continue on to the bay area. The way we made our deliveries around the city was pretty much the same. Deliver at a time when the cameras are out, so no one ever detects a pattern of our deliveries."

I was pretty amazed by the whole thing. Especially the cable running under the Lake. I guess most inventions were born out of need, and this was no exception.

I could see how the operation was messed up by not having the maintenance schedule, but that just made me real curious to know how did they get it before and why they couldn't get it anymore? Ahsu told me that someone got careless. The person I replaced got caught hacking into the Central Computer and is now at Folsom Prison. "Oh, great!" I told her. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" She just said that it didn't matter anyway because he was caught trying to hack into the system from his home. The officials had no idea what he was using the schedule for. "And while we're talking about such things, when you get time, I want you to get him out of prison." I laughed. "I'm serious as a heart attack!" she said.

Heads Up from TechJim.com

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Top Tech Stories Complete as of Thursday, 02 September 2010

The Archive starts with Sunday, 19 December 2004 and continues thru Thursday, 02 September 2010 , over 5 years.

Order your Top Tech Stories Archive from TechJim today. The cost is $45.00. To order send a check or money order to
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Thieves, Liars, Schmucks. - Car Insurance

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Geico Corporation Informative

Thieves, Liars, SCHMUCKS. - Car Insurance

As a young Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps. I fell into the GEICO scam. Save 15% or more on car insurance, and competitive rates for military. I was making around 800.00 a month and spending 450.00 on insurance. I was not a car crasher, or a speeder. I only had one ticket for going 10mph over the posted speed limit. I was a 19 yr old male at the time. I just don't understand why i spent so much on ins. SERVICE MEMBERS BEWARE! Go to USAA, they have rewards for staying with them, and they offer discounted services for having vehicle insurance with them.

And USAA ALSO HAS COMPETITIVE INSURANCE RATES.

Hotmail Suffers Outage

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By Juan Carlos Perez

IDG News Service - A technical problem kept an undetermined number of Windows Live Hotmail users locked out of their e-mail accounts for hours on Thursday.

The problem, which started at around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time, has affected "a small amount of customers," a spokeswoman for Microsoft said via e-mail. She declined to be more specific about the number of people affected.

"We are continuing to investigate the issue, but can confirm that the majority of customers that were affected are now able to access their Hotmail accounts," she wrote.

The outage apparently was large enough to warrant the posting of a prominent note at the top of the Windows Live Solution Center stating that Hotmail is experiencing login issues.

The message remains on the page Friday morning.

Hotmail has about 355 million active accounts worldwide, the spokeswoman said, citing figures from comScore.

Last week, a network problem at a Microsoft data center affected access to the company's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and to other hosted software products for enterprises.

How Websites Make You Spill Your Secrets

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People divulge more sensitive information on sites that look less safe.

By Erica Naone

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the appearance of website has a big effect on how honestly people answer personal questions put to them by the site. But paradoxically, it turns out we're more likely to spill our secrets on websites that appear less reputable. The way a website phrases questions also affects our willingness to disclose revealing information, the researchers found.

The findings could have implications for privacy online--affecting how marketers approach consumers, and how policymakers try to protect consumers from privacy abuses.

Companies are constantly collecting information about people online: Google stores billions of search queries every day, and Facebook tracks the interests and social habits of millions of users. Much of the information collected online comes from tracking how people behave, but some is volunteered willingly.

The Carnegie Mellon researchers designed several tests to determine what encourages people to give out personal information online. "We're interested in particular in the dichotomy between what people say they desire in terms of privacy, and what we all actually end up doing online," says Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon. Acquisti was involved in the work along with doctoral candidate Leslie John and economics professor George Loewenstein.

In work to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, the researchers asked volunteers an identical set of personal questions using three different-looking websites. The questions included "Have you ever 'cheated' while in a relationship?" and "Have you ever driven when you were pretty sure you were over the legal blood alcohol level?"

One site displayed an official-looking logo, formal fonts, and staid colors. Another site was designed to appear neutral. And the third used lurid colors, less professional-looking fonts, and a cartoonish devil icon. The researchers found that people were nearly twice as likely to admit to having engaged in "illicit" or "socially questionable" activities when presented with questions on the third site--the least reputable-looking one. About a third of all participants also gave up their e-mail addresses, and about half of those e-mail addresses were easy to trace back to the person's real identity.

While this behavior might seem irrational, the researchers say their volunteers may have had the impression that the least official-looking website would be least likely to store or use their personal secrets.

Marketers could see this behavior as a good thing, Acquisti says. They could exploit it by designing websites that encourage visitors to spill more information. On the downside, sites with an unprofessional design are more likely to lack privacy protections or sell their users' personal information to spammers.

The Carnegie Mellon group found that the phrasing of questions also affects how much information people will divulge. For example, people clammed up when asked point-blank if they had ever gone on a date just to make someone jealous. But they replied more openly when asked "If you have ever gone on a date just to make someone jealous, how unethical do you think it was?" Acquisti says such phrasing can distract people from the fact that they're divulging personal information.

"Our lesson here is that it's difficult for all of us to navigate issues of privacy and choose the optimal balance of revelation and disclosure, because little contextual cues can dramatically change our propensity to reveal," Acquisti says.

Joseph Bonneau, a University of Cambridge researcher who has shown that social networks get more data from users when they bury their privacy settings, says the Carnegie Mellon group's work establishes important facts about how people reveal information. "They've documented it very strongly, I think," he says.

Bonneau believes these findings will prove important in the context of regulations covering what information marketers can collect from users and how they disclose what will happen to that information.

But Soren Preibusch, another University of Cambridge researcher who studies online privacy, says it's often in a company's best interests to guard consumers' privacy. He says his own research has shown that consumers are willing to spend much more money on a company's products when they trust that company to protect their privacy. Sites that were perceived as "privacy-friendly" could sell products at prices an average of 80 percent higher than firms perceived as "privacy-unfriendly," he found.

Fail-Safe: Achieving 100% Uptime for Crucial Web Services

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By Jason Burnett
TechNewsWorld

There's no substitute for testing redundancy measures, both from an IT and general utilities perspective. It's easy for many providers to claim iron-clad redundancy, but without adequate testing, it's impossible to ensure that the purported measures are effective. It's much less stressful and less detrimental to discover and solve a problem during routine testing than at a critical juncture -- on Black Friday, for example.

For a growing number of businesses, maintaining fail-safe website availability is a matter of business-critical importance, and not just for the e-commerce industry. Certainly for the e-tail trade, website downtime equates to lost business, but beyond the online sales realm, Web availability is paramount for organizations of all sorts and sizes.

As demand for SaaS, or hosted, applications grows and the move to cloud computing gains momentum, always-on Web availability has literally become a do-or-die proposition for the vast majority of organizations.

In the event of a Web outage, loss of revenue can be a major blow to business continuity -- but for many businesses, the loss of presence in the marketplace is equally damaging.

For many consumers (both business and individual) the Web is a primary source for locating products, services or other resources. For these customers, if your Web presence is down, your business simply doesn't exist. If they can't find you online, they're unlikely to search elsewhere and will instead turn to your competitors to deliver the products or services they need.

To achieve 100 percent website uptime requires a two-fold approach to ensure that both infrastructure reliability and capacity needs are met. One of the most effective ways to overcome these challenges is to partner with a high-performance managed hosting provider with a proven track record of reliability, cutting-edge technology, ample capacity and a robust redundancy program to ensure the availability of vital Web service assets.

When choosing a hosting provider, consider the following key factors to measure whether the host you select is well-suited to meet your needs for 100 percent uptime.

Expertise in the Technologies You Require
Consider the business applications your company requires, and measure them against the capabilities of the host. If the host is unable to run or is unfamiliar with the apps you need, continue your search.

If the provider appears on the surface to support your apps, check references (both listed and non-listed), and ask about their experience specific to similar apps.

In some cases, it pays to choose a provider with deep and direct experience in your specific vertical industry to be sure the common industry-specific apps you need will be fully supported.

Network Availability Guarantees
Many low-cost hosting providers cut costs by minimizing infrastructure, which puts your website and Web services at risk. Look for a provider that is consistently transparent with its infrastructure capabilities -- including data capacity, network landscape/diagrams and statistical reports.

Ask for uptime data and demand a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that includes an uptime guarantee where downtime in excess of .1 percent, for example, results in financial compensation to the customer.

By backing its SLA with a financial stake, the host can offer greater piece of mind and confidence in its uptime claims.

Get a Second Opinion

As you evaluate hosting providers, it's a good idea to seek a third-party consultation to gain a "second opinion" of the system design to ensure that all parameters have been met.

By seeking the counsel of a trusted neutral-party network engineer who understands your business and IT needs, you can ensure that adequate resources and redundancy measures are in place and make a more effective comparison between competing proposals.

Validate Redundancy
Finally, there's no substitute for testing redundancy measures, both from an IT and general utilities perspective. It's easy for many providers to claim iron-clad redundancy, but without adequate testing, it's impossible to ensure that the purported measures are effective.

It's much less stressful and less detrimental to discover and solve a problem during routine testing than at a critical juncture -- on Black Friday, for example, or during other known periods of heavy traffic.

Beyond IT infrastructure, be sure the host you choose is able to provide redundancy testing results for support utilities as well. Ask any potential managed hosting provider if it invites a certified electrical engineer to cut the power to the company's data centers to test and certify its power redundancy measures in a real-world failure scenario. This is the only way to be sure the test is accurate.

For both hosting providers and system admins, adequate redundancy is often one of the toughest things to "sell" to customers or upper management. It's difficult to convey the benefit and justify the added cost of complete redundancy to ensure 100 percent uptime until they've felt the pain of an outage.

In today's Web-dependent business environment, robust redundancy is like an insurance policy for business continuity -- an investment in uptime and availability that provides peace of mind and respite from disaster when you need it most.

Virus Update from Symantec

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W32.Zeeker is a virus that infects .exe and .scr files. It also attempts to download files on to the compromised computer.

W32.Changeup!gen9 is a heuristic detection used to detect threats associated certain threat families.

Other resources
For more information, please see the following resource:
W32.Changeup

Trojan.Sasfis!gen2 is a heuristic detection used to detect threats associated with the Trojan.Sasfis family.

Packed.Cisabim!gen1 Trojan, Virus, Worm

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor

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

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No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time: and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office.

Section 7. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to t hat House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the person s voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Verizon Discourteous Pompous Appalled No Customer Service Newnan Georgia

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My daughter, who just graduated from college, has been on my Verizon account for several years. In November and December, she was using her phone to check e-mail, etc and my phone bill skyrocketed. In January, I went to Verizon and ask to have her removed from my account. I was told that I would have to pay about $200 to cancel the contract and change it to a different plan. I did.

The next month my bill was over $150 (it should have been between $60 and $70 depending on taxes, etc.), but I just paid it because I figured their may have been some remnants left of the old contract.

The following month it was the same. Once again, I paid it and told myself to go by Verizon so that they could correct it. I was never out that way until this past Saturday, April 25.

I waited in line and explained that I was still being billed for the old contract which I had paid $200 to get out of. They told me they had no record of that ever having taken place. I ask if their records showed that I paid an extra $200 in January and they said yes. I ask why would I do that if not to get out of the contract.

I described the girl who waited on me. The manager of the store was discourteous, pompous, and arrogant. He sarcastically said no one of that description worked there. He said that he would take my daughter off the contract, but that it would cost me about $200. I said that it was Verizon who had made the mistake, not me, and that it was up to them to fix it.

They told me to call customer service and I ask them to get them on the line for me. I once again explained what happened and they said they couldn't do anything about it. I was appalled. I have been a good customer of Verizons for years. They have never heard a complaint from me before.

y this time, I admit that I had started shedding tears of frustration. I told them just to end the service. Guess what? They charged me another almost $200 and I still have to pay the high bill and the service up until Saturday. Customer service? Verizon has no customer service. They don't care about the little person. Abusing a customer for profit? That's is what they're about.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the contract so I guess I'm just out of luck.

Connie
Newnan, Georgia
U.S.A.

IETF: At&t's Net Neutrality Claim is 'Misleading'

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by Declan McCullagh

The head of the Internet's leading standards body said Thursday that it is "misleading" for AT&T to claim that its push to charge customers for high-priority service is technically justified.

Internet Engineering Task Force chairman Russ Housley told CNET that AT&T's arguments to federal regulators, which cited networking standards to justify "paid prioritization" of network traffic, were invalid.

"AT&T in their letter (to the Federal Communications Commission) says the IETF envisioned this," Housley said. "That's not my view."

This particular debate began earlier this week, when AT&T sent the FCC a letter (PDF) arguing that telecommunications providers need the ability to set different prices for different forms of Internet service. Paid prioritization, AT&T said, was a form of network management that was "fully contemplated by the IETF" more than a decade ago.

At 24 years old, the IETF is a highly respected organization of engineers and computer scientists that intentionally shies away from Washington politicking. That's partly because the group is international--half of its meetings are held outside North America--but also because IETF participants tend to admit that they have relatively little expertise in non-technical areas touching on law and economics.

AT&T did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist said in a blog post earlier in the day that he was inviting critics to a "public forum," and pointed to a letter from the New America Foundation that he said lent support to AT&T's views.

"We didn't foresee AT&T throwing our name into this discussion," the IETF's Housley said. He added: "This characterization of the IETF standard and the use of the term 'paid prioritization' by AT&T is misleading."

Everyone agrees that, in the late 1990s, the IETF revised its networking standards to allow network operators to assign up to 64 different traffic "classes," meaning priority levels. That concept of "differentiated services" is referred to today as DiffServ, which allows high-priority communications like videoconferencing to be labeled with a higher priority than bulk file-transfer protocols that aren't as sensitive to brief slowdowns.

A July 1999 IETF specification (RFC 2638) discusses paid prioritization by saying: "It is expected that premium traffic would be allocated a small percentage of the total network capacity, but that it would be priced much higher." Another specification (RFC 2475) published half a year earlier says that setting different priorities for packets will "accommodate heterogeneous application requirements and user expectations" and "permit differentiated pricing of Internet service." (An RFC is a policy document, often accepted as standards, published by the IETF.)

The disagreement arises from what happens if Video Site No. 1 and Video Site No. 2 both mark their streams as high priority. "If two sources of video are marking their stuff the same, then that's where the ugliness of this debate begins," Housley says. "The RFC doesn't talk about that...If they put the same tags, they'd expect the same service from the same provider."

Which is, by the way, more or less what liberal advocacy groups like Free Press have told the FCC. "DiffServ was not designed to be a tool to allow the network provider to drive application-level discrimination," Free Press Research Director Derek Turner said earlier this week.

Ever since a federal appeals court torpedoed the FCC's attempt to punish Comcast, pro-regulation groups have been lobbying agency Chairman Julius Genachowski for a new set of regulations, while a majority of members of the U.S. Congress has opposed the idea. Google and Verizon responded by announcing their own proposal, which includes a "presumption" that paid prioritization on wired networks is illegal.

On the broader question of Net neutrality, though, including what any laws or regulations should say, the IETF has not taken a formal position. The group discussed the topic at a meeting in Stockholm in July 2009 but did not reach a consensus leading to a public position statement.

Update Friday 12:30 a.m. PDT: I heard back from AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris, who said: "Our letter highlighted recent Free Press filings at the FCC, which insisted that compensation arrangements were inconceivable under the IETF documentation for Differentiated Services (DiffServ). We simply quoted from the IETF documents, which state otherwise."

And there seems to be some disagreement about whether Russ Housley was speaking for the entire IETF. George Ou, policy director at the Digital Society think tank, sent me e-mail analyzing the RFCs and saying: "In the context of Housley essentially calling AT&T a liar, his comments are outrageously deceptive."

Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

Metal Manufacture Breakthrough Promises Transformer Objects

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A novel manufacturing process for shape-memory alloys could bring shape-shifting jewelery and transforming stents.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have developed a process for making "smart materials" that can change into multiple different shapes at different temperatures.
Smart materials, also known as shape memory alloys, are metals that remember their original shape and will return to that shape at a specific temperature. They're used in various defense systems, medical devices, printers, hard drives, vehicle components, valves, and actuators.

The first such alloy to see practical use was made of nickel and titanium. Discovered by the U.S. Naval Ordinance Laboratory, the alloy was commercialized under the name Nitinol, an acronym capturing its elemental components and its provenance. Nitinol couplers has been used since the 1960s in F-14 fighter jets to join hydraulic lines.

Until now, shape memory alloys have only been able to remember two distinct shapes, one at high temperatures and one at low temperatures.

The scientists at the University of Waterloo have figured out how to make smart materials that can remember multiple pre-determined shapes and can assume those shapes at specific temperatures. The process is referred to as "Multiple Memory Material Technology."

Ibraheem Khan, a research engineer with the University of Waterloo's Centre for Advanced Materials Joining, said in a phone interview that the process has so many potential applications that it has been hard to figure out which to pursue first.

"One of the applications we're looking at is jewelery, where we can make a flower and if it touches the human body, it will start to open up," he said.

But the most compelling applications, Khan said, are likely to be in industries like aerospace and medical devices. For example, multi-memory material could be used to create a stent for angioplasty patients that opens over time, he suggested. He also said that whereas previous smart materials have had limited applications due to their limited number of states, multi-memory alloys might be well suited for aviation components like ailerons that require a wide range of motion and angles.

The Multiple Memory Material Technology process, applied using a local energy source like a laser or electron beam, is precise, said Khan. It can be used on an area of only a few microns or a much larger area. With an alloy like Nitinol, it can be used to set any number of shape changes between a temperature range of -150 Celsius to +150 Celsius. For other alloys, it can work at temperatures of up to about 600 Celsius. The process can also enhance corrosion resistance.

Khan said the University of Waterloo is working to commercialize the process rapidly and that he hopes it will be licensed and implemented before the end of the year.

Of the various prototypes developed to showcase Multiple Memory Material Technology, one attempts to replicate a transformer robot. The shape-shifting wire-frame figure isn't quite as impressive as its cinematic point of reference, but it does provide a glimpse of the possibilities of this new materials process.

Microsoft Issues 'Fix it' for Dll Flaw

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Following the revelation of a flaw that put hundreds of Windows applications at risk, Microsoft issues an automated "Fix It" tool to address the vulnerability.

By Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft has moved to address a vulnerability that potentially put hundreds of Windows applications at risk.

The software giant's solution is a "Fix It" button, which provides automated tools for adjusting settings or fixing problems. In this case, Microsoft is addressing a vulnerability that could enable hackers to target Windows applications using dynamic link libraries (DLL), though the company attributes the threat to sloppy programming. eSecurity Planet takes a look.

After revealing that hundreds of Windows applications may be at risk of attack from malicious hackers using rogue dynamic link libraries (DLL), Microsoft has released a "Fix It" solution meant to ameliorate the problem.

Fix Its are automated tools from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) that tweak settings or repair problems -- sometimes security flaws -- that users encounter. Microsoft debuted the Fix It Button technology last year, enabling users to choose to automatically install a bug fix by clicking on a button instead of manually installing it themselves.

Samsung Unleashes Its Galaxy Tab on Apple's Ipad

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By Jennifer LeClaire

Samsung introduced its Galaxy Tab tablet computer at the IFA show in Germany. With two cameras for video conferencing and phone capabilities, the Android-powered Galaxy Tab aims to outdo Apple's popular iPad. While Apple is expected to offer video conferencing in the next iPad, the real battle is between Android and Apple's iOS.

Samsung on Thursday introduced the Galaxy Tab, a tablet PC aimed at the heart of Apple's iPad, at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Germany. Samsung presented the tablet with a pun that cites a "new galaxy of possibilities."

The Galaxy Tab has a seven-inch display and weighs .84 pounds. It comes with 16GB or 32GB of internal storage and a 32GB microSD expansion slot. The iPad competitor also features a touchscreen, Wi-Fi, GPS, 802.11 and Bluetooth.

What the Galaxy Tab has that the first iPad doesn't is back- and front-facing cameras. The front-facing camera allows face-to-face video telephony over 3G . The rear-facing camera captures still images and video that consumers can edit, upload and share.

The Galaxy Tab also acts as a mobile phone. Samsung is billing the device as fit to use as a speakerphone on the desk, or as a mobile phone on the move via a Bluetooth headset.

"The fact that the device makes calls is a definite differentiator, and it also has a front-facing camera, which means you can do video conferencing," said Michael Disabato, managing vice president of network and telecom at Gartner. "I'm expecting to see that in iPad version two next year because Apple was roundly struck in the butt about not having that capability."

Samsung Bets on Growth

The tablet uses Samsung's popular Swype software that promises faster text input. The Tab offers HD movie playback, navigation, augmented reality, e-reading capabilities, and a PC-like browsing experience. The device also runs Adobe Flash, unlike Apple's iPad.

Samsung developed the Reader's Hub, an e-reading application that gives consumers access to a digital library of books. Meanwhile, the Media Hub offers a gateway to films and videos, and the Music Hub gives access to music. The company is using the DivX format, which means no file conversions are needed to view videos on the Galaxy Tab.

"Samsung recognizes the tremendous growth potential in this newly created market and we believe that the Samsung Galaxy Tab brings a unique and open proposition to market," said JK Shin, president and head of the mobile communications business at Samsung Electronics. "There is a new and emerging consumer demand that Samsung can satisfy, since mobile is in our DNA. This demand continues to grow and develop as users tap its limitless potential."

Android vs iOS

The Samsung Galaxy Tab will be launched in Europe in mid-September, and in other markets, including Korea, the U.S., and Asia in coming months. When the device enters the market, Disabato said it's not really a battle against Apple's hardware and Samsung's hardware.

"What you have here is not Samsung vs Apple, but Android vs iOS. If the planet revolved backward for a day and you could run iOS on another tablet that was not made by Apple, you would discover it's not really about the hardware. It's about the software. The iPad is not what you think it is. It's what you make it. That is also true for the Galaxy Tab. You have to look at it and decide what applications you can run on it."

Current Activity Reported by the US-CERT

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Apple Releases iTunes 10

Apple has released iTunes 10 to address multiple vulnerabilities affecting the WebKit package. These vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial-of-service condition.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review Apple article HT4328 and apply any necessary updates to help mitigate the risks.

Google Releases Chrome 6.0.472.53