Technology Info

Within hours of its release, Microsoft’s Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.

The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft’s Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.

“My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up,” complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. “After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t,” said ‘Doug W’.

Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. “I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals,” wrote ‘Paul’. “Now I can’t get the computer to boot.”

Dozens of other posters reported similar problems. (link)

A London legal firm is demanding in excess of £600 from people who it claims are guilty of downloading a single game from a file-sharing service.

Legal firm Davenport Lyons sent the demand to one PC Pro reader, after claiming it had “forensic computer analysis” that shows he downloaded the game Two Worlds using BitTorrent. Davenport Lyons is acting on the behalf of German games distributor Zuxxez, which last year employed the firm to target file sharers.

The PC Pro reader was given no prior warning to stop file sharing, unlike the usual “three strikes and you’re out” approach adopted by the music industry, which gives users two warnings to stop sharing before legal proceedings are instigated.

The legal demand claims that “given the extent of the damage that file sharing is causing to our client’s business, our client is left with no option but to adopt a policy of enforcing its rights in an attempt to stem the wholesale misappropriation of its property.” (link)

Apple Canada is reportedly offering a total of $3.54 million in credits to Canadian iPod owners, in order to settle two lawsuits over the battery life of the portable music players.

The credits are being offered to owners of first-, second-, or third-generation iPods bought before June 24, 2004, The Gazette newspaper in Montreal reported Thursday. The lawsuits, one filed in Montreal and the other in Toronto, claimed that the rechargeable batteries in the devices died after three hours of use, while Apple advertised the iPods as running for eight hours between charges.

The Ontario Superior Court granted class-action status to the Toronto suit, while the court in Quebec denied the same status to the Montreal suit. Nevertheless, Apple Canada has agreed to a settlement covering both suits, the newspaper said. The deal has to be finalized by the courts. The next hearing is May 26 in Montreal and June 20 in Toronto. (link)

Detection of a trojan named Downloader-UA.h was added to the McAfee DAT files several days ago. Since that time more than 360,000 McAfee VirusScan Online users have reported detections, a whopping 32% of those reporting in the past 24 hours alone. Now Downloader-UA.h is not your everyday trojan, this detection covers fake music and video files associated with fastmp3player.com.

When a user attempts to load one of these MP3 and MPG files, they don’t get the music/video they were hoping for; instead they’re directed to download a file named PLAY_MP3.exe. In fact, the MP3/MPG file they downloaded was completely fake, playing no media clip what so ever.

Here are some of the samples names that we’ve seen. Many many other file names are surely floating around on P2P networks. File sizes vary as these files are padded with nulls. (link)

AMD has updated its server processor roadmap with single-die 6-core and dual-die 12-core Opteron processors. The new processors will be manufactured in a 45 nm process that will be introduced with the Shanghai quad-core later this year.

When Intel rolls out its Nehalem processors later this year, AMD appears to be better prepared than in late 2006 when Core began its triumph and until today pretty much wiped out all of the gains AMD Opteron has made in previous years. On the server side, AMD will counter Intel with the “Shanghai” quad-core CPU, which will be based on the current Barcelona technology, but will be manufactured in 45 nm and bring performance and power consumption benefits.

According to vice president Randy Allen, Shanghai will deliver about 20% more speed than Barcelona. While the chip will remain compatible with the current Socket F (1207) platform, the L3 cache will triple to 6 MB, 3-lane HT3 support will be integrated and DDR memory support will be extended to 800 MHz devices. AMD claims that the idle power consumption of the new CPUs will be 20% below their 65 nm counterparts. (link)

A company called SIMable has produced a little chip that they call the “10-second solution” for unlocking carrier-tethered GSM handsets. The gimmick is that, instead of unlocking the phone itself—and risking invalidation of your warranty— the chip works on the SIM card, provided—in certain cases—you punch a hole in the SIM.

Yes, I said “punch a hole.” The SIMable card lies flat against the SIM, and for certain 3G phones including the 8GB Nokia N95, Nokia E51, Sony Ericsson W200 and others to maintain “full 3G functionality,” you first have to perform the following surgical procedure: (link)

The files, including patient names and medicare numbers, were being transferred from New Brunswick to British Columbia under a reciprocal billing agreement for residents of one province who use the health system of another.

The tapes have never been found and the information wasn’t protected by encryption.

In one of two reports released concurrently, New Brunswick ombudsman Bernard Richard said the provincial Health Department failed to ensure the information was protected.

“I’m satisfied, however, that the department has taken proper steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

David Loukidelis, B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner, also released his report into the incident.

“B.C.’s Health Ministry should not have been couriering around unprotected tapes of personal health information like this,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that the tapes can only be read using technology that’s not commonly available.

“Proper encryption is the basic standard for portable data storage like this.” (link)

The six major Hollywood studios have won a US$111 million judgment for copyright infringement against the shut-down file-sharing website TorrentSpy.com.

The judgment, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, fined the operators of the website, Valence Media LLC, $30,000 per violation for nearly 3,700 illegal movie and TV show downloads. The Motion Picture Association of America said the judgment sends a strong message to copyright violators.

The site shut down in March, saying the legal climate was too hostile to continue. (link)

Computer attacks typically do not inflict physical pain on their victims.

But in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation’s website with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images.

The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they’re exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.

The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation’s publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site’s support forums. (link)

While the RIAA has waged a full-on legal assault against individual file-sharers, the MPAA has instead chosen to go after individual web sites. In 2006, the motion picture industry trade group filed copyright infringement lawsuits against a number of BitTorrent sites, including TorrentSpy and isoHunt. TorrentSpy lost, thanks to its admins’ willful destruction of evidence, but isoHunt is fighting back. A recent filing in the case opposes the MPAA’s motion for summary judgment, arguing that isoHunt is just another search engine.

“There are hundreds of public torrent sites, some limited to a specific subject matter, others general aggregators like isoHunt, who like Google, try to cover as much of the Internet as possible,” reads isoHunt’s filing. “The essential functions performed at a torrent site are also performed at a comprehensive search site like Google or Yahoo!.” (link)