Chad Weirick
Chad Weirick
Recent posts
Most people hear the word BitTorrent and immediately think piracy, but there are legitimate uses for the technology according to a group of TorrentSpy founders who are now founding a new company, FileRights. The goal of FileRights is to allow companies who feel their content is being distributed in a fashion that isn't beneficial to them...
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Intuit, maker of Quicken products, started using a "strong encryption" method in 2003, but apparently a backdoor has been found that might compromise passwords: "A Russian firm that provides password-recovery services says it has found a backdoor in the encryption mechanism that Quicken uses to secure password-protected files, a feature...
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Pricewaterhouse Coopers is claiming that the sales figures for video games are going to overtake music sales by 2011: "The video gaming industry is poised to overtake the music industry in the US, with global spending on video games surpassing music spending as soon as this year, according to consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers. PwC...
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BlackBerrys can be quite useful for staying in touch, sending media, and even sending business related files. People might want to draw the line at sensitive government data: "We're not at war with France, at least not the last time I checked, but that doesn't mean that the French want their state secrets coursing through the U.S. telecommunications...
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If you are one of those people who already owns an Apple TV, then you might want to go into your menu and force an update. The security patch that fixes a buffer overflow issue will not be part of automatic updates at this time. Description: A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the UPnP IGD (Internet Gateway Device Standardized Device...
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Care to guess how many computer viruses, thefts, hacker break-ins, and other security issues the Department Of Homeland Security has suffered over the past 2 years? If you guessed over 800, you're a right! "In one instance, hacker tools for stealing passwords and other files were found on two internal Homeland Security computer systems....
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You might soon be able to get an Apple-powered navigation system for your next car...if your planning on buying a Mercedes-Benz that is: "A rumor making the rounds on the Internet this past weekend has Apple partnering with luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz to deliver a multifaceted navigational system sometime during the 2009 calendar year.Citing...
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Apparently MySpace might actually have a very beneficial role in your future, if you want to be in advertising at least: "Want to get ahead in advertising? Then learn how to navigate MySpace, and pick up a programming language or two.Ad agencies are about to trade three-martini lunches, schmooze-fests and fast-talking account executives...
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Google just won an argument with Microsoft before their lawyers even got to deliver an opening statement; Microsoft decided to take the high road and allow users to decide which desktop search program to use. If you select Google for all your desktop searching needs, then the Vista seach engine will be disabled, thus no longer causing the...
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It looks like AMD is considering an exit from the costly chip fabrication business. This might seem a strange move as many were speculating that part of the advantage of picking up ATI was that they could help the graphics firm eliminate the overhead caused by outsourcing chip fabrication. It's unclear if the union has provided enough work...
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It seems that general counsel for NBC/Universal is of the opinion that Net Neutrality should take a back seat to issues such as piracy: "Last week NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton argued that law enforcement resources are "misaligned." Cotton says it's wrong to focus on real property theft and potentially deadly crimes when cops...
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Yahoo investors have finally gotten their way and a replacement for (now former) CEO Terry Semel has been named: Co-founder Jerry Yang. It isn't that Terry Semel wasn't a capable leader, in fact he lead the company in the dark times that are now referred to as the .com crash era, but investors felt that he lacked the ability to guide the...
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EA recently hired back former CEO, John Riccitiello, who departed in 2004, in hopes of getting back on the right track. Riccitiello plans on dividing the company into 4 operating units: EA Games (Battlefield series, C&C, NFS), EA Sports, The Sims, and then a group that handles pretty much everything else. One of the goals of diving the...
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Who knew that playing video games could be healthy? Quick, somebody e-mail Jack Thompson: "Buried at the bottom of a couple mainstream articles about the Wii is a slightly different take on the whole “fitness” phenomenon. Mary Jane Zamora is a 50 year old woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2005. After a round of chemotherapy...
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For those wondering if the Itanium with its IA-64 was going away now that Intel has more or less adopted the x86-64 instruction set, it appears the answer is no: "In a conference call on Thursday, Intel laid out its mid- to long-term plans for the Itanium Product Family (IPF). With all the hype around Penryn and Nehalem and the ongoing popularity...
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Despite numerous sites running stories that point out that the beta for the allegedly secure Apple browser has serious security flaws, Apple claims that they've exceeded the 1 million downloads mark: "More than 1 million copies of Apple Inc.'s Safari web browser for Windows were downloaded in its first two days of availability, the company...
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You might be a net junky if you kill your own mother because she won't give you money to go to a 'net bar. Of course this boy, only identified by his rather common family name of Wang, also decided to kill his father but was unable to complete that task. So much of Oedipus, eh? "A teenage boy in southern China, "heavily addicted" to the...
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Just when you thought it was safe to open your browser: "The Department of Justice and FBI today said ongoing investigations have identified over 1 million botnet crime victims. The FBI is working with industry partners, including the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, to notify the victim...
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It seems that the world of mobile computing just gets more popular and devices get smaller and/or more powerful. Now it appears that in addition to Intel joining the UMPC crowd with a long-term roadmap, AMD is planning to rise up to offer challenge: "Early last year, Microsoft revealed its ultra mobile computing platform. Smaller than a...
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Windows Home Server, officially announced earlier this year, is already at the release candidate stage. The software is designed to allow users with a home network to have a single, quick, and easy to use interface that will allow users to access media from other PCs, NAS boxes, and even Zunes. The idea is make life easier for families that...
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The war on spam seems to be heating up, this time with anti-spam sites on the receiving end of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack believed to be coordinated by spammers: "Spammers have been taking over unsuspecting computer users' machines for years in order to send out unwanted e-mails, but recently they have been getting even...
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Windows Vista brought users a new security feature called User Account Control, or UAC for short. Some like it, some find it to be annoying, and Apple even made a humorous commercial that made fun of UAC. Of course you can just turn UAC off, and some do, but that may or may not be the optimal solution. After all, UAC is designed to be helpful,...
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