Nata's Corner

I'll believe it when I don't hear it. Television commercials are supposed to start getting quieter.

In about a month, security people are going to try to hack fully patched browsers for fun and profit at the CanSecWest (why does that sound so much like a military abbreviation? Maybe I watch too much NCIS) conference in Vancouver. The bottom line is that if you can crack IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome, it's worth $500,000. Of course, Google's contest pays better.

Sophos has its annual security threat report available. Not surprisingly, the biggest targets out there are Java and Android. Then again, given how often the US government gets hacked, it's possible that we'd all better start thinking about whether we really need to be online.

This is serious. Almost all of us have bought a new device and plugged it into our computers, and Windows has very nicely popped up its Plug 'N Play system that goes and finds the right drivers so it will work correctly. Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is the next generation, written to make it possible for network devices to communicate with each other, but the release of a Rapid7 white paper a couple of weeks ago has caused the Homeland Security department to tell people to turn off UPnP because of bugs in the protocol. For most of us, disabling it in your router or firewall should do the trick.

Symantec and Microsoft both take a lot of heat out here; they're both described as making bloated software that's behind the times and isn't all that friendly and on and on, but every once in a while, we all need to give them their just due when they do something right, like busting up a big botnet that made its money through click fraud. And speaking of fraud, that Facebook legal notice you got? it's legit, so if you're one of the people who "sponsored" a "story" on Facebook but didn't really, you have until May 2 to file a claim.

In Brief

Haven't we been down this road? Not that we have a stake in the game... but Michael Dell is going to use his own stock in Dell as collateral to ... buy Dell (he's also getting $2 billion from Microsoft -- which makes sense since Dell buys a lot of Microsoft software). Sounds a lot like the banking industry from about four years ago, so it's not surprising that other big shareholders aren't so happy with the deal. Go figure.

Earning their keep: The Federal Communications Commission has been pretty busy lately; the agency proposed "super WiFi networks" (making the tech industry happy and the cable industry apoplectic); told Congress that a free and open Internet is "under attack" from the UN's telecommunications agency, which is a little like saying the barn door is open after the horse has already left; and finally started thinking about what to do about cell phone disruptions during a storm -- while a huge snowstorm pounded the northeast.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't all my fault: Nata took a little bit of a justifiable shot at me in our last issue, but it turns out that maybe my having a spam tweet sent out by my account wasn't entirely my fault. I'd blame Facebook, but I don't have an account there. And while we're on the subject, if you want to guarantee that you're trending, it will only cost you $200,000 -- a day.

I'll do it after I've answered this question: One of these days, I'll read 10 steps to stop procrastinating. Or I can use Google Calendar; it obviously worked for them.

Darn the bad luck: Big advertisers (and big ad firms) are finding out that Facebook ain't what they used to be. It especially didn't do well during the Super Bowl.

But they have so much money: The Chinese hacked the New York Times (and the Wall Street Journal), but Google's Eric Schmidt will still talk about them and the Times will still write about them.

Is there anything worth looking at? Google has mapped North Korea, but there are still blank spots -- just not as many. The reviews, though, are priceless.

New toys: The new Blackberry Z10 is getting good reviews. The Microsoft Surface: not so much. The Stanford Bluegene/Q system: absolutely. Just wait'll those guys on World of Warcraft see me now.

I'll take Privacy for $1,000, Alex. "The answer is: Google, AOL, Yahoo and Facebook." "What tech firms are not on the list of most trusted companies for privacy?" But Mozilla and Microsoft are.

In requiem: Andre Cassagnes, inventor of the first tablet-based art device; John Karlin, who led the development of the telephone keypad; and the old name of the manufacturer of the BlackBerry.

If there's no picture, it didn't happen: In a couple of days, a small -- if you call something the size of an Olympic swimming pool "small" -- asteroid will pass the Earth inside the orbit of communications satellites known as the Clarke orbit. Send us any photos you get of it...

If there's no tweet, it didn't happen: When HMV -- a record store company -- decided to cut costs the quickest way possible (fire employees), the one who had the keys to the company's Twitter account used it to retaliate.

Signs of the Apocalypse: If you're Steve Ballmer, releasing Office 365 with no support for the iPad "makes sense". Also, banned personalized license plates, a dad is paying his daughter $200 to quit Facebook, and the emails of two former Presidents were hacked.

Milestones

New Prodigy: sdstuber is now a Prodigy in Oracle.

New Aces: Rancy has earned his Ace certificate in Microsoft Exchange, while garycase picked his up in Miscellaneous Hardware.

New Geniuses: leakim971 has become only the seventh member of Experts Exchange to have seven Genius certificates; his most recent is in PHP. Ray_Paseur has earned his fourth, in Miscellaneous Web Development. Picking up his second was COBOLdinosaur, in CSS. Earning their first 1,000,000 t-shirts were redmondb in Microsoft Excel and SidFishes in ColdFusion.

Milestones:

• capricorn1 has earned 25,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange.
• matthewspatrick has earned 7,000,000 points in Microsoft Excel, while peter57r accomplished the feat in Microsoft Access.
• Ray_Paseur is one of only 14 EE members to have 2,000,000 points or more in three different topic areas, the most recent being MySQL.
• rindi has earned 11,000,000 points in his EE career.
• GrahamSkan reached the 10,000,000 point level overall.