Facebook Virus Turns Your Computer into a Zombie

Hey, I have this hilarious video of you dancing. Your face is so red. You should check it out.

If you've received a message like that through Facebook or MySpace, you may have been exposed to the "Koobface" virus. "Koobface" comes through an e-mail sent by one of your social networking site friends inviting you to scope out a video.

Once the URL is clicked, "Koobface" prompts you to update your Flash player before the video can be displayed. Therein lies the virus, cloaked in a "flash_player.exe" file. According to the Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus organization working closely with Facebook, "the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets."

The McAfee Security Blog explains that when "Koobface" infects your computer, it prompts a downloaded service named Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) to load on start-up. SamSs then proxies all HTTP traffic, stealing results from popular search engines and hijacking them to lesser-known search sites.

A clear eye for fraud will help you avoid this mess. You can usually spot phony e-mails by their titles. Kaspersky found the following: Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments. My own "Koobface" attack came in an e-mail entitled, lool, yoour blushingg afce is so funny! Checkk out. Obviously, Paris Hilton never threw dwarves, and in all likelihood, my 26-year-old friend knows how to spell more than two words. These are clear indicators you're being attacked.

Facebook has posted instructions about how to remove the "Koobface" virus: give your computer an antivirus scrub-down and change your Facebook password.

This attack on the world's most popular social networking site and its 120 million users comes just weeks after Facebook won an $873 million lawsuit against several people accused of hacking user accounts and spreading spam.

Intel, HP Describe Green Strategy

Reaffirming their commitment to green computing, technology giants Intel and HP recently announced their respective planet-saving initiatives at the "Greenergy" forum, a slight twist from the traditional Synergy event that the two firms have been jointly organizing in the Philippines since 1997.

"There's been a lot of talk about efforts (that) everybody's doing, steps they are undertaking in terms of greening," said Ricky Banaag, Intel Technology Philippines Inc. country manager, who explained that Intel's approach to "eco-technology" is driven through four pillars: sustainable manufacturing, energy-efficient performance, design for the environment, and policy and industry.

According to Banaag, Intel has long been working on reducing the environmental impact of the company's operations through various initiatives like: solid waste and consumer recycling to reduce e-waste, packaging reductions of 16-40% which decreased number of shipments and fuel consumption, and the pursuit of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for fabrication plants and buildings, among many others.

In the next five years, Banaag said Intel has the following environmental goals: to reduce absolute global warming gas footprint by 2012 from 2007 levels; reduce energy consumption per chip 5% per year from 2007 through 2012; ensure that Intel products maintain energy efficiency for the next two product generations; reduce water use per chip by 2012 from 2007 levels; reduce generation of chemical waste per chip by 10% by 2012 from 2007 levels; and recycle 80% of chemical and solid waste generated per year.

In terms of the products they will be releasing, Banaag says the company will continue to focus on delivering performance without compromising energy efficiency. The official said this is why the company has been generating better power by adding or improving cores on the CPU instead of just increasing processor core speed. Intel's newest 45nm processors are, likewise, lead- and halogen-free, the official said. Banaag likewise touted the use of solid-state drives in the future since, according to him, the requirements for cooling an SSD are much less. "Expect to have greater than a 5x reduction in power with the transition to SSDs," he said.

Banaag also shared that Intel, along with Google and the World Wildlife Fund, has been actively promoting the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which aims to improve computing energy efficiency by 50% (by collectively saving $5.5 billion in energy costs) as well as to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 54 million tons per year.

Meanwhile, HP has been just as busy with similar greening initiatives both internally and in the products that they come up with as they see more customers, especially enterprise consumers, are actually also beginning to look at what companies like HP are currently doing to promote greening.

Aside from its reduced energy consumption and recycling initiatives, HP has been coming up with flat panel displays instead of cathode ray tube (CRT) screens since the former are said to use less material and energy. The company has also been renewing its inkjet packaging and pouring in investments on energy-efficient product lines like the HP server processors, desk jet printers, laser jet printers, blade PCs, xw6400 workstation, and its servers and storage.

HP Philippines managing director David Tan shared that HP has collaborated with Dreamworks Animation in coming up with the Halo studio--a network of rooms that lets HP employees meet with colleagues from across the globe by providing life-size, real-time, eye-to-eye conferencing with no delay. According to Tan, use of the Halo studio in global HP offices has led to productivity gains and huge travel cost savings. Asked whether the HP office in the Philippines shall have a Halo studio set up as well, Tan said the Philippines is one of the countries recommended to install Halo, most likely by next year.

HP has also embarked on the "Planet Partners Program" which offers to take back end-of-life HP and non-HP computing equipment like PCs, handhelds, notebooks, servers, printers, etc., for recycling. According to Tan, HP has, in fact, recycled more than 250 million HP print cartridges worldwide since the inception of the Planet Partners program in 1991.

In the future, Tan says HP will continue to "green" its operations by reducing their combined product and operations energy use and associated greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 25% in 2010 and recover 2 billion pounds of computing and printing equipment by 2010.

Citing data from an International Data Corporation (IDC) study Tan said 80% of HP's global customers today evaluate environmental practices as part of purchasing and 55% actually give preferred status to vendors who address environmental issues. "We see this more from corporate clients and global customers coming here who ask about our CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives. In the Philippines, questions are coming more from corporate clients but we are increasingly seeing interest from customers about our green initiatives," Tan said.

Watch for a Vista Update in April

Microsoft Corp. will deliver Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) to manufacturing in April 2009, two months after it issues a final test version to users, according to a Web site that accurately predicted several Windows ship dates in 2008.

TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that nailed the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) dates for Vista SP1 and XP SP3 earlier this year, said that Microsoft will post a release candidate -- the final test version -- of Vista SP2 in February 2009, finish the service pack next April and offer it to users via download from the Web at some point afterward.

The last was necessarily vague, if only because Microsoft has had trouble this year synchronizing service pack RTM dates with availability on Windows Update. It took six weeks last winter to get Vista SP1 in the hands of most users -- and then only after a ruckus when Microsoft initially denied access to subscribers of its for-pay developer services -- and a week to issue Windows XP SP3 in the spring. XP SP3 was delayed because of a data-corrupting compatibility bug with Microsoft's own point-of-sale software.

Although Microsoft issued the beta of Vista SP2 to a limited number of testers a month ago, company officials have so far only committed to shipping the update sometime in the first half of next year.

According to Microsoft, Vista SP2 will include Windows Search 4, Bluetooth 2.1 wireless support, faster resume from sleep when a wireless connection has been broken and support for Blu-ray. Some of those features, including Windows Search and the Bluetooth support, have been available to Vista users for months through individual updates.

The service pack will update both Vista, the client version of Windows, and Windows Server 2008, the company's corresponding server software.

Vista SP2 will require SP1 as a prerequisite, a factor that played to Microsoft's ongoing recommendation that users deploy the first service pack as soon as possible.

Brits Prefer Tunes on Phones

Mobile phones are more popular than CD players when it comes to listening to music, says the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

According to the ERA in the past two years, 44 million mobile phones that feature MP3 capability have been sold, compared to just 8 million CD players in the same period. The ERA also highlighted that between September 2007 and September 2008, 32.1 million MP3 devices were sold in the U.K., 75 percent of which were mobile phones.

"Never in the history of the music business have we seen a format take off like this before. There is now no doubt that MP3 is the fastest-growing music format of all time, faster than vinyl, cassette or CD," said Russel Coultart, chairman of ERA Digital.

Microsoft's Azure Won't Take the Cloud by Storm

It's no surprise that Microsoft has its eye on the cloud. Cloud computing, that is.

What is surprising is the news -- first unearthed by BusinessWeek reporter Peter Burrows -- that the software giant is planning to build 20 datacenters at a cost of about $1 billion each in hopes of dominating the cloud.

Even in this day of the $700 billion bailout, $20 billion is real money, and there aren't many technology companies with pockets that deep. But Google is in that financial league, and it's clear that the Redmonders are hoping to carpet-bomb the Googleplex. "Google has done a great job of hyping its prowess. But we're neck and neck with them," Debra Chrapaty, Microsoft's vice president for Global Foundation Service, told Burrows.

Neck and neck? I don't think so. Microsoft is the wrong company at the wrong time to dominate the architecture of the future. Here are four big negatives that will keep Microsoft out of the winner's circle.

1. A motivated salesforce. Great technology means nothing unless someone decides to buy it. And when we're talking about enterprise customers, we're also talking about a direct salesforce. In most software companies -- and Microsoft is no exception -- those feet on the street are incentivized (an ugly but useful word) to sell a certain type of product. It can take a long time to find a compensation structure that the salesforce will buy into. Until Microsoft does, they'll keep peddling the same old products in the same old way.

2. Brand equity. Microsoft's brand -- and it's a great one in many respects -- is all about Windows and Office. It's not about the cloud or software as a service. It's no accident that Web-based e-mail, probably the simplest cloud service, is dominated by Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo.

3. Cannibalization. The majority of Microsoft's revenue and profits still comes from Windows and Office. There is no way the company can afford to encourage users to emigrate from Office to a cheaper, Web-based alternative. Sure, Microsoft will roll out a new version of Windows Live that includes Web-based apps, but you can bet they'll be very lightweight. Google, on the other hand, has core business built on the Web that will only be enhanced by its efforts in cloud computing.

What's more, a host of non-Office productivity apps and suites are beginning to make small inroads into the Office monopoly.

[ Read InfoWorld's comparative review of Google Docs, Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice, and Zoho, or view the "Office killers" slide show. | If you're looking to dump both Office and Windows, find out whether you can really switch to Mac OS X or convert to desktop Linux. ]

4. The desktop culture. Microsoft became a giant because it dominated the desktop, from the operating system to the productivity suite. The company has certainly evolved, but the Vista debacle tells us that the old "build it big" mindset is still firmly in control. Microsoft knows how to build a battleship, but it has yet to understand that speedboats are the craft of the future.

Having said all that, it's also clear that Microsoft isn't, and won't be, on the ropes anytime soon. There are plenty of reasons that most businesses and consumers will stay on the Office treadmill. They've already spent a lot of time and money learning it, and old habits die hard. Then there's the pesky problem of bandwidth. If you're on an airplane, or just out of reach, running an app in the cloud is a no-can-do.

The technology business is not a zero-sum game, nor is it a something out of the pages of Sun Tzu's Art of War where there can only be one victor. There's plenty of room for both Microsoft and Google to make obscene amounts of money. But Microsoft won't make it in the cloud.

Apple will launch netbook competitor in '09, says analyst

Apple Inc. will roll out a lower-priced and lighter-weight laptop in the first half of 2009 to compete in the growing "netbook" category, an analyst said today.

The slipping economy will force Apple to address a glaring omission in its lineup: the lack of a lower-priced laptop, said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc.

"Apple is facing the possibility that as the economic news gets worse, that they're increasingly pricing themselves out of an important market," said Gottheil. "Economic conditions are accelerating this."

Apple won't compete directly with netbooks on price or size, Gottheil maintained, but will have to respond with something he characterized as an "entry-level notebook" that could compete with the $300-$500 price tags of most netbooks. Currently, Apple's lowest-priced notebook is the older, white-cased MacBook, which the company retained when it unveiled new unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros last month. That MacBook lists for $999, although Best Buy has launched a sale of Apple hardware that prices the model at $899.

Gottheil pegged the debut of a lower-priced laptop at sometime in the first six months of 2009, and said that the most likely price point would be $599. He based that on comments a month ago by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who dismissed any desire to play in the netbook market as currently defined. "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that," Jobs said at the time.

Apple's answer to the netbook, continued Gottheil, would probably be more like the MacBook than the MacBook Air -- Apple's thinnest, lightest laptop -- but the company is also unlikely to simply copy current netbooks, which in some instances have sported screens as small as 7 inches.

"Apple feels compelled to be a little different," said Gottheil. "It will look at the netbook form factor and then decide, 'What are the appealing characteristics that we can create under our price umbrella?'"

Gottheil is betting that Apple will stress light and thin over width and depth. "I think this will be more paper-sized, with more screen than most netbooks," he said. The new unibody MacBook, which sports a 13.3-in. display, takes the tape at 12.8 inches wide by 8.9 inches deep, slightly wider than a piece of paper is long.

Other traits that an Apple netbook competitor might boast, said Gottheil, could include a touch-enabled screen and a limited amount of flash memory in lieu of a traditional platter-based hard drive. If the machine is flash-based, Apple might steer users toward its MobileMe online sync service for additional data storage. Apple could also point buyers to its new 24-in. stand-alone monitor, which includes a power connection to recharge a laptop, as well as USB 2.0 ports for jacking in a mouse and keyboard.

Mozilla eyes extra beta for Firefox 3.1

Mozilla Corp. will probably add a third beta to the development schedule for Firefox 3.1 to get a better handle on remaining bugs and give several new features, including a faster JavaScript engine and a private browsing mode, more testing time, the company's browser director said today.

Previous schedules published by Mozilla had limited Firefox 3.1 to only two betas before moving to a release candidate.

In a long post to the "mozilla.dev.planning" forum, Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, said that Beta 3 is necessary to get a feel for the severity of the remaining bugs and an idea of how long it will take developers to eradicate them. In addition, another beta will give more exposure to features landing in the browser only as of Beta 2, which has not yet been released.

Beltzner named several of Firefox 3.1's high-profile additions, including the new "TraceMonkey" JavaScript rendering engine and the so-called porn mode feature, dubbed "Private Browsing Mode" by Mozilla, among those that would benefit from more testing.

Beta 3 is not a done deal, Beltzner noted in a follow-up e-mail to Computerworld today, but he is confident that developers would approve the plan. "We're never comfortable declaring new milestones by fiat, but I expect that there won't be any opposition to the plans for a third beta at today's meeting," he said. "I'd say that it's very likely at this point."

So far, Mozilla has shipped only Beta 1, which was released six weeks ago, although Beta 2 should be available in early December, perhaps as soon as the end of next week. A schedule for the third beta has not been set, but Beltzner said Mozilla would likely declare a "code freeze" -- a milestone after which changes are either forbidden outright or tightly restricted -- in early January.

In his e-mail today, Beltzner stressed that the extra beta wouldn't delay the final version of Firefox 3.1. "We believe we can do this without major impact to our shipping schedule," he said. "It's more a matter of inserting another public consultation milestone than it is about slipping, per se."

Mozilla is traditionally leery of committing to final ship dates -- like other developers it typically says it launches products when they're ready and not on a timetable -- but previously it had said it was shooting for a late 2008 or early 2009 window. Today, however, Beltzner said that Firefox 3.1 is "still looking at late in Q1 2009 for final delivery."

In a status meeting last week, Mozilla also decided to retract a revamped Ctrl-Tab tab-switching feature it had originally slated for Firefox 3.1. The enhancement, which was based on an already-available Firefox add-on, showed users thumbnails when they cycled through open tabs, and switched between current and last-viewed tabs rather than simply moving to the next tab to the right. Like many of the features that made it into Firefox 3.1, it was initially set for Firefox 3.0, but had slipped out of that earlier update.