Adobe recently released their 11th major version of Photoshop, along with the rest of the gang: Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Premiere, After Effects and more. Here’s a peek at CS4’s video-related tools, which are closer to the technologies I use for my Creative Commons videography work. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article…

LoseThos is an open-source 64-bit operating system that was created from scratch without any compatibility with Windows or *nix. It is not your regular main-stream OS and it doesn’t aspire to become one. It is built for a programmer and it gives the programmer unchecked privilege over its kernel.

To address the growing need for a PC security solution tailored to the demands of emerging markets, smaller PC form factors and rapid increases in the incidence of malware, Microsoft Corp. plans to offer a new consumer security offering focused on core anti-malware protection.

The new 0.4 version of Etoile had just been released. Etoile intends to be an innovative, GNUstep-based, user environment built from the ground up on highly modular and light components. It is created with project and document orientation in mind, in order to allow users to create their own workflow by reshaping or recombining provided Services (aka Applications) and Components. 0.4 is a developer-targeted release on its way towards this goal. As a developer-focussed release, this predominantly consists of frameworks. A few demonstration applications are also included.

“An alpha version of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux operating systems was released on 11/17/2008 and is available for download. This offers easier, native installation on 64-bit Linux distributions and removes the need for 32-bit emulation.” The pre-release can be downloaded from Adobe Lab Downloads.

“The Windows Research Kernel (WRK) packages core Windows XP x64 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 kernel source code with an environment for building and testing experimental versions of the Windows kernel for use in teaching and research.”

Microsoft has released an initial release of version 2.0 of the Singularity operating system (research development kit, as it likes to call it). Singularity is a microkernel research operating system, where the kernel, drivers, and applications are all written in managed code. Singularity is released under a shared source academic license, and you can do whatever you want with it, except making money (simply put).

Contiki is an operating system for networked embedded systems such as radio-equipped networked sensors that have 8-bit CPUs with a few kilobytes of memory and a few milliwatts of power budget. Within these constraints, Contiki provides full IP networking, multi-hop radio routing, a web server, a telnet server, and a networked command-line shell. The 2.2.2 release contains uIPv6, the world’s smallest fully compliant IPv6 stack, SICSlowpan IPv6-over-802.15.4 header compression, and command line tools for HTTP interaction: wget and httpd.

Thanks to the Mandriva Xfce volunteer development team, a community Xfce One edition of Mandriva Linux 2009 is now available for download from all official Mandriva mirrors. A list of download locations can be found on the Wiki page. This release gives you all the benefits of Mandriva Linux 2009 along with a fast and stable Xfce desktop.

Unveiled on Monday by the USB Implementers Forum, the USB 3.0 spec can theoretically support data-transfer speeds of up to 4.8Gbps - 10 times the speed provided by USB 2.0. The new standard, also known as SuperSpeed USB, is also expected to be more power-efficient than its predecessor. “SuperSpeed USB is the next advancement in ubiquitous technology,” Jeff Ravencraft, the president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that promotes USB technology, said in a statement on Monday. “Today’s consumers are using rich media and large digital files that need to be easily and quickly transferred from PCs to devices and vice versa. SuperSpeed USB meets the needs of everyone, from the tech-savvy executive to the average home user.”

At its annual MAX user conference, Adobe puts on the dog and serves up new tooling and other support for Flash. Adobe introduces Flex Builder Gumbo, Flash Catalyst — formerly known as Thermo, the availability of Adobe AIR 1.5 and a pre-release of the 64-bit Linux version of Adobe Flash Player 10. Adobe also opens up its cloud initiative, known as Cocomo, as a public beta.

“Depending on where you look, Windows 7 is being called a savior for the embattled Vista, or a disaster waiting to happen. Regardless, certain interface features in Windows 7, whether brand new or streamlined, have been mostly applauded by experts who have tested the pre-beta. Which features are the most interesting and controversial? Here are five that deserve your attention.”

“Apple has shown terrific growth over the past decade after virtually collapsing in the early 90s. However, one segment that it has never really been able to win back is the business sector. Not since the days of Apple IIe’s or further back has Apple really enjoyed strong business adoption. And the business sector, consisting of everything from business laptops, to servers and business phones, is a huge revenue source so this was a big loss for Apple. However, Apple’s hottest gadget, the iPhone is finally starting to win Apple a following in the business community.”

OpenSocial supporters, including Google and MySpace, have celebrated the first anniversary of the project to establish a common set of standard APIs and tools for developing social networking applications.

“The FreeBSD project is finally, after much work, pleased to announce the availability of an official FreeBSD web based discussion forum. It is our hope that this forum will serve as a public support channel for FreeBSD users around the world and as a complement to our fine mailing lists.”

CNet has a report that a federal judge has dismissed Psystar’s antitrust suit against Apple. Observers had said that the counter-suit embodied the Mac clone-maker’s best chance of prevailing and staying in business. We’ve been following Psystar and the dueling lawsuits since the beginning.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pickens writes “The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany where the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and their two children. ‘We’re really sure, based on hard biological facts not just supposing or assuming,’ says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, from The Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords. The children and adult males had the same type of strontium in their teeth — which was also found locally, but the nearest match to the women’s teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area. ‘They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken,’ says Dr. Alistair Pike from Bristol University. He noted that one victim even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra. ‘You feel some kind of sympathy for them, it’s a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them. … We don’t know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love,’ added Dr. Haak.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gamasutra reports on a talk by Far Cry 2 developer Dominic Guay in which he discussed why procedural content generation is becoming more and more important as games get bigger and more complex. He also talks about some of the related difficulties, such as the amount of work required for the tools and the times when it’s hard to retain control of the art direction. Quoting: “Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approach based on algorithms — which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. ‘We considered it to be a total failure,’ he said. He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coondoggie writes “The Federal Trade Commission yesterday had a US District Court issue a temporary restraining order halting the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware. According to the FTC’s complaint, RemoteSpy spyware was sold to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers’ computers. The defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader notes a posting up at a law blog with the provocative title Does Your Boss Have to Pay You While You Wait for Vista to Boot Up?. (Provocative because Vista doesn’t boot more slowly than anything else, necessarily, as one commenter points out.) The National Law Journal article behind the post requires subscription. Quoting: “Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. … During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. … [A] management-side attorney… who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits… believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JakartaDean writes “Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famed Internet regulator, has lost his Senate seat. The AP is reporting that ‘ Stevens was declared the loser in Alaska on Tuesday night after a two-week-long process of counting nearly 90,000 absentee and early votes from across Alaska. With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens’ conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.’ It’s probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there’s a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dynamoo writes “The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is… well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft’s anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hcg50a writes “NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. The store-and-forward protocol was designed by NASA in consultation with Vint Cerf. Here’s a discussion from last July before the test began.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A week ago we discussed the takedown of McColo (and the morality of that action). McColo was reportedly the source of anywhere from 50% to 75% of the world’s spam. On Saturday the malware network briefly returned to life in order to hand over command and control channels to a Russian network. “The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to… Trend Micro. The brief resurrection allowed miscreants who rely on McColo to update a portion of the massive botnets they use to push spam and malware. Researchers from FireEye saw PCs infected by the Rustock botnet being updated so they’d report to a new server located at abilena.podolsk-mo.ru for instructions. That means the sharp drop in spam levels reported immediately after McColo’s demise isn’t likely to last.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike and other readers alerted us to Google’s announcement that it was making available 10 million images from Life magazine’s archives dating back to the 1750s. (Most of the news accounts covering this announcement refer to Life’s “photos,” and none mention that photography wasn’t invented until early in the 19th century.) Only a small percentage of the images — including newly digitized images from photos and etchings — have even been published. The rest have been “sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints.” At this point about 20% of Life’s archive is online; the rest is promised within months.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers find more flaws in wireless security

Secure hash competition kicks off

You don’t know (click)jack

>> Advertisement <<
Can you answer the ERP quiz?
These 10 questions determine if your Enterprise RP rollout gets an A+.
http://www.findtechinfo.com/as/acs?pl=781&ca=909

Researchers weigh “clickjacking” threat

Microsoft to replace OneCare with free service

Microsoft sees value in exploitability index

>> Advertisement <<
Can you answer the ERP quiz?
These 10 questions determine if your Enterprise RP rollout gets an A+.
http://www.findtechinfo.com/as/acs?pl=781&ca=909

McColo takedown nets massive drop in spam

Firm offers $1 million bounty for blackmailers

TJX employee fired for exposing shoddy security

>> Advertisement <<
Can you answer the ERP quiz?
These 10 questions determine if your Enterprise RP rollout gets an A+.
http://www.findtechinfo.com/as/acs?pl=781&ca=909

Thoughts of a Teenage Bot Master

Hikers, joggers, and active folk in general should have a look at Berbie’s TrailRunner 1.8 (v288) for Mac OS X. TrailRunner is a route planning software for all kinds of long distance sports like…

We recently reported on the departure of Tony Fadell–the “father” of the iPod–from Apple Inc. At that point the how’s and why’s were rather vague. John Gruber of Daring Fireball sheds some light…

Floola 3.9 has just been released. Floola is an application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model that supports iTunes) under Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Video…

As MacRumors reports, several days ago, iPhone developer Smule released a rather unique musical application called Ocarina [App Store]. Since its release, Ocarina has jumped to the 3rd most popular…

As TUAW reports, SquareTrade, an independent warranty provider has released a report that shows the iPhone to be more reliable than either the Palm Treo or BlackBerry devices.The report, titled…