Binarycse Blog

Experts predict the world will run out of internet addresses in less than a year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.

The internet protocol used by the majority of web users, IPv4, provides for about four billion IP addresses — the unique 32-digit number used to identify each computer, website or internet-connected device.

There are currently only 232 million IP addresses left — enough for about 340 days — thanks to the explosion in smartphones and other web-enabled devices.

“When the IPv4 protocol was developed 30 years ago, it seemed to be a reasonable attempt at providing enough addresses,” carrier relations manager at Australian internet service provider (ISP) Internode John Lindsay told the Herald.

“Bearing in mind that at that point personal computers didn’t really exist, the idea that mobile phones might want an IP address hadn’t occurred to anybody because mobile phones hadn’t been invented the idea that air-conditioners and refrigerators might want them was utterly ludicrous.”
The solution to the problem is IPv6, which uses a 128-digit address. It would give everyone in the world more than four billion addresses each, but most of the internet industry has so far been reluctant to introduce it.

It would require each device that connects to the internet to be reconfigured or upgraded, with some users even being forced to buy new hardware, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

With “India living in the villages”, political parties are working to ensure that they optimise the use of technology to reach out to their traditional vote bank — the rural masses.

The technologies develo-ped by global IT giant Micro-soft has attracted the atten-tion of the ruling Congress Party which is planning to use this to interact with the illiterate and semi-literate villagers across the country from its party headquarters in New Delhi.

Microsoft’s display technologies enable projection onto any surface inclu-ding walls, tabletops and windows. The US-headquartered company has already come out with a proof-of-concept with regard to these technologies.

“The Congress Party is looking at ways to use these kinds of displays to reach out to the rural, semi-literate or illiterate environment. They are very inter-ested in grassroot engag-ements to get the illiterate and semi-literate villag-ers to interact with the par-ty headquarters in Delhi,”

Microsoft Corporation (India) Chairman Ravi Venkatesan said. Speaking at the sixth India innovation summit, organi-sed by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Thursday, Venkatesan said, he had one of the most interesting and practical conversation around display technologies, with the Congress Party.

Google announced today that users can add a picture to the background of Google.com if they want.Adding a picture to the background makes Google look exactly like Bing, which has big colorful pictures in the background.In its official blog Google revealed ;
“Today, we’re introducing a new feature that brings a whole new level of personalization to Google by letting you add a favorite photo or image to the background of the Google homepage. You can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos.

Whether you choose a photo of a loved one, a picture of your favorite vacation destination or even a design you created yourself, Google.com is now yours to customize. For those of you who want to enjoy the clean, simple look of Google as well as your personalized view, we’ve made it easy to switch between your customized search page and classic Google.

We are beginning to roll out this new feature to users in the U.S. over the next few days, so if you don’t see a link in the lower left-hand corner of Google.com now, check back soon. For those of you outside of the U.S., you can expect to see this new feature in the coming days as we roll it out internationally to offer similar, consistent experiences globally.

And if you’ve customized your look with a fun personal photo we’d love to see what your new homepage looks like. Tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage and share it with us! “.

Internet major Google is phasing out its internal use of Microsoft Windows operating system due to security concerns, which arose mainly after its operations were hacked recently.The directive to move to other operating systems had begun in January at Google, after its Chinese operations were hacked.

The move could effectively end the use of Windows at Google, which employs more than 10,000 workers internationally, the report added.

“We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” FT quoted a Google employee as saying.

Another google employee said that many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the attacks.

New people hired at Google are now given the option of using Apple’s Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system.

In early January, some new employees were still being allowed to install Windows on their laptops, but it was not an option for their desktop computers, the report added.
The May 31 Financial Times article quotes only anonymous Google sources, identifying them as several of Google’s 10,000 employees. FT reporters David Gelles and Richard Waters write: “Employees wanting to stay on Windows required clearance from ‘quite senior levels’, one employee said. ‘Getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO approval,’ said another employee.”

Google officials have not tacitly denied the Windows ban on work computers, issuing the following statement to the Reuters news agency: “We’re always working to improve the efficiency of our business, but we do not comment on specific operational matters.”

The FT calls Google’s anti-Windows policy “semi-formal” and said that some laptops of “new hires” were still being outfitted with Windows, but all internal desktop PCs for these employees would run non-Windows based operating systems.
Microsoft’s dominant operating system Windows and its leading Web browser Internet Explorer have a reputation for being vulnerable to attacks. Security experts point out that Microsoft’s market share dominance promises malware developers a significantly higher return on investment than the Mac OS platform, which owns 5 percent of the OS market. Other operating systems (including Mac OS) and Web browsers — including Google’s own Chrome Web browser — have also suffered from security vulnerabilities.

A group protesting Facebook’s privacy policies said Monday more than 30,000 people had heeded its call to quit the social networking giant.
“For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department,” the organizers, who did not identify themselves, said on their website for Monday’s “Quit Facebook Day.”
“Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices.”
The group said at 2300 GMT that 32,749 had dropped out of the Facebook universe.
Facebook.com is visited monthly by 540 million people, or slightly more than 35 percent of the Internet population, according to Google data.
Facebook is overhauling privacy controls in the face of a barrage of criticism that it is betraying the trust which has made it the world’s biggest social network.
Facebook redesigned its privacy settings page to provide a single control for content and “significantly reduce” the amount of information that is always visible to everyone.
Facebook also said it is giving users more control over how outside applications or websites access information at the service.
In India, though, hardly any of the 16.8 million Facebook users appear to be perturbed over the development, with most of them either unaware, or not particularly disturbed over the lack of privacy issue.
QuitFacebookday.com claims: “Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.”

Websites like www.quitfacebookday.com, where users have indicated their intent to delete Facebook accounts, claim users could consider alternatives such as Twitter, Flickr, Orkut, and the yet-to-be-released Diaspora project for social networking.

Symantec will launch its new Norton internet security software for Android based smart phones, which would provide a better, faster and safer online browsing experience.Apart from restricting the opportunity for cyber criminals, Norton Connect has been providing services to iPhone and Android users, access to files backed up using Norton Online Backup, reports Rajni Sharma from Infocera.com.The product will be refreshed by the company and made more magnificent while releasing Beta in June.

Simulatanously, a Beta version of Norton for Android with features like scanning for bogus apps, remote wipe and lock and caller blocking will be released. the Smartphone quickly recover files and folders or complete Windows systems in case of a system failure as the suite includes backup and recovery option.Download is for free for a certain trial period. This software will protect the system form all type of cyber attacks and users can experience safer and faster online browsing experienceSymantec will combine consumer security, back up and infrastructure technologies to deliver the products to consumers in new ways. The company plans to launch Norton Smartphone Security for Android Beta, Norton Connect Beta and North DNS BetaThe company is focusing on smartphones as the market is expected to continue to grow well into 2011. With this growth comes the need for security applications to meet the needs of the market. Symantec intends to launch the security products over the next few months.

Hackers have launched yet another version of the tools that claim to unlock the iPhone 3G/3Gs/3.1.3 version in only 5 minutes.

Since the time of the launch of iPhone from the Apple, the hackers are releasing new and improved versions of the firmware to sidestep protections and restriction placed by the manufacturer on the device.

An illegal program called iPhonia is available on the internet that uses iTunes and other tools to unlock the device after a guided unlocking process. The new update asks users to download the iPhonia 2.2.9 version for unlocking their device.

The process recommended also requires users to connect to the a computer through a USB. The unlocking enables users to run programmes that are restricted on the phone and also allows them to unlock the phone for use in other networks.

The tool installs Cydia which includes various unauthorized software onto the device. The Cydia software if upgraded also works on the iPad. iTunes is used to restore the iPhone’s firmware and it then it is Jailbreaked and Unlocked with iPhone OS 3.1.3.

Apple says the jailbreaks are violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and also violate its licenses. The unlocking allows users to use the device on other networks in different countries around the world and it also opens up the multi million dollar resale market for the device.

Google has decided to permanently offer the multiplayer version of Pac Man game for free on Google doodle. The company decided to offer it permanently after it received good response to the game on doodle on Friday and Saturday when it was offered for free to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Pac-Man’s video game.

The users who clicked on the doodle that appeared on the search page were able to play the game for free. Tweeter users have also noticed the free gift form Google and it woalso works on new devices like iPhone.

The game was very popular on the video game and the Google game works in a similar way. The computer screens display classic Atari box with the 8-bit cartridge. The doodle includes the game’s original game logic, graphics and sounds and the bugs.Recently, Google celebrated the classic arcade game Pac-Man as; it featured a playable version of the game on its homepage as its logo. As we all know Google’s custom logos are famous for their creativity and always have a special meaning following them, but this one had an unexpected impact on the US economy. Projected figure suggest that Google received an additional 4.82 million hours of attention on Pac-Man day than it would usually have received on a Friday, totaling $120,483,800 in lost wages. With such a figure, one can hire all Google staff for six weeks approximately.

Symantec reported that a worm targeting users of instant messaging software Yahoo Messenger on Windows. During the attack, the victim receives a message appear to come from one of his/her contacts and inviting them to click a link to download a photo. The malware, identified by experts is the W32.Yimfoca , analyzes the list of contacts from Yahoo! Messenger and continues to reproduce.

Of course when the victim clicks on this link, the default browser is launched and redirected to an executable file. Once again it trying to pass for a picture but advanced users will notice the extension. exe.

Once it is installed on the machine, the worm is divided and added to the green list of Windows Firewall. Then it disables the manager updates Windows Updates. The malware also infiltrated in the registry and changes the key below in order to be activated each time the computer starts.The malware arrives via instant message through Yahoo or Skype with any one of a number of messages, including “Does my new hair style look good? bad? perfect?” or “My printer is about to be thrown through a window if this pic won’t come out right. You see anything wrong with it?” Bkis wrote in a blog post.
The message includes a link to a Web page that looks like it leads to a JPEG, or image file. When the link is clicked on, the browser displays an interface that looks like the RapidShare Web hosting site and offers up a ZIP file for download. The extracted file is actually an executable file with a .com extension.
The malware, which Bkis has detected as “W32.Skyhoo.Worm,” disappears if the computer does not have Skype or Yahoo Messenger installed. It automatically sends messages with varying content and malicious links to contacts in the victim’s IM list and automatically injects a malicious link in e-mail messages and Word or Excel files that the user is composing, Bkis said.
The worm also connects to an IRC server to receive remote commands, blocks antivirus software, uses a rootkit technique to hide its files and processes and automatically copies itself onto USB drives to spread, according to Bkis.

Google has taken the rare step of asking a California judge to declare that by linking to copyright-infringing works on Rapidshare, the search giant is not facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs.Blue Destiny Records, a small blues-oriented music label, sued Google, Microsoft and Rapidshare in Florida. The label claimed that Rapidshare was running “a distribution center for unlawful copies of copyrighted works,” and that Google and Microsoft’s Bing search engine were helping to prop up the company. The label argued that users can easily find copyrighted songs on file-hosting websites by doing a simple search query.

But in late March, Blue Destiny voluntarily withdrew its lawsuit. Google then asked the company to waive the right to pursue its copyright allegations. According to Google, the label refused, preserving its option to refile its claims.

Now Google has decided that it wants the court battle. The company has filed a 96-page complaint with the California district court, asking for a declaratory judgment that it’s not infringing Blue Destiny’s copyrights.

Google is showing a bit of hubris in its latest move. By going on the offensive, Google gets to do battle with a much smaller company in the inevitable fight over whether search engines facilitate copyright infringement. Plus, Google gets a more favorable jurisdiction than a Florida court. The Ninth Circuit has been friendly to Google in similar litigation with Perfect 10, an adult entertainment publisher that tried to punish search engines for indexing copyrighted photos.
Google has now sued the indie, asking a more friendly Californian court to provide a declaratory judgement whether links to cyberlockers constitute infringement. Victory would ensure a significant area of liability for Google would be removed. But even Reuters is moved to describe Google’s response as “hubristic”.

As well as drawing attention to the disparity in the resources available to Google and companies who depend on copyright – Google’s annual revenue is larger than the entire global record industry – the aggressive litigation also sends out a message to copyright businesses that they should not dare to antagonise the internet giant.

The mood has changed significantly in recent months. While Google may win this court battle, it may be losing the longer, bigger war.

The trade unions have swung behind the creators, in the shape of the TUC-backed Creative Coalition Campaign in the UK, and the AFL-CIO in the US. The release of emails in the Viacom litigation showed Google executives burying their ethical reservations and buying YouTube anyway – so much for “Do no evil”.