Microsoft to send users 4 critical patches on Valentine’s Day
Microsoft plans to publish nine updates next Tuesday – four of which are critical – as part of a Valentine's Day edition of its Patch Tuesday update cycle.
Highlights of the batch, which collectively address 21 vulnerabilities, include a critical update for Internet Explorer.
There are also two critical fixes for Windows itself, plus one for Microsoft's .NET framework. Three the five remaining "important" fixes grapple with remote code execution-type vulnerabilities, one of which involves Office. Flaws of this type are best addressed sooner rather than later because they might easily be exploited by malware slingers. Read more...
HP shares database smarts with EnterpriseDB
EnterpriseDB is trying to pump up the PostgreSQL database to do battle with Oracle 11g and, to a lesser extent, IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL. So the database upstart is upgrading its Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1 - and kicking it onto Amazon's EC2 compute cloud to peddle it alongside Amazon's own Relational Database Service.
As El Reg previously reported, the open source PostgreSQL relational database was updated to the 9.1 release level last September, with a lot of the work being done by a team at EnterpriseDB, which has become the "Red Hat for PostgreSQL," led by Robert Haas, the senior architect at the company. Read more...
Microsoft details Windows 8 for ARM devices
Microsoft has released technical design details about the new version of Windows for devices that use ARM chips, outlining in a lengthy blog post different ways in which this OS, called WOA and still in the works, will be alike and different from existing versions of Windows.
WOA (Windows on ARM) will be based on the Windows 8 code base, itself still in development, and will replicate some familiar Windows design features, such as having a desktop interface component. In other ways, WOA will be uniquely crafted, such as requiring that devices running it use a system-on-a-chip design.
"WOA enables creativity in PC design that, in combination with newly architected features of the OS, will bring to customers new no-compromise experiences," wrote the post's author Steven Sinofsky, president of Windows and Windows Live Division.
Cloudscaling set to offer OpenStack private cloud platform
Cloudscaling plans to introduce on Monday an OpenStack-based platform that enterprises can use to build private clouds.
This will be the first product offering from Cloudscaling, which built its business as a services company that helped others design and create their cloud infrastructures.
"We're introducing a cloud infrastructure suite of products that essentially delivers an Amazon Web Services-like cloud, but on a customer's premise," said Michael Grant, Cloudscaling's CEO. Read more...
Coming soon from BlackBerry: 5 things to look forward to
These are dark days for Research In Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry brand...or at least dim ones.
The Canadian company is struggling with an increasingly negative market perception, shrinking customer loyalty as long-time BlackBerry users move on, and stiff competition from rivals, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, among other things.
But that doesn't mean it should all be doom and gloom for RIM right now. Here are five reasons why current BlackBerry users and others interested in the brand and its future should remain optimistic in the coming months. Read more...
FBI reveals 1991 probe of Steve Jobs
The FBI today made public a background investigation of Steve Jobs in 1991, when he was being considered by the George H. W. Bush administration for a spot on the President's Export Council.
The council is a group that advises the President on international trade. Current members include the CEOs of such U.S. firms as Boeing, UPS, Verizon, Walt Disney and Xerox.
In 1991, Jobs was the CEO of NeXT, the computer company he founded after being forced out of Apple. Subsequently, Jobs returned to Apple, which he co-founded in 1976, where he remained until his death last October at age 56. Read more...
Brazil files injunction against Twitter
A request for an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make Brazil the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments' requests.
Twitter unveiled plans last month that would allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.
"As far as we know this is the first time that a country has attempted to take Twitter up on their country-by-country take down," Eva Galperin of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Galperin, who described the foundation as "a digital liberties organization," predicted governments will be taking similar opportunities to censor Twitter traffic. Read more...
Find your ‘most valuable’ Facebook friend
I promise: The result above was not a setup, but the outcome of trying a fun, free app called "MVF," which lets you find your "Most Valuable Friend" on Facebook. I know msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle pretty well — although not well enough to, say, share science experiments with him. But that's the result that MVF gave me, produced in seconds after I allowed it to access my Facebook info.
As the TheNextWeb notes, the app "allows anyone to find out their most valuable Facebook friend based on a weighted combination of the total number of friends and subscribers." Read more...
Amazon accidentally starts shipping the PS Vita early
A few gamers in Canada eagerly awaiting the launch of the PS Vita got a welcome surprise this week when their pre-ordered Vita’s arrived in the post.
The official launch of the PS Vita hardware is split between the first edition bundle, available from February 15, and the standard Wi-Fi and 3G editions coming the week after on February 22. However, someone at Amazon in Canada messed up, or at least someone with access to the shipping system did, and started sending out the stock early. Read more...
Microsoft to issue more critical patches next week for Win7 than XP
Microsoft today said it would deliver nine security updates next week, four of them critical, to patch 21 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Office, .Net and Silverlight.
This year's February Patch Tuesday will feature three fewer updates and one less patch than 2011's.
Four of the nine updates were tagged "critical," the highest threat ranking in Microsoft's four-step system, while the other five were marked "important," the second-level rating. All of the critical updates and two of those pegged important will patch bugs that Microsoft admitted could be exploited by attackers to hijack computers and plant malware on PCs. Read more...