golf – Page 78 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Fully loaded new 27-inch iMac will cost over $4,200—before tax

Apple’s newer, thinner iMacs are due to be released tomorrow , with the 21-inch models showing up in stores and shipping immediately, and 27-inch models shipping some time in December. While base model pricing and configuration options have been known ever since the new models were announced in October, Apple has not yet officially announced the pricing of any of the add-on options like video cards and extra storage, so potential purchasers haven’t yet been able to nail down their total pocketbook impact. Enlarge / Base pricing for the new iMacs. Image from store.apple.com However, earlier this week MacRumors posted news from an Apple reseller named Expercom , which reportedly contains the entire set of iMac build-to-order upgrade prices. According to that list, a fully loaded 27-inch iMac will cost an eye-watering $4,249, before tax: Base price, 27-inch iMac, 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX video card, 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM: $1,999 Upgrade to 3.5GHz Intel Core i7: $200 Upgrade to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX video card: $150 Upgrade to 768GB SSD: $1,300 Upgrade to 32GB of RAM: $600 Tossing in 6 percent for a guess at sales tax (obviously, this varies by state and even city) yields a grand total of $4,503.94 for an iMac with every single upgrade box checked. Hope you brought a second pair of underwear… preferably one stuffed with $100 bills. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fully loaded new 27-inch iMac will cost over $4,200—before tax

Google, Microsoft, PayPal, other Romanian sites hijacked by DNS hackers

For a brief time, people trying to visit google.ro on Wednesday were connected to this page instead. Kaspersky Labs Romanian websites for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal, and other operators were briefly redirected to a rogue server on Wednesday. The redirect is most likely a result of a decade-old hacking technique that underscores the fragility of the Internet’s routing system. For a span of one to several hours on Wednesday morning, people typing Google.ro , Yahoo.ro , and Romanian-specific addresses for other sites connected to a website that was purportedly run by an Algerian hacker, according to numerous security blog posts, including this one from Kaspersky Lab. Researchers said the most likely explanation for the redirection is a technique known as DNS poisoning, in which domain name system routing tables are tampered with, causing domain names to resolve to incorrect IP addresses. DNS poisoning first came to light in the mid-1990s when researchers discovered that attackers could inject spoofed IP addresses into the DNS resolvers belonging to Internet service providers and large organizations. The servers would store the incorrect information for hours or days at a time, allowing the attack to send large numbers of end users to websites that install malware or masquerade as banks or other trusted destinations. Over the years, DNS server software has been updated to make it more resistant to the hack, most recently in 2008, when numerous providers introduced fixes to patch a DNS cache poisoning vulnerability discovered by researcher Dan Kaminsky. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google, Microsoft, PayPal, other Romanian sites hijacked by DNS hackers

Pro-Iranian hackers stole data from UN atomic agency’s server

The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency has admitted that data from a retired server at its Vienna headquarters was stolen and posted to a hacker website. A group calling itself Parastoo allegedly stole the data in an effort to draw attention to Israel’s nuclear weapons program and as a protest against attacks on Iran’s nuclear efforts—including the use of the Stuxnet worm and assassinations of Iranian nuclear researchers. A Pastebin posting on November 25 by someone purporting to represent the group (which takes its name from the Farsi name for the swallow) listed the e-mail addresses of physicists and other experts that had consulted with the IAEA. The message urged the people whose addresses were listed to petition the IAEA to investigate “activities at Dimona”—the site of Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center, which is widely believed to be the center of Israel’s nuclear weapons production efforts. “We would like to assert that we have evidences [sic] showing there are beyond-harmful operations taking place at this site and the above list who technically help IAEA could be considered a partner in crime should an accident happen there,” the statement read. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Pro-Iranian hackers stole data from UN atomic agency’s server

Windows 8 sales are good, if not great, at 40 million copies in the first month

Tami Reller, corporate vice president (and chief financial officer and chief marketing officer) for Windows and Windows Live, announced today that Microsoft has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses after its first month of retail availability. Is that number good, bad, or merely mediocre? Probably good, but perhaps not great. Microsoft sold 60 million copies of Windows 7 in the first ten weeks of that operating system’s availability, with the Wall Street Journal estimating that 40 million copies were sold in the first month. With Windows 8 selling 40 million copies in five weeks, it seems to be selling at about the same pace as Windows 7. Considering the different market dynamics—Windows 7 was an iterative release that fulfilled substantial pent-up demand as businesses chose to ignore Windows Vista whereas Windows 8 is a more controversial update being brought to a market that is generally happy with Windows 7 anyway—this is a healthy performance. Windows 7 sold very well and matching it is no mean feat. The apparent failure to surpass Windows 7’s launch could explain the mixed reports on early sales. Strong sales can still be disappointing if they were expected to be stronger still. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Review: Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal a mix of promise, pain

Tux shares a perch with Ubuntu 12.10’s namesake bird Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Write this down: Ubuntu 12.10, the late-year arrival from Canonical’s six-month standard release factory, marks the first new release within the company’s current long-term support cycle. Got it? Good, because it may be the best takeaway from the latest Ubuntu release, codenamed Quantal Quetzal. After that, it’s a bit of a rocky ride. The product’s development lineage is important to note from more of a business/adoption side perspective. The release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in April was Canonical’s fourth long-term support product and signaled the end of one full two-year development cycle. Quantal Quetzal is the first standard release on the road to pushing out Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in Spring 2014 (undoubtedly to be codenamed “Uber-rocking Unicorn” if the pattern holds), and it sets up themes and directions which will mature over the next two years. Standard releases aren’t terribly different from the bi-annual LTS products, though they tend to be slightly less conservative in code offerings. The Ubuntu development community lets off the brakes a little and sticks some shiny back in. Read 63 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Review: Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal a mix of promise, pain

Notorious BitTorrent tracker Demonoid back online, website still down

As of Monday, well-known BitTorrent tracker Demonoid is back online . Three months ago, the tenacious tracker was chased out of its Ukrainian host, likely under pressure from American authorities. It may also have been driven offline due to a denial of service attack. According to the IP address linked to the tracker, the new host appears to be physically located in Hong Kong . The website, meanwhile, remains down. TorrentFreak points out that in previous closures, Demonoid’s tracker appeared before its website came back online, indicating that the site’s return may be coming soon. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Notorious BitTorrent tracker Demonoid back online, website still down

Best of both worlds: Setting up Wi-Fi for iOS on 2.4 and 5GHz

For a while, it seemed that Wi-Fi was becoming a victim of its own success. In many cities, there are numerous active Wi-Fi networks on those preciously few non-overlapping channels—that’s in addition to microwaves, bluetooth, cordless phones, and baby monitors, which all share the 2.4GHz band. But since about 2007, Apple has also built support for 802.11n Wi-Fi on the 5GHz band into its computers and Airport line of Wi-Fi base stations. Now, the iPhone 5 and the latest iPod touch also have that support. (The iPad has had it since day one.) So, how do you set up a Wi-Fi network that makes the most of this confluence of Wi-Fi bands? Not created equal First of all, it’s important to realize that the two bands are created very differently. The 2.4GHz band suffers from lack of non-overlapping channels and interference from other devices. But the lower frequencies pass through walls and floors reasonably well. The 5GHz band on the other hand, has a much larger number of channels—and they don’t overlap—but the higher frequencies have reduced range, even in open air. In addition to this, Apple only supports using two channels as a single, double-speed wide channel in the 5GHz band. If all else is equal, 5GHz is twice as fast as 2.4GHz. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Best of both worlds: Setting up Wi-Fi for iOS on 2.4 and 5GHz

Researcher advises against use of Sophos antivirus on critical systems

Antivirus provider Sophos has fixed a variety of dangerous defects in its products that were discovered by a security researcher who is recommending many customers reconsider their decision to rely on the company. “Sophos claim that their products are deployed throughout healthcare, government, finance, and even the military,” Tavis Ormandy wrote in an e-mail posted to a public security forum . “The chaos a motivated attacker could cause to these systems is a realistic global threat. For this reason, Sophos products should only ever be considered for low-value non-critical systems and never deployed on networks or environments where a complete compromise by adversaries would be inconvenient.” A more detailed report that accompanied Ormandy’s e-mail outlined a series of vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit remotely to gain complete control over computers running unpatched versions of the Sophos software. At least one of them requires no interaction on the part of a victim, opening the possibility of self-replicating attacks, as compromised machines in turn exploit other machines, he said. The researcher provided what he said was a working exploit against Sophos version 8.0.6 running Apple’s OS X. Attackers could “easily” rewrite the code to work against unpatched Sophos products that run on the Windows or Linux operating systems, he said. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Researcher advises against use of Sophos antivirus on critical systems

How Georgia doxed a Russian hacker (and why it matters)

Aurich Lawson On October 24, the country of Georgia took an unusual step: it posted to the Web a 27-page writeup (PDF), in English, on how it has been under assault from a hacker allegedly based in Russia. The paper included details of the malware used, how it spread, and how it was controlled. Even more unusually, the Georgians released pictures of the alleged hacker—taken with his own webcam after the Georgians hacked the hacker with the help of the FBI and others. The story itself, which we covered briefly earlier this week , is fascinating, though it remains hard to authenticate and is relayed in a non-native English that makes for some tough reading. But what caught my eye about the whole cloak-and-dagger tale is the broader points it makes about hacking, jurisdiction, and the powerful surveillance devices that our computers have become. It’s also an example of how hacks and the alleged hackers behind them today play an increasing role in upping geopolitical suspicions between countries already wary of one another. Georgia and Russia have of course been at odds for years, and their conflict came to a head in a brief 2008 war; Russia still maintains a military presence in two tiny breakaway enclaves that Georgia claims as its own. Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How Georgia doxed a Russian hacker (and why it matters)

Sharp says there is “material doubt” over its corporate survival

Sharp , the century-old stalwart of Japanese electronics, is in deep trouble . On Thursday, the company said it sustained a ¥249.1 billion ($3.12 billion) loss for its latest quarter, the second year it had suffered record deficits. The company still has about $10 billion of debt. “As operating and net loss for the six months ended September 30, 2012 were huge, continuing from the previous year, cash flows from operating activities were negative,” the company wrote in its quarterly earnings report (PDF). Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sharp says there is “material doubt” over its corporate survival