Cody Taylor

Got an aging Windows laptop or desktop computer, but money’s too tight to buy a new one? Here are some programs that will give it a quick system tuneup

mask.of.sanity writes “BitDefender has released what it claims is the first vaccination tool to remove the notorious Conficker virus that infected some 9 million Windows machines in about three months. The worm, also known as Downadup, exploits a bug in the Windows Server service used by Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008. It spreads primarily through a buffer overflow vulnerability in Windows Server Service where it disables the operating system update service, security center, including Windows Defender, and error reporting. The Romanian security vendor said its removal tool will delete all versions of Downadup and will not be detected by the virus.”

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dp619 writes “Capped per-unit royalties make FAT licensing agreements permissible under the GPL, and SD Times has found that Microsoft’s public license policy caps royalties at 0k. If the royalties are capped — as they seem to be — TomTom should be able to license FAT without violating the GPL. And if that is the case … TomTom needs some serious explaining to do as to why they aren’t licensing FAT. That said, Microsoft still needs to explain why it just cannot say that folks won’t violate the GPL if they license FAT under its terms.”

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pnorth writes “Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as 0 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another , according to email offers cited by security experts. A technical account manager at authentication firm Vasco said that cyber crime is becoming so business-like that online offerings of malicious code often include support and maintenance services. He said ‘it was inevitable that services would be sold to people who bought the malware toolkits but didn’t know how to configure them. Not only can you buy configuration as a service now, you can have the malware operated for you, too.'”

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What makes the OCZ Apes Series different from OCZ’s previous SSD offerings, however, is the Apex series’ use of what OCZ calls an “internal RAID 0 configuration” Instead of relying on a single drive controller, the OCZ Apex series is equipped with two controllers and the dual storage arrays are linked internally in a pseudo-RAID 0 setup.

This month, Hulu turns one. And to celebrate, the joint venture of News Corporation and NBC Universal is pulling back the curtains to reveal which video clips and full-length TV shows from its extensive online collection have been the biggest hit with viewers.

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Paper – don’t you just hate it? We live in the ‘information age’, and yet the much promised era of the paperless office still seems decades away. Our desks are cluttered with notes, reminders and scraps of random information that desperately need to be sorted, but it’s hard to find the time.

It’s not a bad move on the talk show’s part, since Digg has such a following on the Web. Mr. Fallon appeared on Diggnation in January, where he quizzed the hosts on their middle names and talked about attending the Consumer Electronics Show earlier that month.

It looks like the backlash from angry iPod owners worked: “It really has disturbed a lot of New Yorkers. They just see it as inconvenient and frustrating,” said Gov. Paterson. It was the governor’s plan for so-called nuisance taxes: Balancing the budget with new fees on sugary soda, iPod downloads, gym memberships, Broadway performances.