Google Announces PC Operating System to Compete with Windows …

Google is releasing a lightweight, open-source PC-operating system later this year, the company announced Tuesday night, a move that threatens the very heart of Microsoft, long seen as Google’s biggest rival.

Chrome OS is intended to be a very lightweight, quick-starting operating system whose central focus is supporting Google’s Chrome browser. Applications will run mostly inside the browser, making the web — not the desktop — into the computer’s default operating system.

It’s a sign that Google truly believes in the age of cloud computing — where the usefulness of a computer is in its connection to the net where data is stored remotely and information processing happens in a dance between a browser and remote servers.

The Linux-based OS is the second for Google, following on Android, another open-source OS that intended for small devices such as mobile phones. Chrome OS will first be on netbooks — the popular lightweight and inexpensive notebook computers — in the second half of 2010, the company said in a blog post. Desktops will come later.

The code itself will be released under an unspecified open-source license at the end of the year.

The announcement included some not so veiled jabs at Microsoft.

People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. [...] Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.

Google has already laid the ground work for a web OS by revolutionizing webmail with Gmail’s speed, features and capacity (now over 7GB). It followed that with free online word processing and spreadsheet software. Add in its online photo sharing services, and the myriad other online applications from Facebook to customized radio station Pandora, and most common uses of a computer can be done through a browser.

With Tuesday’s announcement, Google is going after Microsoft’s most lucrative and dominant business — the operating system.

Google is implicitly making the argument that there’s no need to pay the premium for a Microsoft OS, when there is lighter, faster and free. And Google is arguing, rather persuasively, that the Web and modern, standards-based browsers like Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox are where innovative third-party development is taking place these days.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

More to the point, more web usage equals more money for Google, which basically makes more money the more people use the web — thanks to its dominant ad platform that brought in more than $5 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2009.

Microsoft has been looking forward to the fall release of Windows 7, its successor to the not-well received Vista. Windows 7 beta releases have gotten good reviews. It’s a bit more complicated in the enterprise space, where IT departments are slow to migrate to anything, but for the average consumer the question now becomes, why ever pay again for a Microsoft operating system, unless you are a gamer or run custom, legacy software?

If indeed Google puts out a fast, easy to use operating system that lets netbooks soar and free users from constant software patches, Microsoft will find it very hard to explain to consumers why they should continue to use its software, other than just out of a foolish consistency.

Don’t be evil, Google’s unofficial motto, has long been understood as code for “Don’t be Microsoft.” Perhaps, it ought now it to be augmented with the commandment, “Leave no Microsoft product unchallenged.

from Wired …

Njoy ..

New Firefox knows where you live !!!

 

The all new Firefox v. 3.5 is finally out for download … with lots of new features and enhancements … but the feature i am talking about is … embedded Google technology called .. Geo-location … so , now new firefox browser can know your geographical location from your IP !!! …

I don’t know about others out there , but for me , i sure don’t like this feature .. ( i am not paranoid about my identification but still i don’t like this feature ) … so , i do very little reading about it … and found that its easy to disable this feature ( lucky for me that i am not alone to think this feature is invasion on privacy just same like google do every time we use google search  or any of its services ) …

to disable this feature … just type …

about:config

in browser address bar … and it will show warning page indicating that , now firefox warranty will expire if we change this options !!! ( i never had any idea that softwares DO COME with warranty ) … just say OK … and in FILTER … just type GEO , it will list all strings starts with GEO … just locate ..

geo.enabled

.. and make it FALSE …

 

and you are done with it …

 

enjoy …

Pirated Windows 7 Builds Botnet with Trojan

Attackers pushing pirated, malware-laced copies of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system have been actively trying to build a botnet.

According to researchers at Damballa, attackers hid a Trojan inside of pirated copies of the operating system and began circulating them on BitTorrent sites. Damballa reported that it shut down the botnet's command and control server May 10, but by that time infection rates had risen as high as 552 users per hour.

"Since the pirated package was released on April 24th, my best guess is that this botnet probably had at least 27,000 successful installs prior to our takedown of its CnC [command and control] on May 10th," said Tripp Cox, vice president of engineering at Damballa.

Targeting users through pirated software is nothing new for hackers. Earlier in 2008, for example, attackers sought to build a Mac botnet on the backs of users of pirated versions of iWork '09 and the Mac version of Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Even aside from the malware threat, piracy is big business. A joint report by the BSA and IDC estimated software companies experienced $50 billion in losses in 2008 due to piracy.

In the case of Windows 7 RC, pirated copies were leaked on BitTorrent sites with a Trojan horse that, once downloaded, attempts to install a bundle of other malware on the infected machine. Blocking infections is tricky, as many anti-virus tools do not yet support Windows 7 and the operating system is infected before the tools can even be installed, according to Damballa.

"We continue to see new installs happening at a rate of about 1,600 per day with broad geographic distribution," Cox said. "Since our takedown, any new installs of this pirated distribution of Windows 7 RC are inaccessible by the botmaster. The old installs are accessible. The countries with the largest percentage of installs are the U.S. (10 percent), Netherlands (7 percent) and Italy (7 percent)."

from EWeek ..

Njoy !!!

Conficker still infecting 50,000 PCs per day

The Conficker worm is still infecting systems at a brisk rate and continues to snag computers in Fortune 1000 companies, according to security researchers.

The worm is infecting about 50,000 new PCs each day, according to researchers at Symantec, who reported that the U.S., Brazil and India have been hit the hardest.. "Much of the media hype seems to have died down around Conficker/Downadup, but it is still out there spreading far and wide," Symantec said in a blog post.

Conficker began spreading late last year, taking advantage of a recently patched flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system to infect entire networks and also using removable storage devices to hop from PC to PC. Security experts say it has now infected millions of computers worldwide, which now comprise the world's biggest botnet network.

"We can see that companies that spend literally millions of dollars on equipment and gear to prevent infections … these Fortune companies have had this infection and it's stayed in their networks for a long period of time," said Rick Wesson, CEO of Support Intelligence and a member of the Conficker Working Group. "It's really hard and really expensive, and if the Fortune companies can't stop it, how can you expect small businesses to do it?"

The Working Group has set up so-called sinkhole servers that can communicate with infected machines. It has spotted infections within many Fortune 1000 companies, Wesson said. "Everybody got hit," he said. "Even Microsoft still has infections."

The worm got a lot of media attention in late March, and while the news stories have tapered off, the worm isn't going anywhere.

Some worried that an April 1 change in the way Conficker received updates could mark the beginning of a new round of Internet attacks, but in reality the Conficker network has been only lightly used, security experts say.

"It's still a significant botnet. It hasn't done anything of significance, but it has not gone away," said Andre DiMino, cofounder of The Shadowserver Foundation and a member of the Working Group. "The remediations need to ramp up."

Njoy !!!