Articles by John P. Mello Jr

When was the last time you updated your anti-virus software? Even if you update your AV software frequently, there's still a gap between the time a virus is released into the wild on "day zero" and when virus fighters can update their programs to squash the malware....

While consumers have been slow to move to digital TV, that hasn't deterred Congress from trying to goose the transition process That process includes snatching back spectrum currently used to broadcastover-the-air analog TV channels -- a process that, under current law, issupposed to occur by 2007 -- but only if 85 percent of the households inAmer...

Financial services companies might be unwitting contributors to the nation's identity theft problem, according to a report from Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that identity theft costs American businesses US$50 billion to $60 billion a year. "Despite this clear threat to their business, f...

For companies burdened with legacy systems they can't seem to get rid of, this could be the jackpot they've been waiting for A Los Gatos, California, startup maintains it has perfected a program that allows software applications compiled for one processor and operating system to run on another processor and operating system without any source code ...

The techniques used to develop open-source software like Linux have proven to be so effective that they've been adopted by malware writers to improve their mischievous ways "There's a community of worm builders creating, almost in an open-source fashion, Trojan source code that can be downloaded, compiled and released into the wild," said Scott Cha...

A federal appeals court in Boston has been asked to take a second look at a decision that some say could have a far-reaching effect on the privacy of Internet communications in the United States The decision handed down by a panel of appeals court judges ruled that monitoring the content of people's incoming e-mail by a service provider does not vi...

Sender authentication might work as a club to beat down phishing attacks on Web denizens, but it does little to fight spam. That's the finding of a study released this week by CipherTrust, a messaging security firm in Atlanta On the basis of analyzing some two million messages received between May and August by more than 1,000 CipherTrust customers...

The words "copy protection" make Adam Gervin wince. Gervin is senior marketing director for the entertainment technologies group at Macrovision, in Santa Clara, California. Macrovision is a company best known for cooking up ways to thwart the copying of movies and music from tapes and discs He's also point man in Macrovision's quest -- through a ne...

A recent blog posting by a Microsoft project manager spawned ablizzard of discussion on one of the Internet's major tech forums andgenerated speculation that Microsoft may be ready to improve its relations with the open-source community Josh Ledgard, a program manager for Microsoft's Visual Studio communityteam, sparked a flurry of comment at Slash...

Despite a drop in its overall share of global spam, the United States remains the number one originator of unsolicited e-mail in the world Those are the findings of antivirus, antispam software maker Sophos in its latest "dirty dozen" report, which identifies the 12 top countries where spam originates....

It's as jarring as former First Lady Nancy Reagan saying yes to drugs The maker of the code hackers love to crack -- Macrovision -- is touting the sharing and copying features of the next version of its CDS-300 copy-protection scheme when it's released in this year's fourth quarter....

For the first time ever, the major providers of DSL broadband services garnered more new subscribers in a calendar quarter than their cable television competitors According to figures released by the Leichtman Research Group (LRG) in Durham, New Hampshire, the top DSL providers added 895,336 net new broadband subscribers to their rolls in this year...

The desire to learn won't be the only thing returning with students to their universities this fall College IT departments can expect a wave of viruses, worms and other computer nasties to accompany their charges as they connect their computers to their college's networks When many students return to school from summer vacation, they're returning w...

Microsoft has introduced a new version of Windows XP designed for computers sold in emerging markets -- and analysts contend that is a sign that the Redmond, Washington-based software giant is worried about threats to its leading market position by Linux as well as to its bottom line by pirates Popularly known as "XP Lite," the new stripped-down ed...

Phishing attacks increased 19 percent in June over May, according to a report released by the Anti-Phishing Working Group Of the 1,422 new unique attacks, 92 percent of them used forged, or "spoofed," e-mail addresses. To somemembers of the working group, that fact reveals a crying need for sender authentication in all e-mail in order to limit both...

In a move expected to be a stimulant for the high-speed wireless market, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted an order to restructure frequencies within one of the several bands used for wireless broadband communication Industry insiders maintain that the order, adopted on June 10 and published for the first time last week, is a ...

Virus writers busily scribbled code during the first half of 2004,introducing 4,677 new viruses into the wild, a 21 percent increase overthe same period last year, according to a report released by Sophos, aninternational maker of antivirus and antispam software "There's a greater interest in writing viruses than ever before," SophosSenior Technica...

After a growth surge that contributed to the decline in market share ofMicrosoft Internet Explorer (IE) for the first time in six years, usageof the Mozilla browser flattened out during much of this month "The general trend over the last two weeks, at least, seems to havemostly flattened out," Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory, aSan Dieg...

Hewlett Packard has issued a statement calling a two-year-old internal memo that has been circulating on the Internet and raises fears that Microsoft would mount a litigation campaign to "shut down open-source software" now outdated and largely irrelevant The memo dated June 3, 2002, a copy of which was obtained by LinuxInsider, has been circulatin...

Microsoft has formed a new Media/Entertainment & Technology Convergence Group, a move analysts say is calculated to build trust between the Redmond, Washington, technology giant and the media and entertainment industries. "Clearly Microsoft is trying to reach out to the companies that own rights to digital media because having that media compatibl...