thefickler writes “Clearly, the rise of free antivirus is starting to worry Symantec, with one of their top executives warning consumers not to rely on free antivirus software (including Microsoft’s Security Essentials). ‘If you are only relying on free antivirus to offer you protection in this modern age, you are not getting the protection you need to be able to stay clean and have a reasonable chance of avoiding identity theft,’ said David Hall, a Product Manager for Symantec. According to Hall, there is a widening gap between people’s understanding of what protection they need and the threats they’re actually facing.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At first glance, Canonical is an operating system company — built around Ubuntu Linux. But take a closer look at Canonical’s moves during the first half of 2009, and you’ll find the company has increasingly bet its revenue stream on cloud, online and consulting/support services. Here’s some perspective.

Ponca City, We love you writes “David Ropeik writes at MSNBC that there’s a lot more to making a basic firework display than putting a fuel source and an oxidizer together. Pyrotechnic chemists, who are trying to create bedazzlement instead of bang, don’t want their work to explode, but to burn for a bit, so it gives a good visual show. To achieve the desired effect, the sizes of the particles of each ingredient have to be just right, and the ingredients have to be blended together just right. To slow down the burning, chemists use big grains of chemicals, in the range of 250 to 300 microns, and they don’t blend the ingredients together very well, making it harder for the fuel and oxidizer to combine and burn, thus producing a longer and brighter effect. Surprisingly few emitters are used in pyrotechnics, and there are no commercially useful emitters in blue-green to emerald green in the 490-520 nm region. Energy from the fire in the basic fuel is transferred to the atoms of the colorant chemicals, exciting the electrons in those chemicals into a higher energy state. As they cool down, they move back to a lower state of energy, emitting light. So, you actually see the colors in fireworks as they’re cooling down. To get the really tricky shapes, like stars or hearts, the colorant pellets are pasted on a piece of paper in the desired pattern. That paper is put in the middle of the shell with explosive charges above it, and below. When those charges go off, they burn up the paper, and send the ignited colorant pellets out in the same pattern they were in on the sheet of paper, spreading wider apart as they fly.”

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The SCP protocol, which runs on port 22, is similar to the BSD rcp protocol, however unlike rcp, data is encrypted during transfer, to avoid potential packet sniffers extracting usable information from the data packets. The protocol itself does not provide authentication and security; it relies on the underlying protocol, SSH, to provide these features. You can use scp to copy files between remote hosts using secure a connexion.

By default, Firefox (or Swiftfox) crashes when trying to view a full-screen video on say… YouTube. At least for me it used to crash until I found a fix. If that is the case for you also, you may want to read on.

In this article we will be transferring data from an MS Access database to a database on SQLServer 2008. Both the source of data and the destination database are on the same machine, in this case a computer box running Windows XP Pro. There are two versions of the Import and Export Wizard and in this example the 32 bit version is used.

It goes without saying that nobody wants to be in the hospital. Bland food, no privacy, and gowns that leave nothing to the imagination — not to mention the procedures being performed — don’t exactly make ones visit a relaxing trip to the spa. We all know, however, that Linux can make anything better, and now, whether you’re recovering from a lung transplant or liposuction, Linux is there to make your life in the infirmary just a little bit sunnier.

schliz writes “Researchers behind the world’s largest quantum encrypted network said the technology could secure business networks inside six years. The prototype Quantum Key Distribution network was built by the Secure Communication Based On Quantum Cryptography (SECOQC) group last year. It is described in a journal paper published by the Institute of Physics this week, which includes details on how it is based on the trusted-repeater paradigm.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tonight the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was opened with a party sponsored by Kubuntu’s very own Canonical. Stickers, t-shirts and beer were all given out to contributors and users of KDE, Gnome and any other free software environment. Some converts were made from the local Canary island population who were enthused by the spirit of freedom.

Task organiser that’s more about tasks than organisation

iPhone App Review  Task manager apps all pose the question: ‘How organised are you?’ They imply that you’re not very organised at all, or you wouldn’t be considering software to help you get on top of things.…