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The Apple QuickTime zero-day exploits are also targeting systems running Apple Safari 3.0 on Windows, Firefox, and Microsoft's Vista, XP, Internet Explorer 6, and IE7, according to a posting late Monday night on the SANS Internet Storm Center blog.

SANS also reminded people to undo the workarounds once Apple develops a patch for the security problem. Otherwise, the QuickTime streams won't work on your system.

Security researchers are warning that exploit code has been published that can take advantage of an extremely critical security flaw in a protocol supported … Read more

Oil officials see limit looming on production. It's not an oil peak; it's an oil plateau. The Wall Street Journal reports on impending restrictions on oil extraction. Now both oil industry skeptics and execs are seeing limits. Recently, Don Paul, CTO of Chevron (not the presidential candidate), told us that the world has consumed 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and will go to 1.5 trillion by 2012. The world only had 3 trillion barrels to begin with.

A deeply green city confronts its energy needs and nuclear worries. The New York Times reports on the struggle … Read more

It's one of those as you like it stories. We like the music that we like. Me, I hated the sound of Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" CD that came out last year, and Bob wasn't too crazy about it either. "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like--static." That's what Dylan told Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone magazine, September 7, 2006.

I dissed Modern Times for its muddled sound. Dylan's vocal was … Read more

We're still waiting for Sony to hurry up and develop that sugar-powered battery for our mobile phones, but something like this might have to suffice in the meantime.

Philips is developing a handset for the Asian market that it says will provide 17 hours of talk time on a single charge and, on standby, will last for two months, according to SCI FI Tech. And it doesn't look like one of those one of those industrial-strength survival radios either.

The Xenium 9@9 has all the other usual appointments, including a color display, VGA camera, microSD card slot, … Read more

This item is something of a mystery to us, for we know of no one who does anything but work at their office desk. But for some reason Pyramat, which manufactures game chairs for the home, has created a version for the cubicle as well.

At first glance the "Pyramat Wireless PC Gaming Chair 2.1" looks like a typical black vinyl chair that can be found at any OfficeMax, complete with pneumatic lift. But it actually has speakers built into the headrest and controls discreetly tucked away in one of the armrests, according to Coolest-Gadgets.

A word … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Red Hat plans to begin a private beta test of new open-source messaging software next month, hoping to shake up a section of the server market currently dominated by proprietary rivals and give the Linux seller a new revenue source.

Server messaging software's purpose is--bear with me here for a moment--sending messages. That may sound obvious, but doing it reliably and in high volume is essential to large-scale networked business tasks such as trading stocks, where a brokerage that can place buy and sell orders faster than a rival can make real money.

Indeed, Red Hat's APQM … Read more

Rupert Murdoch plans to give away the digital version of the Wall Street Journal, making News Corp. the latest company to give up on paid subscriptions.

"We are studying it and we expect to make that free," Murdoch was quoted by the Associated Press as he spoke to a group of investors in Australia. He said that "instead of having one million (subscribers)," the company will receive readers "in every corner of the earth."

Murdoch is banking that a free model for WSJ.com, which recently announced that it had topped the 1 million-subscriber … Read more

As much as I like open source, there is something to be said for not having to install or maintain applications. But that doesn't mean it's smart or realistic to move all the applications in your enterprise to on-demand delivery.

As Gary Rivlin writes in today's NY Times "few software companies make the move to platform status" let alone the ones that have no footprint on the desktop. This is something I noted back in September after the Dreamforce event which reinforced my belief that enterprise software isn't going anywhere--at least not infrastructure software.

In the case of infrastructure (like networking and integration), and desktop environments (like Windows) it's hard to get excited about doing everything through a browser. Not that it?s a bad idea, but as I learned on my trip to Japan last week it's not entirely feasible at this point to do everything via the internet. Rivlin writes:

And yet for Benioff, the company's chief executive, that is not enough. He wants to turn Salesforce into a platform like Microsoft's Windows operating system, a product so popular that it is the foundation for a veritable ecosystem of software developers.

If you at the on-demand subscription offerings from Microsoft and SAP, both mediocre by comparison to Salesforce.com or SugarCRM (also available open source) the main advantage they have is that the existing user base is tied to a set of desktop applications which reinforce the desktop computing paradigm. … Read more

Following weeks of rumors that his ousting was on the way, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons announced his resignation effective January 1. On Monday, the media giant's board of directors announced that it has elected Jeffrey Bewkes, currently the company's president and chief operating officer, to Parsons' post.

"Dick Parsons has done an outstanding job during his tenure as chief executive officer," said Robert C. Clark, the board's chairman of the nominating and governance committee. "The board is grateful for Dick's exceptional leadership in turning this company around and putting it on a … Read more