began ticking down yesterday. If you’re still using the ancient, legacy version of Windows, it’s time to consider your next move. . When support for Windows XP ends, Microsoft will cease developing security patches for the venerable OS. As old and great as the OS is, new vulnerabilities impact Windows XP on a regular basis—including many critical flaws that could allow an attacker to take over or cripple a PC running it.
Rural telecom and broadband providers in the United States face big challenges in connecting their most remote customers, as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission transitions away from old telephone subsidies, a group of providers told lawmakers. The FCC's eligibility rules for carrier subsidies under the new Connect America Fund, a broadband-focused revamp of the agency's Universal Service Fund, seem to have arbitrary caps and target carriers serving the most rural areas, said John Strode, vice president of external affairs for Ritter Communications, an Arkansas voice and broadband provider. High-cost carriers have their subsidies capped under the new fund, he noted during a Senate hearing Tuesday. The high-cost carriers are capped "with no examination" by the FCC of why their costs are higher than other carriers, he said. Some carriers have legitimate reasons for high costs, because "some service areas are very, very expensive to serve," Strode told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's communications subcommittee. The new FCC rules, adopted in November 2011, make it difficult for rural carriers to plan ahead and to invest in new services, Strode said. Ritter has cut costs and laid off workers as a way to offset changes in telecom subsidies and declines in intercarrier compensation rates, he said.
Cellphone cameras make amateur photographers out of all of us. We can relate to making blurred photos, which we normally then delete and forget about. But sometimes those blurry photos contain important information that we must retrieve. In these instances, it might be worth firing up the free SmartDeblur to see if it can work its magic on the picture. SmartDeblur is a small portable app available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It enables you to work your magic on photos by tweaking a couple of sliders back and forth which changes the colors and contrasts to make the picture slightly clearer. In the end, it won't produce a perfect high-definition picture worthy of your photo album, but if you're looking to make some information a lot clearer, then this app can probably make some headway. on his website for anyone interested in reading up on the technical side of the app. The great thing about this app is that if you don't understand the technical side of things, or you don't want to know, you're still covered. The intuitive user interface makes using SmartDeblur absurdly easy. Simply download the portable app, unzip everything into a new folder (making sure you preserve the folder structure), and start up the app. You are provided with an example image if you want to practice before trying the app on your own pictures.
It’s Patch Tuesday time again. This month Microsoft has . Nine is a reasonably high number of updates, however, only two of them are rated as Critical. So, it’s actually a little more laid back than most months, but there’s still cause for concern. There are seven security bulletins rated as Important, which affect a range of platforms and services including Active Directory, the Windows antimalware client, and the Windows Kernel. The two Critical security bulletins apply to Internet Explorer and Remote Desktop. Be prepared—most of the patches require a reboot. Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of first. “This month, the most important bulletin to apply to your infrastructure is MS13-028, which contains a new release of Internet Explorer (IE) covering all versions of the browser starting with IE6 going to IE10, and also including Windows RT, the operating system for mobile devices and tablets.” Andrew Storms, director of security operations for (a Tripwire company), agrees that Internet Explorer deserves attention, but adds that Internet Explorer lacks its usual “patch immediately” urgency. Microsoft has assigned the underlying IE flaws with an exploit index rating of two, which indicates that Microsoft believes they are exceptionally difficult to exploit, and there’s not likely to be a successful exploit in the next 30 days.
Keeping track of all the online videos you want to watch can be a challenge...especially if you're not always in front of your PC. Sometimes, you see a video while you're on your computer, but you just can't remember what or where it is by the time you launch the browser on your smartphone. Enter DivX Stash, . This free service helps you create a queue of videos that you can watch later, either on your PC or mobile device. It's a very handy tool, and one that works well—most of the time. To use DivX Stash, you start on your browser, preferably on a PC or Mac. You must log in with your Facebook account and install the browser extension or add-on to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You then surf the Web as usual. When you come across a video on a DivX Stash-supported site (including YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Funny or Die, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, College Humor, and more) , you'll see a button underneath the video that says "Stash It." Clicking this adds the video to your Stash, which you can access via the Web on your computer or via mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. I tested it on my iPhone and iPad. From your Stash, you can click a video title and watch the video within the DivX Stash interface. DivX Stash doesn’t download and store the videos offline. It simply stores the video URL and brings it up within its own app. That means you'll need an active data connection if you're using a smartphone or tablet, and spotty service will greatly impact the quality of the video you see. In addition to the videos you stash, DivX Stash also creates a feed of all the videos found in your Facebook feed. These are all of the videos posted by your friends and made available to you on Facebook. It's nice to have them all in one scannable list, but it's unfortunate that you cannot search the list to find a specific video you may have seen. Instead, you have to scroll through the videos, which appear with those most recently posted near the top, to find what you're looking for.
