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Microsoft Admits OpenOffice.org Is a Contender 480

Posted by CmdrTaco from the first-you-ignore-them dept.
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Microsoft has unwittingly admitted that OpenOffice.org is a rival, by launching a three-minute video of customers explaining why they switched to Microsoft Office from OpenOffice.org. Glyn Moody writes: 'You don't compare a rival's product with your own if it is not comparable. And you don't make this kind of attack video unless you are really, really worried about the growing success of a competitor. [Microsoft] has now clearly announced that OpenOffice.org is a serious rival to Microsoft Office, and should be seriously considered by anyone using the latter.'"
Games

Valve Announces Dota 2 128

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-improved-ways-for-people-to-call-you-terrible dept.
RulerOf writes "Just over a year after hiring IceFrog, the lead developer of the wildly popular DotA Allstars mod for Warcraft III, and the speculation surrounding Valve's recent trademark filing for the 'DotA' name, Valve has officially announced Dota 2. Gameplay of Dota 2 is being ported 'exactly' from the current DotA Allstars and includes every hero, but vast improvements are being made to the game including VoIP, a coaching system, in-game rewards, and AI that takes over for disconnected players. Lastly, it all runs on top of the Source engine. (GameInformer's website appears to be struggling right now though, as they had an exclusive on this story.)"
Iphone

iPhone 4 Screens Break 82% More Than 3GS 348

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-that-kind-of-crack dept.
A surprising number of readers have submitted linkage to a story discussing a recently released study that proclaims that iPhone 4 glass breaks way more often than the 3GS's. Although the chart that I found more surprising was the one that said almost 9% of iPhone 3GS screens crack after a year.
Iphone

The Surprising Statistics Behind Flash and Apple 630

Posted by CmdrTaco from the math-is-hard dept.
Barence writes "PC Pro's Tom Arah has dug up some statistics that cast severe doubt over Steve Jobs' assertion that Flash is the technology of the past, and Apple's iOS is the platform of the future. He quibbles with Net Applications' assertion that iOS growth is 'massive,' considering that mobile accounts for only 2.6% of web views, and the iOS share stands at only 1.1%. By comparison, Silverlight penetration now stands at 51% while 97% of web surfers have Flash installed, according to Stat Owl. 'At least when Bill Gates held the web to ransom he had the decency to first establish a dominant position,' Arah claims. 'In Steve Jobs' case, with only 1.1% market share, the would-be emperor isn't even wearing any clothes.'"
Advertising

Anti-Product Placement For Negative Branding 130

Posted by samzenpus from the touch-of-death dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Product placement to promote your brand just isn't enough any more. These days, apparently, some companies are resorting to anti-product placement in order to get competitors' products in the hands of 'anti-stars.' The key example being Snooki from Jersey Shore, who supposedly is being sent handbags by companies... but the bags being sent are of competitors' handbags as a way to avoid Snooki carrying their own handbag, and thus potentially damaging their brand."
Firefox

Submission + - Latest Firefox 4 Beta Enables GPU Acceleration (mozilla.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Beta 5 of Firefox 4 has been released and brings with it Direct2D acceleration enabled by default on Windows Vista and Windows 7, a new audio API to read and write raw audio data within the browser, and HTTP Strict Transport Security. An add-on called Grafx Bot has also been released to assist with GPU acceleration testing. Accelerated compositing is also in progress but is not yet enabled in the beta releases.
Google

Submission + - Primary WHOIS Servers Hacked, Apparently For Lulz (sophos.com)

Submitted by Titoxd
Titoxd writes: Sophos reports that the primary WHOIS servers for the web at whois-servers.net have been hacked, and that several high-profile websites (such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, MySpace, and others) have had their WHOIS records altered. The attack seems to be more of a nuisance than anything more serious.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Previewing and Tweaking Ubuntu 10.10 (linuxtrends.com) 5

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: On September 1st, the Ubuntu development project issued the beta version of Ubuntu 10.10 — aka Maverick Meerkat — as a step toward achieving a stable release by October 10th. This quick test of the beta by LinuxTrends suggests that the new version of Ubuntu might be 'the most user-friendly, full-featured desktop Linux distribution ever.' In addition to showing Ubuntu 10.10's installation process, desktop, menus, and list of default applications, the review touts the benefits of using Ubuntu Tweak to add more functionality and modify various GNOME settings and attributes.
Hardware

Submission + - Hands-on with the iPad alternatives (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: This week's IFA show has seen a flurry of Android-based alternatives to the iPad emerge from leading manufacturers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab made a strong first impression on PC Pro's reviewer. The 7in tablet's TFT screen "beams forth with rich, saturated colours and wide, wide viewing angles", the device is capable of Full HD playback and the TouchWiz UI is "clearly intended to draw customers away from the iFamily". Elsewhere, ViewSonic has launched a pair of 7in and 10in tablets, the larger of which dual boots into either Android or Windows 7. "Our first moments with Windows 7 were surprisingly painless, too: we expected the Atom processor and 1GB of memory to be horrendously sluggish, but it wasn’t the case," PC Pro reports. Finally, Toshiba's 10.1in Folio 100 marries Android 2.2 with Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform to deliver "mighty graphics crunching power". The build quality left a little to desire, though. "The 14mm thick chassis feels lightweight, and even relatively gentle twisting motions left the Folio’s plastic body creaking under the stress."
The Internet

Submission + - 4chan Does Something Nice (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Members of 4chan aren't known for doing things that are cute and heart-warming and when they decide to go after someone, it's typically to subject them to ridicule. But not this time. Someone at 4chan decided that the Internet should get together and wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday, and soon Lashua's local branch of the American Legion was deluged by birthday calls from people as far away as Sweden. The account someone set up for Mr. Lashua's birthday on facebook had 3,956 "likes" and over 500 comments, most of which wished him a happy birthday and thanked him for his military service. It's not clear how 4chan originally came across a photo of Lashua, but a member of the site posted a snapshot of a flyer that was on the bulletin board at a store in Ashburnham, Massachusetts asking for guests to attend the nonagenarian's birthday on at the American Legion hall and the post took off. In contrast to their usual behavior, 4chan members "were giving him nice phone calls and sending him nice notes" and discouraging those who wanted to do something stupid or mean. "They were all being.. well, shucks, awful nice.""
Google

Submission + - Nasty Data-Stealing Bug Haunts Internet Explorer 8 (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: There's an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 that enables simple data-stealing attacks by Web-based attackers and could lead to an attacker hijacking a user's authenticated session on a third-[arty site. The flaw, which a researcher said may have been known since 2008, lies in the way that IE 8 handles CSS style sheets.

The vulnerability can be exploited through an attack scenario known as cross-domain theft, and researcher Chris Evans originally brought the problem to light in a blog post in December. At the time, all of the major browsers were vulnerable to the attack, but since then, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera all have implemented a simple defense mechanism. The upshot of this is that if a victim has visited a given Web site, authenticated himself to the site, and then visits a site controlled by an attacker, the attacker would have the ability to hijack the user's session and extract supposedly confidential data. This attack works on the latest, fully patched release of IE8, Microsoft's flagship browser.
Spam

Spammers Attack Apple's Ping Social Network 85

Posted by Soulskill from the strict-inevitabilities dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Scammers and spammers have deluged the new Ping musical social network, created by Apple and built into the new version of iTunes. Sophos researchers have found that Ping is being overrun by scams and spam messages. 'Apple seems to have anticipated a certain degree of malfeasance, as profile pictures that you upload will not appear until approved by Apple. They are likely filtering for other offensive content as well, so they probably have means in place they could use to stop the spam.' It's ironic that the most common scams on Ping right now revolve around Apple's own iPhone." The Sophos blog post adds that Apple is doing their best to clamp down on the spam, manually deleting many of the offending messages for now. Reader Tootech adds that Facebook integration was quickly disabled, possibly because of blocked API access.

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