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PCMag has an interesting interview with Mike Nash, "corporate vice president of the Security Business & Technology Unit (SBTU) at Microsoft Corp", questioning him on the recent M$ security debacle, and it's upcoming SP2 release for Windows XP.

MJM: Even if Windows does have fewer vulnerabilities than other operating systems, there's a perception from people I've talked to?and I've talked to a lot of people?that there are more viruses and more spyware aimed at Windows than at Mac OS or Linux. Would you agree?

MN: There are a lot of viruses aimed at Linux and other platforms as well. But with Windows, the number is larger.

The entire interview can be read here.

In the wake of all the hullaballoo over the IE flaws, Mozilla and Opera have also announced major flaws in their browsers. While Mozilla have also announced a patch, Opera are yet to do so.

The Mozilla Foundation has issued patches for a flaw in its browsers that could allow an attacker to execute existing applications on a Windows XP machine. Researchers have also discovered a bug in Opera Software ASA's browser that could be exploited to make users falsely believe they are visiting a trusted website, such as a banking site.

A database collating advisories from various sources, has collected 54 vulnerability advisories for IE 6.x during 2003 and 2004, 42 percent of which were "highly critical " or "extremely critical", and 32 percent of which granted system access. Opera 7.x had 26 bugs, 17 percent of which were highly or extremely critical, and Mozilla 1.3 and later had a total of 12 advisories, none of which were more than moderately critical.

PC Advisor has this piece.

Silicon India notes that Antrix corporation (as in Anthariksh corporation..), ISRO's commercial entity, has bagged an order with a German firm to provide launch services for a 312-kg scientific satellite named Agile.

The Agile, a 320-kg satellite, is to be placed in a nominal 550-km near- equatorial orbit during May 2005 by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, Chauhan said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

"The launch service, when successfully carried out, will be a major international launch for PSLV at an internationally competitive price," he said.

The article can be read in its (rather brief) entirety here.

India's annual budget report was announced yesterday by the finance minister P.Chidambaram. The Economic Times is carrying a report highlighting the major changes in each sector.

Computers have been exempted from excise duty. Stand alone Central Processing Units (CPUs) will also be eligible for the exemption. Parts captively consumed in the factory of the manufacture of computers have also been exempted from excise duty.

Read the full article here. A visual presentation, albeit one in poor taste, is also available here.

Venue: Asan Memorial School, Anderson Road, Greams Road (Intersection),Chennai 6.

Date : 10th and 11th July 2004
Time : 10AM to 5PM
Entry F(R)EE, All are Welcome :-)

Agenda:
1. Linux Demo
2. Linux Installations
3. Linux Q and A Session
4. Linux Movie Show

Books & CDs will be sold. More up-to-date information will always be available on the ChennaiLUG website.

Chennai based IMSc's supercomputer - Kabru, has been officially recognised by the Top500 survey, at No.257.

But one of the surprises in the June 2004 Top 500, is `Kabru', the do-it-yourself cluster Linux supercomputer assembled at Chennai's Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), just two months ago. It has been ranked no. 257 with a maximum computational speed of 959 Giga FLOPS (or billion floating point operations per second) and a peak speed of 1382.4 GFLOPS. The peak speed is achieved when the machine is fully stretched, but this may not be sustainable for long. The peak speed makes this machine, a `teraflop' (trillions of operations per second) supercomputer.

There are 6 more India-based supercomputers in the Top 500 but unlike the IMSc machine, they have not been indigenously assembled, but are commercial machines imported from the U.S., and deployed by industry here. Beside Tech Pacific Exports and PCS Trading which have each, a HP Superdome and Geoscience which has deployed two IBM Blade Centers and an IBM xSeries, the other supercomputer being used in India is another IBM xSeries, credited to a "Semiconductor Company", and thought to be with Intel, Bangalore. The last is slightly faster than the `desi' machine at 1196.41 GFLOPS maximum.

The Washington Post reports that a kids website named Googles.com has filed suit against Google, to ensure that Google does not infringe upon it's business interests any time in the future.

Stelor Productions filed documents with the Commerce Department's Patent and Trademark Office yesterday opposing an application from Google Inc. to broaden its trademark rights. Stelor said the similarity between the names is driving away potential investors and confusing customers. The company is challenging the search engine's request to use the Google name on children's books and other items, such as umbrellas, mouse pads and tote bags, that "are not expressly limited to adults."

"We want them staying out of the children's space," Esrig said. "Anything that could potentially be a children's item as far as I'm concerned is legally ours."

The entire story can be reached here.

ZDNet has an interesting story on a class-action that has been initiated against online-auction giant eBay, over billing inconsistencies.

According to the complaint, Cerreta and Spaulding, who hail from Florida and Ohio, respectively, were charged twice the amount they actually owed eBay for handling auctions of goods they were selling. The eBay users assert that the funds were then inappropriately drawn from bank accounts and credit cards they had registered with the company. In addition, the two customers said that eBay threatened to suspend their user accounts over the disputed charges.

In the suit, Spaulding also said she was threatened with jail when she attempted to protest outside the user conference, which was held in New Orleans. A copy of the lawsuit has been published on the Web site of the law firm that the two eBay members are using, Fazio & Micheletti, of San Mateo, Calif.

The entire story can be read here. eBay recently acquired Indian auction site - Baazee.com.

Simson Garfinkel, has published his review on Google's Gmail webmail system. He considers it as a sound advertisement for the thin-client concept, once that Sun has been trying to revitalise for a while now.

Gmail is different. For starters, it’s blindingly fast-so fast that it feels like it is running on your local computer and not in some data center. Click on a message’s subject and it instantly appears. When you are done reading a message you click “Archive”-the message is instantly stored, and you’re looking back at your inbox. (As with other Web-based mail systems, you can report spam simply by clicking “report spam.”)

Gmail’s anti-spam system is nothing short of phenomenal. I sent Gmail a copy of my entire inbox for two weeks-that’s 200 real messages a day plus 500 pieces of spam. My anti-spam system at home let through about 20 spams a day; Gmail let through fewer than 5. Gmail’s big advantage in the anti-spam department is its ability to harness the collective vigilance of all Gmail users. Once a message has been reported as spam by a few dozen users, Gmail’s servers can pull that message out of everybody else’s inbox.

Technology Review has this piece.

The Economic Times reports on a tie-up between Creative and an iTunes clone named Sound Buzz, which hopes to spearhead growth of fee-based music services in the South and South-east Asian regions.

The two companies are setting up online music stores in Singapore, Hong Kong and India – regions where knock-off CDs burned by sophisticated piracy syndicates or downloaded off the Internet for free are hammering sales of recorded music.

Soundbuzz.Com and Creative launched the first of their online stores in Singapore on Tuesday, offering 250,000 songs at S$1.99 ($1.16) each in a format designed for quick downloading into Creative's digital music players.

Incidentally, Soundbuzz has an Indian influence, and was formed in 1999 :

Soundbuzz are a group of professionals spanning the Music, Internet and Finance industries and was co-founded in December 1999 by four partners including Sudhanshu Sarronwala (ex MTV Asia Managing Director), Shabnam Melwani (ex MTV Asia Communications Director), Justin Reis & Simon Lower.

I don't know how far they plan to get with such a woefully designed website :S The full story can be read here.