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Comodo Firewall rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor’s Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It’s easy to install and use and passes the industry’s most stringent firewall “leak” tests. Unlike some other ‘free’ firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are FREE forever!

Comodo Personal Firewall 3.0 – System Requirements
* Windows XP (SP2) – 32 bit version
* Windows XP – 64 bit version
* Windows Vista – 32 and 64 bit versions
* 64 Mb RAM
* 35 MB hard disk space for 32-bit versions and 55 MB for 64-bit versions

Download Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.24.368 – Vista 32/XP (Full)
Download Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.25.378 – Vista 64 (Full)

Version 3.0.25.378 : 30 May, 2008
* Fixed! Windows Vista 64 UI Problems.
* Fixed! SafeSurf crashes applications on x64 based operating systems.

Comodo Firewall rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor’s Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It’s easy to install and use and passes the industry’s most stringent firewall “leak” tests. Unlike some other ‘free’ firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are FREE forever!

Comodo Personal Firewall 3.0 – System Requirements
* Windows XP (SP2) – 32 bit version
* Windows XP – 64 bit version
* Windows Vista – 32 and 64 bit versions
* 64 Mb RAM
* 35 MB hard disk space for 32-bit versions and 55 MB for 64-bit versions

Download Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.24.368 – Vista 32/XP (Full)
Download Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.24.368 – Vista 64 (Full)

Version 3.0.24.368 : 24th May, 2008
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall activation fails under some circumstances.

Version 3.0.23.364 : 22nd May, 2008
* NEW! COMODO SafeSurf Toolbar built on COMODO Memory Firewall technology.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall does not add files from network shares to pending list.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall does not log incoming ICMP packets properly.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall blocks everything when password protection is OFF and suppress options are ON.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall does not terminate active connections properly.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall firewall driver can not be installed properly in Vista operating systems.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall can be terminated when Windows XP is being shutdown.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall GUI does not appear properly on Windows Vista operating systems
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall GUI can truncate texts in 120 DPI.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall does not handle long filename properly.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall does not update the version correctly after being updated.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall crashes on exit.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall can cause BSODs when gameprotect rootkit triggers its self defense.
* FIXED! COMODO Firewall can not verify digital signatures.
* FIXED! Small problems in GUI.
* IMPROVED! Clean PC Mode and Safe Mode: Improvements that lead to small number of alerts and pending files.
* IMPROVED! Default Security policy so that Windows Updates do not lead to significant alerts.

This bad boy isn’t your daddy’s USB porn drive (but maybe it should be). It’s the real deal for keeping your data safe and secure.

The IronKey USB flash drive is one of the most secure devices I’ve ever worked with, but simultaneously tries to be–and achieves being–among the simplest to interact with in achieving that security. The product, from the eponymous company IronKey, comes in capacities from 1 GB to 8 GB that encrypts data five ways to Sunday while achieving government certification as tamper evident. A secured, anonymized version of Firefox is also onboard. Prices start at $79 including a one-year subscription for anonymous browsing; an 8 GB drive is $299…

For starters, there’s hardware AES encryption on board the sleek metal drive: there’s no software to install on a host computer, and all encryption happens within the drive. This dramatically improves the security profile. Encryption keys are stored only on the drive, and only unlocked when a password you create at the time you initialize the drive is entered. (IronKey lets you back that password up on their secure Web servers with additional layers of authentication in case you forget it; accessing your account requires a digital certificate stored on the IronKey.)

Enter the password incorrectly 10 times, and the hardware fries itself. Likewise, if an IronKey is physically tampered with in an attempt to access the on-board flash memory directly, the hardware wipes memory as well. Their tamper-resistance has led to FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validation by the U.S. and Canadian governments–physical tampering must be evident–and they’re working on Level 3, which requires countermeasures to attempts to disassemble the hardware…

A password manager that’s integrated into Firefox takes the oompf out of keylogging software by using a workaround to enter your Web data, making it possible to use a cafe or Kinko’s PC without worrying about having your details snarfed. IronKey’s version of Firefox also stores no temporary files on the host computer, and uses a secure proxy to tunnel browsing to its anonymized endpoints.

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2 please!

After months of financial statement teases and the initial reveal in an issue of Game Informer, Activision has officially released the first details of Guitar Hero 4, now known as Guitar Hero: World Tour. The game will be available this Fall on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. The same development teams that created Guitar Hero III are back on board with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions being developed by Neversoft, while Vicarious Visions is creating the Wii version and Budcat is bringing it to the PS2.

Guitar Hero: World Tour looks to be the beginning of a completely era for the Guitar Hero series. As was revealed by Game Informer, World Tour will feature a drumkit and microphone along with the Music Studio track editor and an eight-player Battle of the Bands mode. Any song created in the Music Studio can be shared with other gamers through the game’s online database GHTunes.

Other gameplay options will include a four-player “full band” mode (that can be played both online and locally) and singleplayer Career mode that can be played with any instrument. ..

Activision is saying that World Tour will feature the largest number of tracks in a music game ever. As of now, four bands have been confirmed to have a place in World Tour: Van Halen, Linkin Park, The Eagles and Sublime. And all of the songs will be master tracks; there will be no covers on Guitar Hero: World Tour. The game will also offer “significantly more localized downloadable music than ever before on all of the next-generation consoles.” So while it’s vaguely worded, it sounds like downloadable tracks are coming to the Wii as well as the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Finally, Activision has announced that the guitar controller will once again be redesigned, this time becoming “slick” and “more responsive.”

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In a single word, bitchin’.

Symantec claims its 2009 Internet Security products will have “zero impact” on PC performance…

“Fundamentally, consumers don’t want to be bothered at all. We’ve set as our goal zero-impact security,” she said…

Symantec claims one of the ways the product will make less demand on system resources is by scaling back on the amount of scanning. “Our new technology allows us to scan less,” claimed Chaffin. “We know which files are good files and we can scan those less.”

“If software runs on millions of systems, it’s going to be good software,” Chaffin added. “If software only runs on a small number of machines, chances are it’s bad.”

Is there not a chance malware writers will quickly cotton on to which applications Norton is scanning less frequently and target those? “If they modify a file in any way, we can scan,” claimed Mallon.

Norton will also use the past history of the user to gauge how much scanning is necessary. “If someone’s not been infected before, the chances of them being infected are low.”

Norton Internet Security 2009 and Antivirus 2009 will be out this autumn.

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NASA engineers will be holding their breaths Sunday, as a digging robot attempts a precarious landing on Mars’ surface.

NASA’s Phoenix Lander was launched in August and has traveled 122 million miles to Mars. It is a $457 million robotic spacecraft — equipped with a backhoe, cameras and a compact chemistry lab — that will attempt to find out whether the cold, forbidding surface of Mars could once have been warm enough for microbial life to exist on the planet.

Phoenix is scheduled to land Sunday evening at 7:38 p.m. ET. It must first separate from its rocket and then survive a harrowing seven-minute descent at 12,600 mph. It will then slow down to 5 mph to land in one piece on the planet’s unexplored north pole.

Mars has attracted more space missions than the rest of the solar system’s planets, but nearly two-thirds of all Mars missions have failed in some way.

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I’ve read or heard somewhere that the 2/3 value is true but the encompasses more than just the American attempts, whereas the American attempts are more of a 50-50 shot, still not the average you’d have high hopes for but better than 33%.

Ad-Aware provides protection from known Spyware including: Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components.

What’s New in 2008:
* Improved Threat Detection
o Spyware, Adware, Trojans & Hijackers
o Fraud Tools & Rogue Applications
o Password Stealers & Keyloggers
* Enhanced Rootkit removal system
* Faster Updates & Faster Scans
* Less Resource Usage for optimal computer performance
* Easy to Download, Install and Use
* Lavasoft ThreatWork submission tool
* Compatible with Windows Vista (32- and 64-bit)

More feature details:
* NEW! Extensive Detection Database – Bigger and better detection to guard your privacy against malware attacks.
* Advanced Code Sequence Identification (CSI) Technology – Precise detection of embedded malware including Trojans, worms, spyware, bots, and other forms of deceptive malware.
* NEW! Enhanced Rootkit Removal System – Rootkit detection technology to find and remove hidden threats.
* TrackSweep – Control your privacy by erasing tracks left behind while surfing the Web on multiple browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, with one easy click.
* Easy to Download, Install & Use – Effortlessly maneuver the complexities of malware detection and removal with our new user-friendly interface.
* NEW! Lavasoft ThreatWork – Directly submit suspicious files for analysis via ThreatWork, an alliance of global anti-spyware security volunteers actively fighting online threats.
* NEW! Faster Updates – Save precious time and maximize resource efficiency with faster download times.
* System Restore Point – Easily revert to your clean system to recover from a spyware attack.
* Free Updates – Protect against the latest forms of spyware and malware with free software feature updates and definitions file (threat) updates throughout the license duration.
* Free Support – Unlimited support from an extensive international network of Lavasoft security analysts and volunteers at the Lavasoft Support Forums.

Download Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.7 Final

An anonymous reader recommends a Computerworld article on a new report from Australian security vendor PC Tools. The company released figures on malware detection by its ThreatFire product, and in its user base 27% of Vista machines were compromised by at least one instance of malware. From the article:

“In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system [that] is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.”

Microsoft hasn’t responded yet to this report.

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Adobe Systems Inc. today rolled out a beta version of its Adobe Flash Player 10 (formerly called Astro) browser plug-in, which adds features to help designers and developers create special effects and cinematic Web experiences.

The new offering adds support for custom filters and effects created using Adobe’s Pixel Bender tool kit, Adobe said. The Pixel Bender technology is used in the company’s After Effects CS3 tool, which creates motion graphics and visual effects for film and broadcast.

“We’re doing things that really change the game of what’s possible on the Internet,” said Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager for Flash Player. “The community now has the ability to upgrade the capabilities of the player and create new types of effects and cinematic experiences that are not available with any other browser plug-in.”

The beta version of the player also includes native 3-D transformation and animation capabilities, an extensible rich-text layout, and graphics processing unit hardware acceleration, he added.

The new support for 3-D is “really 3-D for the rest of us,” Barclay noted. “It allows people to take what they know in the 2-D world and transform it into 3-D. It’s native so the performance is very fast, and it will not result in larger file sizes.”

New bit-rate streaming for video links between the Flash Player and intended future releases of Adobe’s Flash Media Server will automatically adjust video quality as bandwidth changes without having to rebuffer, the company said. “This will provide a seamless playback experience with no starting or stopping of video waiting for the stream to catch up,” Barclay said.

In addition, a new text engine in Flash Player 10 allows designers and developers to have more creative control over device font attributes such as rotation and style, Adobe said. The new version also adds more text layouts, like vertical and bidirectional, which support the creation of rich Internet applications like interactive e-books and online publications in additional languages, Barclay added.

The beta version of Adobe Flash Player 10 runs on the Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. The Adobe Pixel Bender Exchange is available for beta users to create custom effects for the Flash Player, according to the company.

The general release of Flash Player 10 is expected later this year.

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