Despite Apple’s well-publicised claims that Macs are safer than their PC-based rivals, security expert Charlie Miller, author of The Mac Hacker’s Handbook, says that "Snow Leopard's more secure than [previous release] Leopard, but it's not as secure as Vista or Windows 7." Mr Miller says that Apple missed an opportunity to make Snow Leopard more secure when it ignored the security developments Microsoft had made three years ago in building Windows Vista. He points to a system called address space layout randomization (ASLR), which "randomly assigns data to memory to make it tougher for attackers to determine the location of critical operating system functions, and thus make it harder for them to craft reliable exploits." Mr Miller says that Leopard’s ASLR was substandard, and Apple have failed to address the issues. He said: "Apple didn't change anything. It's the exact same ASLR as in Leopard, which means it's not very good." He had made the same criticisms when Leopard was originally released. He concedes, however, that Apple have plugged some security holes, notably in QuickTime.

At the moment, says Mr Miller, Mac users are far less likely to get hacked than PC users. However, that is simply due to numbers: there aren’t enough Macs to make it worthwhile for hackers. He says: "It's harder to write exploits [hacks] for Windows than the Mac, but all you see are Windows exploits. "That's because if [the hacker] can hit 90 per cent of the machines out there, that's all he's gonna do. It's not worth him nearly doubling his work just to get that last 10 per cent." However, Snow Leopard has still outshone both Leopard and the previous system Tiger in first-week sales, by a distance. It has sold twice as many copies as Leopard did in its first week, and almost four times as many as Tiger. (www.telegraph.co.uk)

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Eco-friendly vehicles aren't something new today, but Taxius Animalus is a completely different story. This concept car represents an all-electric taxi that has six wheels and was designed to be able to pass through off road terrain. The design is credited to Francis Gomes from Turin, Italy.

The vehicle might be far from being produced for the masses, but its design is definitely worth highlighting. It is worth mentioning that the taxis used today emit a lot of gases everyday and a large portion of those gasses are wasted when taxis wait for passengers or are stuck in traffic jams. Taxius Animalus is not just eco-friendly, it is also capable of transporting people to areas where normal taxis would never pass using its six wheel track resembling that of a tank, informs Tuvie. You can find more information about cars at www.InfoNIAC.com - please check the links at the bottom of the story.

The unnamed analyst told Barron's that he had seen a prototype of the device, and believes it will be available in November following an official September launch. The source said that the wider computer industry had slowed production on their own touch-screen tablet devices to see what kind of gadget Apple produced. Such is Apple's reputation as a trendsetter, that other companies are keen to see how Apple implements the technology before proceeding with their own devices. "It's close enough now to a final design that in Asia, there's no other product in the waiting room or in the bullpen," said the analyst. "There are dozens of [original device makers] making products for Lenovo and other PC makers that are all waiting to see what the Apple product is."

The touch-screen tablet, dubbed the MacBook touch by Apple fans, is expected to have a 10in touch-screen and be similar in look and feel to a large iPod touch. Experts expect it to cost around $800 (£500), and to be positioned as a home media hub, capable of streaming content and services in much the same way as Apple TV does, and doubling as a games console. Although Apple has refused to comment on the rumour and speculation surrounding the launch of a possible touch-screen tablet, it has hinted that it is exploring new product lines. Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, said on a recent earnings call that Apple was working on something "very innovative". Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive of Apple, is said to have been the driving force behind the tablet, despite a recent leave of absence from the company due to ill-health. Analysts believe the machine could even compete directly with Amazon's Kindle ebook reader by allowing users to download books, music and movies directly to the device over the Wi-Fi network. Apple is also said to be working on a new music initiative, code-named Cocktail, that will see all four major record labels – EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal – offer interactive booklets, sleeve notes, exclusive cover art and other digital assets with songs and albums purchased through Apple's iTunes Music Store. ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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A Boston jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay a total of $US675,000 for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing network. The figure of $US22,500 per song is closer to the $US222,000 award in the first Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial than the $1.92 million figure from her second trial, but of course they're all ridiculously high penalities. The defendant's case was hamstrung from the start by the judge having ruled out the Fair Use defence to the RIAA firms' claims of copyright infringement and later having directed the jury that it could only return a guilty verdict because the defendant admitted liablity on the witness stand. After three hours of deliberations the jury came up with the stonking fine, which was actually smaller than many had predicted might have been assessed.

Tenenbaum's attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson told Ars Technica, "it's a bankrupting award." He also said things might have gone differently at trial had the defence been allowed to argue Fair Use. Tenenbaum said that he doesn't have the ability to pay the judgment and that he'll be filing for bankruptcy if the award stands. Of course the RIAA is happy. This is the second high profile case that has actually gone to court and it has proven that the way the law stands P2P users can end up paying thousands of times the cost of a $US1 track if they stick it on a P2P site. Judge Gertner has previously said she will hold a post-trial proceeding to determine whether the size of the award violates the US Constitution.

( www.atomicmpc.com.au )

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A third of people in the European Union say they have never used the internet, according to an EU study published today. The report found that 25 per cent of Europeans had never used a computer before, while 40 per cent had no internet access at home. Almost 33 per cent of those with no internet access said they didn't feel they had a need for it, while one in four said they couldn't afford it. The findings were revealed in a report, commissioned and published by the European Union, in to the state of the digital economy in member countries. It concluded that digital products and services could play a significant role in lifting Europe out of the current financial crisis. The study reveals that almost 80 per cent of EU citizens access the internet using a high-speed broadband connection, with young people aged between 16 and 24 the biggest web users, while those aged 65 and over, and the unemployed, were the least active online.

One in three British youngsters aged between 16 and 24 said they would not be willing to pay for online services such as digital music downloads, although 10 per cent said they had paid for such online services in the past. The report, entitled Digital Competitiveness, found that almost three-quarters of all European youngsters in this age group were using what it called "advanced" online services to create and share content over the web, on sites such as YouTube. Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for information society and media, said governments should focus on freeing up the internet for these "super-users". "To release the economic potential of these digital natives, we must make access to digital content an easy and fair game," she said. "These young people are intensive internet users and also highly demanding consumers. "We should seize the opportunity of a new generation of Europeans who will soon be calling the shots in the European marketplace." ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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The latest invention of researchers from Vermont is hedonometer, a device that can estimate the level of happiness. Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth were the ones who developed the software that gather sentences from different blogs and Tweets and then identifies the days that were the happiest and saddest throughout the last several years. According to Peter Dodds, a scientist at the University of Vermont, the goal was to take advantage of the increasing popularity of blogs and Twitter and come up with a tool that would be able to estimate the emotional signal from a group of people. The staring point was the website WeFeelFine.org that examines 2.3 million blogs, searching for sentences that start with the words "I feel" or "I am feeling". The words that followed were then rated on a scale from 1 to 9. Researchers managed to rank 1,034 words, with "triumphant" having the highest score of 8.87 and "hostage" the lowest - 2.20. By gathering 10 million sentences over that last few years, researchers estimated the daily level of happiness, reports Discovery News.

It wasn't a surprise when then found that the happiest days are the weekends and holidays. In general the happiest days of the last several years were the election day and the inauguration of US President Barack Obama. You can find more information about the happiest day and the like her at www.InfoNIAC.com - please check the links at the bottom of the article. Using their latest invention, researchers found that during these two days people most often wrote sentences that contained the words "proud" and "pride". The software showed that the saddest days were the anniversaries of 9-11 and the death of pop star Michael Jackson. Scientists applied their latest invention to Tweets to be able to estimate the level of happiness besides the United States (90 percent of all analyzed blogs were from the States). But there are some drawbacks in the software. If someone posts a message that says "I am not happy", it will identify it as a happy statement. Besides, the majority of users who write on blogs and Tweet are younger than the overall population. (www.infoniac.com )

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The Marines had already banned the use of social media on military networks but issued a more detailed order this week defining which sites were out of bounds and noting possible exceptions to the rule, a Marine Corps spokesman, Lieutenant Craig Thomas said. "These Internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," the Marine Corps said in an order posted on its website. "The very nature of SNS (social networking sites) creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts opsec (operational security), comsec (communications security)... at an elevated risk of compromise," the order said.

Those marines whose assignments may require access to social media could apply for a waiver, it said. Marines working in criminal investigations, press relations and recruiting have a need to use social media to carry out their duties and would likely be granted access, Mr Thomas said. But he said "social networking sites have always been banned in the Marine Corps." The Defence Department meanwhile confirmed it was carrying out a formal review of its policies on the use of social networking sites. In a July 31 memo, the deputy secretary of defence, William Lynn, said he had asked the Pentagon's chief information officer to draw up policy options examining the threats and benefits of so-called Web 2.0 capabilities. The memo acknowledges how social networking sites have proved valuable for recruitment, press relations and sharing information with allies and among military families.

"However, as with any Internet-based capabilities, there are implementation challenges and operational risks that must be understood and mitigated," the memo said. The policy review comes as other branches of the armed services have embraced social media with enthusiasm, seeing the sites as a means of reaching a wider audience and spreading information within the military. The US Army has set up a new office for online social media but the military has struggled to balance security concerns with demands to modernise its communications. Security rules have been blamed for stifling blogging by soldiers from the battlefront, even as some senior commanders write blogs or maintain a Facebook page. ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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