Google stops censoring its Chinese site. Google has expressed its annoyance at the Chinese governments general progress on human rights, and specific attacks on email accounts for prominent human rights activists. The expression has come in the form of removing all the previously agreed blocks to search for politically inconvenient information. Sadly for the people in China even though they can now search the whole internet - the government firewall still blocks access to the information. All very sad. For the rest of us Google has uncovered a whoping great security flaw in Internet Explorer used in the exploit. At this time Microsoft and Google are trying to fix the problem...
France and Germany ditch Internet Explorer. In response to the Google-China situation France and Germany recommend avoiding Internet Explorer. For the rest of us it is business as usual. Keep anti-virus up to date, and avoid the too good to be true scams. Yet there are some some long term implications ... somewhat unsurprisingly Microsoft have for the first time officially recommended replacing Windows XP with Windows 7 in response to recent events. Also Linux could be the way to end our dependency on just one supplier who gave us Vista and all these bugs. Interesting times ahead. Best to keep your options open!
UK Governments Laptop Scheme Criticised. TalkTalk has heavily criticised the Government's plans to get low-income families on-line as "muddled thinking". Under the proposals the Government will pledge £300 million to offer low-income families free laptops and broadband access for a year. While TalkTalk claimed the scheme was laudable it has argued that other policies being introduced by the Government to fund its 2Mbits/sec broadband plans will serve to price families out of the broadband market.
Microsoft stops selling Office 2007. Microsoft have been found guilty of copyright infringement and have been instructed to withdraw sales of the product. Microsoft appeals have failed and the sales have to stop. Micosoft's on-line store confirms "this product is currently unavailable while we update versions on our site. We expect it to be available soon."
Upgrading to Windows 7. You probably know that Microsoft only support upgrades from Windows Vista to Windows 7. So Welcome a familiar name...Laplink and its PC Mover product. PC Mover has now been updated to automate upgrades from all previous versions of Windows. More: http://www.laplink.com/
Be sensible with PDF documents. Make sure you keep Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader up to date. Opening a PDF with the right code hidden inside can give control of your PC away. Details: http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb10-02.html
Microsoft fixes Explorer. Just as I was writing this Microsoft have confirmed a fix to the China/Google/Explorer problem will be released today. All very exiting but do not compromise your systems by applying this rushed fix too soon. My advice remains: business as usual test it first against all your applications. It is not unknown for Microsoft to have to issue fixes which fix fixes.
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