smart computer use?

I bet you wish you knew about it. Actually it’s not much to get worked up about, but it’s a good sign of the times.

About two weeks ago, Wal-Mart began selling $200 Linux-based PC. The initial run was around 10,000 units. Now Wal-Mart is sold out. Has Linux now found a niche?

Wal-Mart’s $200 PC – sold outThe system sold by Wal-Mart was an Everex’s TC2502 gPC and is the first mass-market $200 desktop PC. The spec of the system is very low – 1.5 GHz VIA C7 CPU embedded onto a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive – but this doesn’t matter because the system does pretty much everything that your average PC users wants.

Has Windows outgrown the average user?

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Imagine that. A striptease, a trojan, and code cracking. Not as kinky as it sounds. I guess this whole thing is just an example of the dark underbelly of the internet.

A nifty little program that Trend Micro detects as TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A disguises itself as a strip-tease game, wherein a scantily clad “Melissa” agrees to take off a little bit of her clothing. However, for her to strut her stuff, users must identify the letters hidden within a CAPTCHA.

Read the rest here.

Mac users have been able to avoid the virus hoopla that surrounds Windows users for years. This period of calm might be coming to an end.

Be warned: Apple’s comeback in the world of personal computing brings with it a heightened level of security risks for its customers, not unlike those Microsoft Windows devotees have faced for years. Reports surfaced earlier this week of a malicious new Trojan horse–like piece of software found on several pornography Web sites that has the potential to let cyber thieves take control of infected Mac computers so they can steal personal information.

Read the article here.

Lots of speculation is being thrown around about what the Google Phone will be like. Here’s yet another interpretation:

It seems like the only people who know for sure are those who work for Google, and they aren’t talking. But that hasn’t stopped analysts, journalists and bloggers from writing about what they think Google has planned for the mobile device market. But before we venture into wild guesswork, let’s look at what we know for a fact.

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There is currently an easy way to exploit Google duplicate site content handling using proxy sites. There are also ways to defend against the Google proxy exploit if you feel the need to implement preventative measures into your website(s) or need to fix an issue already affecting your site.

From the article at SiteProNews.com, written by Sophie White:

There is a current and active way to knock a website out of Google’s search engine results. It’s simple and effective. This information is already in the public domain and the more people that know about it, the more likelihood there is that Google will do something about it. This article will tell you how it works, how to get a website knocked out of the search engine rankings, but most importantly, how to defend your own website from having it happen to you.

If anything, this is just a latest example of the ongoing evolution of search engine technology. There will always be exploits for ranking site and and un-ranking sites on various search engines. The good news is that the people behind the search engines are always working on their algorithms to ensure that exploits do not have a major impact on natural and organic search results.

Talk about an ongoing battle.