PCIN.net Update

From eWeek:

Step aside, Six Flags. Move over, Magic Mountain.

For sheer, gut-wrenching highs and lows, even the world’s tallest, fastest, most technologically advanced fly-by-wire roller coaster can’t compare with the last 10 years of highs and lows at Microsoft.

Whether you’re a shareholder, an employee, a customer or a competitor, you’ve experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of BSODs.

In the year and a half leading up to the debut of Windows 95, I wrote more than 100,000 words about the upcoming operating system, mostly for the late, lamented PC Computing.

I was at the launch party on Aug. 24, 1995, and I’ve been covering succeeding versions of Windows (and the controversies surrounding them) continuously since then. It’s been quite a ride.

From MSNBC:

Web retailer Amazon.com Monday said it would offer online photo developing services through a partnership with leading Internet photo service Shutterfly as it targets a fast-growing market.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Amazon said the service would allow customers to design photo cards, calendars, photo books and gifts such as mugs, T-shirts and other personalized products.

From VNUnet:

Phishers are rapidly becoming more sophisticated with the development of malicious crimeware software that can bypass conventional IT security systems and steal identity information for financial crime, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) warned today.

In July 2005, APWG researchers found that phishers are designing systems specifically to neutralise the counter-phishing technologies being deployed by financial institutions and ecommerce sites.

“The technological contest between phisher and counter-phisher is well and truly underway,” said APWG chairman David Jevans. “It is a contest of escalation.”

From eWeek:

The number of Web sites distributing malicious software has quadrupled in the last year to more than 300,000, as the spyware problem continues to fester on the Internet, according to an upcoming report from Webroot , an antispyware software company.

Webroot Software Inc.’s State of Spyware Report for the second quarter of 2005, claims that 80 percent of enterprise computers are infected with some kind of adware or spyware. Rates of infections of malicious programs such as Trojan horse and keylogging software did not decrease between the first and second quarter, despite more awareness of the danger of spyware.