Changes to Apple’s iTunes prices take effect

Posted on April 8, 2009 by wjimenez275

Apple Inc., on Tuesday, began selling some of its most-downloaded songs for $1.29 apiece.

Apple said in January that it would stop selling all individual songs for 99 cents each and begin offering three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29.

Recording companies pick the prices. The main iTunes page advertised collections of 69-cent songs that included “London Calling” by The Clash and “Monkey” by George Michael.

Other songs from the same albums and artists remained at 99 cents.

Apple also did away with copy-protection technology known as digital-rights management, or DRM, allowing customers to play more songs on devices other than Apple’s own iPods.

Without DRM, the songs can be copied to any number of CDs, computers and music players, as long as those devices support the AAC encoding format Apple uses.

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Fear of viruses could be causing PC attacks: report by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech

Posted on April 8, 2009 by wjimenez275

Computer users’ growing fear of worms and viruses could be behind a recent spike in attacks on PCs via bogus security software, according to a Microsoft Corp report published on Wednesday.

As the Conficker worm and other malicious software — known as malware — have grabbed headlines, more computer users have been looking for security programs online, some of which turn out to be agents for viruses themselves.

Out of hundreds of millions of PCs monitored by the world’s largest software maker for its twice yearly Security Intelligence Report, seven of the 25 top security threats came in the form of fake security programs.

In the last six months of 2008, Microsoft said it cleared 4.4 million PCs of the most successful bogus security program, which goes under the name of Win32/Renos.

That is a 67 percent increase over the first half of 2008, said George Stathakopoulos, head of product security at Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group.

Fear of Conficker “could be a part of it,” said Stathakopoulos, explaining the sudden jump in attacks from what Microsoft calls “rogue” security software, or “scareware”.

According to the report, more security-conscious consumers are being tricked by insistent or alarming pop-up warnings into paying for protection which, unknown to them, is actually malware designed to steal personal information.

The phenomenon of “scareware” is a headache for bona fide security software makers such as Symantec Corp, McAfee Inc and Trend Micro Inc.

But these companies in turn have played a role in raising fears about malware such as Conficker, and have reaped a windfall from worried computer users buying their products.

Conficker, a program that works its way into a PC and allows it to be controlled remotely, is believed to have infected millions of PCs, but no significant disruption has yet occurred.

The report, and guidance on how to avoid viruses, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/sir.

via Fear of viruses could be causing PC attacks: report by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech.

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