Free Republic

In the 30-plus years that Richard Atkinson has been studying obesity, he has always maintained that overeating doesn’t really explain it all. His epiphany came early in his career, when he was a medical fellow at U.C.L.A. engaged in a study of people who weighed more than 300 pounds and had come in for obesity surgery. “The general thought at the time was that fat people ate too much,” Atkinson, now at Virginia Commonwealth University, told me recently. “And we documented that fat people do eat too much — our subjects ate an average of 6,700 calories a day. But...

I have a two-year-old eMachine T3092 running Windows XP Home Edition. Over the past six months it has become progressively slower until it now takes 30-60 seconds to open a new screen or start an application. I use Norton Antivirus, Spy Sweeper, and BlackIce Firewall. I suspect the problem is simply too much extraneous crap in it. Is there a product that can clean-up Windows and my files to get it up to speed again? Thanks.

ITHACA, N.Y. — In May, scores of dead fish started washing up along the eastern shoreline of Lake Ontario. James O. LaPlante, 59, first noticed them at a friend’s house. By the following week, so many carcasses had come ashore, they littered the beach near his home in Cape Vincent. “There were lots,” he said. “When I say lots, I mean hundreds and thousands.” The fish had fallen victim to an unknown disease. At first, residents and fishermen were not alarmed, since the victims were round gobies, a nuisance fish that consumes the eggs of more prize-worthy catches. But in...

"Overall, the research shows that many consumers have a false sense of security while online," ESET Chief Research Officer Andrew Lee said in a statement. "With the number of zero-day threats rapidly increasing, users need to be even more cautious and proactive in their own protection." While nearly 90 percent of computer users have software on their machines to protect them from malware like viruses, Trojans, worms and spyware, almost two-thirds of those users are reluctant to upgrade the software after it's installed. That was the finding in a survey released Monday by security software maker ESET, of San Diego....

Rockets bursting in air, fireworks everywhere! Thank you for helping mark the 200,000th entry into the VirusScan malware (malevolent software) detection database. But truly, this is not a moment to celebrate. For, larger and larger numbers of malware is a plague, not a cause to celebrate. Instead, we mark this moment simply as a milestone in our continual trip to fend off the bad stuff from everyone’s machines. It is alarming that we reach this milestone so soon after September 2004 when the count reached 100,000. Eighteen years to reach 100,000. Less than two years to double. Looking ahead, our...

Excerpt - A security researcher with expertise in rootkits has created a working prototype of new technology that is capable of creating malware that remains "100 percent undetectable," even on Windows Vista x64 systems. Joanna Rutkowska, a stealth malware researcher at Singapore-based IT security firm COSEINC, says the new Blue Pill concept uses AMD's SVM/Pacifica virtualization technology to create an ultra-thin hypervisor that takes complete control of the underlying operating system. Rutkowska plans to discuss the idea and demonstrate a working prototype for Windows Vista x64 at the end at the SyScan Conference in Singapore on July 21 and at...

Excerpt - Security software makers, the 800-pound gorilla has landed. Microsoft Corp. was to announce Wednesday that it is releasing software that aims to better protect people who use its Windows operating system from Internet attacks. The move pits the world's largest software maker head-to-head with longtime business partners Symantec Corp., McAfee Inc. and others. Windows Live OneCare, which will protect up to three computers for $49.95 per year, marks the latest step in Microsoft's effort over the years to make its operating system less vulnerable to crippling Internet attacks. Windows, which runs on the vast majority of personal computers,...

By studying chimpanzee droppings in remote African jungles, scientists reported yesterday, they have found direct evidence of a missing link between a chimpanzee virus and the one that causes human AIDS. Scientists have long suspected that chimpanzees are the source of the human AIDS pandemic because at least one subspecies carries a simian immune deficiency virus closely related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But because the simian virus, known as S.I.V.cpz, was identified in chimpanzees in captivity, researchers could not be sure that the same simian virus existed among these apes in the wild. It does, the team...

My wife woke me up yesterday morning and told me she had to restart the computer. An ad had popped up that said, "A major virus could be on your computer, download from us and we'll fix it..." Being familiar with pop-ups, I didn't think much of it, until four hours later when I went to use my computer. There were 47 Internet Explorer windows open and something was trying to open more. My system was almost at a standstill. Even a simple click of the mouse took two minutes to process. I disabled and deleted the P2P application, but...

Despite widely available testing, about a quarter of the Americans infected with H.I.V. don't know it. Those who are unaware of their infections can spread then unknowingly. They also miss out on powerful drug therapies that have been shown to extend lives, while protecting infected people from the diseases to which H.I.V. makes them prone. Rapid AIDS tests — which have cut the waiting time for results to 20 minutes from as much as two weeks — have greatly helped the outreach effort. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will take another important step forward this summer when...

The virus one is funny

People tell me I bash Microsoft too much; that Microsoft's products really are great. OK, so I won't bash Microsoft this time around. I'll let Microsoft's own friends do it.

My son recently downloaded the google toolbar and I ran the AV program and there were viruses detected in this particular item. After the scan, AVG said, "selected object is located inside the archive and cannot be healed." How in the world do I handle something like this?

Most people who use e-mail now know enough to be on guard against "phishing" messages that pretend to be from a bank or business but are actually attempts to steal passwords and other personal information. But there is evidence that among global cybercriminals, phishing may already be passé. In some countries, like Brazil, it has been eclipsed by an even more virulent form of electronic con — the use of keylogging programs that silently copy the keystrokes of computer users and send that information to the crooks. These programs are often hidden inside other software and then infect the machine,...

142---Number of unique I.M. viruses in 20042,403---number of unique I.M. viruses in 2005The number of viruses transmitted through instant-messaging software surged in the last year. . . . Such viruses typically arrive in innocuous-looking messages, ostensibly from an I.M. buddy, [urging] the recipient to download software that turns out to be malicious.[E]-mail inboxes are increasingly well protected against viruses, forcing hackers to look at other modes of transmission. . . . Another innovation last year was the first talking I.M. virus, which chatted with its targets. . . . [O]ne of its favorite phrases was "lol that's cool."

Haven't seen a thread concerning this yet. I've got 10 e-mails unopened.

Two decades ago, Brain, the first boot sector virus which infected personal computers via the floppy disk, was detected. While Brain itself was relatively harmless, it marked the genesis of the world of computer viruses. This year marks the 20th year of the existence of viruses after Brain was detected on January 19, 1986. Boot sector viruses, now long extinct along with the floppy disk, held a relatively long reign from 1986 to 1995. Since transmission was via disk from computer to computer, infection would only reach a significant level months or even years after its release. This changed in...

Computer security experts were grappling with the threat of a newweakness in Microsoft’s Windows operating system that could put hundreds of millions of PCs at risk of infection by spyware or viruses. The news marks the latest security setback for Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, whose Windows operating system is a favourite target for hackers. “The potential [security threat] is huge,” said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at F-Secure, an antivirus company. “It’s probably bigger than for any other vulnerability we’ve seen. Any version of Windows is vulnerable right now.” The flaw, which allows hackers to infect computers using...

<p>Since it was discovered in 1976, the Ebola virus has killed more than 1,200 people in scattered outbreaks in Central Africa, the World Health Organization calculates. But while health workers have managed to contain the outbreaks, scientists have been frustrated that they do not know the virus's hiding place in nature.</p>

China's economy continues its incredible growth, but the IT infrastructure at all the new offices, research parks and other projects isn't keeping pace and is increasingly imperiled by hackers and other Internet predators, experts tell UPI's The Web. The IT problems -- hackers, viruses, worms, malware -- are so severe in China that entire enterprises are at risk, and doing e-business with companies with such shoddy Internet security could pose a threat to U.S. companies. By Gene Koprowski