This Week In The News: 'My Bad McAfee', iAndroid, and more

This week has a few noteworthy news topics. McAfee Attacks! iPhone meet Android, you're new OS. We get a new Doctor...Who that is!

First up this week, McAfee attacks! During an update that McAfee rolled out, widespread complaints started rolling in. Apparently, the update quarantined the 'svchost.exe' file therefore causing affected computers to continuously reboot themselves. The 'svchost.exe' file is a critical system file that Windows uses during boot and runtime to operate. McAfee is noting that only a small percentage of user's were affected. But according to several articles (including this one from PC World http://www.pcworld.com/article/194776/mcafee_error_little_relief_in_sight.html ) mention complaints from hospitals and in some cases, law enforcement.  So tell me, how can a 'security' company rollout such a problematic update?  Surely McAfee has some sort of quality assurance control, that allows them to ensure the integrity of each update and even each software release they produce.  Sure, we are used to companies like Microsoft releasing regular service packs and updates which have been known to fix a few bugs, but create a few more.  But when this happens to your antivirus/web security tools, you're now open to other attacks too. 

Personally, I used to be a McAfee customer (when I bought my first Dell about 6 years ago).  Then I moved to Norton, didn't stay there long.  Now I am happy with AVG.  The reason I moved from the previous two companies: they're software got too big.  They both decide to implement scanners for everything from email to file scanning.  Those systems became bloated and caused things to run slow for me.  So far, I haven't encountered any issues with AVG.  But they day that AVG grows too big for itself, I'll move on to another solution then as well.  I say do security, do it right, and with as little intrusion on the system and it's resources as possible.  As with anything, if you are looking for an antivirus solution, do your homework for what is best for you.  Big names aren't always the best solution.


Next up in the news: the iPhone is hacked again, this time to run Android.  Mr. David Wong; who is well known with certain iPhone hacking/jailbreaking communities, has managed to get a first generation iPhone to run the Android operating system.  Does Android take over the phone?  Nope, it's dual boot.  Using OpeniBoot the device will boot up the Android OS.  According to Wong, the system is still a little buggy, it is possible.  This isn't possible on a stock iPhone or iPod Touch.  The device has to be 'jailbroken' first (which voids the Apple Waranty).  Apple Insider


Also in the news, this last Saturday we were treated to the regeneration of a new Doctor on Doctor Who (in America anyways, the UK are a couple episodes ahead of us).  I'm a relatively new Doctor Who fan, but if you are a sci-fi fan and have never checked out Doctor Who...Do yourself a favor and give ti a chance. 

Finally this week, the Ubuntu 10.04 Release Candidate was released.  This means we are getting pretty close to the official 10.04 release.  The beta releases and release candidates can be downloaded now for those of you who want to check it out.  http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06022

Happy Surfing!