In what probably is the most surprising finish to a lawsuit that is commonly thought to drag on (and drag the Apple iPhone in the process), Apple and Cisco have settled their differences.

Surprising finish because:

1. The settlement was THAT FAST (six weeks since Cisco filed suit).
2. Both parties agreed to use the iPhone name.
3. A promise of interoperability between iPhones.

Now, Steve Jobs can relax (can he relax when his company had to pay Cisco and share a trademark with them?) and concentrate on meeting the target release date. Apple fanboys can now sigh in relief.

(New York Times article here.)

The 3GSM Congress is currently ongoing at Barcelona, and as expected, mobile phone makers are busy strutting their new wares.

Merging the Communicator line with its E series, Nokia has unveiled the highly-anticipated E90 (above). Now running Symbian OS and in S60 version 3, it has all the features that business phone users need (except for fax support, which was always present in all Communicators before E90).

My Symbian has a sneak preview (lucky them).

Nokia has also unveiled the E61i, the E65, and the N77.

Samsung takes on the iPhone with the Ultra Smart F700 (above). On all specs, this is a winner, although it runs on Windows Mobile. There’s also the F520, which is probably the cheaper sibling of F700. Samsung has also unveiled other units in the slim line.

The mobile/smart phone market must be so lucrative; Lenovo joins the fray with two units, one of which sports the Google logo in a key (phone at the left, below). Neat.

Here are more units unveiled:

i-Mate 7150 (click image to enlarge)

HTC Vox

Toshiba G900

Asus Aries

Motorola SLVR L9

With so much phones being released, what a buyer can do is stick with his current handset, specially if budget is a problem.

And the way they keep pushing the technological envelop, a Star Trek commbadge is probably within reach – five decades, perhaps?

(Photos from Engadget)

Engadget has the goodies.

The pics are not that clear (probably taken clandestinely), but in a week, we will know if this is really THE rumored E90.

If so, is this the end of the 9000 series?

(Grabbed from Engadget, click to enlarge)
(I want this phone.)

Trend Micro has confirmed the existence of a vulnerability of its scan engine. When scanning a corrupted UPX-packed file, a buffer overflow occurs, which can cause the dreaded blue screen of death, or worse, an arbitrary code execution.

All Trend Micro products that uses the said scan engine (version 8.3xx) are affected.

If you are an affected Trend Micro user, make sure your pattern file is not lower than 4.245.00.

Trend Micro has credited iDefense for the discovery of such vulnerability. Here is the iDefense report.

Another vulnerability exists, this time on its Anti-Rootkit module. When exploited, it allows for an elevation of privilege and execution of arbitrary code.

Updating the module to 1.600-1052 will resolve this vulnerability.

Here is the iDefense report for the said vulnerability.

Two new vulnerabilities are also discovered for the Web browser FireFox, this time by SecuriTeam. The first one involves the pop-up blocker. This vulnerability is a little complicated, but in the simplest sense, exploiting this flaw allows for reading local files arbitrarily.

Upgrading to version 2, or turning the pop-up blocker on may solve this problem. Note that the report does not mention if version 2 is affected.

The second vulnerability centers on the anti-phishing feature and affects only version 2. In this flaw, a phisher can trick the browser that a fraudulent site is safe (instead of flagging it as a phishing site) by adding particular characters in the site’s URL.

There are no known workarounds for this one. Be careful in doing online transactions, and check the URL very well.

Mozilla has yet to issue a reaction and/or patch for both security issues.

The grand daddy of all American sporting events is over, and SuperBowl XLI passed without incident – not.

Combing social engineering with Web hacking, the Web site of the host stadium was hacked in time for SuperBowl 41. The hack was not visible in the site, you had to look at the source code. Trend Micro has the detailed analysis.

Next: this had me ROTFL. Bill Gates really says the funniest things (grabbed from Sunbelt Blog):

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

Yeah, right. Mr. Gates, count how many Windows patches your company had released for the XP. And should we count those for Office (with two new ones this month alone)? Read this entry from McAfee Avert Labs Blog for more details.

And lastly: two weeks ago, I was reading about dual boot machines (Windows and *nix), and Google, bless its intelligence, chided me with this during a Google search:

(Click image to enlarge.)

A new Microsoft Word 2000 zero-day exploit has been found. Microsoft has released a security advisory about this vulnerability, and a patch may be issued this coming February Patch Tuesday.

This vulnerability is present on Word 2000. When opened, a malicious .DOC file may corrupt system memory, allowing a remote user to execute arbitrary code on the affected system. This vulnerability does not affect any other Word versions.

The exploit code is detected by Trend Micro as TROJ_MDROPPER.EQ, and Symantec detects this as Trojan.Mdropper.W.

The usual precautions apply. Do not open email attachments from unknown sources. Update your antivirus apps. Patch your system when patches are available.

The Storm worm and its Trojan cohorts had a wonderful run during the weekends, and the fun continues.

The recent variant, Small.DAM (F-Secure, Radar Alert 2) or TROJ_SMALL.EDW (Trend Micro, Medium overall risk rating) or CME-711 or Downloader-BAI!M711 (McAfee) or Trojan.Peacomm (Symantec, Category 3), is usually spammed or dropped by another malware. The subject of the spam emails that carry this Trojan are usually related to recent or current events.

When executed, this Trojan drops several files, one of which is a rootkit , which enables this Trojan to hide its files and processes.

It also connects to several IP addresses using port 4000 (F-Secure data; Trend Micro lists several UDP ports).

Elimination of this Trojan is difficult because of the rootkit. Delete the following files if you have found them on your system:

* peers.ini
* wincom32.sys
* wincom32.ini

If you believe your system is infected but cannot find the said files, use rootkit detectors; here are some of them:

* Trend Micro RootkitBuster (free)
* Microsoft Rootkit Revealer

Note that these are technical in nature and thus not for average users. I suggest you use the documentation (if any) that is provided by the software maker.

For a detailed cleaning solution, read the one from Trend Micro.

Your antivirus can remove this malware automatically, as long as its detection is updated.

Printed way below the article by the Inquirer on the early birds who filed their certificates of candidacy for senator is a curious item that caught my attention. Let me quote the article:

Others who filed their COCs were independents Rummel Pinera, 35, a “small businessman” from San Pedro, Laguna, and Daniel Magtira, 46, of Marulas, Valenzuela City. (emphasis mine)

I have seen that name before; he made several comments to several blogs last year. So I Googled his name for information, and here’s what I had found out.

In several blogs, a certain Danny Glor had posted the same lengthy comment about Rummel Pinera. Read for yourself:

* Comment on Piercing Pens
* Comment on Jester-in-Exile
* Comment on My Liberal Times

He was also the subject of ridicule by several commenters on a certain post (I won’t post the URL; I can’t believe that there are educated people in the Internet who can only utter ad hominem statements). There are loads more. Just look around.

Here’s a bio and pic if you are interested.

Poor guy. He might have good intentions, but even before January 15 he was already ridiculed; I will not be surprised if he would end up being declared as a nuisance candidate.

What have I learned when I began this blog post? It reinforced my feeling that there are people who would debate on issues and there are people who would do ad hominem instead; that class, social status, educational background are not good measuring sticks of a person’s capacity to think; and that current Philippine politics is no longer about ideas. And that there’s no reasoning, however logical your arguments are, with people whose thoughts are already set.

And be careful with your online presence, Google will surely find you.

It seems that ABS-CBN has something on its sleeves for its upcoming coverage of the 2007 Philippine elections.

Earlier today, I saw an teaser advertisement about “Boto Ko, Text Ko” (My Vote, My Text), with the usual Halalan (Elections) logo that the network uses in its election coverages. The logo of their technical partner, STI, was also shown.

Usually, TV networks do a quick count of sorts after the voting period. Basically the school partner provides the manpower and technology in handling the quick count; the network only has to present the results. The process is really simple: student volunteers monitor the counting at the precints, and sends the data to a data center. You might had noticed that as early as seven in the evening (or earlier), the networks had reported partial results already; that was because the volunteers were required to submit partial results by the hour (sometimes even every 30 minutes).

And now, this. I think what they want to do is to ask voters to text whoever they have voted. This will probably be more unofficial than the unofficial quickcount, as the votes via text cannot be verified (unless they have the technology to do so). However, remember that the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) had attempted to do its quickcount via SMS in 2004, which failed miserably. ABS-CBN will probably ask the voters to text the candidates that they have elected for senators only (in contrast, Namfrel had tried to collect the results for all positions at stake at that year).

Whether this project will work or not remains to be seen. Please note that this is just speculation at this point.

NOTE: This post is also posted at The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything, a blog being led by Rocky, an old friend from LiveJournal. I will be contributing to the Geeky Guide at least once a week.

“Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.”, says its Web site. With more than 2 million virtual citizens online, it is a surprise hit, and it seems there are more tricks in the sleeves of Linden Lab, creator of Second Life.

Vivox had announced last year that it will be providing voice communication to Illusion Factory‘s island in the Second Life world. Citizens of Second Life who would reside in the IF island will be able to call other Second Life citizens using an ordinary phone or via VoIP.

And now, Star Trek in Second Life? In the latest Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves keynoted day two of the show, and here he announced CBS’ collaboration with Second Life, using Star Trek as an example. Whether how the Star Trek material is going to be used in Second Life is still anyone’s guess. Download the keynote here (in PDF).

But imagine being a starship captain in Second Life! Or a Ferengi. Or maybe an actor playing a starring role in a Star Trek series.

BTW, LindenLab has released the Second Life Viewer code, making it open source.