Bad McAfee Update Takes Down PCs

An update to antivirus software for corporate customers of McAfee Inc., caused much difficulty for customers running Windows XP with Service Pack 3 installed. The company has released a statement via it's blog saying:

In the past 24 hours, McAfee identified a new threat that impacts Windows PCs. Researchers worked diligently to address this threat that attacks critical Windows system executables and buries itself deep into a computer’s memory.

The research team created detection and removal to address this threat. The remediation passed our quality testing and was released with the 5958 virus definition file at 2.00 PM GMT+1 (6am Pacific Time) on Wednesday, April 21.

McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to this release. Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected...

Guess it's damage control time! I'm amazed that this sort of thing doesn't happen more frequently considering the frequency of updates issued and the nature of the files that are potentially affected.

Gizmodo Asked To Return Nextgen iPhone Prototype To Apple

Whether they found the device as they claim, or they paid $5,000 for it as has been reported, Apple just want's their prototype next generation iPhone returned to them by Gizmodo. The popular tech blog had earlier posted photos and video of the device that some speculated was a knock off, but it would appear by Apple's reaction that it is the real deal. Gizmodo shared a letter received from Apple lawyers stating in part that "This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple," to which Jason Chen of Gizmodo writes "Now that we definitely know it's not some knockoff, and it really is Apple's, I'm happy to see it returned to its rightful owner,"

Perhaps a third scenario exists where this is a new tactic by Apple to generate hype about the new product!

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/04/20/tech-iphone-4-gizmodo.html?ref=rss#ixzz0ljNiNsqf

iPad Not Ready For Higher Education?

It seems that the iPad is attracting the wrong kind of attention from a number of high profile universities for reported issues with connectivity and degradation of the school's networks when a number of the devices are connected. The Wall Street Journal is reporting "The tablet, lauded by many as the next wave in education technology, is having difficulty being accepted at George Washington University and Princeton University because of network stability issues. Cornell University also says it is seeing connectivity problems with the device and is concerned about bandwidth overload."

In addition to the networking woes, some educators are also complaining about a lack educational content available via the iBookstore application. Regardless, I am sure that Apple will be working hard to solve the hardware issues and attract more content. Not to mention, too many consumers Apple products are simply irresistible!