Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Internet Explorer 7 for Longhorn Will Resist Spyware. Microsoft’s IE7 for Longhorn to Have “Low Rights”

1:29 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

For the past couple of years Microsoft has been developing its next generation operating system (OS) – Longhorn. While the release of the OS has been several times postponed, some details on the Longhorn continue to emerge on the Internet: we do know that besides being more comfortable to work with, Longhorn will concentrate on tangibly improving security features. Since harmful programs, such as spyware and adware, annoy users all around the world, Microsoft is concentrated on developing some means, which will decrease the threat and damage done by spyware in future. 

“Rob Franco, lead program manager for IE Security at Microsoft, wrote in a blog entry on Thursday that Internet Explorer 7 for Longhorn will contain a feature called “low rights IE”. The feature essentially removes administrator rights, so that the system will not allow unknown applications, such as spyware and other potentially dangerous code, to be installed without express permission from the user,” claims CNET News.com.

"The Web site’s code won’t have enough privileges to install software, copy files to startup folder, or hijack the settings for the browser’s homepage or search provider. The primary goal of Low Rights IE is to restrict the impact of a security vulnerability... It can limit the damage a vulnerability can do,” writes Rob Franco, lead program manager for Internet Explorer Security at Microsoft.

• CNET News.com: IE7 Being Developed to Resist Spyware.

Graphics Chips Starring as Processors, Try No. N. Programming Language to Use GPUs as CPUs Developed

1:04 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Modern graphics processing units (GPU) are far more complex than contemporary central processing units (CPUs) and even though they work on much lower frequencies, the number of operations they can perform at once may exceed than of the CPUs. Unfortunately, in order to make GPU calculate something other than graphics, a completely new programming language, or a special translating software, should be written.

“The Scout programming language, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, US, lets scientists run complex calculations on a computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of its central processing unit (CPU). In tests, the graphics processor was able to perform certain types of calculation 12 times faster than a single CPU,” writes New Scientist.

In fact, in the past a number of attempts to use GPU as CPU were made, but none were recognized by the industry.

“These [GPU] chips normally sit idle when scientists work. They have all this processing power but it’s just not being used. Researchers could use the Scout programming language to simulate and visualize various phenomena, such as ocean currents and the formation of galaxies. Performing these calculations on a graphics processor makes it simple to render simulations visually at the same time,” says Patrick McCormick, a LANL researcher.

• New Scientist: Computer Graphics Card Reveals Supernova Collapse.

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