Technology

Parallels Support (via Mike Ash):

We use in-product notifications to share several types of information with our customers. First, and most importantly, we share information about product updates which are generally related to compatibility with OS X, new features and product enhancements. Second, we occasionally share special offers from Parallels or other third party companies who provide special deals for our customers. Many of our customers rely on the information about product updates and appreciate the special deals for products that are of interest to them.

Individual notifications can be turned off by clicking the “don’t show this again” button. However, because customers need to receive important product information, there is not a mechanism for customers to completely disable notifications.

The whole thread is disturbing. When Parallels first came out, I used it to run Windows. Lately, I’ve been using VMware Fusion, mostly to run prior and pre-release versions of Mac OS X — via Michael Tsai

Sydneysiders rejoice! Google Maps has finally added public transport directions for buses, trains and ferries.

Search for directions between two Sydney addresses and you’ll also be offered public transport directions where available, including the times of relevant services. The system will default to choosing the fastest trip, but you can click the More options link and specify if you want train, bus, ferry or light rail. The search isn’t rock-solid — it didn’t always spot ferry trips in my early tests — but even in an imperfect form, this is a long-overdue addition. Sydney has had directions for the light rail since 2009, but that’s only a tiny part of the system — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A group of telco consultants and engineers in Victoria is planning to launch a not-for-profit internet service provider in an attempt to provide cheap access to the National Broadband Network for like-minded people.

The nascent group, dubbed No ISP, gained cooperative status under Victorian law earlier this month, enabling them to recruit members and provide services without the financial requirements of a standard company structure.

It will offer plans on the NBN with minimal margins, facilitated by near-zero costs, non-existent staffing and none of the support or service structures now commonplace in the telco and ISP industries.

In effect, No ISP plans to offer NBN as a utility, rather than a service — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Have you ever taken a look at the list of functions available in PHP? I just counted 5025 on the PHP quick reference page. Granted, it depends on what extensions you have enabled, but still: that’s one heap of functions. While I can’t show you every one of them, if you’re new to the language, I’ll introduce you to seven really handy ones in this quick tip — via Nettuts

One of the world’s most active spam botnets — Grum — was crippled after two of its command and control (CnC) servers hosted in the Netherlands were taken down, according to researchers from security firm FireEye.

These two CnC servers were responsible for pumping spam instructions to their zombies, said FireEye senior staff scientist Atif Mushtaq in a blog post on Tuesday. With these two servers offline, the spam template inside Grum’s memory will soon time out and the zombies will try to fetch new instructions but will not able to find them.

If Grum stops sending spam, it will have a significant impact on the global spam volume, Mushtaq said. However, this might be just a temporary victory, because the botnet’s creators still control two CnC servers hosted in Russia and Panama — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Symantec last week crippled a large number of Windows XP machines when it shipped customers a defective update to its antivirus software, the company acknowledged Friday.

After a full evaluation and root cause analysis … we have determined that the issue was limited to machines running a combination of Windows XP, the latest version of the SONAR technology, the July 11th rev11 SONAR signature set, and certain third-party software, said Orla Cox, of the company’s security response team in a 14 July blog post — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A colour-blind European artist who has gained fame as a cyborg who sees colours through sound is planning to have an operation that will fuse his listening device to his skull.

Neil Harbisson, 29, was born with a rare condition called achromatopsia, which limits his colour perception to black and white. In 2004, working with friends, he began to wear a series of devices that translated colour into sound. While he initially used earphones, over the last eight years the devices have become increasingly incorporated into his body, to the point that his British passport photo now includes his device, which he calls an eyeborg. Currently Mr Harbisson wears the eyeborg — a single, antenna-like device that arcs from the nape of his neck over to the front of his forehead — continuously, even when he showers. A single sensor, which sits at the end of the antenna, turns colours directly in front of Mr Harbisson into sounds based on a correlation of frequencies of the wavelengths.

Mr Harbisson’s current eyeborg is pressed against the base of his head with extremely high pressure, which allows the sounds to reverberate along his skull to his eardrums. But his new eyeborg, to be implanted in September, will be connected to his body through three screws in his head — two to support the antenna and electronic chip, and a third for the sound to be passed into his skull, which will vibrate with the sound. He expects it will take about two months for the bone to heal around the implant — via redwolf.newsvine.com

We all know about spam. For most of us, it’s a matter of email. But if you run a website there’s the dreaded scourge of comment spam. You’ve seen it. People who go into comments and post totally off-topic comments with links to this or that commercial site. So, hey, you’re talking about health care reform and mandates, but check out the great Refi i just got at scamrefi.com!!!

Clearly, the folks who do this for a living are shameless and awful. But this morning I learned they’re striving for even greater levels of shamelessness and actually achieving it — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Home Office is to launch a pioneering scheme on Thursday to alert sex workers about people with a history of violence, including rape.

The scheme, which is being launched in Manchester, will encourage sex workers to co-ordinate with police on a national scale. It also has the wider intent of taking murderers, rapists and other violent criminals off the streets.

It will enable intelligence about people with a history of violence to be fed into a national intelligence database. Sex workers will be alerted by text, email or phone app about people who have carried out attacks.

Online escort agencies, street sex workers and those working in brothels will all be able to access the warnings.

The National Ugly Mugs pilot scheme is based on an Australian system in which sex workers alerted each other to violent customers. Similar schemes have been operating informally in areas of the UK but this is the first time that information will be collated nationally — via redwolf.newsvine.com