.The Federal Government has ramped up warnings about Microsoft’s web browser Internet Explorer, which has come under attack from hackers.
The Government is warning that people risk having their computers infiltrated and passwords stolen unless they install temporary fixes from Microsoft or use alternative browsers.
The Government says Microsoft has acknowledged all recent versions of the program are vulnerable.
The French and German governments have warned internet users in Europe to avoid Microsoft’s popular web browser.
It also says people should remember to regularly update their security software and change passwords oftenly.
Senior lecturer in network engineering at Melbourne’s RMIT University, Mark Gregory, says industry and governments are not prepared for the changing threats to cyberspace.
The concern follows revelations that hackers used a crack in Internet Explorer to mount an attack on Google and a number of other companies.
“The digital network is like the wild west.
“It is being used in ways that it wasn’t meant to be used and we need to get organisations, companies and governments . It is unregulated,” he said…”
Bill Caelli, from the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology, says the Government and regulators must step in to protect internet users. focused on taking action to make the digital network more secure for the general public.
“How many builders have put smoke detectors in the new homes and houses? How many people have put fences around their pools to protect children?” he said.
“How many builders have put smoke detectors in the new homes and houses? How many people have put fences around their pools to protect children?” he said.”
The Government says Microsoft has not solved the security glitch and Australians should use alternative browsers. It’s always been driven by regulatory [sic], by society itself, and that’s the role of government.
“There are other browsers that are available that appear to be being targeted less by the hackers and by these organisations than what Internet Explorer is being targeted,” he said. .
“On that basis you’d have to argue that if security was a principal concern then using another browser would be wise until the incidence is reduced.
“I don’t think there was any inference in what they said that Internet Explorer was any more deficient in terms of security than any of the other browsers, just that it was being targeted more.
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Editor’s note (19 January 2010): This story has been amended to reflect the fact that web users can install temporary fixes from Microsoft to reduce their risk
.France captain Thierry Henry’s infamous handball in the World Cup play-off win over Ireland will go under the microscope on Monday (local time) when FIFA’s disciplinary commission assess the incident.
Two months to the day since the Barcelona man’s controversial intervention secured the 1-1 draw that took France to South Africa and ended Ireland’s World Cup dream in the second leg of their play-off tie in Paris, Henry will face up to the possibility of a fine or even a ban.
“I had a phone conversation with Thierry Henry,” Blatter said.
The meeting of the 21-man disciplinary panel, an independent body chaired by the Swiss Marcel Mathier, was announced by FIFA president Sepp Blatter in Cape Town on December 2 following an extraordinary executive committee meeting. It was a conversation between sportsmen.
“We didn’t talk about guilty or not guilty.”
Blatter’s diplomacy can be explained by the lack of precedent regarding retrospective punishments meted out to players. I didn’t say that he would be punished, I said he’d be the subject of an investigation.
Despite the media storm that followed the match, with the goal dubbed “The Hand of Frog” in the Irish press and Irish prime minister Brian Cowen calling for a replay, Henry is likely to escape lightly.
The disciplinary commission is likely to issue a symbolic penalty, as FIFA’s rules do not explicitly address incidents of such a nature and a heavy punishment would create an unwelcome precedent for world football’s governing body.
Blatter, meanwhile, has raised the possibility of awarding “moral compensation” to the Irish team.
Article 57 of FIFA’s disciplinary code concerns “anyone who insults someone in any way, especially by using offensive gestures or language, or who violates the principles of fair play or whose behaviour is unsporting in any other way” and refers to punishments ranging from warnings to the return of awards.
France was losing 1-0 to Ireland at the Stade de France on November 18, having won the first leg 1-0, when Henry teed up William Gallas for what proved to be the decisive goal after illegally controlling the ball with his hand.
“That could be a special trophy or a prize, we’ll have to see,” he said.
.Snow and icy weather has disrupted travel across Europe, closing Geneva airport on one of its busiest tourist weekends of the year and prompting a state of emergency on part of Germany’s Baltic coast.
Thousands of passengers were stranded at Geneva’s Cointrin airport after heavy overnight snow kept it closed until noon.
“It was the first time we had so much snow on the runway since 1985,” said airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli as departures began at midday.
Many British, German and other European skiers use Geneva airport to reach popular Swiss and French ski resorts in the close toby Alpine region, including Verbier.
Delays were expected as frustrated passengers queued to re-book flights at the airport, where 100,000 people had been due to transit over the weekend.
Schools across the state will stay closed on Monday.
Hundreds of motorists had to abandon their cars in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where 25 centimetres of snow fell and the district of Ostvorpommern declared a state of emergency, local authorities said.
Levees in parts of the neighbouring state of Schleswig-Holstein showed cracks on Sunday, threatening low-lying areas with floods, police said.
In Poland, at least 200,000 households suffered a power outage and shoppers and workers were evacuated from a shopping centre in the western city of Leszno when its roof began to give way under 1. Coastal towns like Flensburg and Travemuende had suffered flooding by afternoon.
A police spokesman said that since the onset of cold weather in October, 152 people had been found frozen to death in Poland.5 metres of snow, rescue services said. .
- Cars trapped -
On Germany’s Baltic island of Fehmarn, some 5,000 residents were shut in by the blizzards, while scores were trapped in their cars for hours on the A20 autobahn because normal snow ploughs could not reach them, authorities said.
The weather had caused over 1,100 road accidents between Saturday and Sunday morning in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, according to the regional government.
The weather had caused over 1,100 road accidents between Saturday and Sunday morning in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, according to the regional government.
In the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, snow caused more than 900 road accidents between Friday and midday on Sunday, seriously injuring 15 people and causing 4 million euros of damage, the regional interior ministry said. At least 16 people have been badly injured in the state due to the snow since Saturday.
In Britain, chemical firm Ineos said it had diverted 12,000 tonnes of salt for use on British roads that had originally been destined for Germany.
Ninety-one flights were cancelled on Sunday at Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, compared to 225 the day before.
The government told local authorities to reduce the amount of salt they put on roads by a quarter at the end of last week in a bid to conserve supplies.
“Because we’ve been inundated with calls from local authorities, we’ve decided to retain the supplies in the UK,” a spokesman said.
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.Services have returned almost to normal after three days of chaos on the Eurostar rail link between the UK and France.
But many parts of Europe continue to face severe transport disruptions and there have been more deaths as a severe cold snap sweeps the continent.
More than 80 people have died across Europe, including 42 in Poland and another 27 in Ukraine who have frozen to death.
Air, rail and road transport has been severely disrupted across northern Europe where as much as 50 centimetres of snow has fallen with more expected in the coming days.
Another 13 people died in car accidents in Austria, Finland and Germany, where temperatures dropped well below zero.
More freezing fog was expected at Stansted, north of London, and forecasters from Britain’s Met Office also issued severe weather warnings across the country, warning of icy roads and thick snow in eastern Scotland.
But after three days of cancelled services, Eurostar trains began running again between Brussels, Paris and London: an investigation has been launched into the disruption of services.
Britain’s Automobile Association said Monday was their busiest night for 25 years, with about 700 calls received every hour.
“There was no way that I was going to throw customers out into that,” said store managing director Deborah Strazza.
In Buckinghamshire, west of London, about 100 people, including 20 children, spent the night in the John Lewis department store after being snowed in.”
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.A French artist has struck an unusual deal to sell his latest work: Instead of paying up front, the buyer will hand over a regular fee until the artist dies.
Christian Boltanski said his deal with Australian professional gambler David Walsh was a “game” with the devil, but not a pact.
The work involves four video cameras filming Boltanski’s studio in suburban Paris, day and night, from January until his death, with images relayed live to a cave in Tasmania, Australia.
“Anyone who never loses or thinks he never loses must be the devil.
“This man (Walsh) thinks he can beat the odds and he says he never loses,” Boltanski, 65, said.
The longer Boltanski lives, the more Walsh has to pay.”
Rather than handing over the price of the work in one lump sum, Walsh will make regular payments - monthly or annual, the artist did not say - until Boltanski’s death.
Walsh, a professional gambler who made his fortune in casinos, worked out that he would make money from the deal if Boltanski dies within the next eight years. If I die in 10 years, he loses,” Boltanski said.
“If I die in three years, he wins. He’s probably right. .
“But I’m going to try to survive. I don’t look after myself very well. You can always fight against the devil. You can always fight against the devil.
The images will be stored on DVD, but as long as the artist is still alive, there are restrictions on what Walsh can do with them.
“It’s not my bedroom, it’s just my studio,” he said, and in any case the pictures are going to Tasmania, where “no one ever goes”.
“He wanted to buy my ashes, but I refused.
Walsh has a passion for the macabre, Boltanski said, and collects Egyptian mummies. There’s a little temple in Japan that will suit me just fine,” he said. I don’t want to end up in Tasmania.
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.Thousands of French internet users have flooded video sharing websites to enjoy a lampoon of their glamorous first couple, almost a week after they appeared on the US show, The Simpsons.
Cartoon caricatures of President Nicolas Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni starred in an episode of the animated show on November 15 in an episode entitled The Devil Wears Nada.
In the show, bungling paterfamilias Homer Simpson and his colleague Carl Carlson visit Paris and bump into Ms Bruni, a cigarette-smoking femme fatale in a stylish ballgown, at a high-society reception.
Their cameos passed largely unnoticed in France until Friday, when news websites started linking to pirated clips of the episode, creating a buzz which saw more than 117,000 fans linking to the DailyMotion site alone.”
Later, after Carl threatens to have Homer sacked, the hero declares: “You know that woman you’ve been playing hide the baguette with? That’s the first lady of France, Carla Bruni!
“If you fire me I’ll call President Sarkozy and he’ll be all over you like Truffaut on Hitchcock,” Homer warns, in a dig at French cinema’s supposed debt to American models.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the Bruni character throws herself into Carl’s arms and declares: “I want to make love, right now. .
When Carl doubts the threat, Homer calls Mr Sarkozy’s office and we see the French leader at his desk with a portion of camembert and his sultry wife.
But while Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair and Fox network owner Rupert Murdoch recorded their own voices for their appearances and escaped with a gentle ribbing, the harsher Sarkozy parody appeared without their consent.
This is not the first time The Simpsons has mocked the French - the show famously popularised the taunt “cheese-eating surrender monkey” - or leading world figures.
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.Ninety-six shoe addicts have signed up for Friday’s Stiletto Championship, which takes place after office hours on an indoor track in the old stock exchange building in central Paris.
The only rule is to be perched on heels at least eight centimetres high. The prize is boxes and boxes of shoes.
“Walking on heels is no piece of cake.
“The finalists are training very seriously,” said Caroline Gentien, who works for the online shoe sale site that came up with the idea.
“We came up with the idea just two years ago.”
The finalists hail from all over France and made it into the glam challenge after a series of regional races. This year, 400 candidates signed up for the regional races,” Ms Gentien said.
The race, being run at 9:30pm (local time), is a three-part relay over 180 metres involving 32 teams of three with names such as “Yes We Can”, “Sexpistols” and “Superwoman”.
The prize is 3,000 euros worth of shoes.
Winners of the 2008 race will be competing again this year - a TV journalist, a psychologist, and a lawyer competing under the name “Talk To My Foot”.
Volunteers from the Red Cross will be standing by in case of accident, but last year’s competition wound up without a single twisted ankle.
“The only training we do is running to catch a train or a bus every day.
“We all love shoes and we love having fun,” said journalist Dorothee Kristy, 29.”
Also taking part in the race is stiletto school “Talons Academy”, a private business that doles out tips on how to walk in heels without hurting one’s back or ankles.”
Also taking part in the race is stiletto school “Talons Academy”, a private business that doles out tips on how to walk in heels without hurting one’s back or ankles. They go to a rendezvous in flat shoes and put their stilettos on at the last minute,” she added.
“Or else they cheat.”
The trick for Friday’s contestants, she says, is “mastering the half-turn.
“It’s true that it is harder to find your balance on heels. You have to get it right for each foot. .”
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. Stilettos is all about technique
.The 16 nations of the Eurozone have officially grown their economies by 0.4 of a per cent, meaning the zone is officially out of recession.
The new figure means that on average Eurozone countries have emerged from recession faster than earlier predicted, but the powerhouse nations of Germany and France have recorded a recovery below expectations.7 per cent and France just 0.
The German economy grew by 0.
The Spanish economy is trailing and is still in recession.2 per cent.
Though not in the Eurozone, Britain too is lagging behind other European countries and is still in recession after recording six consecutive quarters of negative growth. .
It is Britain’s worst result since quarterly figures were first gathered in 1955
.French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who helped shape Western thinking about human civilisation, has died at the age of 100.
Levi-Strauss died on Friday and was buried at a private service in the Burgundy village of Lignerolles, where he had a house, senior colleagues said.
“Two years ago he broke his hip and he had been very tired ever since.
Trained as a philosopher, Levi-Strauss shot to prominence with his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques (A World on the Wane), a haunting account of travels and studies in the Amazon basin and one of the 20th century’s major works. He died at a grand old age,” said Philippe Desacola, his successor as head of the social anthropology laboratory at the College of France research institute.
The French leader described him as a “very great scholar, always open to the world, who created modern anthropology and raised the reputation of French human and social sciences to its highest level.
Paying tribute, French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave “homage to a tireless humanist, a curious academic who was always in search of new knowledge, to a man free of any sectarianism or indoctrination”.”
Levi-Strauss was a leading proponent of structuralism, which sought to uncover the hidden, unconscious or primitive patterns of thought believed to determine the outer reality of human culture and relationships.
French academia and the cultural elite marked his 100th birthday last year, paying homage to Levi-Strauss with a program of films, lectures and reflection on his contribution to modern thinking.
Structuralism was also, Levi-Strauss liked to say, “the search for unsuspected harmonies”.
He was the oldest member of France’s prestigious Academie of leading intellectuals, a respected but retiring figure, who had said he no longer felt at home on an overpopulated planet.
Among the more striking conclusions of his work was the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the belief systems and myths of so-called “primitive” races and those of modern Western societies.
“What I see are the current devastation, the frightening disappearances of living species, be they plants or animals.
- No longer at home -
In a 2005 television interview, Levi-Strauss expressed worry about ending his days in “this world that I do not love”. Because of its current density, the human species is living in a type of internally poisonous regime. Because of its current density, the human species is living in a type of internally poisonous regime.
He studied the lives of the tribes of the Mato Grosso and the Amazonian rainforest, collecting material for theories on the underlying structures of human relationships and myths shared by various cultures. He studied philosophy and in 1935 went to Brazil, where he became a professor at the University of Sao Paolo.
He was given the chair in social anthropology at the College de France in 1959, where he worked until retirement in 1982.
Returning to France in 1939 he was conscripted, but after the Nazi invasion he was, as a Jew, forced to flee to the United States, where he taught while awaiting his chance to return home and restart his career.
“He had an ecological approach to the world and to individuals that was ahead of its time.
“Straddling the worlds of philosophy and science, his work is essential for any attempt to reflect on our society and how it works,” said Denis Bertholet, one of Levi-Strauss’ biographers.
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.There is fresh evidence about the potential cause of an Air France Airbus crash which killed all 228 people on board when it plunged into the Atlantic while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The Airbus A330 disappeared on June 1, when it flew into a notoriously stormy area of the South Atlantic.
One of the biggest problems for investigators has been their failure to find the all important black box flight data and voice recorder.
But before the plane crashed it did send a routine maintenance message back to France.
It stopped transmitting a location signal a few days after the plane crashed and is now on the bottom of the ocean, probably four kilometres down.
They read the outside air pressure and convert it to measure the all important speed of the plane.
The message indicated a failure of the aircraft’s air speed indicators, known as pitots. .
As it headed into the stormy area, known as the inter-tropical convergence zone, it is possible the radar which is designed to pick up water droplets was blinded.
The kind of pitots used on Air France flight 447 were known to have problems icing up, particularly at the super cold high altitudes where modern jets like the Airbus fly to save fuel.
He said the Airbus had weather radar which picked up a lot of information.
Airbus vice-president of the flight test division, Fernando Alonso, admitted to Foreign Correspondent that the Airbus onboard radar could not “see” ice particles.”
If the plane did fly into an ice storm, blocking the pitots and giving a false air speed indication, it is possible the Airbus stalled.
But when asked if it was correct to say that the ice could not be detected as easily by the radar as rain, he said: “I believe that the ice could not be detected.
According to Air France pilots, the pilot would have had to wrestle not just with the plane, but contradictory advice on how to deal with a stall warning from the aircraft.
According to Air France pilots, the pilot would have had to wrestle not just with the plane, but contradictory advice on how to deal with a stall warning from the aircraft.
Watch Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABC 1.”
Shortly after the crash the pilots threatened to strike if Air France did not change the pitots and they did, the next day.