Minkom Wa iLaykom

Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, sent a message of greetings to Bashar Al-Assad, president of Syria, on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the March 8 revolution in Syria. In the message Kim Yong Nam said that the Syrian people have smashed the moves of the imperialists and Zionists and defended the dignity of the nation and the sovereignty of the country for 43 years, rallied close around the Arab Socialist Baath Party. He sincerely wished the president and people of Syria greater successes in their work for foiling the moves of the outside forces to isolate and stifle Syria, stepping up the modernization of the country and for fair and comprehensive settlement of the Middle East issue. He expressed the conviction that the good relations of friendship and cooperation between the two countries will continue to vigorously consolidate and develop.

"The "blog phenomenon" seems to have been growing to a frenzy over the last few months. Everyone has a blog, reads a blog, or wants a blog. At a fundamental level, blogs are the true promise of the Internet encapsulated in a new four letter word. Blogs give everyone a soapbox, a place to state or shout their mind, whether it be about the tedium of their own lives, politics, or eLearning. Author David Weinberger has recently paraphrased Andy Warhol and said that 'on the web, everyone is famous to fifteen people.' Blogs are exactly the kind of tool that make this possible, and increasingly accurate. They are the first foolproof tool of the Internet's "me" generation.

Live ID will be required for nearly all of Microsoft's software and services going forward. Microsoft announced this week that its Passport system, which allows customers to use one login name to access many websites and online stores, will be going through an upgrade. While some have predicted that Passport will be axed, the case isn't so. Instead, Passport will be highly integrated into Microsoft's Live platform.

The new service, called Live ID, will coexist and be used with such other services as Xbox Live, Windows Live, Office Live, and other Microsoft online services such as MSN. Unfortunately however, privacy groups are complaining once again that any type of singular login such as Passport, pose a great security risk for end users. With Live IDs being required for nearly all of Microsoft's services and products going forward, tracking customer behaviors and actions, and linking everything back to a user's Windows install will be easier than ever -- for both Microsoft and its cooperatives.

A new type of Trojan is making the rounds on the Internet, hijacking files and then leaving messages for the victims, demanding a ransom to return access. Called "Cryzip" by some antivirus firms and "Zippo.a" by others, the Trojan blocks access to files stored in 44 formats -- including .doc, .jpg, and .pdf -- by grouping them in a password-protected .zip file. The Trojan then deletes the original files and eliminates itself. Left behind along with the encrypted files is a ransom note, riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, that demands that users pay $300 in electronic currency to gain access to their files. The author of the note and Trojan writes that reporting the incident to the police will not help because "they do not know password." A text file includes instructions for victims to transfer money to one of nearly 100 accounts run by money-transfer site e-gold.

Hackers have managed to get Microsoft's Windows XP operating system running on an Apple Mac computer. The success ends a competition started to see if the feat was even possible when Apple unveiled computers that used Intel chips. The pair who managed the feat won $13,854 (£7,895) in prize money for their trouble. The software used to put Windows on the Mac is now being circulated so others can try to replicate the success.

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In January 2006, the first Apple Mac computers using Intel chips were unveiled at the Macworld show by company boss Steve Jobs. Soon after the unveiling, Mac enthusiast Colin Nederkoorn kicked off a competition to see if it was possible for the two operating systems to run independently on the same machine. To tempt entrants, he put up $100 of his own money - a prize fund that gradually grew as news about the competition spread. The rules of the competition stressed that to win hackers must get both Windows XP and Apple's OSX running on the same machine and neither operating system must conflict with the other.