The Tecker

Microsoft has released the Windows 7 beta to the general public after its mention at the CES. This means you do not have to download it via torrents because Microsoft released it on their site! [Windows 7 beta...]

Sorry, it would be there. Except the demand crashed Microsoft's servers. Oh well.

No, we'll post the link as soon as it comes back up!

There seems to be a huge rise in hacks on popular websites recently.

Twitter has gotten hacked not once, not twice, but 33 times! It seems as though the group behind the attacks is called Digital Gangster. Check out the full story here. [Twitter gets hacked] [Digital Gangster is the culprit]

There is still uncertainty about who is behind the MacRumors site hacking though. [MacRumors hacking]

UPDATE: Now Cork'd, a wine finding site seems to be hacked to link to another not-so-family-appropriate site. [Cork'd gets uncorked]

Journalspace.com was a place for people to blog and share pictures, etc. However, their database was overwritten and they had no real backup, so their company is toast.

One might ask why they did not have a backup.

Well, they did, sorta. They relied on a RAID configuration to keep their data safe. So if one of the drives failed, they just swapped it out for it's backup drive. However, in Journalspace's case, the drive did not fail, it was overwritten which also means (because the drives are configured in a RAID format) the other one had the copy written over too!

The moral? Don't rely on any one technology to keep your data safe. In this case it was RAID, that didn't turn out the intended results. The technology didn't fail, it did its job by copying the one drive, it just had no way of knowing that it was not supposed too.

So remember people backup your data often on removable formats, and always have a backup kept off site too!

---Info for any Journalspace users---

• You can find out more information what happened. [Journalspace News]

• A blog post about how to attempt to recover your posts and pictures via Google's cache. [Andrew's Blog]
• Journalspace also has a twitter account set up so you can view the updates [jsupgrades@twitter]
• Also the company is planning to release the source code for the site to the open source community

If anything else comes up, we'll keep you posted here at The Tecker!

Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool has found and removed the "AntiVirus 2009" virus from 400,000 computers so far.

[via Slashdot]

Not sure if this is true or not because I do not own a Zune, but it seems as if all 30gb HDD Zunes have frozen up at around 2:00 this morning or so, and have not been able to be reset or anything.

Everyone's seems to be frozen up at the loading screen, the loading bar fills up and then it just stops.

Tell me if it has happened to anybody.

UPDATE: Microsoft does know about the problem and they are working hard to fix it... Just be patient people!

We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).” - Zune spokesperson

UPDATE 2: Microsoft said that this problem is to be blamed on a bug in the software due to 2008 being a leap year, and your Zunes should work next year (yes, tomorrow.) Let's hope that M$ fixes this by 2012 though!

[via... the World.... and Wall Street Journal]