bug

Microsoft, Google split over browser bug bounty

To entice security researchers to look for holes in the Chrome browser, Google has announced it will pay $500 for bugs found in the code. But several experts say that's not enough money to motivate skilled vulnerability researchers.

"I think it's ridiculous," Charlie Miller, a senior security researcher at Independent Security Evaluators, said when asked Monday for his opinion of Google's new bug bounty program. "It's insulting. It's so low."

Under Google's new "experimental" incentive program, announced last week, people will get paid $500 for select interesting and … Read more

TuneBug vibrating speaker for boarders and bikers

LAS VEGAS--I can tell you from experience that there's nothing quite like riding down a mountain with your own personal soundtrack. I'm sure cyclists feel the same way, particularly when it comes to long-haul biking.

The problem is safety: these activities already involve a fair amount of risk, and that shoots up when you impair your ability to hear what's going on in your surroundings. (In fact, in some places it's illegal to ride with two earphones in.) Luckily, we have this great thing called technology, which allows for innovations such as TuneBug's Shake.

In … Read more

Unresolved iTunes 9 bugs plague users

Since Apple introduced iTunes 9 several months ago, we've received a fair number of complaints about two particular bugs. So far no one, not even the first and second levels of Applecare support, has been able to resolve them.

iTunes password-saving problem

Previous versions of iTunes allowed you to save your iTunes Store password on your desktop by checking the box as shown in the adjacent picture. Now, iTunes 9 teases us with a dialog box offering this option, but when you attempt to save the password by checking the box, iTunes fails to remember the password. Although there … Read more

Microsoft fixes Office 2003 bug with patch

Microsoft says it has a fix for a bug that was keeping Office 2003 users from being able to access some rights-managed files.

The bug, which cropped up on Friday, meant that users of Office 2003 were unable to access files protected using Microsoft's rights management service (RMS) technology.

Microsoft posted a software download known as a "hotfix" on Saturday that it says resolves the issue.

"The issue of the inability to open Office 2003 documents protected with RMS has now been resolved with a hotfix," Microsoft said in a short statement on its Office … Read more

Bug keeps some Office users from their files

Some users of an older version of Microsoft Office may find that their protected documents are now not only protected, but completely inaccessible.

Microsoft warned on Friday that a glitch is causing users of Office 2003 to be unable to access files protected using Microsoft's Rights Management Service.

The software maker acknowledged the bug on its Office Sustained Engineering blog and said it is working to fix the issue.

Starting on December 11, 2009, customers using Office 2003 will not be able to open Office 2003 documents protected with the Rights Management Service (RMS) or save Office 2003 documents … Read more

iPhone OS 3.1.2 searching-for-service bug

On Apple's iPhone discussion boards, people are complaining about a bug in iPhone OS 3.1.2 that causes the iPhone to search for service at random times. According to the 3.1.2, Searching for Service thread on the forums, people are blaming the problem on the iPhone OS because users are seeing the same problem on AT&T in the U.S. and on Rogers Wireless and Telus in Canada.

According to the thread, there is no indication that the iPhone 3GS is affected, since so far the complaints focus on the iPhone 3G. Both new … Read more

Twitter issues mulligan on new 'retweet' feature

It was a controversial new addition: Twitter had just started rolling out a new feature that built "retweets," a user-created way to quote other tweets, into the main Twitter application. But on Wednesday, plagued by errors, Twitter appears to have pulled the feature for further maintenance.

A post on the Twitter status blog late on Wednesday morning reads that it was "working on (a) high number of errors." The Next Web dug up some discussion from Twitter's developer IRC channel and found that "retweet is temporarily unavailable while we deploy a bug fix." … Read more

Alterna-browsers Firefox, Chrome get quick fixes

Mozilla Firefox 3.5.5 is out, just eight days after the browser updated to version 3.5.4. For Windows, Mac, and Linux, the new version of the browser fixes three bugs: one critical bug across all platforms, and then one lower priority one for Windows and one lower priority one for Mac.

The critical bug addresses crashes in the GIF decoder that was not present in version 3.5.3, while the Windows bug fixes a security runtime issue and the Mac bug fixes an HTML parser error. Mozilla Evangelist Christopher Blizzard tweeted that although the critical bug … Read more

Snow Leopard: Trouble opening groups of downloaded files

Users are reporting a bug in Snow Leopard's Finder that prevents groups of files that have been recently downloaded from being opened at the same time. In a real world scenario this could include downloading multiple images for use in design work or multiple video elements for use in film work, etc. This bug requires users to open each file individually, a limitation that can severely disrupt certain workflows.… Read more

Workaround for iPhone eating draft e-mail

I recently posted my experiences with a serious bug that I discovered on my iPhone 3GS after it lost the entire contents of two different e-mail messages. The bug appears to be caused by a problem with my e-mail accounts on MobileMe or Gmail and accessing them later on my iPhone.

The steps that I have used to demonstrate the bug, which I've been able to successfully replicate every time on my iPhone running OS 3.1 or 3.1.2 and my MobileMe account are posted in My iPhone eats draft e-mail--yours could too.

After providing Apple with … Read more