Want to learn about networking without hours and hours of reading or spending money on a college class? Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte have been doing a series of podcasts that could give you a good starting point for your networking education.

Nmap, Insecure.org's much-praised open source network auditing tool, has received a major set of updates. So many updates, in fact, that it was deemed worthy of a new version number.

Just when Windows administration was starting to get boring, there's a new worm on the run with more than its share of variations and names. According to a Microsoft security advisory dated January 30, a Mywife variant is in the wild that will be triggered on the third day of each month. That means this Friday could lead to a long weekend for many a technician.

It's 2006. Apple is now using Intel hardware for some of its notebooks. Microsoft is using PowerPC chips for its gaming consoles. Google has found a way to be pro-privacy as well as pro-censorship all in the span of about a week. With so many changes in the last few months effecting the entire industry, I'm surprised to still scratching my head over the pitiful performance of consumer-grade networking hardware.

An ill wind is blowing near Microsoft right now. It's come and passed before, but this time seems different. I'm starting to get a lot of clients asking about this "Linux stuff." And I'm not even talking about the corporations trying to save money on software; I'm talking about individuals trying to save their home computers.

So far, Microsoft hasn't released a patch to the much-hyped WMF vulnerability and isn't expected to for at least another week. Fortunately, there is a third-party workaround available.

NASA is reporting that an explosion was sighted on the Moon's surface. Don't worry, there are no little green men involved. But there is something odd about this report.

Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying that he didn't know what weapons World War III would be fought with but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. But looking through the prism of mutually assured destruction, perhaps the next great war will be fought in cyberspace. If that's the case, China has been accused of firing the first shot.

The odds of it happening at any given moment are slim. But given plenty of time, the chances of a collision with a near-Earth object become astronomical. With one such object in particular, 99942 Apophis, the risk is high enough that people are starting to take notice.

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