Apple Co-founder and Former CEO Steve Jobs Dead at Age 56

Steve Jobs, one of the most visionary Americans of his industry and the co-founder of Apple computers, died Wednesday. He was 56 years old. Apple released a statement Wednesday night saying they had "lost a visionary and creative genius" and "his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. In 2005, following a bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.

He said, "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

That is a powerful statement. ... "these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important". The question is "What was 'truly important' to Steve Jobs and more importantly, what is 'truly important' to you?" 

Success and money were truly important to Steve Jobs. Forbes magazine estimated Steve Jobs net wealth at $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American.

Family was truly important to Steve Jobs. He has left behind a wife, a son, and three daughters (one from a previous relationship). His family said, "He was a great family man".

Religion was truly important to Steve Jobs. He was a professing Buddhist and married by a Zen Buddhist.

However, in the face of death, truth did not seem truly important to Steve Jobs (although we don't know what happened in his final moments).

Is the Truth truly important to you? When you stare death in the face will the Truth be what's truly important to you? You see, the Truth will set you free. Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me." Most professing Buddhists do not believe Jesus is God's son, nor do they believe there is any God at all.

The real cause of death for Steve Jobs was not cancer, but sin. The wages of sin is death. The truth is that Steve Jobs was a sinner in need of a Savior. The truth is that death has come into the world because of sin. Steve Jobs was born a sinner in need of a Savior. The truth is that you were born a sinner and are in need of that same Savior. His name is not Buddha, but Jesus Christ.

In the face of death, Steve Jobs should have been worried about what is truly important. Steve should have been worried about his eternal soul that will never die, but rather live in one of two places of eternity forever. Steve Jobs should have been worried about heaven and hell? In fact, right now you should consider what's truly important, because you don't know when the moment will be when you will face your own death. You have an eternal soul and it is appointed for you to die once and then face the judgment of Almighty God. You will not be judged according to Buddha's standard, your standard or Steve Jobs' standard, but according to God's Holy standard.

God's standard of judgment is His Ten Commandments. You are probably familiar with them. If you were to die today would you be innocent or guilty of breaking God's commands?

How many lies have you told in your life time? The 9th Commandment says "Do not lie". The bible says all liars will have their part in the lake of fire (hell).

Have you ever taken something that didn't belong to you? The 8th commandment says "Do not steal". The bible says that no thief will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

God is Holy, Righteous and Just. He cannot and will not overlook your sins on the Day of Judgment. In fact, God's judgment of you will be so thorough that He will see the thoughts and the intentions of your heart.

Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That means every time you have looked with lust, even at the sinful pictures on the computer or iPhone screen that Steve Jobs created, you have broken the 7th Commandment that says "Do not commit adultery".

Jesus went on to say, "If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell."

Do you understand how serious and thorough the judgment of God will be concerning your sin ?

Steve Jobs said, "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,"

The most important choice Steve Jobs could have ever made in life would have been to turn from his sins and to follow Jesus Christ as Lord of his life (again we don't know what happened in his final moments). The most important choice you will ever face in life is to turn from your sins and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "he who believes in Me will live even if he dies."

2000 years ago, God perfectly showed His justice and mercy to all the world. Jesus Christ lived a perfectly holy life. He never sinned. He never broke God's Laws like us. In fact, God came in the flesh that He might declare Law breakers like me, you and Steve Jobs, NOT GUILTY on the Day we all stand before Him. Jesus died, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead. Jesus Christ defeated sin, death and the grave.

The real cause of Steve Jobs death will be the real cause of your death too. You are a sinner in need of a Savior. 

Ignorance will be no excuse on the Day of Judgment. Buddha cannot save your soul. You don't want God's thorough justice and you do not want to spend eternity in hell. You need the mercy of God that is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ. Please turn from your sins and follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Cry out for mercy to the Only One who can satisfy God's justice on your behalf. Jesus Christ The Righteous One. He will forgive your sins, remove your guilt, give you peace and joy like you have never known and present you faultless on judgment day by grace through faith in Him. He will never leave you nor forsake you. 

Please turn to Christ today, He will save your soul and give you eternal life in heaven with Him forever.

Steve Jobs is dead. You still have time to turn to Christ right now. Don't wait until it's too late.

Apple searching for product security managers after 2nd lost iPhone prototype

After losing its second iPhone prototype in two years, Apple has posted a pair of job openings for Managers for New Product Security to help safeguard the company's unreleased products and related intellectual property.

Apple listed the two identical job descriptions, first discovered by PC Mag, late last week, shortly after the news broke that the company was searching for a lost prototype of the fifth-generation iPhone. Though it's possible that the recently lost iPhone may be unrelated to Apple's search for security managers, high-profile incidents both last year and this year do appear to indicate a lapse in its usually tight secrecy that the company is working to rectify.

The Cupertino, Calif., company is searching two managers responsible "for overseeing the protection of, and managing risks to, Apple’s unreleased products and related intellectual property." The positions are based at its headquarters and will require as much as 30 percent travel both domestic and abroad.

Candidates are expected to have a proven record of "accurately assessing physical and logical security implementations" and making risk management recommendations while considering impact on "corporate culture, business operations, system architectures, manufacturing processes, and employee workflows." They are also expected to have had success implementing a "variety of security technologies." The New Product Security Manager will also work to mitigate risks associated with the company's "multi-tiered electronics supply chain."

Apple also expects the candidate to hold an advanced degree in risk or security management, as well as protection professional certification. The posting also lists more than five years of security assessment as a requirement for the position.

Two of Apple's security officials made headlines last week after reports emerged that they had accompanied police officers to the San Francisco residence of a man suspected of being in possession of the lost iPhone 5 prototype. The device is said to have been left at a bar in the Mission district of San Francisco in July before being quickly tracked by Apple to a Bernal Heights house.

Though there was some initial confusion as to whether the police joined in the investigation, the San Francisco Police Department has since stated that "three or four" of its officers accompanied Apple's security officials, but did not enter the house. One of the security officials reportedly served as a San Jose Police sergeant before joining Apple as a "senior investigator."

"Apple came to us saying that they were looking for a lost item, and some plainclothes officers responded out to the house with them," SFPD spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield said. "My understanding is that they stood outside...They just assisted Apple to the address."

Last year, an Apple engineer reportedly left a test iPhone 4 unit in a Redwood City, Calif., bar, where it was found and eventually sold to a publication. Two individuals have been charged with "misappropriation of lost property" in connection with the incident.

According to recently leaked Wikileaks diplomatic cables, Apple's security officials have also struggled to protect Apple's brand and products in Asia, where millions of counterfeit iPods, iPhones and accessories are produced every year. An Apple security team director was noted as telling U.S. embassy officials that he was "afraid" of his company's inexperience with the situation.

Earlier this year, millions of dollars of convincing counterfeit products, including fake iPhones and iPods (pictured below), were confiscated in Los Angeles. Apple also recently executed a warrant for a raid against a New York store allegedly selling counterfeit Apple accessories as part of an ongoing lawsuit against a number of parties.

Trend Micro: Morto worm infections rising

 
A Windows computer worm that enables remote desktop access is spreading rapidly, a computer security firm said Friday.

Trend Micro said it is “continuously receiving" reports of infections, including in the Asia-Pacific region, involving WORM_MORTO.SMA.

“Once WORM_MORTO.SM gets loaded, it decrypts a file that contains the malware’s payload. It searches for Remote Desktop Servers associated with the affected system, and attempt to log in as an administrator using a predefined set of passwords. Once a successful connection is established, it drops a copy of WORM_MORTO.SM into a temporary directory in the system," it said in a blog post.

Trend Micro said a cybercriminal can use the worm to access a victim’s entire system remotely - thus a cybercriminal being able to connect grants him/her complete access to the system.

“It appears that the aim of this attack is indeed to give the attacker full control of the affected system and of the whole network, since the malware logs in using an administrator account. Anything can be done in the system at this point, including information theft, especially if the malware infiltrates servers," it said.

According to Trend Micro, the worm drops its component files into the system, including a DLL file into the system’s Windows folder.

The DLL file - clb.dll- is detected as WORM_MORTO.SM, which loads the malware and places its own clb.dll in the %Windows% folder to exploit the way Windows finds its files.

“Windows typically loads the %Windows% folder before %System%, where the legitimate clb.dll is placed. In doing so, the malware’s .DLL file is loaded first whenever regedit.exe is executed," Trend Micro said.

Trend Micro said its software can detect the worm, and block URLs that the malware uses to connect to its servers.

In the meantime, it advised users to use a strong password and enable their firewall.

Also, it advised network administrators to require a secure VPN connection before allowing users to use the Remote Desktop Connection.

Hackers Break Into Linux Source Code Site

As Linux fans know, there are two kinds of hackers: the good guys who develop free software, such as the Linux kernel, and the bad guys who break into computers.

The bad guys paid the good guys an unwelcome visit earlier this month, breaking into the Kernel.org website that is home to the Linux project. They gained root access to a server known as Hera and ultimately compromised "a number of servers in the kernel.org infrastructure," according to a note on the kernel.org website Wednesday.

Administrators of the website learned of the problem Sunday and soon discovered a number of bad things were happening on their servers. Files were modified, a malicious program was added to the server's startup scripts and some user data was logged.

Kernel.org's owners have contacted law enforcement in the U.S. and Europe and are in the process of reinstalling the site's infrastructure and figuring out what happened.

They think that the hackers may have stolen a user's login credentials to break into the system, and the site is making each of its 448 users change their passwords and SSH (Secure Shell) keys.

The hack is worrying because Kernel.org is the place where Linux distributors download the source code for the widely used operating system's kernel. But Kernel.org's note says that, even with root access, it would be difficult for a hacker to slip malicious source code into the Linux kernel without it being noticed. That's because Linux's change-tracking system takes a cryptographic hash of each file at the time it is published.

So once a component of the Linux kernel has been written and published to Kernel.org, "it is not possible to change the old versions without it being noticed," the Kernel.org note said.

This kind of compromise has become disturbingly common. In January, servers used by the Fedora project -- the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- were hacked. And around the same time another open-source software development site called SourceForge was also broken into.

Hackers break into Linux 'home'

 
Even if it is not as high-profile as Windows or Mac OS X, the Linux operating system came under attack from hackers, who broke into the primary site for its kernel source.

Administrators of the Linux Kernel Archives (www.kernel.org) said they discovered the security breach August 28, but said the breach may have occurred weeks before.

"While we currently believe that the source code repositories were unaffected, we are in the process of verifying this and taking steps to enhance security across the kernel.org infrastructure," they said on the site's main page.

The site administrators said intruders gained root access on the server Hera, possible via a compromised user credential.

Files belonging to ssh (openssh, openssh-server and openssh-clients) were modified and running live while a trojan startup file was added to the system start up scripts.

So far, the administrators said they have taken boxes offline to do a backup and are in the process of doing complete reinstalls.

"We have notified authorities in the United States and in Europe to assist with the investigation," they added.

The administrators also said they are working with the 448 users of kernel.org to change their credentials and change their SSH keys.

Hackers break into linux source code site said the hack is worrying because Kernel.org is where Linux distributors download the source code for Linux's kernel.

"But Kernel.org's note says that, even with root access, it would be difficult for a hacker to slip malicious source code into the Linux kernel without it being noticed. That's because Linux's change-tracking system takes a cryptographic hash of each file at the time it is published," it said.

Windows 8 to support ISO, VHD files straight from disc

Here's another goodie from Microsoft for its upcoming flagship operating system Windows 8: the ability to read data in ISO and VHD files.

Windows storage and file systems team manager Rajeev Nagar said this may be a big plus for users who need to rip files from optical discs to their computers.

"our desire for thin and light form factors such as slates and ultra-mobile laptops often leaves no room for vendors to add optical disc drives. This is exactly the feedback we received from many of you who used Windows 7 – the ability to directly use ISO files (also known as ISO images) without requiring a physical CDROM or DVD drive is very important"

He added managing disc image formats remains important for a number of mission-critical operations in many organizations and among power users.

An ISO file is a disc image stored as a file, composed of all of the contents of a CDROM or DVD disc, used by vendors to distribute software.

But before one can access the content contained in the ISO file, one has to “burn" the ISO file to a writable optical disc or download and install software that allows one to mount and access its contents.

"With Windows 8, we have eliminated this last step – you can simply access the contents of the ISO file without needing either needing to burn a new disc or needing to find/download/install additional software just to logically access the ISO," he said.

The ISO file appears as a virtual drive once mounted.

Once a user finishes with it, he or she can “eject" it, and the virtual drive disappears.

On the other hand, VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) is the format used by Virtualization software Hyper-V or Virtual PC.

It allows the encapsulation of the hard disk into an individual file for use by the operating system as a virtual disk.

But instead of appearing as a removable drive as is the case with ISO, VHDs appear as new hard drives.

"You can then work with the virtual hard disk just like any other file storage in your system, whether you are modifying, adding or removing files," Nagar said.

Once one finished working with a VHD file, he or she can click Eject or just use the Eject button on the ribbon.

Any changes made remain saved within the file.

Accessing data in ISO and VHD files

In continuing with the improvements in core Windows functionality and also oft-requested features, we are adding native Explorer support for ISO and VHD files in Windows 8. While terabytes of storage are available to all of us, managing disk (or disc) image formats remains important for a number of mission-critical operations in many organizations and among power users. We know even more support for VHD is a big request, so stay tuned. Rajeev Nagar authored this post. He is a group program manager on our Storage & File Systems team. --Steven

The trend of incredibly large and small form-factor hard disks means we can store ever increasing amounts of data without worrying about running out of capacity. Windows 8 enables easy access to the contents of two important storage formats, ISO and VHD files. While we generally think of these formats when they appear on media, they are also very useful as files within a file system and that is where native support in Explorer comes in handy.

Working with ISO files

While optical discs continue to be useful in many situations, large hard disks allow us to decrease our dependence on them. Personally, I’ve spent a load of my time (legally) ripping about 900 GB worth of music, and more recently almost 1TB of home video DVDs into my collection. I know that my backup of our photos and home movies is probably the most important data in my house. Together with backups, storing the most basic things in my house now requires terabytes of space. Just a couple of years ago that was an unimaginable amount of storage. These days, however, I know I can buy a 3TB hard disk for less than $200.

Given cheap hard disks and our mobile lifestyle, we have little interest in carting around collections of discs. Also, we expect to be able to receive content as well as share and collaborate with friends, family, and colleagues in an instant – typically through online file transfers. Last but not least, our desire for thin and light form factors such as slates and ultra-mobile laptops often leaves no room for vendors to add optical disc drives. This is exactly the feedback we received from many of you who used Windows 7 – the ability to directly use ISO files (also known as ISO images) without requiring a physical CDROM or DVD drive is very important.

A quick refresher on ISO files might be helpful. ISO refers to the International Organization for Standardization which is an international standard-setting body, and a world leader in developing and publishing international standards. For the purpose of this blog entry, our interests lie in a couple of standards published by ISO, namely ISO-9660 and ISO-13346. Simply stated, these two standards each describe a method by which photos, video, applications, documents or other content (excluding CD audio) are organized on CDROM or DVD optical media. The reason for the popularity of these standards is they allow CDROM and DVD media content to be easily interchanged across systems from different vendors e.g. you can create a DVD on a Windows PC and read it in your living room DVD player. An ISO file is simply a disc image stored as a file, composed of all of the contents of a CDROM or DVD disc. You can also think of an ISO file as a full-fidelity image (digital copy) of the optical disc.

ISO files are used by vendors to distribute software. Backup applications also store content in the ISO format and many utilities allow creation of an ISO file from existing CDROM or DVD media. Once created, these files can be sent around, downloaded, and stored just like any other file – however, before you can access the photos, video, applications, documents, or other content contained within the ISO file, you either have to “burn” the ISO file to a writable optical disc or download and install software that allows you to “mount” and access the ISO file contents directly (i.e. without burning). With Windows 8, we have eliminated this last step – you can simply access the contents of the ISO file without needing either needing to burn a new disc or needing to find/download/install additional software just to logically access the ISO.

So how does this work in Windows 8? It’s quite simple – just “mount” the ISO file (you can select mount from the enhanced Explorer ribbon or double-click or right-click on the file), and a new drive letter appears, indicating that the contents are now readily accessible. Underneath the covers, Windows seamlessly creates a “virtual” CDROM or DVD drive for you on-the-fly so you can access your data. Let’s walk through the flow that will enable you to access such an ISO file.

As you see in the figure below, we have three ISO files in a local folder. The one we will work with contains the (legally obtained) Office application suite. To mount the ISO, you can either double click the file or click Mount on the Actions tab.

Once you mount the ISO, a new drive letter appears for the virtual CDROM/DVD drive that Windows seamlessly creates. The contents of the ISO are accessible just as they would have been had you inserted the CD/DVD media into a physical optical drive. Only, operating on the contents happens at the speed of your hard drive, not an optical drive.

Once you are done using the ISO, you can (virtually) “eject” it, and the virtual drive disappears.

In case you need a utility to create ISO images from existing optical media, there are many tools that give you that capability. One I use is the Oscdimg command line tool that is available as part of our automated deployment kit.

That is it! Accessing ISO files has now become a snap with Windows 8. Regardless of whether you have an optical drive accessible to you or not, accessing your data is never a problem.

Working with VHD files

Another place we’ve simplified access is with Virtual Hard Disk files. Virtual Hard Disks are the format used by Virtualization software Hyper-V or Virtual PC. In a future blog post, we’ll talk more about the enhancements to Windows Virtualization technology, Hyper-V.

The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format is a publicly-available image format specification that allows encapsulation of the hard disk into an individual file for use by the operating system as a virtual disk in all the same ways physical hard disks are used. The VHD format is used by Hyper-V to store information for Virtual Machines. In Windows7 & Windows Server 2008 r2 we have the ability to boot the system off a VHD file, and we had command line and MMC plugins for managing them. VHDs are handy for portability of system settings or to play back what has been saved as a snapshot of a system.

Accessing a VHD in Windows 8 is as simple as what we’ve done with ISO files, but there is one important difference: rather than appearing as a removable drive (as is the case with ISO), VHDs appear as new hard drives.

Underneath the covers, Windows provides a virtual drive letter pointing to the volume within the VHD. You’ll notice that the icon for the drive G: below is the same as the icon for a VHD file.

You can then work with the virtual hard disk just like any other file storage in your system, whether you are modifying, adding or removing files.

Once you’ve finished working with the VHD, like an ISO, you can right-click it and click Eject (or just use the Eject button on the ribbon). Any changes you’ve made remain saved within the file.