bugs

The U.S. Navy may have developed a solution to hull-dwelling barnacles and slime--a "foul" problem that has plagued sailors and their ships since Noah launched the ark.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has developed what looks like a combination pressure washer/minisub called the Hull Bio-inspired Underwater Grooming, or Hull BUG. It's designed to prevent or suppress the growth and build-up of nuisance marine growths such as barnacles--also known as biofouling (PDF).

This could be a major breakthrough. High-performance warships and submarines rely on a clean hull for speedy acceleration and hydroacoustic stealth--things that crustaceans … Read more

A video posted recently on YouTube demonstrates, on an iPod Touch, a potential security risk for users of iPhone OS 3.0. The bug allows e-mails that have already deleted to be viewed by searching for the title of the deleted message.

The results of the search display two copies of the message. Selecting either one of these the first time will cause Mail to crash. The second time you select the messages, the iPhone may display the original message or you may get a warning that states: "Message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted.&… Read more

The iPhone OS 3.0 Camera Roll is running out of film for some iPhone users. A handful of photographers on Apple's discussion board are reporting that pictures taken with the iPhone camera and screen captures are disappearing from the iPhone's onboard photo library.

The bug, according to these reports, occurs when the photo names generated by the iPhone reach IMG_10000.xxx or higher, where the xxx represents either a JPG for photos, PNG for screen snapshots, or MOV for videos. Once you've reached this 10,000 mark milestone in your iPhone photography career, the Mobile Photos app no longer displays additional media files. Luckily, however, the photos are still there--they simply don't display on the phone.

Some users found help using the Phoneview utility from Ecamm on their Macs--the free demo version worked long enough to uncover the missing photos. PC users may be able to find their shots via iPhone Browser.… Read more

Among the bevy of problems--some large, some small--reported by iPhone users following the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS lurked a bug I encountered in Find My iPhone on Apple's MobileMe service.

Find My iPhone remembers all your devices, including any old iPhones turned off or sold after you upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. Until now, there was no way to make Find My iPhone forget that old iPhone.

Apple has quietly released an updated Apple support document, "MobileMe, iPhone OS 3.0: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe," which now states:… Read more

Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it is looking into an issue in which users of Internet Explorer 6 are forced into having Bing as their default search engine.

"We are aware of the issue with Bing on machines running IE6 and are investigating a solution," Microsoft said in a statement. "This issue is not impacting IE7 and IE8 users."

Although it is only affecting its older browser, many people still use IE6 and Microsoft has faced a lot of regulatory scrutiny over how default search preferences are set and changed within Internet Explorer.

The issue crops … Read more

Microsoft warned on Friday of a significant bug in the latest version of its SharePoint portal product.

The bug, in a service pack update to the product, improperly activates an expiration date, so SharePoint will expire as though it were a trial installation 180 days after the service pack is deployed.

Microsoft says the bug will not affect SharePoint performance until the ersatz expiration date passes. The company also said customer data will not be affected, even if the product does expire but that it will render SharePoint inaccessible for end users.

Microsoft says a manual fix is out now … Read more

Canon released a service note detailing a notable but infrequently and randomly occurring artifact in photos shot with certain PowerShot G10s: lines. If you've seen these and wondered at them, wonder no more, and contact Canon for your free repair. It turns out our evaluation unit fell into the relevant serial number range, but none of my test photos displayed this problem. Whew.

How dangerous is your commute? The answer may depend on the weather.

In addition to speed traps and red light cameras, Njection.com is now offering people the option to view the traffic accident history of a route based on past weather conditions using the Njection Mobile iPhone application.

Njection took five years of accident data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and merged it with global weather conditions from WeatherBug.com. Using Microsoft Virtual Earth, this mashup enables people to see what accidents have occurred in a particular area, and if they want, filter the data to show … Read more

Correction and update:This post was updated at 1:53 p.m. with a corrected headline (the word "patched" was missing) and additional and winnowed information on the security holes.)

Mozilla published a critical security upgrade for Firefox Friday evening. Version 3.0.8 for Windows, Mac, and Linux fixes two security holes listed as "critical."

One patched an arbitrary code execution hole through an XUL element, and the other corrected an XSL stylesheet exploit. Both fixes patch crash-based security holes in which remote codes could have been run.

The release notes for Firefox 3.0.… Read more