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MacKeeper is a strange piece of software. There may be no other app as controversial in the Apple world. The application, which performs various janitorial duties on your hard drive, is loathed by a large segment of the Mac community. Check out any blog, site or forum that mentions it, and you'll find hundreds of furious comments condemning MacKeeper and Zeobit, the company behind it. We discovered this ourselves earlier this month, when we offered a 50%-off deal on MacKeeper. Look at all those furious comments on the post. The complaints about MacKeeper are all over the shop: It's a virus. It holds your machine hostage until you pay up. It can't be completely removed if you decide to delete it. Instead of speeding up your computer, it slows it down. It erases your hard drive, deletes photos, and disappears documents. There are protests about MacKeeper's annual subscription fees. Zeobit is slammed for seedy marketing tactics. It runs pop-under ads, plants sock-puppet reviews and encourages sleazy affiliate sites, critics say. But what's really strange is that MacKeeper has been almost universally praised by professional reviewers. All week I've been checking out reviews on the Web and I can't find a bad one. All the reviews praise the software for being well designed and easy to use. Macworld magazine calls it "a gem." TUAW gives it a favorable review. Dave Hamilton of Backbeat Media, a Mac industry veteran, recently talked it up at Macworld Expo. None of the professional reviewers complain of slowed-down machines or deleted data. Given the comments on our deals post, I started researching Zeobit and MacKeeper. (Our deals, by the way, are determined by our partners, StackSocial.) I was alarmed that Cult of Mac might be promoting malware, but quickly became curious why such well-reviewed software gets such bad reviews from users. I reached out to Zeobit and Symantec, which publishes anti-virus and security software under the Norton brand

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Shiva Ayyadurai, pictured above, is a shimmering intellectual. He holds four degrees from MIT (where he lectures), numerous patents, honors, and awards. He also says he invented email, and there's a global conspiracy against him. Guess which one of these statements is true. In 1978, a precocious 14-year-old from New Jersey invented email. You can see him doing it in the photo at the top right of your screen-the kid glued to his monitor. In that picture, he's busy showing off his creation-a way for office staff to message each other via computer. As he's happy to gab to the Washington Post, which recently ran a profile of him, Ayyadurai was a teen wonder who invented the electronic messaging system with which we all communicate, back in 1978. Ayyadurai's collection of "historical documents" is now to be interred at the Smithsonian, the Post reported, laid gloriously on the pillar of American history alongside artifacts of Occidental Civilzation such as Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet, Thomas Jefferson's Bible, and a 1903 Winton, "the first car driven across the United States." Ayyadurai is about to become more than just a gifted programmer and Professional Smart Man, but a historical figure. All of this leading up to a plum book deal with Norton, proclaiming his place in history as the upstart inventor of email itself. But why have you never heard of him? Probably because there's precious little evidence that Ayyadurai came remotely close to inventing email, beyond a few misleading childhood documents and a US Copyright form of dubious weight. This was enough to convince the Washington Post and Smithsonian? Before you could even finish the Post's ode, Emi Kolawole, the reporter behind the piece, issued a stumbling correction: A number of readers have accurately pointed out that electronic messaging predates V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai's work in 1978. However, Ayyadurai holds the copyright to the computer program called"email," establishing him as the creator of the

A group of hackers who call themselves the Lords of Dharmaraja, (and is associated with Anonymous) have published the source code of Symantec, a digital security firm know for the Norton antivirus program and pcAnywhere, raising concerns that others could exploit thesecurity holes and try to control the users computer.The release of the source code came after the 'extortion' attempt failed as Symantec did notcomply with their numerous deadlines.Negotiations through email messages between a representative of the hacker group,YamaTough, and someone from Symantec were also released online. The exchange of messages are about Symantec's offer to pay USD 50,000 for the hackers to stop disclosing thesource code and announce to the public that the whole Symantec hack was a fake, which madethem a subject of mockery for appearing to buy protection.Both sides admitted that their participation was just a trick.The hackers denied any extortion aim, saying that they never intended to take the money andwere going to publish the source code whatever happens; they simply want to humiliate them sothey played along. While Symantec said that they are not actually the one in communicationwith the hacker, but a law enforcement agent.The long negotiation worked to the favor of Symantec as they have been able to come up withpatches to theirNorton and pcAnywhere programs. Symantec has advised their users to stopusing the softwares in the meantime until they have issued more patches for them.Symantec released a statement saying that they have always been prepared for the leak of thesource code so they've made and distributed hotfixes on January to secure their users.The drawn-out negotiation is an obvious sign of a law enforcer on the other line. Delaying tacticsis one of their assets to obtain insight into the enemy. More importantly, it will create moretransactions where paper trail will be left along the way -- utilizing persons who have beeninvolved in the process and the records themsel