Microsoft's new secure-boot functionality in Windows 8 could prevent some users from running both Windows and Linux on their pre-built PCs, according multiple reports. Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett blogged about the possible lockout scenario a couple of days ago, where he explained the new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) that Windows 8 will support, will prevent any unsigned executable or drivers from being loaded.

Businesses have dragged their feet on upgrading from the ten-year-old Windows XP to newer versions of Microsoft’s operating system. First, they skipped Windows Vista en masse after the OS was the target of scorn from critics and IT analysts. Now, they are making the upgrade to Windows 7, but analysts at Gartner are worried some XP-using businesses will consider skipping Windows 7 in anticipation of next year’s release of Windows 8.

This would not be wise, Gartner and other analyst firms say. Microsoft will end support for Windows XP in April 2014. For a home user, that is a long time away. But enterprises have long deployment cycles for new operating systems that depend heavily on budgets, internal processes and third-party vendors updating applications to support the latest version of Windows.

The United States ranks 26th in a recent report concerning global Internet speed. Such a ranking puts the US slightly ahead of the world average at 616KBps, according to Pando Networks.

The study analyzed 27 million downloads by 20 million computers in 224 countries from January through June 2011 to determine that the average worldwide download speed is 580KBps. South Korean Internet access is nearly four times faster than what most Americans use. That country ranked first in the study with an average speed of 2,202KBps, surpassing most nations by a large margin. Romania and Bulgaria came in second and third place with average speeds of 1,909KBps and 1,611KBps, respectively.

The Google+ social network launched with much fanfare at the end of June. As the 100-day mark approaches, Google is looking to further expand the audience. The search giant is now dropping the invitation barrier and making the service accessible to all users.

In a statement on the official company blog, Google engineering senior vice president Vic Gundotra explained that the site is ready to move from "field trial" to full beta. Google+ has adequately scaled with the growth of the audience so far—it's not clear how many users connect to the site every day, but Gundotra says that over a billion posts have been shared since the launch.

Researchers have discovered a serious weakness in virtually all websites protected by the secure sockets layer protocol that allows attackers to silently decrypt data that's passing between a webserver and an end-user browser.

The vulnerability resides in versions 1.0 and earlier of TLS, or transport layer security, the successor to the secure sockets layer technology that serves as the internet's foundation of trust. Although versions 1.1 and 1.2 of TLS aren't susceptible, they remain almost entirely unsupported in browsers and websites alike, making encrypted transactions on PayPal, GMail, and just about every other website vulnerable to eavesdropping by hackers who are able to control the connection between the end user and the website he's visiting.

At the Ekoparty security conference in Buenos Aires later this week, researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo plan to demonstrate proof-of-concept code called BEAST, which is short for Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS. The stealthy piece of JavaScript works with a network sniffer to decrypt encrypted cookies a targeted website uses to grant access to restricted user accounts. The exploit works even against sites that use HSTS, or HTTP Strict Transport Security, which prevents certain pages from loading unless they're protected by SSL.