Google has a secret laboratory, unknown even to most of the company’s employees, where it develops projects that sound like something taken from a sci-fi movie, the New York Timesreports.

At the lab, located somewhere in the Bay Area, Google’s brightest engineers are working on some hundred projects, including smart refrigerators and dinner plates, robots that fetch the groceries and elevators that can take you to outer space.

An unnamed Google engineer says that the lab is run mysteriously, in two different office buildings — one for logistics and the other for robotics projects.

The scientists working in the lab include hires from Microsoft, Nokia, Stanford, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon and New York University. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin is reportedly “deeply involved” with the project, and he and co-founder Larry Page have come up with a list of ideas for the lab.

It is reportedly headed by robotics and artificial intelligence expert Sebastian Thrun from Stanford, best known for his work on the world’s first driverless car. Andrew Ng, a Stanford professor and an esteemed A.I. expert, also works at the lab.

A Google spokeswoman would not confirm the existence of the lab, but she did say that Google likes to invest in speculative projects. Google’s 20% rule, which lets engineers spend one-fifth of their work time on personal projects, is one example of that, but a secret lab takes this idea a step further and makes you wonder which of these technologies will graduate to be full-fledged Google projects.

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The Department of Justice has indicted seven people for allegedly hijackingmillions of computers, manipulating traffic on popular websites, and generating more than $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue.

The defendants — six Estonians and one Russian — allegedly hijacked more than 4 million computers using malware that rerouted Internet traffic to websites where they would get a cut of the ad revenue. Infected computers with users looking for popular websites such as Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes were rerouted to webpages that featured the defendants’ ads.

This case is supposedly the “first of its kind,” according to US Attorney Preet Bharara, because the suspects set up their own “rogue servers” in order to perform the rerouting. Using their rogue servers, the defendants were allegedly able to substitute legitimate Internet ads with their own ads, thereby generating millions in advertising revenue.

According to BusinessWeek, the indictment cited a case in which an American Express ad on the Wall Street Journal’s home page was replaced — instantly, once users clicked on it — with an ad for “Fashion Girl LA.”

About 500,000 of the infected computers were located in the United States, Bharara said in a news conference in New York. The alleged scheme, which ran from 2007 to 2011, was first discovered at NASA, where 130 computers were infected.

The defendants are being charged with 27 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and computer-related crimes. The most serious charges, wire fraud and money laundering, carry a maximum punishment of 30 years in prison.

The six Estonian defendants — Vladimir Tsastsin, Timur Gerassimenko, Dmitri Jegorow, Valeri Aleksejev, Konstantin Poltev, and Anton Ivanov — were arrested Tuesday, but the Russian suspect, Audrey Taame, remains at large.

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UPDATE 8:39 A.M. PST: Adobe confirmed it will cease Flash development on mobile devices in a press release published Wednesday morning.

In an abrupt about-face in its mobile software strategy, Adobe will soon cease developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers, according to an e-mail sent to Adobe partners on Tuesday evening.

And with that e-mail flash, Adobe has signaled that it knows, as Steve Jobs predicted, the end of the Flash era on the web is coming soon.

The e-mail, obtained and first reported on by ZDNet, says that Adobe will no longer continue to “adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations,” instead focusing on alternative application packaging programs and the HTML5 protocol.

“Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores,” the quoted e-mail says.

In the past, Adobe has released software tools for mobile developers that create a single platform programmers can use to make applications that work across three major mobile platforms: Android, iOS and the BlackBerry OS. While it’s seemingly easier than learning all of the native languages for each operating system, some developers have claimed a loss in app performance when coding in a non-native language that then gets translated into other languages.

The move indicates a massive backpedaling on Adobe’s part, a company who championed its Flash platform in the face of years of naysaying about its use on mobile devices. Despite Flash’s near ubiquity across desktop PCs, many in the greater computing industry, including, famously, Apple Computer, have denounced the platform as fundamentally unstable on mobile browsers, and an intense battery drain. In effect, Flash’s drawbacks outweigh the benefits on mobile devices.

Flash became a dominant desktop platform by allowing developers to code interactive games, create animated advertisements and deliver video to any browser that had the plugin installed, without having to take into account the particulars of any given browser. However, with the development of Javascript, CSS, and HTML5, which has native support for video, many web developers are turning away from Flash, which can be a resource hog even on the most advanced browsers.

Apple made its biggest waves in the case against Flash in April of last year, when Steve Jobs penned a 1,500-word screed against the controversial platform, describing it as a technology of the past. Jobs and Apple disliked the platform so intensely, it has since been barred from use on all iOS devices.

Despite attempts to breathe life into Flash on other mobile devices — namely, Android and BlackBerry OS — Adobe has failed to deliver a consistently stable version of the platform on a smartphone or tablet. In WIRED’s testing of the BlackBerry PlayBook in April, Flash use caused the browser to crash on a consistent basis. And when Flash was supposed to come to tablets with Motorola’s Xoom, Adobe was only able to provide an highly unstable Beta version of Flash to ship with the flagship Android device.

“Adobe has lost so much credibility with the community that I’m hoping they are bought by someone else that can bring some stability and eventually some credibility back to the Flash Platform,” wrote software developer Dan Florio in a blog post on Wednesday morning.

The drastic reversal in Adobe’s mobile plans comes in the wake of the company cutting 750 jobs on Tuesday, a move prompted by what Adobe labeled “corporate restructuring.”

An Adobe representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Several U.S. Supreme Court justices hearing arguments in a case today suggested that allowing warrantless GPS tracking of citizens’ cars could lead to a Big Brother scenario of constant computerized government surveillance.

“What is the question that I think people are driving at, at least as I understand it and certainly share the concern, is that if you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States,” Justice Stephen Breyer told a Justice Department attorney. “So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like ‘1984‘ from their (opposing counsel) brief. I understand they have an interest in perhaps dramatizing that, but–but maybe overly. But it still sounds like it.”

“And so what protection is there, if any, once we accept your view of the case, from this slight futuristic scenario that’s just been painted, and is done more so in their briefs?” Breyer asked.

The high court heard arguments in a case in which District of Columbia police surreptitiously installed a GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking device on the car of Antoine Jones, a suspected cocaine dealer. At the time, police did not have a valid search warrant. The Justice Department appealed a lower court ruling that threw out the conviction.

A ruling will establish whether a warrant signed by a judge is required before law enforcement can track a driver’s every move on the roads. The Obama administration argues that no warrant is needed.

Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben told the court that cars traveling on public roadways do not have the same Fourth Amendment privacy protections afforded citizens in their homes. In addition, GPS devices on cars are akin to beeper surveillance used to track suspects in their vehicles along with visual monitoring.

However, Chief Justice John Roberts and other justices pointed out that GPS devices make it easy to collect much more information about people than could previously be done, rendering moot the legal notion of a “trespass,” which happens when a device is installed on a person’s property.

“In the pre-computer, pre-Internet age, much of the privacy–I would say most of the privacy–that people enjoyed was not the result of legal protections or constitutional protections; it was the result simply of the difficulty of traveling around and gathering up information,” said Justice Samuel Alito.

“Essentially, I think you answered the question that the government’s position would mean that any of us could be monitored whenever we leave our–our homes, so the only thing secure is the home,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Asked how many GPS devices are used by federal and state agencies, Dreeben said “in the low thousands annually.”

Ginsburg asked defense attorney Stephen Leckar how GPS is different from video cameras, which are trained on streets and public spaces and recording peoples’ movements constantly. “GPS is like a million cameras,” said Leckar.

Justices touched on whether there had been a search or a seizure and whether it was unreasonable or not. “The unreasonableness requirement or prohibition does not take effect unless there has been a search,” said Justice Antonin Scalia. But there is no search “when you are in public and where everything you do is open to the view of people,” he added. “Why is this an invasion of privacy?”

“Because it’s a complete robotic substitute” for human-based surveillance, Leckar said.

In his rebuttal, Dreeben said “Today perhaps GPS can be portrayed as a ’1984′-type invasion, but as people use GPS in their lives and for other purposes, our expectations of privacy surrounding our location may also change.”

“That seems too much to me,” Justice Elena Kagan said. “I mean, if you think about this, and you think about a little robotic device following you around 24 hours a day anyplace you go that’s not your home, reporting in all your movements to the police, to investigative authorities. The notion that we don’t have an expectation of privacy in that, the notion that we don’t think that our privacy interests would be violated by this robotic device, I’m–I’m not sure how one can say that.”

The court did not indicate how it would decide the case or when.

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Barnes & Noble’s new Nook Tablet may cost $50 more than Amazon’s Kindle Fire, but B&N has no trouble explaining why that extra $50 is worth it. The brick-and-mortar bookseller will engage in mighty battle with Amazon and iPad-maker Apple this holiday season, with no other competitor even coming close. When you’re shopping for your dream tablet, it’s important to keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.

Barnes & Noble
Though this retailer was on the ropes a few years back, it is projecting Nook devices to be a $1.8-billion business this year. The company beat its online rival Amazon to launching both a 7-inch color tablet and a touchscreen e-ink reader, and now they’re challenging Amazon again with major upgrades of both, and similar pricing.

Selling points: The Nook Tablet may cost $50 more than the Kindle Fire, but B&N says that additional RAM and in-device storage are worth it. Offering in-store support at locations all over the nation, and a potentially more aggressive library of books, magazines, comics and kid titles, mean that it’s going to hold its own in the lit department. And leveraging partnerships with Netflix, Hulu and other streaming media providers means that people who subscribe to those services will be drawn to this device.

On top of that, the $99 Nook Simple Touch reader is priced to challenge the ad-supported $99 Kindle Touch reader — but comes unencumbered by ads.

Weak spots: B&N doesn’t have its own multimedia offerings, so people may look to other devices for similar Netflix and Hulu experiences. The Nook Cloud service doesn’t do what Apple and Amazon cloud services do, such as back up personal files, or store your personal music collection.

And while the Nook Tablet’s $50 step up in price sure seems justified, there’s a chance it will turn off deal-hungry shoppers. They could select the existing Nook Color, which now costs $199, but that’s just confusing, and is apt to under-deliver on some experiences, even when its major update arrives in December.

Amazon
We’re pretty gung-ho about the Kindle Fire tablet, since the $199 price point and Amazon’s ecosystem of books, movies and music are a compelling pitch. And let’s not forget that Amazon is the dominant player in the e-book world, and the focal point of impulse buying during the holiday season.

Selling points: Not only does Amazon have a pretty devoted audience already, it is working hard to lock them in tight. Amazon Prime, for $80 per year, not only gives people “free” two-day shipping, but streaming TV and movies, a la Netflix. The company just announced that the membership would also include a lending library of recently released books, available “free.” In other words, just buying the device and signing up for Prime is enough to guarantee you plenty of activities, and that’s before you add in all of the free apps you can get at the Amazon Appstore for Android.

And without more on-board memory, I’m wondering how I’d use it to watch movies when I’m on an airplane — I sure as heck won’t be paying for Wi-Fi so I can stream a trickle of video off of a satellite to a jet flying at 500 mph somewhere 32,000 feet above America.

Weak spots: Barnes & Noble derided the Kindle Fire for being underpowered, and the e-ink tablets for being cheap only because they show ads when you’re not reading. Both of these could factor into people making holiday buying decisions, along with the fact that Amazon has no in-person support program, while both B&N and Apple do.

Apple
Almost anything you can do on a Kindle Fire or a Nook Tablet, you can do on an iPad, with a screen that’s twice the square inches. Even if the iPad isn’t a direct competitor, it’s safe to say it will lure many bigger spenders away from the reader-focused tablets.

Selling points: Besides the Apple halo of design, quality and service, and the evolving iTunes/iCloud ecosystem, the iPad really is a more grown-up product. It’s got cameras that developers are using in many ways beyond just video conferencing. It has apps that do real work, from word processing to video editing. And it has Netflix and Hulu Plus for video, not to mention B&N Nook and Amazon Kindle e-reader apps. They don’t do everything, but they serve the majority of needs. And they’re likely not going away.

Weak spots: Both B&N and Amazon are aware of Apple’s threat, so having a Nook or Kindle app for iPad doesn’t guarantee full service. Many of the Nook magazine and kids’ book features are not available anywhere but on the Nook Tablet and Nook Color, and Amazon’s Prime lending library is exclusive to Kindles, both the Fire and all of the e-ink versions. Apple has its own iBooks service, but the very existence of other options from major booksellers renders it all but moot.

Some people prefer the lighter weight and smaller 7-inch screens on the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire, in part because they’re better for reading books and watching movies by yourself.

And let’s face it, the iPad is $500 — baseline. Until it’s $399, or even $299, it’s not going to reach the greatest number of people who want it, even if its merits are abundantly clear.

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Houston may be home to high-profile Fortune 500 companies, but its economy is fueled by small businesses.

Ninety-seven percent of businesses in the greater Houston area are classified as small businesses with less than 99 employees, according to an analysis of the latest U.S. Census Bureau data by The Business Journals’ On Numbers, a division of American City Business Journals American City Business Journals Latest from The Business JournalsDFW ranks highly in private sector employment, payHouston average salaries ahead of Dallas, study showsDFW among nation’s metro areas with 100,000 businessesFollow this company .

The Houston region was home to 117,886 small businesses in 2009, the most recent data available, putting the Bayou City as No. 10 nationwide in the total number of businesses of this size. And 73 percent of those small businesses – 85,978 – are classified as “microbusinesses” with nine or fewer employees.

Dallas-Fort Worth has more small businesses than Houston, with 135,799, ranked No. 7 in the country.

A total of 6.98 million private-sector businesses are located within the nation’s 938 metropolitan and micropolitan areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And 6.82 million of them – 97.7 percent – have fewer than 100 employees, meeting the definition of a small business. >more

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The new-look Gmail that Google accidentally told us about last weekis now rolling out to all users.

The changes, officially announced in a blog post Tuesday, allow Gmail users much more control over the look of the service. You can drag sidebars around to your preferred size and width, choose from a wider selection of high-resolution background pictures, and decide whether you want lots of email on your screen or more white space between mails. (Your choice of email density is between “Comfortable,” “Cozy” and “Compact.”)

Heavy Gmail users will also be pleased to learn that there’s a new search function — that is, you can now access Advanced Search by clicking on the search bar. Conversations have been condensed, and profile pictures added.

These are more features than Google offered in its sneak peek of the new Gmail, which started in July. Here’s the video about the new features Google mistakenly made public last week:

For now, at least, the new features will be opt-in — and not all of us will be able to access them immediately. “If you like what you see, over the next few days you’ll be able to switch to the new look by clicking on Switch to the new look in the bottom-right of Gmail,” writes Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell.

So do you like what you see? Will you be switching? Or is Google messing around too much with a good thing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Bluetooth 4.0, which can be found inside the iPhone 4S and the latest MacBook Air and Mac Mini, is being rebranded by the group that controls the technology. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group announcedthat Bluetooth 4.0 devices would be called Bluetooth Smart Ready and Bluetooth Smart, in order to differentiate the type of products featuring the technology.

What is Bluetooth 4.0?

Bluetooth 4.0 is the latest version of the wireless technology found in many electronic devices and peripherals today, including smartphones, tablets. The updated 4.0 version is only found in the iPhone 4S and the latest MacBook Air and Mac Mini, with more manufacturers expected to jump on board in the coming months. The improvements brought by Bluetooth 4.0 include drastically reduced power consumption via a low pulsing method that keeps devices connected without the need of a continuous information stream.

What is Bluetooth Smart?

Bluetooth Smart will represent a new breed of Bluetooth 4.0 peripherals: sensor-type devices like heart-rate monitorsor pedometers that run on small batteries and are designed to collect specific pieces of information. These Bluetooth Smart devices include a single Bluetooth 4.0 radio that will connect only to Bluetooth Smart Ready devices.

What is Bluetooth Smart Ready?

Bluetooth Smart Ready will refer to devices that use a dual-mode radios, which can handle both the 4.0 technology, as well as classic Bluetooth abilities, such as transferring files, or connecting to a hands-free device. So, for example, the iPhone 4S, a Bluetooth Smart Ready smartphone, can connect to the Bluetooth Smart heart rate monitor with Bluetooth 4.0, but it will also work with classic Bluetooth devices, such as hands-free kits or your car’s stereo.

Here’s an overview of the new Bluetooth 4.0 compatibility scheme.

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Of the 470,000 Wi-Fi connections made on a recent day at Abilene Christian University, fully 94% used the 2.4GHz band, representing an extreme example of how today’s surging number of Wi-Fi clients is crowding the band least able to accommodate them.

At ACU, this is not considered a problem, at least not yet. In part, that’s because of careful wireless LAN design and capacity planning. And partly because a goodly percentage of mobile devices that can run on the alternative 5GHz band, do so: on that same day, 47% of the school’s laptops and desktops, and two-thirds of its iPads cruised on 5GHz, via either 802.11a or 802.11n.

Yet relatively few of today’s Wi-Fi clients support 5GHz.

“The challenge isn’t that 5GHz-capable devices are not connecting the 5GHz band, but rather the challenge is there are too few devices that have 5GHz capabilities,” says Arthur Brant, ACU’s director of networking service. “The 2.4GHz band is congested, a symptom of the number of devices that only operate on that band, and the limitation of its [only] three non-overlapping channels.”

A growing concern

This congestion is a growing concern and, in some cases, a problem on college campuses. More schools are rebuilding campus-wide Wi-Fi networks that now are designed for 5GHz. That means more costs, including half as many access points and associated cabling and ports, because the higher frequency doesn’t penetrate walls as well. But it also means four to six times the number of non-overlapping channels, much greater capacity, and a clean radio frequency.

At a range of schools, IT staff say 50% to 60% or more of their current Wi-Fi device population, including the tidal wave of smartphones and other mobile devices, are stuck with the 2.4GHz band. [See "Wi-Fi client surge forcing fresh wireless LAN thinking".] Somewhat surprisingly, that’s true for many laptop PCs, such as Dell’s value-line of Inspiron laptops and its higher performing XPS line, though the latter do offer a $35 upgrade to a dual-band Wi-Fi radio.

“Since most users don’t understand the difference, they don’t change this option,” says John Turner, director for network and systems, at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. The Brandeis Wi-Fi network, based on Aruba’s dual-band access points, benefits from the growing popularity of Apple Macs. About 50% of the students have them “and will connect on the 5GHz band nicely,” Turner says.

“Our jobs would be easier if clients just all did a good job using the 5GHz band and left the 2.4 for other devices, like the [Nintendo] Wii and lower-power devices like smartphones,” he says.

But they don’t. That’s partly because of decisions by radio and device manufacturers and partly due to the 802.11 standard, which from the outset has control of wireless access in the client radio, not the access point. More Wi-Fi brains and control is shifting slowly to the network, as vendors implement optional parts of the IEEE 802.11 standards, and the .11 working group develops new standards. [See "Major Wi-Fi changes ahead"]

At University of Massachusetts/Amherst, the WLAN for campus residence halls has been redesigned for 5GHz (though service on 2.4 is still offered). So far this year, the campus Aruba network has identified 47,000 unique Wi-Fi devices, with just over one-third making use of 5GHz.

The resulting interference levels are high in the residence halls in the 2.4 band, and during peak periods in the evening users on this band see throughput ranging from 5M to 10Mbps. But clients on the 5GHz band, “regularly showed performance in excess of 20Mbps” all day, according to Rick Tuthill and Michael Dickson, network engineers with the school’s Office of Information Technologies.

The 2.4GHz junk band

“We would certainly like to see more clients choose 5Ghz when available, because we believe we can deliver a better experience there,” says Dan McCarriar, assistant director of network services at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “The general perception in IT, and it matches our experience, is that 2.4GHz has become somewhat of a junk band, with all the consumer Wi-Fi routers and ‘hotspot’ devices that prefer it.” In off-campus sites leased by CMU, “it’s not uncommon to see dozens of competing SSIDs and ad-hoc devices operating in 2.4GHz frequencies, causing co-channel and adjacent channel interference and any number of other headaches.”

Even where congestion isn’t a problem the collection of “junk” on the 2.4 band can bog down performance. “The older equipment slows down the network for everyone, not just the older clients,” Turner says.

Users with high-throughput 802.11n radios in spiffy new laptops often can’t get the most out of that higher throughput, says Marcelo Lew, wireless enterprise administrator at the University of Denver. “You have a Ferrari, but if you are sharing a single-lane road [2.4GHz band] with a lot of other Ferraris, you won’t go very fast,” he points out. “Now, move the Ferrari to a five-lane highway [5GHz band] and you will be able to move a lot faster.”

A better Wi-Fi highway

The IT groups are taking a number of steps both to build the five-lane highway and get clients to use it. As mentioned, many are redesigning their WLANs for 5GHz, creating smaller Wi-Fi cells and boosting capacity in the process, making the 5GHz signal pervasive. Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., is upgrading its dorm network from 802.11abg to dual-band 802.11n, with the access point placement based on 5GHz. “More in-depth shifting of clients to 5GHz will depend on our ability to expand 5GHz coverage,” says Steven Hess, Wheaton network administrator.

UMass/Amherst’s minimum system requirements for student and faculty include “dual-band Wi-Fi-certified adapter, and before arriving on campus, students are given information on what they can do to “lower the overall noise in the 2.4GHz band,” according to Tuthill and Dickson.

Secondly, more of them are switching on the automatic “band-steering” feature that WLAN vendors now support. When a dual-band client radio switches on, it “probes” for a wireless access point. The access point with band-steering temporarily “hides” the 2.4GHz band from the probe. So the client concludes that only 5GHz is available, and then connects using that band. Afterward, it’s able to use 2.4 if needed for longer range connectivity.

“In locations with band steering turned off, we have almost no 5GHz usage, says Ethan Sommer, associate director of core services at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minn. “In our new academic building, where I turned on band steering, I think we have almost 4:1 in favor of 5GHz. I guess we should experiment with turning it on in more places.”

Other changes include: setting up a separate SSID for the 5GHz band, and naming it something like “(university name)-fast” to encourage user adoption; and switching off the lower data rates for each connection mode, especially for 11b and 11g.

Many IT staffers say Wi-Fi problems are client-related, often due to aging or badly written drivers. Often, updating the driver fixes the problem. UMass/Amherst is trying out a new program of loaning students who report particular types of network issues a replacement USB Wi-Fi adapter that supports both radio bands. If the adapter solves the problem, the student is encouraged to buy and use the same model.

The influx of Wi-Fi clients that can only use the 2.4GHz band is putting the RF environment under stress. IT groups are responding with better spectrum planning, redesigning WLANs around 5GHz, shifting as many clients as possible to that cleaner band, and using the 2.4GHZ band more efficiently.

“I’d say the 5GHz band is our preferred future,” says CMU’s McCarriar. “But in the ‘bring your own device’ environment that many universities have lived in for years, we’re ultimately at the mercy of the device vendors doing the right thing in designing and testing their products.”

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iPad 2 owners who use the Smart Cover and Smart Cover unlocking in iOS 5 are exposed to a bug that can potentially leave sensitive information open to others, Apple blog 9to5Mac is reporting.

According to the blog, if users have Smart Cover unlocking enabled in iOS 5 and use a Smart Cover to protect the iPad 2, the last screen they left open before locking the tablet can be accessed with some trickery.

In order to recreate the flaw, 9to5Mac says users must have the iPad 2 password-protected. After the device is locked, those who want to gain access to data need to hold the power button down so the software reveals the slider allowing them to power the tablet down. On that screen, users must close the Smart Cover over the iPad 2, open it back up, and click the “cancel” key. Upon doing so, they’ll be brought to the last screen that was open on the tablet.

If users lock their iPad 2 on the home screen, those who access the tablet won’t be able to click any applications, 9to5Mac said. However, if an application is left open, users will be able to interact with it, even though the device is technically locked.

Although there are several steps required to recreate the flaw, it can be troublesome. As 9to5Mac points out, if users leave open their e-mail platform on the tablet, that data can be accessed.

9to5Mac’s discovery is the second potential security flaw to arise this month. Earlier this week, CNET reported that Apple’s voice-activated personal virtual assistant, Siri, has a flaw that lets folks make phone calls and send e-mails or text messages from the password-protected iPhone 4S‘ lock screen.

However, MacWorld reported last week that in order to fix that flaw, users need only to turn off Siri support in the operating system’s Passcode Lock settings.

The flaw 9to5Mac came across is similarly easy to fix. According to the blog, users need only to disable Smart Cover unlocking in the operating system’s settings pane to ensure others can’t exploit the bug.

Apple did not immediately respond to CNET‘s request for comment on 9to5Mac’s findings.

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