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"Until someone reveals the chipset inside we still have no idea if we are stuck with those horrible infineon chips which are the root of iPhone evil."

I still call fake.

This whole bar story doesn't add up either. I've been to many bars with many cellphones and I've never lost one, how the hell do you lose a prototype iPhone at a bar? That's not just your $500 phone, THAT'S YOUR JOB IN YOUR POCKET.

What are the odds that a iPhone would just happen to be found by gizmodo and engadget? Of all the people in the world? And how much would a popular blog pay for a iPhone prototype? Imagine the hits you'd get with first real photos of the next iPhone! You could even put a no-name blog on the map with real photos. This prototype is incredibly valuable.

If anyone really found a prototype iPhone it would be on eBay until they pulled it, but not before it received thousands of hits and a few dozen bids up to several thousands of dollars, but someone would contact them outside of ebay and negotiate a deal anyway.

Let's not forget that there's not one photo of this prototype iPhone running. Why not? They couldn't charge it? The brains behind engadget and gizmodo can't charge an iPhone? Let me guess, they found a "broken" iPhone prototype at a bar. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Some people argue "Well Apple wiped it remotely!" Seriously? Wiped it so well it doesn't turn on at all? Not even a "charge me" screen? I don't buy it. I would be happy with seeing any photo of this thing running next to a regular iPhone, just so you can somewhat compare resolutions.

WHERE'S THE INTERIOR PHOTOS!? ONE photo of the interior, and not a good one. WTF? This is my biggest skepticism. Why not a dozen photos of various processors, the new cameras, the wifi chip, etc. We could piece together every feature of the new iPhone just by interior photos, but they only posted one which shows almost nothing. FTA: "it said it was XX GB, but since we were unable to get the phone to a running state, we couldn't see exactly how large it was." Well if you would have taken photos of the chips someone could probably find the size. FAIL

Changing design doesn't make sense either. Apple has 3 generations of iPhones shaped exactly the same, and now they go in a different direction? Of course Apple did the same thing with the Nano, 5 generations of Nanos and the 3rd and 4th are shaped differently from previous generations, but this is a phone, a lot of money and research has been spent making compatible cases and docks, to change it now would cost a lot of wasted time and money by hundreds of companies.... although that means new licensing fees for Apple.... ok, perhaps new design does make sense ;)

This is either Apple's April Fools on Gizmodo/Engadget or a clever marketing by Apple

UPDATE: while I was writing this post I found this: Apparently Gizmodo did buy this phone:
"iPhone was stolen from Apple, then purchased by Gizmodo."

At least that what Computerworld's IT Blogwatch has determined:

There's a few pundits with egg on their faces this morning, as Apple approves Opera Mini. Against predictions of rejection, the alternative Web browser is now available from the App Store. Initial reviews are mostly positive, bar some fanboi grumbling. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers boggle and try it out.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/15917/apple_oks_opera_for_iphone_its_really_quite_good?source=CTWNLE_nlt_blogs_2010-04-13

Based on a number of different sources, the thing is hard to hold on to for any decent length of time. Nearly every review I have read makes mention of this, regardless of whether it heralds the iPad as the second coming of christ or as a piece of junk.

Just like supermodels with eating disorders, being too skinny can be a bad thing.

It must take a really long time to put NAND flash chips on a board. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136256/OCZ_to_release_1TB_SSD_this_month

which is a ploy to avoid hiring American workers in favor of H1B & green card temp workers? It's only "old news" if you have already been replaced by an H-1B.

I read one ad for Qt4 programmers which required 5 years experience, but tool had only been released in the prior year!

The most infamous quote by immigration lawyer Larry Lebowitz during the Cohen & Grigsby seminar on employment visas, May 15th, 2007 in Pittsburgh. Lebowitz coached immigration attorneys and employers how to avoid hiring US workers in order to hire foreign workers on green cards:

"Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested US worker."

http://www.programmersguild.org/rir/

Or, HERE

How U.S. Employers Can Avoid The H1B Cap

Under the present scenario, U.S. employers can only file H1B petitions for new bachelor-level or master-level H1B workers on one day each year, or on April 1 of each year.

However, there are some other options available to U.S. employers.

Alternatives To The H1B Visa

o Hire U.S. workers.
o Hire foreign nationals who already have an H1B visa under the H1B "portability" rules.
o Hire recently graduated students on the USCIS' extended "optional practical training" (OPT) program for certain foreign graduates of U.S. universities.
o Hire H1B1 workers from Chile or Singapore.
o Hire E-3 workers from Australia.
o Hire TN workers from Canada or Mexico.
o Hire E-2 foreign nationals who own and operate their own companies within the United States.
o For multinational companies, transfer employees from overseas to the United States under the L-1 visa category.
o Utilize the U.S. State Department's J-1 visa program to hire foreign "trainees" and "interns".
o Utilize the H2B "temporary worker" nonimmigrant visa category.

A TN visa process is an "objective" process in which the USCIS officer determines whether an applicant's credentials meet those listed in NAFTA.

There is no requirement that a sponsoring employer pay at least the prevailing wage (or actual wage, if higher) for the position being sponsored for the geographic location where the foreign national will work.

A year ago it was reported that H-1B workers OUTNUMBERED unemployed techies!

H1B and other quotas are set in the Free Trade Agreements with the various countries. Despite the fact that these job ad s

"Sales rate"? Are you projecting from the first month of sales for the Nexus One to a uniform total sales for the year? By that logic the iPad alone has a "sales rate" of roughly 109 million.

I'm not sure I agree with his end of year projection, but Gartner does forecast Android overtaking the iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile, by year 2012. And also, let's not forget, Mainland China (despite all the problems they had with Google) are forking and standardizing on Android 1.6. How many cell phone users does China have anyway?

There, fixed that for you :)

Well, you realize that Google is the default in the upstream (non-ubuntu branded) firefox browser because they contribute 90% of the Mozilla Foundation's revenue, right? [1] Clearly, Google sees a lot of value in partnerships like this. I don't think anybody would argue that Yahoo!'s spending power is greater than Google's. So, if Google sees value in something, they have the money to take it. It's not cynical, it's a business reality.

noah

1. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9120866/Google_deal_produces_88_of_Mozilla_s_revenue (Yeah, it's somewhat dated. Please feel free to dig up something newer.)

Worldwide IBM employees: ~400,000 http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/
US IBM employees: ~109,000 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9169678/IBM_stops_disclosing_U.S._headcount_data

They ARE well below 50%. For the remainder of your post, read IBM's annual report. They are in it for their shareholders. If that constitutes evil, then so be it.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174828/NASA_Key_antenna_fails_as_i_Discovery_i_enters_orbit?taxonomyId=12

They're just trying to make it so their problems affect everybody. That way, it's more likely that things like this http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9164438/Microsoft_s_security_chief_suggests_Net_tax_to_clean_computers would be seriously considered by governments for example. And it becomes a way for them to try to reclaim Linux servers [so you still pay a Microsoft tax even if you run Linux servers...

There were more than five versions before IE6, and only two afterwards. I will say, though, that they're getting better about it than they used to be, but when I got the netbook last month with Win7 it, too, was changed way too much, especially the Control Panel. The new CP is a step backwards from XP, as is Windows Explorer; they have actually removed useful features.

It's possible that the missing features are because the netbooks come with "Win7 Starter", but that's stupid on Microsoft's part; the OS has already been developed and at least a home version should be installed; only a fool would spend $130 for an OS on a computer that only cost $250. It's insane; I'm still trying to figure out how to get Mandriva on it without its having a CD or DVD drive. To me, Win 7 Starter is Windows, and that hurts Microsoft.

How is Microsoft's response here not them trying desperately to spin their way past the latest Pwn2Own results from CanSecWest? Safari, Firefox and IE8 all went down pretty quickly. Chrome wasn't even attempted. Nobody there had a way to take it down. Money was left on the table.
( http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2010/02/15/pwn2own-2010 )

Microsoft's response?

First claim that Windows 7 isn't really meant to prevent you from hacking into it.
( http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174309/Microsoft_defends_Windows_7_security_after_Pwn2Own_hacks )

Then try to convince people Chrome is somehow worse.

Seem's like that makes your choice to either accept that a company like Google knows what information you're looking for [turn off the option, heck even use a different browser. I'm sure they can figure it out anyway.] or letting random anyhacker access ALL the data on your system.

I'll take option A thanks.

How does dropping flash for HTML5 remove an attack vector? It just replace one attack vector with another.

Other have expounded on it, but I'll summarize: You drop a proprietary (single point of failure) vendor who has been slow about security. Had Adobe been very security conscious, [removing flash for security purposes] may not be a credible argument, but as it stands, Adobe is bad at security.

If Adobe were to move to HTML5, it would no longer be a single-point-of-failure since you can create HTML5 without Adobe.

I wonder how the HPC community is going to respond; there is a not insubstantial community who heard "150Gflop/$400" and "Linux" and decided to build clusters from PS3s. Those machines can probably just have updates held back, but it makes replacement a problem. To forestall the inevitable "that isn't a serious use" argument, US Airforce owns Something like 2,500 PS3s for compute work.
Killing Linux on the PS3 also presents something of an issue for the other Cell "partners", who seem to be looking at the PS3 as a low-cost Cell development starter kit. The other Cell machines on the market are *much* more expensive (an IBM QS22 blade is $8-20k, depending on configuration, and Mercury Computer Systems doesn't even like talking about how much their Cell boards cost). Given that Cell is an enormously difficult architecture to target, having relatively inexpensive systems to test and train on is very desirable for the other vendors, especially now that so many of the HPC folks are fixated on GPGPU, which is also terrible to program for, but has a far lower cost of entry. It could be that IBM's decision not to pursue Cell in the HPC market is how it became politically tenable for Sony to kill off Linux on the PS3.

It's not the first time Apple products fail at pwn2own.

It's not the first time Apple products fail at pwn2own.

Sorry to the rest for feeding a troll, but let's have some facts:

A month ago from today, mozilla didn't have any info on the vulnerability:

http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/02/22/secunia-advisory-sa38608/

neither did secunia:

http://blog.psi2.de/en/2010/02/20/going-commercial-with-firefox-vulnerabilities/comment-page-1/#comment-666

“This particular report is a bit special because of the lack of information available. Normally, we do not write about vulnerabilities unless certain details are available and / or we can test it. () and previous vulnerabilities reported by this company / person has proved to be reliable.

Mozilla posted was contacted by Evgeny Legerov on the 18th:

http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/18/update-on-secunia-advisory-sa38608/

So the response time is well under a month. now compare that to the time it took Microsoft to release the patch for the Aurora exploit:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-01/22/microsoft-learned-of-ie-zero-day-flaw-last-september.aspx http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9147058/Microsoft_patches_IE_admits_it_knew_of_bug_last_August?taxonomyName=Security&taxonomyId=17

From this evidence I can not come to the conclusion that slashdot is reacting fanboyishly when criticizing microsoft on security. Quite the opposite. I can however say that you're quick at defending microsoft without investigating the whole story, much like what you criticize slashdot readers of doing. I don't know, but in my book that is a fanboyish reaction on your behalf. =]

A sad day on Slashdot when someone saying "programming correctly is the right response" and he's ridiculed by at least 4 replies and modded +3 Funny. What the hell happened to this place?

It's the blind fanboyism. When it's about Firefox it doesn't matter because they patched it! (ignoring the fact that it took them a month and were constantly under pressure to do it). But when it's about Microsoft, then they should had got it correctly in the first place and no one will *ever* use Windows again because of this!

Some people here really seem to lack objective thinking and are blindfolded by their fanfare.

And the fact that the vulnerability has been in the wild for a month.

Just days before the start of a hacking contest set to target Web browser vulnerabilities, Mozilla has patched its flagship Firefox browser. ...

Mozilla had been under pressure to fix the bug, after it was included by Russian security researcher Evgeny Legerov last month in his VulnDisco hacking tool, which is sold as an add-on to the Canvas penetration testing kit.

What did you say about reaction time with importance again?

You must have been doing something wrong :

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9087918/Size_matters_Yahoo_claims_2_petabyte_database_is_world_s_biggest_busiest

The iPhone has a small marketshare? HAHA! It has a 63.7% marketshare. Article linked to postulates one reason Apple slapped HTC with a lawsuit declaring patent infringement is because Android based phones are gaining on Apple's marketshare.

They might be number one now, but they were number one with the Apple II and look at how quickly they lost that lead.

In the bookstore of the school I attended in 1985, half of the computers sold were Macs. The rest were divided up by the various PC compatible OEMs. Than was 8 years after the Apple II came out. Looking now, Windows "accounted for 92.1% of the operating systems that powered machines visiting the 40,000-plus sites that NetApplications monitors for clients of its analytics service." That is up slightly from previously, but it does not break down OEMs. Now if Linux and other non-OS X OSes raised the percentage of OSes powering PCs to 93% that leaves OS X running 7%. Now how many of the rest are Dells, HPs, Levenos, or one of the dozens more OEMs? Seven percent may not seem like a lot but how does it compare to OEM sales?

Falcon

According to the policy, he was supposed to have the passwords in a global, heavily-protected database. Whether he did or did not is open for debate. I don't know. And that could be a source of trouble to him.

For clarity's sake, here's the section of the policy relating to this type of "system level" password from your linked PDF:

4. Policy 4.1. General
All system-level passwords (e.g., root, enable, NT admin, application administration accounts, etc.) must be changed on at least a monthly basis.
All production system-level passwords must be part of the security administered global password management database.

As you alluded, it would seem pretty clear that Mr. Childs was indeed in violation of this policy. If he had the passwords in the database, as required by the policy, no one would have had to ask him for them.

According to the charges, he did not surrender the passwords to a group of people, many of whom were unknown to him, and many others of whom were clearly not authorized to possess that information

As I've noted in a few other replies (and detailed in this article):

That afternoon Childs "unwittingly" found himself in a surprise meeting in the city's Hall of Justice, where he maintained network facilities. At the meeting were his boss, DTIC Chief Operations Officer Richard Robinson, San Francisco Police Department CIO Greg Yee and human resources representative Vitus Leung

.

I'm having a hard time buying the whole "he didn't think the people were authorized" routine. When the COO, your direct boss, and a rep from Human Resources are there, I think it's time we drop the whole "oh, I don't think you're cleared for that" story.

From what I understand, they guy asking for them was not in the "need to know" list of people.

Then you would be mistaken. From this article:

That afternoon Childs "unwittingly" found himself in a surprise meeting in the city's Hall of Justice, where he maintained network facilities. At the meeting were his boss, DTIC Chief Operations Officer Richard Robinson, San Francisco Police Department CIO Greg Yee and human resources representative Vitus Leung. On the phone were engineers, listening in to confirm whether the passwords he gave were correct.

Well, surrendering a master password to persons unknown on a conference call isn't what I'd call responsible.

Nice try. While there were people on a conference call in the room, that's not the whole story. An excerpt from this article clearly states:

That afternoon Childs "unwittingly" found himself in a surprise meeting in the city's Hall of Justice, where he maintained network facilities. At the meeting were his boss, DTIC Chief Operations Officer Richard Robinson, San Francisco Police Department CIO Greg Yee and human resources representative Vitus Leung. On the phone were engineers, listening in to confirm whether the passwords he gave were correct.

I think his boss and the COO were quite qualified to meet the "need to know" requirement.

And, despite all their efforts, every month, every week, hell, almost every day another security exploit is discovered or released that shows just how broken previous versions of their platform is:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9164038/Microsoft_Don_t_press_F1_key_in_Windows_XP

Of course, the biggest problem is that most users run Windows with Admin rights but M$ is to blame for making Windows too hard to run without full admin rights.
I would have had a lot more respect for them if they'd bought out a company like Avecto or BeyondTrust, and spun that kind of functionality into a Service Pack like they did with Security Center so that running with day-to-day with admin rights wouldn't be necessary.
No, UAC / RunAs isn't the same as Privilege Manager or Privilege Guard as it doesn't sufficiently modify the security context of a logged-in user

When was this brought into a court? Did a judge even issue a summary judgment?

Yeah, didn't think so. And Microsoft backed down.

In the mean time, the DMCA does not allow for a "Legal Lock" on a domain name.

According to the original complaint, Blake Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence.

and

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

That establishes the context -- the photo was taken in the student's home. As for how it came to be in the school's hands, I see two options: either the student provided the photo himself or the school snapped the photo. If the student provided the photo himself, then what lawyer would even consider filing a class-action lawsuit? Furthermore, this article states, "On Friday, Christopher McGinley, the superintendent of Lower Merion, sent another letter to district parents, acknowledging that the district had turned on laptop cameras 42 times thus far in the 2009-2010 school year." However, even if the school district never turned on the camera in a single student's laptop, they still deserve to be run through the wringer:

The Robbins...added that there was no mention of the functionality [the ability for the school district to turn on the web cam remotely] in any of the documentation they received or on the district's Web site.

And the privacy of non-students has been violated, the Robbins said. "By virtue of the fact that the Webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the School District, the Webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it," the lawsuit charged.

Sorry, your "fixed that for you" is dead wrong. The evidence at this point strongly supports that the school district f****d up and is now (rightly) being called on the carpet for it.

According to the original complaint, Blake Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence.

and

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

That establishes the context -- the photo was taken in the student's home. As for how it came to be in the school's hands, I see two options: either the student provided the photo himself or the school snapped the photo. If the student provided the photo himself, then what lawyer would even consider filing a class-action lawsuit? Furthermore, this article states, "On Friday, Christopher McGinley, the superintendent of Lower Merion, sent another letter to district parents, acknowledging that the district had turned on laptop cameras 42 times thus far in the 2009-2010 school year." However, even if the school district never turned on the camera in a single student's laptop, they still deserve to be run through the wringer:

The Robbins...added that there was no mention of the functionality [the ability for the school district to turn on the web cam remotely] in any of the documentation they received or on the district's Web site.

And the privacy of non-students has been violated, the Robbins said. "By virtue of the fact that the Webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the School District, the Webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it," the lawsuit charged.

Sorry, your "fixed that for you" is dead wrong. The evidence at this point strongly supports that the school district f****d up and is now (rightly) being called on the carpet for it.

According to the original complaint, Blake Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence.

and

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

That establishes the context -- the photo was taken in the student's home. As for how it came to be in the school's hands, I see two options: either the student provided the photo himself or the school snapped the photo. If the student provided the photo himself, then what lawyer would even consider filing a class-action lawsuit? Furthermore, this article states, "On Friday, Christopher McGinley, the superintendent of Lower Merion, sent another letter to district parents, acknowledging that the district had turned on laptop cameras 42 times thus far in the 2009-2010 school year." However, even if the school district never turned on the camera in a single student's laptop, they still deserve to be run through the wringer:

The Robbins...added that there was no mention of the functionality [the ability for the school district to turn on the web cam remotely] in any of the documentation they received or on the district's Web site.

And the privacy of non-students has been violated, the Robbins said. "By virtue of the fact that the Webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the School District, the Webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it," the lawsuit charged.

Sorry, your "fixed that for you" is dead wrong. The evidence at this point strongly supports that the school district f****d up and is now (rightly) being called on the carpet for it.

According to the original complaint, Blake Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence.

and

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

That establishes the context -- the photo was taken in the student's home. As for how it came to be in the school's hands, I see two options: either the student provided the photo himself or the school snapped the photo. If the student provided the photo himself, then what lawyer would even consider filing a class-action lawsuit? Furthermore, this article states, "On Friday, Christopher McGinley, the superintendent of Lower Merion, sent another letter to district parents, acknowledging that the district had turned on laptop cameras 42 times thus far in the 2009-2010 school year." However, even if the school district never turned on the camera in a single student's laptop, they still deserve to be run through the wringer:

The Robbins...added that there was no mention of the functionality [the ability for the school district to turn on the web cam remotely] in any of the documentation they received or on the district's Web site.

And the privacy of non-students has been violated, the Robbins said. "By virtue of the fact that the Webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the School District, the Webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it," the lawsuit charged.

Sorry, your "fixed that for you" is dead wrong. The evidence at this point strongly supports that the school district f****d up and is now (rightly) being called on the carpet for it.

Absolute is de-activating the cameras:

Calling LANRev a "legacy" product, Midgley also said that Absolute would ship an update in the next several weeks that will permanently disable Theft Track, the name of the feature that lets administrators switch on a laptop's camera to take photographs of a potential thief after the computer is reported stolen. "It really doesn't serve any purpose," said Midgley of Theft Track.

All its theft-recovery software relies on a different model than the former LANRev, said Midgley. "We give no theft recovery tools to our [LoJack and Computrace] customers," he said. "The only truly proven model is a managed service model."

To kick off the recovery of a stolen or lost laptop, customers first must file a police report -- not a requirement of LANRev -- and only then contact Absolute, which in turn tracks the location of the missing machine via its IP address when the system goes online. Absolute employs a team of former law enforcement professionals who reach out to local police, provide them with the location information and then get out of the way. Software maker blasts 'vigilantism' in Pa. school sying case

Damned, the URL of the article I was trying to post

They could have caught him cutting open his little sister for all I care.

The school claims the system was only used to locate stolen laptops. If the kid's laptop had indeed been reported as stolen to the school, all 'bad things' that it caught (like him masturbating) isn't the school's fault.

If it HADN'T been reported stolen, then they have no 'get out of jail free card' on seeing him cutting open his little sister. They're still guilty of illegal wire tapping and if they've done it once, it really should be up to them to prove, no-one has been using the system to spy on people.

Actually it seems like even if the laptop had been stolen spying on the thief would still be unconstitutional. They should have to report the theft to the police and tell them the laptop has that capability, the police would then get a warrant and use the camera. Of course using it in an actual theft scenario is far less immoral than how it was used here, and would still get you the laptop back, but it seems like the evidence gathered by school district with the laptop camera wouldn't be admissible in court.

Some of the newer Anti-theft measures from professional companies work like this, where the owners of the computer don't have the ability to do the computer traces, the police have to contact the company directly. That is how the program-maker's newer programs work, and they are patching this error out of the older program used by this school district.

For the car analogy, if your car with OnStar is stolen the police can contact OnStar and request that they kill the engine. The dealership that you bought the car from does not have the ability to kill the engine if you are late on your payments, or for any other reason.

This in from Computerworld:

The company selling the software used by a Pennsylvania school district to allegedly spy on its students blasted what it called laptop theft-recovery "vigilantism" today.

Absolute Software said it dissuades users of theft-recovery software from acting on their own. "We discourage any customer from taking theft recovery into their own hands," said Stephen Midgley, the company's head of marketing, in an interview Monday. "That's best left in the hands of professionals."

Midgley confirmed that Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. was running Absolute Manage, formerly known as LANRev, which Absolute Software acquired last December. The suburban Philadelphia school district purchased and deployed LANRev prior to Absolute's acquisition, he said, noting that most school districts buy the software for power management features that let IT staff remotely power down systems.

Calling LANRev a "legacy" product, Midgley also said that Absolute would ship an update in the next several weeks that will permanently disable Theft Track, the name of the feature that lets administrators switch on a laptop's camera to take photographs of a potential thief after the computer is reported stolen. "It really doesn't serve any purpose," said Midgley of Theft Track.

All its theft-recovery software relies on a different model than the former LANRev, said Midgley. "We give no theft recovery tools to our [LoJack and Computrace] customers," he said. "The only truly proven model is a managed service model."

To kick off the recovery of a stolen or lost laptop, customers first must file a police report -- not a requirement of LANRev -- and only then contact Absolute, which in turn tracks the location of the missing machine via its IP address when the system goes online. Absolute employs a team of former law enforcement professionals who reach out to local police, provide them with the location information and then get out of the way. Software maker blasts 'vigilantism' in Pa. school spying case

Absolute Manage [LANRev] Automated Client Management for Mac and Windows Computers and Software

LoJack For Laptops

I took a look at coiledsnake's comment and noticed something odd
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1558288&cid=31224858

There are 3 links in his comment, and all to frequent submitters of stories that get put up on slashdot.

One link: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/1710245
submitted by "Stony Stevenson"

Another link: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/02/1418252
submitted by snydeq which links to http://www.infoworld.com/

and another link: http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/18/2016228.shtml
submitted by CWmike which links to http://www.computerworld.com/

Why would these frequent story contributors link their nick to publications? (hope I got the links right)

Keizer's personal take on the situation can be read here.

A student has been quoted as saying:

"Frequently, the green lights next to our iSight webcams will turn on. The school district claims that this is just a glitch. We are all doubting this now."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/school-accused-of-using-webcam-to-photograph-student-at-home/

The lawsuit filed in court states:

"[The student] was at home using a school issued laptop that was neither reported lost nor stolen when his image was captured by Defendants without his or his parents' permission and while he was at home."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9159778/Irate_parents_in_Pa._say_schools_use_peeping_tom_technology_

If this is true, sounds pretty damning to me.

The only data in the article you refer to was captured data from XPnet that said that >90% of RAM was in use in Windows 7 machines. There was no data saying it led to swapping, that was supposition.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9158258/Most_Windows_7_PCs_max_out_memory

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/07/28/browser-ballot-screen-isn-t-just-for-windows-7.aspx

who has time to do that? I'll just point to something that's more than 6 months old (albeit this one mentions just 10, other sources shortly thereafter were mentioning 11 or more such as
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/18/0210240/How-Europes-Mandated-Browser-Ballot-Screen-Works
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142416/FAQ_How_the_IE_ballot_screen_works
which listed:

The first five are Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's IE, Mozilla's Firefox and Opera. On a second screen, the ballot will list AOL, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant Browser, Sleipnir and SlimBrowser.

so ...)

It also would appear as though Microsoft wanted to do a "top ten" http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-24statement.mspx so I believe that they are using the "top ten" plus IE8, thus making 11.

Also, it's important to note that three or four of these browsers (at a minimum) are rebranded IE experiences, using the IE rendering engine. A couple are rebranded Firefox builds.

Also:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/24/1927255/Microsoft-Agrees-To-EU-Browser-Ballot-Screen?from=rss

Actually we are talking about an ULV chip and the system only draws 18 watts maximum for a dual core processor. And while the above article says $750 IRL Walmart and most of the other chains have them for less than $450 for a dual core with a Radeon 3200 GPU, which allows it to play 1080p video smoothly and maultitask quite nicely.

So it really isn't like the old power sucking Athlon days. While it isn't gonna suck single digits max like an Atom (which when paired with the 945g isn't really great power wise either) frankly the increased performance and smooth hardware accelerated video makes it feel much more like a full size notebook than a netbook. If you have a Walmart nearby I would pop in and give one of their display models a spin. They are actually pretty sweet as far as the feel and handling goes, with the one I was looking at boasting 2Gb of RAM and Windows 7 HP for $450.

I don't know, what can you do with Win7 and Office 2010 that you couldn't do with WinXP and Office 2000? What new improvements in productivity do you gain from them? How did they lower your other costs (e.g. hardware)?

Well, new versions of Office simply exist to force you into their new file formats. Office 97, simply put, does everything anyone could want, and does it well. The only real selling point for the latest iteration is the collaboration technology in it, and even then, that's only good for you if you're using it in a business or groups. There's really no practical justification for a home user to upgrade Office.

Windows 7 though, that's a bit different. It appears that MS has really given us a reason to move on from XP, with better graphics support and better security, without the bugs of nags of Vista. Windows 7 is really what Vista should have been. And it would be more compelling if all versions of 7 were 64 bit native, as CPU's have been 64 bit for quite some time now. The 64 bit part would be the real selling point here, as it would allow all versions to move past that 4 GB memory limit, hardware permitting. For a lot of people, the only reason they really had to move to XP from 98SE was the file system limits on FAT32. While 98 was more stable than 95, the reason I upgraded was the 2 GB FAT limit that was smashed with FAT32. Microsoft too often forgets that we need practical reasons to upgrade, not just shiny eye-candy. And real practical reasons, not artificially forced situations like their new Office file formats. The only reason they did that was to force businesses away from 97 and 2K.

//Microsoft Employee Here//

You're right, consumers need compelling reasons to upgrade to a new version, but the point critics must accept when talking about a huge feature pool in a product like Office is "what is important to me?" The 10% that you use, will be different from the 10% I use. A financial analyst will extract different value from Excel than a presenter will from PowerPoint.

If you work in IT, the fact of the matter is that you are uniquely UNqualified in most circumstances to know what features in a product like PowerPoint, Access, Excel, Publisher, and Word, will make employees more productive. You have to ask yourself, do you track operational clicks? Do you time how long it takes for a marketer to create collatoral? What is the output quality of a document from Office 2k vs Office2010? Will more row support improve a financial analyst's ability to have a single doc vs. spreading them across multiple linked files?

Most of the time, people in IT only consider the most basic of information worker productivity. They don't see the value of the enhancements in Office because they themselves do not live in the product. If you don't believe me, try Outlook 2010 and compare it to previous versions of Outlook, its a much better experience and makes your more productive. Only if you live in the application, would you be able to determine the value of an upgrade.

To close, the whole point of MS Works was to be a consumer suite. For one reason or another, Office has moved from the workplace to the home. Microsoft realizes this and will be offer a free version of MS Office called "Starter" which will include Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139162/Microsoft_to_put_free_Office_Starter_2010_on_new_PCs

Final point, for a business, if you were to save 4 minutes a days doing simple MS Office tasks on the computer, over the span of a year, most, if not all organizations would pay for the license of Office. Calculate it. Given, this is only one view in that equation, but things that are trivial in Office 2010 are pretty tough/complex/annoying to do in older versions. Print Preview, resizing, social networking, ECM integration, sharing content, etc...the list is huge.

The source article misses some of the coolest design features of this facility. It has the equivalent of a 12-foot high raised floor, using the entire lower level of the facility as a cooling plenum. The fans bring the cool North Sea air into the lower chamber, and they manage the pressure to direct the air up into the server area. There's also a Computerworld story with more details but an erroneous headline that suggests that it's the "first-ever" wind cooled data center. The story makes it clear that the facility has chillers as backup for when the wind dies down or air temperature doesn't support free cooling. Both Microsoft and Google are already running data centers with no on-site chillers.

I've been reading about this hack for days, but something seems fishy. Some of the earlier reports had him hacking the SLE 66 CL processor chip which is embedded in the TPM, not the TPM itself. This article also describes him as having to work with many copies of the chip to discover its secrets, but it has the chips being inexpensive ones from China. Problem is that Infineon is a German company and I don't think you can get Infineon TPMs cheaply from China. Putting this together, it's not clear to me that he has truly hacked an Infineon TPM. He may have hacked a similar chip and he assumes that the same attack would work on TPM.

However, there is a way for him to easily prove that he has done what he said. Every Infineon TPM comes with an RSA secret key embedded in it, called the Endorsement Key or EK. This key is designed to be kept secret and never revealed off-chip, not to the computer owner or anyone. And Infineon TPMs also come with an X.509 certificate on the public part of the EK (PUBEK), issued by Infineon. If Tarnovsky has really hacked an Infineon TPM and is able to extract keys, he should be able to extract and publish the private part of the EK (PRIVEK), along with the certificate by Infineon on that key. The mere publication of these two pieces of data (PRIVEK and Infineon-signed X.509 cert on PUBEK) will prove that his claim is true.

go to youtube and search "blackhat 2010" and there are 8 parts to his talk.

he has hacked the entire family by playing with the xbox and tpm! e-passports are dead!!!!!

I've been reading about this hack for days, but something seems fishy. Some of the earlier reports had him hacking the SLE 66 CL processor chip which is embedded in the TPM, not the TPM itself. This article also describes him as having to work with many copies of the chip to discover its secrets, but it has the chips being inexpensive ones from China. Problem is that Infineon is a German company and I don't think you can get Infineon TPMs cheaply from China. Putting this together, it's not clear to me that he has truly hacked an Infineon TPM. He may have hacked a similar chip and he assumes that the same attack would work on TPM.

However, there is a way for him to easily prove that he has done what he said. Every Infineon TPM comes with an RSA secret key embedded in it, called the Endorsement Key or EK. This key is designed to be kept secret and never revealed off-chip, not to the computer owner or anyone. And Infineon TPMs also come with an X.509 certificate on the public part of the EK (PUBEK), issued by Infineon. If Tarnovsky has really hacked an Infineon TPM and is able to extract keys, he should be able to extract and publish the private part of the EK (PRIVEK), along with the certificate by Infineon on that key. The mere publication of these two pieces of data (PRIVEK and Infineon-signed X.509 cert on PUBEK) will prove that his claim is true.

The problem is not that badly written programs fail. The problem is that even programs that were supposed to be well written in .NET crash miserably.

In the old days people would say "no one was ever fired for buying an IBM system". Well, there's at least one chief executive of a major corporation that has been fired for buying a .NET system.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9152078/Top_10_Super_Bowl_tech_ads?taxonomyName=Hardware&taxonomyId=12

What more evidence does one need that .Net is crap?

Anecdotes aren't evidence, but their weight increases with decreasing distance. If your anecdote were about camel traders in some Central Asia mountains I would never give it a second thought.

Computer programming, OTOH, is closer to home, it's not just *one* bad program in C# that crashes, it's everyone who works with computers that has come across one badly written .NET system after another.

There must be something wrong about the whole .NET architecture, maybe it's not the system itself, maybe it's because it attracts too many people who do not have what it takes to become a great programmer, but the proportion of .NET systems that are buggy seems to be much greater than in other platforms.

I submitted the story three years ago but it never got picked up.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9046424/Update_Maxtor_drives_contain_password_stealing_Trojans?intsrc=hm_list

In short, Maxtor drives that were produced in Taiwan contained trojan source code that phone home to two servers located in China. There wasn't any conclusive evidence to tie the incident directly to the Chinese (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Aside from internal 1984 style abuse of this proposed system, the fundamental concept (and all existing implementations of it) introduces a new level of security risk and it is this exact interface that is said to be the weakness that was exploited in the Google China attack. From a computer security perspective, this is wrong on many different levels.