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Oh, and I assume you're talking about the TimeLine law suit? Actually that came about because TimeLine cancelled Microsoft's licensing agreement, which gave MS license to the patents. Unless you mean another law suit then please, stop trying to paint SQL Server as containing some sort of patent theft and Oracle as squeaky clean.

So I really do not think the author has fully understood what happens at the end of the 30 day grace period. And as usual the majority of the anti-ms types of slashdot have blindly agreed with any anti-MS sentiments voiced rather than spend time researching the truth; it is out there. At the end of the grace activation period (30 days) Windows Vista goes into 'reduced' functionality mode. Microsoft do not encrypt data, they do not delete data, they do not prevent you from getting to that data to off load it. What happens is that Windows Vista runs the default browser (yes even if its Firefox it runs it) that will allow you to connect to the activation site via the web, or any other web site if it comes to that, or present instructions on how to activate via the telephone. After one hour the logged on user is logged off. The user can immediately log back on. Users are presented with reminders about activation as the grace period expires, with increasing frequency, until they activate or elect to not. The purpose of Activation is not to be able to deny you access to data but to deny people who pirate closed source software a revenue stream. Have a look at the following two URLs for more detail. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/plan /faq.mspx#EYPAC http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9004970

So I really do not think the author has fully understood what happens at the end of the 30 day grace period. And as usual the majority of the anti-ms types of slashdot have blindly agreed with any anti-MS sentiments voiced. At the end of the grace activation period (30 days) Windows Vista goes into 'reduced' functionality mode. Microsoft do not encrypt data, they do not delete data, they do not prevent you from getting to that data to off load it. What happens is that Windows Vista runs the default browser (yes even if its Firefox it runs it) that will allow you to connect to the activation site via the web, or any other web site if it comes to that, or present instructions on how to activate via the telephone. After one hour the logged on user is logged off. The user can immediately log back on. Users are presented with reminders about activation as the grace period expires, with increasing frequency until, they activate or elect to not. The purpose of Activation is not to be able to deny you access to data but to deny people who pirate closed source software a revenue stream. Have a look at the following two URLs for more detail. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/plan /faq.mspx#EYPAC http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9004970

"There are not enough engineers with the appropriate skill sets."

That would be the skill set that includes an MS in Software Engineering and a willingness to work for $10/hour.

"The IT work force is not skilled enough and almost never can be skilled enough," said Robert Cresanti, undersecretary of commerce for technology

And just why would that be, Mr. Cresanti?

Lack of education? I'm sure that college costs rising 6.3% from last year for public colleges, and 5.9% for the very expensive private colleges has nothing to do with it.

Oh, but college enrollment is off. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the media drumbeat announcing that entry level engineering positions are being offshored, reducing interest in college majors leading to software and IT positions. [1][2]

Of course, even getting into these college programs requires a high school education with a strong grounding in the fundamentals of mathematics and science. This seems to be a problem area for United States high schools. [3]

Or are you just proclaiming that the US Commerce Department thinks this is an area Americans just can't compete in? Perhaps American nationals should just know their place in life and stick with "Would you like fries with that?" Hey, even H1B Visa Guy has to eat somewhere. At least your suppliers of Freedom Fries will be secure in their ability to find new employees.

1. http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2006/0,4814 ,111202,00.html
2. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm#outlook
3. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/25/news/scienc e.php
4. http://www.ed.gov/inits/TIMSS/overview.html

Steinbach Credit Union is my home bank, so it was interesting to hear how they set this up back in 2003.

SCU has a second branch located in Winnipeg. Data is constantly synchronized between the two sites providing a physical disaster recovery solution and a convenience for customers, as loan information, etc is always up-to-date so it doesn't matter which branch you visit. (People from Steinbach often visit Winnipeg for shopping and movies). As opposed to paying $70,000 per month for 3rd party leased lines, or $1 million to lay their own fibre, SCU found the cost-effective solution to create their own private wireless network. SCU also uses the direct link for email, VoIP, and streaming security cameras which provides additional bandwidth and long-distance savings.

The towers are full-duplex and shoot a narrow microwave beam which is almost impossible to intercept 100 feet above ground and data is encrypted "2^48 power" and apparently not affected by the weather. <<insert Canadian weather joke>>

SCU won the silver medal in the SearchStorage.com Spring 2003 Storage Innovator awards competition for their innovative wireless SAN setup.

Here are more article links with details and diagrams of the setup and equipment used.

Anonymous Coward's wry list - a sendup of my open letter to Diebold - is a hoot. I love #2. And hiring the working dead is a great idea. It might also help explain away situations where phantom voters appear in e-voting tabulations.

To the degree that people rightly, wrongly or dishonestly don't buy into the system, there's no technology that can prevent that.

It isn't just script kiddies. Organized crime has been making moves into computer crime for some time. There are others too.

Transnational Crime Syndicates
Organized Crime Invades Cyberspace
Cyber Threat Source Descriptions

There is ample evidence of a) the ease in which Diebold voting machines can be patched and b) votes being switched to Republican candidates. Diebolds CEO vowed to deliver the 2004 presidential election to Mr. Bush.

Concerns are already mounting in Texas and Arkansas that votes are being flipped in early 2006 voting.

It's not a conspiracy when so many municipalities conclude that Diebold machines are not fit for elections.

None of these software firewalls are of any use as they can be disabled by the next exploit. What is needed is a firewall running on standalone embedded hardware. Of course with the use of RPC over HTTP and SOAP, a firewall is of limited use in this day and age.

Yes they do http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2005/0,4814 ,99290,00.html/.

A problem that has been hapening is that the paper ribbon in the machine will jam frequently or run out. When they run out, many times the polling volunteers don't have a clue on how to fix it.

I thought /. could see into the future for events such as these.

Only for subscribers, which I guess Microsoft ain't.

It had to take several weeks of planning for them to send that cake?

Well, it would have been sent earlier, but at the last minute the QC team discovered a show-stopping bug, one "would totally crash the cake, requiring a complete rebake". So they had to delay the RTM (Release to Mozilla).

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9004437

When compared to XP's UI, Vista is way too difficult.

They have changed the behavior of common icons (e.g. the network system tray icon does not have a "right-click properties" method of accessing the connection settings).

Also, there is no more Start -> Run option. They have replaced it with Start -> "Search". This appears to offer the same functionality as "Run", but does not seem intuitive.

In case anybody missed it:

Re:Standards (Score:2) by DigitlDud (443365) on Monday October 16, @07:43PM (#16461267) I was referring to what this video says about XPS: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=9805 7

MS shows off their prototype XPS printers and mentions that major printer manufacturers are signed on.

In short, it was indeed nothing but Microsoft propaganda being parroted, and I'll believe it when Cairo ships...

"Should parents tell their kids before they monitor?"

Umm, can I have a "Hell yeah"??? I just wrote an article on Computerworld (blatant plug) about what a terrible idea it is to be secretive about this sort of thing with your kids. When they figure out you're using filters, router logs and keyloggers, and lying about it, they won't ever trust you again. Ever. Even with a $20 bill. And they might even write you off as a perv and cut off communications. (I had one moderately well-known figure in IT Security admit to me this weekend that he'd secretly installed keylogger software on his tech-savvy kid's computer when he started to use an encrypted proxy for private conversations with his girlfriend. What a positively boneheaded move -- I wonder how that'll turn out in a few years.)

Anyway, there's some quotes of people wiser than I in the following "Back to School" article -- http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003519

-Jon

"Should parents tell their kids before they monitor?"

Umm, can I have a "Hell yeah"??? I just wrote an article on Computerworld (blatant plug) about what a terrible idea it is to be secretive about this sort of thing with your kids. When they figure out you're using filters, router logs and keyloggers, and lying about it, they won't ever trust you again. Ever. Even with a $20 bill. And they might even write you off as a perv and cut off communications. (I had one moderately well-known figure in IT Security admit to me this weekend that he'd secretly installed keylogger software on his tech-savvy kid's computer when he started to use an encrypted proxy for private conversations with his girlfriend. What a positively boneheaded move -- I wonder how that'll turn out in a few years.)

Anyway, there's some quotes of people wiser than I in the following "Back to School" article -- http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003519

-Jon

the problem is: the Brazilian prosecutors subpoened Google's Brazilian office.

the Brazilian office doesn't have access to the data stored in the servers, based in the USA. Google's brazilian office is a law firm, probably there are no techies there.

when the brazilian prosecutors present their request properly to Google in USA the data will be handed over. It has been done before:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003739&intsrc=new s_ts_head

There's more to it than that. Part of it is consumer needs, but part of it is consumer desires. Apple has succeeded in creating an identity for and making the iPod desirable, even if some people that use it (of whom I know a few) don't understand what it does at all. At its core, what is it? A screen and a hard drive with a rom chip that knows how to play music files stored on the hard drive.

Do you remember when the walkman first came out? Do you realize that most people now call any portable tape player (Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer, whatever...) a Walkman even though it's the Sony brand? Sony did a remarkable job of taking a bunch of parts of a dictaphone and putting them together to create something ubiquitous. The also completely created the market for it from scratch. They packaged it in so many different forms that it became desirable to everyone. To see what I mean, check out this book. It's short but it's a really good history of a game-changing product, even if it was 'just a tape-player'.

Apple has their iPod, which is just an mp3 player. That's it (at it's core, forgive the pun there). What they have done though, is take a mp3 player (nerdy gadget) and make it desirable to the masses as an accessory, just like Sony did with the Walkman. They're even updating it like Sony did, small changes with the same base. How much different was the last walkman from the first one, really? And apple is getting flack for minor updates to a successful product. Anyways, it will be interesting to see what Zune does. Is Microsoft going to take a bite out of the market that Apple created or will gaining adoption be difficult or will it fail to create its own identity and become a Microsoft iPod (like a Panasonic Walkman)? Too many bells and whistles can take buyers away if they only really want one thing: play their music. Same problem applies to most technology. So much technology is returned because users just plain can't figure it out.

In the end I don't think it's so much about Microsoft trying to crush competition as about Microsoft trying to add a product to a successful market. It's not up to MS whether it will succeed though, in this case it will actually turn out to be a cultural decision!! (read the book, hehe).

Oh my gosh, everyone loves this book. See new review at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003579&source=NLT _PM&nlid=8

cm'on, give the man a link

Anybody else thinks Google is getting careful. They defiantly can handle Linux tech issues but might be helpless with licenses problems. And my guess is they don't want to be forced to publish their extensions.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003492

If you think a lobbyist is a good choice for a homeland security position, consider what his group has lobbied for.

In a conference call with voting machine makers, the ITAA proposed conducting a campaign on their behalf, in exchange for $100,000 to $200,000 per company, depending on the services provided.

The ITAA president told Computerworld that criticism of voting machines was just a "religious war".

He didn't. See here: "Peterson pleaded guilty in December to the charges of selling illegal software valued at more than $20 million. He earned $5.4 million from the illegal sales, equal to the amount of restitution he must pay." Interesting the Cnet story omits that in favour of the "value" of the software, and ends it with the mandatory quote from the BSA: "Software piracy resulted in a loss of $34 billion worldwide in 2005, a $1.6 billion increase over 2004, according to a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance."

Yeas, he profited, lots, but they still spun it to seem worse.

The requirement will be that all websites be renderable by a reader, if Target loses the suit (all that has happened so far is that a Target motion to dismiss the case was not granted). The judge also denied a preliminary injunction to require Target to make their website accessible immediately.
This is not trivial. There are programs that will read web pages and then pump them out through a voice synthesizer. The trouble is that the reader programs can't understand all HTML. I've forgotten the details of what fails, but I remember deciding I never wanted to work on a 508-compliant web site. 508 is a separate set of accessibility regulations for government websites. Information can't be just graphic, for example. On one hand, this is essentially adding another type of browser. But it is more complicated than ms vs. netscape, because you have to have a version of each page that doesn't use graphics.

Lucky for them I have a secret way of finding content on the internet.

• Computerworld
• National Federantion of the Blind (one of the plaintiffs)
• Disability Rights Advocates (the plaintiffs' lawyers

Hey Rob, can I get my editor's fee now?

This wasn't a decision that websites have to be "accessable". The judge just refused to dismiss the suit in the preliminary stages. The judge also refused to compel Target to make the site "accessable" during the litigation. So this just means that there's enough of a question to proceed to trial. It's not a "decision". Computerworld has a better story on this.

Well, Microsoft sure does NOT have a very good record of making a secure system and that record is over 15 years old. But regardless, one thing I was looking for was what/where this person did BEFORE Microsoft to see if there really might be some security talent there. That's when I found that she worked for @Stake before going to Microsoft( http://www.matasano.com/log/mtso/team ). This is the same @Stake which fired one of their own, their CTO no less, when he released a document which was NOT kind regarding Microsoft Windows security( http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/story/0,10801,85563,00.html ).

So, I hope they actually had an expert to interview/test her because those two resume' items are NOT providing strength in any claim of being a security expert. IMO.

LoB

They tried that. Didn't help.

SGI also tried making overpriced Windows desktops. That also flopped. Nice cases, though.

Second: Notes for Mac.

Third: Notes for *Linux*. And it's Eclipse-based.

And they're all 7.0-level clients. The Linux client is actually a preview of the 8.0 Notes client (called Hanover)! So, no need for sympathy! :)

And you're dead wrong about the Bush admin siding with EFF.

The Bush admin is siding with EFF on this:

The U.S. Justice department and U.S. Patent Office also filed an amicus brief in the case, stating that under the test, "a claimed invention that combined elements already present in the prior art would not have been obvious at the time of invention unless there was a teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the prior art that would have led a person of ordinary skill to combine the prior art references in the manner claimed."

And it's not just them, Microsoft and Cisco are also on tha same side:

FOSS advocates aren't alone in the tech industry in questioning the suggestion test. Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. were among the companies signing on to an earlier brief arguing the appeals court has been "too lenient" in accepting patents. The suggestion test hurts innovation by forcing companies to spend their resources on "defensive, large-scale patenting," the companies argued.

I'm no supporter of Bush or his admin but they are doing right by this. It's one of maybe a handfull of things I think they are doing right.

This service could be extremely useful as a render farm for 3D graphics. It would be wonderful to be able to call up 1000 CPUs for a couple days or weeks at a time, without paying for them when not in use.

The problem is that movies output at something like 10M per frame (4000 pixels wide by 2000 pixels high by 48 bits per pixel div 8 bits per byte div 4 lossless compression factor), so you'd be talking about nearly a gigabyte for 4 seconds of footage (and my compression factor may be way off). So you can spin up 1000 CPUs for a half hour to generate five minutes of footage, and wait for weeks for your data to download over your T4 link. You could decide you just want to use this for proofs and cut the resolution in half on each dimension, cut to 24 bits per pixel, allow lossy compression, which cuts down the space by a factor of 16, but ... now you only need 50 or 60 CPUs, so it starts to look more reasonable to just have them on-site.

Yeah, I've wondered about this exact issue in the past. I work at a place which specializes in building amazing giant clusters, and I have friends at Pixar and Dreamworks. But this one is going to be hard to carry. Movie houses keep their render farms hot for 6 months at a time, or if they're like Pixar, pretty much continuously. When ILM moved from Santa Rosa to Presidio, they basically installed a 10gbit fiber link (*) between to help with the transition period (when the render farm was in a different location from the workstations). Amazon isn't going to install a 10gbit fiber link for you :-).

-scott

(*) http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storag e/story/0,10801,105052,00.html

(!!??) Look at the math: India has 1.2 billion, many of which are at subsistence level; Australia, a "developed" country, has 20 million fattening middle class aspirants. A 200:1 ratio reflects that reality.

And of the $200 spent per head in lazy republics, 90% of it goes down the drain (FBI's Keystone Cops IT fiasco; name-your-favourite-boondoggle; even Russia caught quickly on to the overspend-and-underdeliver game, it's a great way to embezzle). Raising indigent populations to Western standards of waste is not really helpful, is it.

Anyway, if you didn't get Carr's memo: IT's a commodity now. The industry's shrinkage can't be blamed on nine-whatever or the "War on Common Sense"; the gold rush days are OVER. Spend less and spend better (hint: not on *cough* MS junk; hint: don't reinvent - unless it's to take business from MS :)

It's shameless self-promotion, but I just wrote an article on computerworld about basic security and privacy issues for the homeless and/or other perennially wandering folks. There's a little coverage about identity establishment there too, along with general protection of information and resources.

-Jon

Perhaps you've never heard of NORA then...

Systems Research & Development (SRD) developed its Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness (NORA) technology to help casinos identify cheaters by correlating information from multiple sources about relationships and earlier transactions.

Las Vegas-based SRD, which received funding from the CIA, is now developing several NORA plug-ins to reach further into the world of criminals and terrorists. Last month, the company unveiled a "degrees of separation" capability that finds deeper connections among people.

"It will tell you that the Drug Enforcement Agency's agent's college roommate's ex-wife's current husband is the drug lord," says Jeff Jonas, chief technology officer at SRD. NORA can bridge up to 30 such links, he says.

http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/s tory/0,10801,70041,00.html/

I don't think it will. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you'll have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis only with confirmation, like a normal user in Ubuntu who can use 'sudo'.

By default, the true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com [computerworld.com] mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis. It pops up a dialogue box like http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/winvis ta_ff_uac_13.jpg, letting you press a big button that says 'allow' if you know it's something you initiated (e.g. you're trying to install something). You don't need to logout and relogin.

>Vista might be running in user mode by default.

Correct, it will. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is all about.

Yes, it will. In Vista, the true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is about.

Yes. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is about.

Well, thank you, but if you do that, you miss http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9002206, which was unfortunately much more interesting than the intended article.

Print version here.

Zero credibility points for trying to put markup in the <title> element and hiding the printable version behind a javascript:void(0) link.

If you want the technical stuff, skip about a third of the way down. The first third of the article just repeatedly tells you that Ajax is when the page doesn't "blink".

The code he supplies is crap. For instance:

<html> <head>

<title>HTMLfs</title>
</head>
<framese t rows="100%,*">
<frame name="visible_frame" src="visible.htm">
<frame name="hidden_frame" src="hidden.htm">
<noframes>Frames are required to use this Web site.</noframes>

Things wrong with even this tiny snippet of code:

• Invalid.
• Frames (at the very least, he should have used iframes).
• Cheesy "fuck off" error message instead of functional equivalent.

Skimming the rest of the article, I see the following mistakes:

• Using DOM methods without testing for their existence.
• Browser detection (which is stupid and wrong).
• Obtrusive JavaScript embedded in the page with old-fashioned HTML attributes.
• Non-degradable JavaScript form submission with <button> instead of <submit>.
• Confusion over what elements and tags are.
• Internet Explorer-only code without error checking or a fallback.

If this is a representative sample of the book it is excerpted from, steer well clear of it. The whole approach is poor.

The best way of producing compatible, accessible Ajax applications is to start with the bare HTML and make that work. Only then do you add the JavaScript, and you do it by enhancing the page, not replacing it. For instance, don't use <button onclick="...">, use a normal <input type="submit"> and hook into the form's submit event. That way:

• It works when JavaScript is unavailable.
• It works when there's a problem in your code.
• It works when you find you can't do something halfway through processing the event (e.g. you find that ActiveX is switched off in Internet Explorer, making XMLHttpRequest unavailable).

Instead of wading thru 7+ pages of clicking and ads ... Printer Friendly version. You can thank me later.

Power outages across the country. Transmission lines catching fire in New York. etc... Millions without power.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=data_center&art icleId=112468&taxonomyId=52

The FCC is the sole authority when it comes to regulating and enforcing spectrum usage. For a good example of the FCC not taking kindly to someone else regulating spectrum, see:
http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/w ifi/story/0,10801,94124,00.html

Printer format TFA. PFTFA? I think a new acronym shall be made.

Printable view here
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9001888

Wal-Mart is a big backer of RFID tech. The company set a 2005 deadline for its 100 top suppliers to use it on pallets of products (rather than individual cereal boxes), and tested the tech in Texas in 2004. Wal-Mart reported some success, but there were also problems. Not sure what the latest news is. If such chips are going to be everywhere, then we should encourage everyone to have readers for them so that the information on them is in everyone's hands, not just governments' and corporations'. For an example of how people could use this tech, see the cyberpunk story "Maneki Neko," about a Web-mediated barter club.

FTFA: "The hard part is building the ecosystem. You have to get your readers and writers, and I don't know how long it will take me to convince the cell phone companies to do this. How long has RFID been around and it's still not completely built out?"

Understatement of the week, for sure. I'm struggling to think of more than half a dozen consumer-exposed implementations of RFID. There are a few gas-station speedpass[tm] gimmicks, some high end automobiles use them in their keys, and various department stores use them to keep inventory from walking out the front door. And a few casinos are now using RFID chips to prevent various gaming schemes and track user play. I think that "not completely" built out is more than an understatement. For instance, the uspto currently lists 2114 patents including the keyword "RFID" versus 519515 including the keyword "OPTICAL" (if you think optical technologies are not a fair comparison, do your own search with your own chosen technology.. my point is simply that RFID has barely been explored by many industries)

Not that I claim to be much of an expert on RFID, but at least it appears technologies such as this will be less vulernable to the encryption problems that RFID currently experience. (previous link is just some random example i googled for.. /. as well as Bruce Schneier have both covered the RFID encryption [and other inherent weakness] topics extensively in the past)

Well, at least the kill switch code has not been enabled yet.

But check out this article In it we have this quote:

Through its spokeswoman, Microsoft said that "80% of all WGA validation failures are due to unauthorized use of leaked or stolen volume license keys."

You might try googling for "WGA failure Dell"....