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prostoalex writes "Each December the Bureau of Labor Statistics prepares a report on telecommunications spending among US households. They analyze the previous year's data, so their most recent release says that in 2006 the average US household spent $542 on their landline, and $524 on their wireless bill. The way the curves are headed, 2007 is likely to become the first year when wireless spending will surpass landline spending. 'To be sure, when corporate cell-phone use is counted, overall U.S. spending surpassed land line spending several years ago, analysts said.'"

prostoalex writes "The New York Times is running a story on a Silicon Valley company that is planning to revolutionize the movie business. It's no secret that the movie-going experience has been deteriorating, while the number of HDTVs sold has been rising steadily. A company called Vudu, run by a guy who started TiVo, is now building a box for peer-to-peer download of movies straight from the studios. That could enables the movie studios to make movies securely available to viewers on the day of release, and improves on the download experience offered by other shops, like Amazon Unbox, MovieLink and others: 'DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog of movies that could be released on the shiny discs. The success of iTunes was also proving that the digital transition was inevitable and that one powerful player, Apple, could control the market if Hollywood did not find other viable partners. And outlaw services like the pirate Web sites that use BitTorrent technology demonstrated that digital piracy, which had consumed the music business first, now posed a real problem for Hollywood.'"

dotpavan writes "While studies have shown that spying on workers tends to make them less productive, that hasn't stopped approximately 1/3 of all U.S. companies from employing email monitoring tools. 43% of those companies employ staff to check outgoing emails. This seems like quite a waste. While there are some times when it makes sense to monitor emails (or it's required by law), most of the time, this seems like a complete waste of money. Not only are you upsetting workers and decreasing productivity, the benefits are pretty hard to spot. The number of "problem" emails tends to be incredibly low. If someone really wants to send out inappropriate emails, they're going to figure out some other way to do so, such as via a free webmail account somewhere. Yet, the companies are buying up expensive tools and hiring staff to watch just in case they catch the one or two problematic emails that go over the corporate network."

prostoalex writes "Nielsen//NetRatings, a top Web reporting and metrics agency, started tracking the Firefox Web site in June 2004 and has announced 237% growth since then. Nielsen tracks Firefox Web site visits, not downloads or usage patterns, but it notes that "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005.""

prostoalex writes "A new survey by Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio shows Windows and Linux are viewed as equal by U.S. businesses. In the eternal OS wars, '88 percent of respondents said that the quality, performance and reliability of Windows was equal to or better than Linux.' Companies were also asked to rank the operating systems on security. On a scale of 1 to 10 'companies rated Microsoft's security at 7.6, double the rating in a similar survey conducted last year. Linux's rating was mostly the same at 8.3.' Conclusion? 'DiDio said that most companies -- whether large or small -- rarely take the huge step of replacing one operating system with another. Instead, they usually add a mix of Windows and Linux server software to expand functionality.' Microsoft used last year's Yankee Group survey results in their Get the facts campaign."

prostoalex writes "FTC told CompUSA they will have to keep their word on paying out rebates for QPS equipment purchased at CompUSA. QPS is currently bankrupt, according to the article, although it's not clear whether they went out of business before or after the promised 6-8 weeks deadline came. CBS MarketWatch says this should spur rebate re-evaluation among other electronic retailers. The habit of offering rebate incentives seems be especially notorious in the consumer electronics and computer hardware industries as a third of shoppers for such goods bought a product with a rebate offered. Reason for such popularity? 41% of shoppers never send in their rebates."

prostoalex writes "FTC told CompUSA they will have to keep their word on paying out rebates for QPS equipment purchased at CompUSA. QPS is currently bankrupt, according to the article, although it's not clear whether they went out of business before or after the promised 6-8 weeks deadline came. CBS MarketWatch says this should spur rebate re-evaluation among other electronic retailers. The habit of offering rebate incentives seems be especially notorious in the consumer electronics and computer hardware industries as a third of shoppers for such goods bought a product with a rebate offered. Reason for such popularity? 41% of shoppers never send in their rebates."

prostoalex writes "South Korea remains the world's undisputed broadband leader (in terms of penetration) with 25 broadband lines for every 100 people as of year-end 2004. But how did it come to that? Joel Strauch moved there to teach English and in his letter to PC World he portrays the everyday life in broadband heaven as well as names the reasons for Korean broadband dominance: 'An ambitious, nearly $11 billion program, it appears to be working. Studies have shown that over a quarter of Koreans have broadband and that anyone who wants it can sign up--with some ISPs charging as little as $19 a month for DSL. I pay $30 myself, for a 1.5-megabits-per-second (mbps) connection--twice the speed of my $50-a-month service back home in the United States.'"

savuporo writes "Robots.net is reporting that Linux-based robots are far more common than Windows-based robotics. Especially various Asian robot builders are increasingly selecting Linux and other open-source software as a basis for robot products and research. Linux is also gaining ground in other embedded applications like PDAs and mobile phones." That said, prostoalex writes "50% of all the PDAs sold in 2003 had Palm OS, while Windows family accounted for 37.7% of PDA market. In 2004 Microsoft is the leader of handheld OS market with 43% market share, followed by Palm OS with 36.3%."

prostoalex writes "Associated Press has the story that three communications corporations are doing test trials of IP-based television in undisclosed markets. From the article: "SBC Communications, the dominant local phone company from the Midwest to California, is deploying a full-blown IPTV system that it plans to launch by year-end in at least a few undisclosed markets. Verizon Communications plans to offer some interactive IP-based features on top of a conventional digital cable service... BellSouth has expressed doubt about whether a cable rollout makes financial sense, the company sees enough potential to trial IPTV technology in undisclosed markets." Currently about 1 mln Europeans get their television via phone line."

prostoalex writes "You're as likely to find a landline in a college dorm as you're an old typewriter, according to this Washington Post article on MSNBC. While roughly 30% of college students had a cell phone 5 years ago, more than 90% have them today, resulting in student directories including out-of-state numbers instead of 4-digit extensions. More trivia on college students: 90% own a PC, 65% have broadband, 62% own a stereo system, 74% have a DVD player, 55% have a gaming system. What the Washington Post article also hints at, is possible tuition hikes due to the landlines dropped so quickly. "Six or seven years ago, telephones on campus were a cash cow," said Glenn Gaslin of Morrisville State College in New York."

Eric writes "In the face of increasing pressure from the likes of Google and MSN, America Online has opened beta testing for its standalone AOL Browser and Desktop Search to anyone with an AOL or AIM screen name. The AOL Browser beta utilizes Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine (not Firefox's, like Netscape) and integrates the company's Desktop Search client. Unlike Netscape it looks decent from the screenshots and also includes some nifty features like tear-off tabs and zooming." And prostoalex writes "In what could be the biggest VOIP push into US households, AOL will start offering VOIP services, as reported by Light Reading. 28% of online Americans subscribe to dial-up or broadband version of AOL, AOL has 4 million broadband users, and beta testers in the Light Reading article seemed to be pretty happy with the service."

prostoalex writes "Ever-increasing presence of high-tech devices in modern cars is a double-edged sword, the New York Times discovers. Software from different suppliers brings up to some peculiar bugs, such as a heater turning itself on during a hot summer day. In December last year ABI Research estimated that roughly 30% of all warranty issues with new cars were microprocessor- and software-related. The NYT article also quotes an interesting prediction from IBM, saying that by 2010 almost all cars will have the same mechanical systems (hardware), and the differences will be primarily on software level." (That prediction seems as accurate as the IBM prediction that there was a worldwide market for 10 or so computers.)

j.e. writes "Commercial WiFi hotspots and open WiFi networks will take about $12 billion out of wireless carrier revenue pie, says Starategy Analytics. With high prices of mobile data services from wireless carriers, the users are more prone to use a cheap WiFi connection, if one is available."

halfacrayon writes "According to Robert Half Technology 2005 Salary Guide, average base pay for IT professionals overall will rise 0.5% in 2005. Data security analysts will command the highest salary (up to $93K), while system auditors will enjoy the highest increase compared to 2004 rates (5.1%). IT instructors are holding the bottom spot in terms of gross revenues (salary could go as low as $43,250) and business systems analysts will barely notice the increase of 1.9% that they should expect in 2005."

ravy writes "Americans bought $113.5 billion worth of electronics in 2004 and by 2005 the number will reach $127.5 billion. Digital television sets, MP3 players and flash memory cards were the best-sellers percentagewise, while PCs and cell phones enjoyed more steady growth in terms of sales. Google Zeitgeist also lists ipod, digital camera and mp3 as the most popular consumer electronics queries for the year past."

prostoalex (Alex Moskalyuk) writes "Anywhere from 26% to 40% of U.S. employees refer to their work as stressful or very stressful. So it's not too surprising that the business motivation and self-improvement market, which includes books, courses, training seminars, etc. generates $5.7 billion a year. David Allen is the author of Getting Things Done, which on its cover promises the Holy Grail of business management -- stress-free productivity." Read on for the rest of Moskalyuk's review. Getting things done author David Allen pages 288 publisher Penguin rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0142000280 summary The art of stress-free productivity

Allen's idea is to first look at the sources of stress. Whether you're working a cushy corporate job, are self-employed, or are still in college, what makes you feel frustrated and stressed? Unless you have had some major disasters in life, the answer will probably rotate around having too much to do and too little time to accomplish all the tasks. Moreover, people around you don't seem to realize how pressed for time you are as they keep coming up with every possible way to interrupt you.

Business people like to talk about multi-tasking. It fills one with feeling of self-importance, since it's obvious that if one multi-tasks, then he or she is involved in multiple projects, failure on most of which would probably result in the end of human civilization. But as Allen points out (his site contains a promotional WMV/QuickTime video), multi-tasking requires you to persist a bunch of projects (most of them unfinished) in your head.

If you count the time you spend on each actual project, and the time you spend switching between the projects, you'd be surprised how much time is spent on the overhead of going from one project to another. Basically (although Allen doesn't express it in these terms) we all would like to be Knoppix, with everything kept in RAM (our brains), nothing relegated to the hard drive (paper or information-management software), multi-tasking at its best. But as anyone would tell you, Knoppix can be quite resource-intensive, and you do not exactly get screaming speeds with it. We're all wired up like early DOS - single-tasking with everything else assigned to external storage, best at doing one thing at a time, if we're to do it well.

Allen develops a system to deal with projects and everyday interruptions accompanying them. Does the issue that came up require less than 2-3 minutes to respond to? Is it returning a call to confirm the dental appointment or e-mail to another developer saying you agree with his suggestion and would approve of it? If it takes you less than 2-3 minutes, do it right away. Do not file it under "Later," do not postpone it until lunch, because your brain keeps track of this stuff, and this unfinished while loop will be running in your brain, even if consciously you do not think about it every minute. In other words, keep the RAM clean.

Allen advocates the 3-D model, where the Ds stand for "Do it," "Delegate it," "Defer it" and advises all projects and small tasks to be processed in that order. The "Do it" part was described above for the tasks that take just a few minutes. The author promises you'd be surprised how much can be achieved by following this simple rule. At the same time, if the project just requires your approval, and you'd pass it to someone else after that, delegate it. But get it off your mind right away, because it's not yours and thus cannot occupy the precious RAM space. Delegate it -- send the e-mail, fax it away, or transfer it to another person in your organization. And if it's definitely a long task and it needs to be done by you, then defer it to the time slot when you're sure you can sit down and do it (by the time you get rid of all the doable and delegable, you will find yourself with plenty of time left to important projects).

Allen is pretty good at pointing out the various excuses that we come up with to excuse our lack of productivity. The rules sound simple, even simplistic, but that's the key to the efficiency of his system. I liked the author's approach, and adhering to his system seemed to bring a relaxed attitude into my daily schedule, since now I don't have a guilt trip over concentrating on a single task and refusing to multi-task. You can read an interview with an author at About.com. There's also an article about the methodology in Fast Company magazine with descriptive title You can do anything - but not everything. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels stress after work or someone who feels they are not at the top of their productivity and spend too much time doing inessential things.

In his spare time Alex enjoys reading business and technology books. He also keeps a list of free books for readers on a tight budget. You can purchase Getting Things Done from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "So who received the most patents in 2004? Despite the frequent publicity around Microsoft's or Amazon's frivolous patents, these two companies are not even on the list. IBM, Matsushita and Canon received the most patents in 2004, followed by HP, Micron, Samsung, Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony. IBM alone was granted 3,248 patents last year."

prostoalex writes "Folks at Silicon.com posted a list of tech headlines that you won't see in 2005. Read about spam volume decreasing, Sun revenues soaring, Longhorn operating system delivered on time and bug-free and other news you're unlikely to see in the papers."

prostoalex (Alex Moskalyuk) writes "After the Presidential election process and U.S. foreign policy directions, outsourcing is a topic guaranteed to stir up heated debate. Bill Blunden's Offshoring IT is not a 'how-to' guide, as one might expect from the title. It's a collection of stats, figures and opinions on outsourcing information technology to foreign providers." Read on for the rest of Moskalyuk's review; watch out too for my upcoming review of N. Sivakumar's Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, did I steal your job?. Offshoring IT author Bill Blunden pages 138 publisher Apress rating 5/10 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 1590593960 summary The good, the bad and the ugly (but mostly the bad) on IT offshoring

Bill Blunden is the author of Cube Farm - a humorous autobiography and story of author's fruitless employment at Lawson Software. A physics major faced with the grand prospects of waiting tables after college graduation, Blunden is not a newbie in the unemployment world. Offshoring IT promises to give the reader "the good, the bad and the ugly" of IT outsourcing practices.

The book is not very long -- just five chapters -- but it's thorough, as each chapter packs data and statistics from various government and commercial reports. "Setting the stage" talks about general trends in the software industry and cost of education. "Measuring the trend" tells the reader which companies outsource, why they outsource and who's helping them with outsourcing. "The Offshoring Obstacle Course" describes existing outsourcing processes - when exactly should company start thinking about outsourcing, what type of jobs is most likely to go offshore, what's the difference between India, Ireland, Israel, Russia and Mexico. Finally, "Arguments in Favor of Offshoring" made it into the book just because the publisher requested a fair look at the other side's arguments (which shows which "side" Mr. Blunden is biased towards). "Arguments Against Offshoring" is truly the author's work with major myths and excuses about offshoring debunked.

Blunden points out that in order to compete in the global marketplace, countries like India invested in their educational system and constructed high-speed data networks, which provided the foundation for companies popping up with the capability to take over remotely as call centers, software development houses, and R&D departments. Meanwhile, the cost of going to Ivy League schools keeps going up, leaving the fresh graduates with six-digit debt -- debt which the Student Loan Corporation (division of CitiCorp) expects to be promptly paid. The cost of college education for those who choose to go this route stipulates adequate pay requirements after graduation, and in the world where IT is going offshore, the paycheck is often just not there anymore, which leaves the fresh grad owing money and needing immediate retraining or a career switch.

The book delves into specific industries and companies, looking at the outsourcing numbers and potential for jobs to be offshored. Blunden notes that while corporations made their offshoring figures public before, lately the backlash against going offshore has made PR departments suddenly avoid the topic. Blunden refutes the argument that only low-level jobs are being outsourced and points to Intel designing CPUs for wireless devices on campuses in India.

Chapter 3 focuses on reasons for outsourcing. According to Blunden, the more face-to-face interaction and management effort a job requires, the less likely it is to be outsourced. At the same time, many companies are currently exploring offshoring some of their projects, claiming that only non-essentials are going abroad. Outsourcing of small projects allows them to establish the necessary processes and test their service provider, so that when a bigger project comes along, the management can feel safer working with the same offshore provider.

Chapter 4 deals with pro-offshoring arguments. Even though the author states he only had to write this chapter to satisfy the publishers, the arguments he picks are ones that appear in the press quite often - namely, that offshoring means more efficient allocation of resources, better revenue projections, and increased shareholder value. In Chapter 5 Blunded goes on a crusade to discredit these arguments, though, saying that offshoring does not benefit average Americans, that only the top 5% of income earners benefit from increased shareholder values, and that frequently top management receives additional benefits while laying off the proles.

While the first two chapters of the book are filled with data, numbers and statistics, the last three chapters mostly read like an rant on the current state of affairs, which many of us may have gotten for free from the older members of the family at Thanksgiving. Blunden does have some valid arguments about the increased danger to national security and wealth due to offshoring, but you can't help but notice the feeling that the author feels entitled to a job provided by an American corporation, even though corporate America is bad-mouthed in the next sentence. To give Blunden credit, he mentions that sometimes reasons for offshoring include the low popularity of call-center and data-entry positions in the U.S. Americans view doing support for AOL and data entry for Cingular as grunt jobs, just temporary positions on the way to a better life, while for many Indians it is the ultimate career, and are thankful to the provider for giving them the opportunity.

Blunden also does not distinguish between different types of IT workers. The aforementioned AOL support soldier and top NASA scientist, designing microcontrollers for the next space mission would be aggregated into the same "IT worker" category. There's little detailed statistics on what sectors of IT are prone to outsourcing and which are pretty stable to be in. Sometimes the author plays little tricks with the reader to make his points across. On p. 106 he talks to an invisible IT manager: "Sure, you can hire six Indian engineers for the price of an American engineer. But if an American engineer can do the work of six Indian engineers, what's the difference?" Oops. Notice how by the time we get into the second sentence the equality in price gets substituted by equality in productivity. Just because 6 Indian salaries would equal to one American, the author assumes the productivity level is going to stay the same, making the example nonsensical, since why would you outsource if it's the same money and the same productivity?

Overall, it's an interesting book to read, although somewhat depressing, as it provides little pointers into how do the readers stay competitive in this marketplace or what needs to be done on the personal skills level to make oneself more valuable. You can definitely tell which side the author is leaning, but subjective writing makes the reading more interesting. Nevertheless, the title does leave an impression of being one giant complaint about the current state of affairs, and I don't think I will be re-reading it. Perhaps just loan it to my friends, who are in college pursuing IT-related careers.

In an attempt to stay up-to-date with his skills Alex reads and reviews many programming and technology as well as keeps the list of free ones available on the Web. You can purchase Offshoring IT from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "You read a lot of stories about older generation either adopting or having troubles with Internet. But some people in this world cannot imagine their everyday life without Internet. The kids who went to school during the early days of the Web are now going to colleges and are demanding broadband, downloading music, sharing photos and posting to Web logs, Associated Press says. Most of the everyday tasks, like homework and job search, have migrated to the Web as well. According to the latest data, 188.5 million Americans and more than 1 billion people globally are online."

prostoalex writes "TV ratings publisher Nielsen is one company that got affected by the digital video recorder boom. With 7 million households recording TV shows and watching them on their own schedules, the concept of primetime changes, and the audience reporting is becoming skewed. So now Nielsen is launching a special program for DVR households, which would allow advertisers and TV executives to track the popularity of TV programs. Nielsen plans to distribute paper diaries among the households that use digital video recorder. Last time I did a Nielsen TV rating diary, they paid $5 a week."

prostoalex writes "Broadcasting television to the cell phones, which few people were actually interested in, is becoming a reality pretty fast, as Fox started making mopisodes (one-minute episodes targeted specifically for the mobile phone screen) to be broadcast on Vodafone and Verizon networks. The Fox announcement timed perfectly with Vodafone launching a broad variety of 3G services in Europe."

prostoalex writes "A lot of avid PC users got first introduced to the computers through games. Some later turned their hobbies into full-time jobs. The ExtremeTech series of Wiley books aims at the readers who are curious about technology and are willing to dedicate some time to personal to projects that educate and develop skills. Before this review starts reading as a press release, I will throw in a link to my review of another title, Linux Toys, the book that pioneered the series." Read on for Alex's review of Wi-Fi Toys. Wi-Fi Toys author Mike Outmesguine pages 408 publisher Wiley rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0764558943 summary 15 cool wireless projects for home, office and entertainment

Wi-Fi Toys by Mike Outmesguine offers 15 projects for radio enthusiasts and those, who have never dealt with wireless networking beyond buying an 802.11 access point at local electronics store. Former US AirForce and National Guard engineer, the author is currently running a technology services company.

Assume for a minute that you have had limited experience with wireless technologies, but are young, ambitious, and eager to dive into the deep sea of wireless data. What kind of projects would be fun to play with? What kind of projects would be educational as well as useful? Probably improving the reception via various antenna hacks would be a cool thing to do, and improving access point to increase coverage would be another way to wow the neighbors with your wireless skills. Discovering other people's networks and wardriving is a must for any wireless security beginner. The author dedicates the first three parts of the book (table of contents here) to building antennas, wardriving and hacking access points. Yes, the book requires toying with hardware and occasionally being outside in the fresh air.

The first chapter, Building Your Own Wi-Fi Antenna Cable, is available online in PDF format and it talks about building your own antenna cable. The rest of the chapters in Part 1 take the reader through building a paperclip antenna, creating a tin can antenna, and modifying the existing access point with a high gain antenna.

Probably there are some people that read the last sentence and asked themselves, "So what is a high gain antenna?" Which brings us to the next point - the readability of the book. Outmesguine did a really nice job outlining the projects step by step and supplying all the major steps with the photos. The pictures are black-and-white, and so are the diagrams. Overall the pictures turned out nicely, but I wish the author had the color version on the Web site, since some of the images (like on page 79), displaying computer graphics on dark backgrounds, did not turn out very detailed. Everything essential to the project is there, but still, color photos and screenshots would have made the difference in some cases.

The author does a good job of explaining terminology before launching into the project. Where needed, Mike Outmesguine provides helpful diagrams, that any radio amateur is probably already aware of, but they still make a nice and readable book for the rest of us. Also, the goal of the chapters is not just build the toy and get done with it as soon as possible. For example, in chapter 4 when talking about modifying the existing access point, the author understands that the only reason you want to do that is to increase the WiFi coverage in your house. So a few pages are dedicated to propagation losses, interference and everything radio-related that the reader needs to take into account before strengthening the access point with a high-gain antenna.

Chapter 14 is probably the coolest in the book, as it talks about creating a car-to-car wireless link for the purpose of... videoconferencing involving two Webcams and Microsoft NetMeeting. Naturally, this is not for driver-to-driver communication, but in case you've got two cars on the road trip, the passengers now can use their WiFi-enabled laptops (and by now everyone should have one) to launch a video conference.

Overall the book reads great, even if you're not serious about doing some projects, it's still fun to follow photographs and see what Mike and the contributors have done in terms of wireless projects. Each chapter is presented as a single project, so with the exception of terminology knowledge there's no preceding knowledge that needs to be there, so one could theoretically start with a digital picture frame (Chapter 15) that hangs on the wall, downloading the pictures via the wireless link and playing occasional videos.

Overall, this is an interesting book to read, and if you've been looking for simple and intermediate projects involving radio technologies and WiFi, the Wi-Fi Toys is packed with useful information.

You can purchase Wi-Fi Toys from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "Tracing the story of one family where the father is employed in the IT field, the Washington Post discusses the current unemployment in the information technology field. For a good reason - for the first time in 30 years the IT unemployment rate exceeded the national average unemployment rate, implying that you have a better chance of getting a job if your field is something other than IT. The journalist does offer a disclaimer, saying that the term 'IT worker' is applied equally to a top-notch scientist in a research lab, to a dot-com startup billionaire, and to a local HTML guru. Relevant employment statistics also shows that layoffs in the IT field were up 60% in the third quarter of 2004."

prostoalex writes "FCC Chairman Michael Powell insists federal officials should be the only ones regulating VoIP, as trusting the Internet phone regulations to states would result in patchwork of conflicting legislature. Powell is a strong proponent of VoIP (and a Skype user), and considers it the technology that ignites (not competes with) telecom industry. Research shows that fewer than 1 mln Americans use VoIP today, but that's expected to increase 12x by 2009."

prostoalex writes "Financial Express quotes a Dell executive saying that spyware is installed on roughly 90% computers out there. Right now 20% of all Dell phone support calls are spyware-related. University of Washington research this March published a moderate estimate of 5.1% PCs running spyware."

prostoalex writes "Financial Express quotes a Dell executive saying that spyware is installed on roughly 90% computers out there. Right now 20% of all Dell phone support calls are spyware-related. University of Washington research this March published a moderate estimate of 5.1% PCs running spyware."

prostoalex writes "As millions of Americans lose their identities to online and offline thieves, a new kind of crime has been cooked up by the criminals who are not bothering with doing pesky credit card charges. They steal entire companies, opening up merchant accounts for existing businesses and running up charges from aforementioned stolen credit card numbers. What's worse, is that the hole the criminals exploit seems to be built into the system. According to Bob Sullivan from MSNBC, "Many of the processing firms interviewed for this article claimed they caught on to the fraud after the transactions had cleared, but before the suspects had withdrawn the money from various checking accounts around the country. One did concede, however, that the scheme has real potential.""

Ant writes "CNET's News.com has an article that says Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software." prostoalex writes "Both OsNews and InfoWorld talk about Bill Gates' speech at the Computer History Museum in California. Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market."

prostoalex writes "Texas Instruments produced a single chip platform for transmitting voice over wireless LANs. The company says the phones using the chip will be available by year-end. The chip supports 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks."

prostoalex writes "InterWoven patented locating and identifying image content via shapes, texture, color or resemblance to another image. No official word yet on whether the company thinks there are any infringers."

prostoalex writes "For the week ending August 21st AMD managed to capture 54% market share among new desktops sold. Intel's share during the week was 45%. While Intel leads the U.S. CPU market with 82.7% market share, folks from AMD are proud to announce this is the second week this year - they also outsold Intel on the desktop market one time in April 2004."

prostoalex writes "For the week ending August 21st AMD managed to capture 54% market share among new desktops sold. Intel's share during the week was 45%. While Intel leads the U.S. CPU market with 82.7% market share, folks from AMD are proud to announce this is the second week this year - they also outsold Intel on the desktop market one time in April 2004."

prostoalex writes "Linux Standard Base 2.0 has been released by the Free Standards Group. The release will allow application developers to ensure their product works on multiple flavors of Linux. FSG keeps a list of compliant distributions on its Web site."

prostoalex writes "Researchers at UCLA are looking for easier ways to implement Web searches by using peer-to-peer techniques to decrease the workload. 'Queries need to be passed along only a few links rather than flooded throughout the network, which keeps search-related traffic low,' reports Technology Research News."

prostoalex writes "O'Reilly Network posts an update on Project Utopia that produced Hardware Abstraction Layer for Linux simplifying device changes. They also link to the Driver on Demand project on SourceForge, whose goal is to create a central database to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device."

prostoalex writes "The Wi-Fi Alliance approved Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) technology that allows packet prioritisation to the multimedia data streamed wireless LANs. Broadcom already announced that one of their access points and one reference design are WMM-certified. Other news outlets report that WMM will accelerate Wi-Fi adoption in consumer electronics and mobile devices."

prostoalex writes "Josh Ledgard from Microsoft, the developer responsible for open-sourcing WiX and WTL, is looking for opinions on what Microsoft should do next in regards to the open source movement that he himself established within the company. "Would you have interest in working on these types of projects with Microsoft? If not, what could entice you? If so, what would be your motivation?", asks Josh." Update: 08/24 19:04 GMT by T : As Ledgard writes on his site, "I am NOT the person responsible for the WIX/WTL projects. I cite them as examples and am working with people who where responsible for those projects to enable more of the same for the groups I work in." Sorry for the misattribution!

prostoalex writes "Wireless LANs seem to be enjoying the tremendous amount of interest lately, if you judge by the number of book covers and articles written on the topic. It's no wonder that this year the sales of WLAN equipment will grow 20% and generate $2.1 billion - everyone seems to be installing a wireless network in their office, their apartment complex or their own backyard. With extending the network into the radio world one is always extending the opportunities for unwelcome visitors to become part of the network. This book is a hands-on guide on hacking wireless networks followed by the recipes and principles to protect WLANs." Read on for the rest of prostoalex's review of Wi-Foo . Wi-Foo: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking author Andrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky pages 608 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0321202171 summary Complete guide to wireless attack and defense

Wi-Foo requires a certain level of expertise, and it's unlikely that the book will be sold left and right or that everyone will want a copy. First of all, to do anything substantial you need to have Linux or FreeBSD operating system installed and know your way around it. Second of all, some knowledge of Perl is required to go through the script source code and enjoy occasional tools that appear on the Internet. The third required bit of knowledge is some familiarity with how wireless networks work and how one can gain advantage of those radio waves that seem to contain pieces of data.

The authors claim that one has little knowledge of wireless security unless he's done some war-driving. So, skipping the first two chapters (which talk about security in general), chapters 3, 4 and 5 take the reader through the hassle of setting up the Linux laptop with all the hardware and software needed to do successful war-driving. The last time I reviewed a book on getting wireless to work with Linux, you guys kept asking what card would work the best with a Linux laptop. To quote p. 28 of Wi-Foo, "if you're serious about 802.11 penetration testing, you should get a decent Prism chipset card. If you plan to base your security audit effort around the BSD platform, you probably cannot do without it. Prism chipset CF and PCMCIA cards are known to be produced by Addtron, Asante, Asus, Belkin, Buffalo, Compaq, Demark, D-Link, Linksys, Netgate, Netgear, Proxim, Senao, SMC, Teletronics, US Robotics, Zcomax and ZoomAir."

What follows could essentially be condensed into a single Web site with links to various Linux tools for network discovery, traffic analysis, encryption cracking, 802.1x cracking, frame generation and traffic injection. Kudos to the authors for providing sometimes detailed instructions on setting up the utility and getting the successful results out of it -- it's obvious that they did not just peruse the Web in search of what's available and provided a list of URLs; they installed, tested and reviewed all the Linux network security utilities listed in the table of contents. As much as many of the products and tools listed complement one another, it was useful for me to see the professionals' take on advantages and disadvantages of free tools out there. Wherever possible, the authors try to stick with free software, which makes the book a pretty useful guide for most enthusiasts out there.

The authors are serious about getting the reader to war-drive at some point, and chapter 8 specifically talks about generating wireless denial-of-service attacks as a last resort for a cracker, who seems to be in the bad mood when other methods of wireless penetration do not work. The books talks about antenna amplifiers and some hardware you might buy to be more successful in wireless hacking. They also discuss the possibilities of war-biking, war-walking and riding a hot air balloon.

By the time you're finished with the chapter 9, if your title includes words like "security" or "administrator," you will probably find yourself quite perplexed. That's where Part 3 (Defense) kicks in, as the authors discuss counter-measures against wireless cracking and possible steps one can take to secure the wireless network. It's not a typical don't-use-WEP-don't-broadcast-your-ID-don't-rely-o n-MAC-filtering preaching one can find in security manuals created for the home user (I am not saying those are bad -- for a home user they do provide necessary guidance in securing a WLAN). This is mostly industrial-level security, which might include multiple levels of protection, such as 802.11i implementation, implementing encryption around the wireless networks, creating hardware Linux-based gateways, deploying VPNs and intrusion detection systems. Setting up honeypots is missing from this list, although one can debate whether this could be considered a worthwhile project outside of academic world.

The book uses clear language and is easy to read. At the same time it takes a while to go through it, as you keep trying out the presented solution on your Linux laptop. The chapters that talk about the philosophical decisions when securing wireless LANs are helpful as well -- the authors occasionally get away from hands-on approach and talk about general principles to consider. Code examples are easy to follow, and every tool that's presented in the title is accompanied by the URL (for some reason Addison-Wesley did not include a CD with Wi-Foo); a large number of them point to sourceforge.net. All the links are available on the book's Web site; see the attack and defense sections.

If you should decide to take up a career as a wireless security consultant, Appendix G includes a variety of checklists and templates that the authors recommend for the corporate environment. Chapter 8 -- Breaking Through is available for free in PDF format. Overall I liked this book a lot. It seemed to concentrate on what's necessary without going into fluff and chapters like "History of radio" or "Linux on laptops for beginners." It's informative and easy to read; if you're an enthusiast, try out the free chapter and see if you like the authors' style, but if you're network admin or security professional, this book is almost a must. It's a combo of Exploiting Software and Hacking Exposed with specialization on wireless LANs.

You can purchase Wi-Foo from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "Longhorn libraries for UI will include Web-style UI widgets to be used in desktop applications. Michael Weinhardt talks about building inductive user interfaces and general UI guidelines in the MSDN article."

prostoalex writes "Microsoft's MSN division previewed a tool for desktop document search extending into the Web search, Reuters reports from Redmond, WA. The message to Google was clearly articulated in Steve Ballmer's speech: 'There's a lot of Google fascination out there and we share it, and we're going to compete. We're going to compete very, very hard.' Google News points to 63 more articles on the topics, MSN Newsbot provides tons of links as well. ComScore estimates Google's market share at 42.2%, Yahoo's at 38.8% and MSN's at 31.8% (numbers do not add up to 100%, since Internet users rely on multiple engines)."

prostoalex writes "New numbers on Linux market share are due this week. As far as global PC market is concerned, Gartner claims 5% of all PCs shipped this year ran Linux OS, although by the time the PCs were actually on the user's desk, only 2% of them run Linux. In the server world IDC estimates that Linux-powered servers comprise 28.3% of all server sales in 2004."

prostoalex writes "CacheLogic attempted to measure the peer-to-peer network traffic by installing their network monitoring tools in data centers of large ISPs. The results are in, and Bram Cohen's BitTorrent overtook Kazaa's FastTrack network. BitTorrent traffic amounted to 53% of all peer-to-peer traffic, according to CacheLogic. It's worth noting, though, that Kazaa traffic is highly seasonal, as a lot of high-schoolers and college students are simply on vacation this time of year."

prostoalex writes "The head of Microsoft Windows client division claimed there will be 1 billion Windows users by 2010, while nowadays there are 600 million of them, Microsoft-Watch reports. 35% of Microsoft's enterprise customers are still running Windows 9x and they are ripe for upgrade. Currently Microsoft's desktop PC market share is at 96%, with the closest rival - MacOS from Apple Computer - being installed on 2.8% of the desktops."

prostoalex writes "PC Magazine reviews Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1 and Opera 7.51, noting: 'Security concerns aren't the only reason to seek an alternative [to Internet Explorer]. IE's slow rendering engine and dearth of privacy features may plant the thought in some iconoclastic minds that it may not be the best browser for everyone.' 4 stars for Firefox and 3.5 for Opera, so looks like a Firefox win, although the editors do point out FF's troubles with DHTML as well as Opera issues with JavaScript."

prostoalex writes "The New York Times describes how Tim Draper, a founder of Draper Fisher Juvetson venture capital firm, is trying out a new approach to finding the next entrepreneurial superstars. In his Web log (which NYTimes mysteriously never links to, but it's on AlwaysOn-Network), Draper asks the readers to leave the comments with their billion-dollar ideas. The winners of this pitch were selected recently, and just reading the comments with innovative ideas is quite interesting."

prostoalex writes "German subscibers of T-Mobile can now get a hybrid PDA phone that supports both GSM and WiFi wireless networks. The new Mobile Digital Assistant (pretty pictures) will connect to cellular and wireless hotspots built by T-Mobile as well as any 802.11a/g Wireless LANs."

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Remember the Best Buy commercial where a puppet asks a woman for a laptop computer, and upon hearing that it's a 'wireless' laptop, starts imagining his life free of strings and limitations? That guy doesn't know it yet, but soon the harsh reality will kick in, ironically kicking him off the wireless network periodically if he uses Microsoft Windows Wireless Zero Configuration or if he wants to run Linux on a laptop with WiFi card that doesn't support Linux. This book, however, is not just about getting your Linux laptop onto the wireless network. Granted, WiFi plays a big role in today's business and personal networks, and three chapters are dedicated to exactly that purpose, but behind that wireless adjective we have a variety of technologies." Read on for the rest of Alex's review of Linux Unwired, from O'Reilly. Linux Unwired: A Complete Guide to Wireless Configuration author Roger Weeks, Edd Dumbill, Brian Jepson pages 300 publisher OReilly rating 8 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0596005830 summary Complete guide to wireless configuration on Linux

Infrared, Bluetooth, 802.11 (in current a, b and g offerings, 802.11i is also being discussed), wireless access points friendly to Linux, United States commercial cellular networks and GPS systems are all covered in a single title that surprisingly fits all of this information into 284 pages. All the chapters can be subdivided into two large parts - familiarizing yourself with the technology (the primer on GPS is pretty good) and running Linux on it (with code and shell command samples and lots of URLs).

Introduction

The authors start up with introduction to wireless, intended for Linux geeks who are not quite up to speed on radio technologies. The concepts of waves, spectrum and radio wave behavior are explained, so later the reader can explain what a retracted radio wave is. Then the first chapter moves on to explain antenna behavior, wireless infrastructure modes and some common problem, like a hidden node in ad-hoc infrastructure. The chapter is well-written, and you're not expected to have an advanced radio degree or ARRL membership to understand the terms.

WiFi cards

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 deal with connecting a Linux desktop or notebook to a wireless 802.11 network. The first issue is that of chipsets used in the wireless card, and even though enough research has been done already, authors discuss different quirks relevant to Intersil Prism, Lucent WavelLan/Orinoco, Aironet/Cisco, Symbol, Atmel, Atheros and Broadcom chipsets. We need to discuss chipsets instead of discussing the actual wireless cards, since some hardware may be shipped under the same brand name with different internals. "A good case in point: the D-Link DWL-650. This radio card initially shipped with a Prism II chipset and was very popular, because it worked on a Linux box. However, D-Link changed chipsets when it released the DWL-650 Version 2, choosing the ADMtek chipset. It is very difficult to tell from the packaging which version of the DWL-650 you are purchasing".

The chapters are done in traditional walk-through mode. They are not HOWTOs or compendia of reference information, available from the manufacturer's Web sites. The authors made an effort to ensure the reader is capable of starting up a wireless connection on Linux box, knowing nothing about it while learning important technology in the process. Certain wireless drivers need to be compiled into Linux kernel, so the task is not for the meek, but with detailed explanation, plenty of URLs and nice fonts and paragraph formatting O'Reilly Publishing uses to differentiate between the text, commands entered at the shell, and URLs, the book is easy to read.

Chapter 3 (available in PDF) teaches the reader how to connect to existing wireless network once the wireless card has been recognized by the system and proven functional. By the time the book hit the stores it was already a bit out of date, since the very first hotspot operator, Cometa Networks, shut down in May 2004. Chapter 4 discusses wireless security, touching WEP settings, a $20 Linuxant utility allowing the user to implement WiFi Protected Access, as well as authentication utilities wpa_supplicant and XSupplicant.

WiFi access points

The issue of WiFi access points is not trivial either, as many vendors out there will ship the product with a Windows app being the only way to set it up. However, for the access point setups that are Web-based, a browser in Linux will do the job. The most Linux-friendly access point include Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Cisco, SMC, EnGenius, Belkin, US Robotics, Microsoft and ActionTec. Again, harsh reality kicked in between the time the book was written and went to press, and it's sad to see yet another Linux-friendly access point vendor quitting the market.

Not satisfied with commercial offerings out there? Chapter 6 takes the reader into the task of building your own access point. Don't forget that an access point doesn't need to be a compact portable - your old 486 with Linux on it and a wireless card connected to it might serve the purpose. Unfortunately, after all the hardware is bought and assembled, the final product might still cost you the quadruple (in case you go with smaller form-factor motherboards and CompactFlash cards for software storage), so consider this more as a geek project, not a viable solution. The authors use LinuxAP distribution for this task.

16 pages are dedicated to hacking Linksys WRT54G access point with Sveasoft, described as disruptive technology by Robert X. Cringely. The authors also take a brief look at Wifi-box and OpenWRT.

Other wireless technologies

Bluetooth, Infrared, cellular and GPS chapters follow the same chapter plan - first the basics of the technology and simple use case scenarios of what you might use it for, then the hardware needed to implement the wireless technology, available Linux software to do the jobs, accompanied with the list of shell commands to successfully talk to a wireless product, and after that typical applications of the working link.

The authors tested various wireless data plans in the United States, although this data, once again, is constantly changing as the operators buy one another and introduce new data plans. The winner of the quality and the fastest download tests, by the way, was a Motorola v120e phone on Verizon Wireless network. In upload speed tests a Merlin C201 PCMCIA card on Sprint PCS network won. T-Mobile also offers a PCMCIA card for its GPRS network, so the authors install and run it under Linux in Chapter 9.

The last chapter discusses using Linux computers with GPS devices and open-source GPSdrive project for reading GPS data.

The book

For those just venturing into the wireless world, the book would be useful. All the information provided on WiFi connectivity can perhaps be googled and found in various HOWTOs. With wireless operators, GPS systems and Infrared connection one would have to rely on enthusiast sites and newsgroups. Having such informative title that covers all of the technologies would be very useful to a Linux enthusiast.

With that, the book can be quite overwhelming, although it's probably not intended to be read from page 1 to the end. There's usually more than one correct way to do things in Linux, and for each successful project another competitor appears on SourceForge the next day. I like the authors' approach of dedicating most of the chapter space to one, leading, Linux package that seems to be dominant in the field, and then briefly mentioning the others. A notable omission is Intel's Centrino drivers for Linux, as the company is bound to become a leader in the chipset marketplace with 42% of notebooks shipped in 2003 running Centrino chipsets.

But overall the book proved to have a high informational and educational value, not only you follow the steps on setting up wireless technologies on Linux, but you also learn the internals of the technology and why certain things are done that way, but not another.

You can purchase Linux Unwired from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "Folks at the Scriptometer conducted a practical survey of which scripting language is the best. While question like that is bound to generate flamewars between the usual Perl vs PHP, Python vs Perl, VBScript vs everything crowds, the Scriptometer survey is practical: if I have to write a script, I have to write it fast, it has to be small (less typing), it should allow me to either debug itself via a debugger or just verbose output mode. sh, Perl and Ruby won the competition, and with the difference of 1-2 points they were essentially tied for first place. Smalltalk, tcc, C# and Java are the last ones, with Java being completely unusable in scripting environment (part of that could be the fact that neither Java nor C# are scripting languages). See the 'Hello world' examples and the smallest code examples. Interesting that ICFP contests lately pronounced OCaml as the winner for rapid development."