Slashdot Mirror

netbuzz writes "The director of Microsoft's Open Source Lab, Bill Hilf, has added a new duty — general manager of Windows server marketing — to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies. What the company calls a 'natural evolution' of Hilf's job description may not be considered quite so natural among segments of the open source community that eye every Microsoft move with suspicion if not hostility." Bill Hilf answered Slashdot's questions two years back and sounded quite friendly to OSS; yet at other times he has come off like a hardcore Microsoftie.

netbuzz writes "The director of Microsoft's Open Source Lab, Bill Hilf, has added a new duty — general manager of Windows server marketing — to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies. What the company calls a 'natural evolution' of Hilf's job description may not be considered quite so natural among segments of the open source community that eye every Microsoft move with suspicion if not hostility." Bill Hilf answered Slashdot's questions two years back and sounded quite friendly to OSS; yet at other times he has come off like a hardcore Microsoftie.

alphadogg writes to mention that an Atlanta man is claiming an iPod Nano actually caught fire in his pants creating flames that lasted 15 seconds and reached up as far as his chest. Apple hasn't responded to the claims yet other than sending him a packet to return the iPod.

An anonymous reader writes "A Network World reader whose brother works for a California state agency forwarded me an e-mail alert that his brother received: "The Department of Technology Services (DTS) has notified us that the Federal Government inadvertently deleted the CA.GOV domain. As the evening progresses you may experience an impact in your ability to access some Web sites and exchange e-mail. DTS is working with their federal counterparts to restore service as quickly as possible but service may not be restored until tomorrow morning.""

coondoggie writes to mention that NASA recently captured images of a solar hurricane ripping the tail off Encke's comet. "In a release, NASA said preliminary analysis suggests that the tail was ripped away when magnetic fields bumped together in an explosive process called "magnetic reconnection." Oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet "bumped into each" by the magnetic fields in the hurricane. Suddenly, these fields linked together--they "reconnected"--releasing a burst of energy that tore off the comet's tail. A similar process takes place in Earth's magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms fueling, among other things, the Northern Lights, NASA said."

coondoggie writes to mention that NASA recently captured images of a solar hurricane ripping the tail off Encke's comet. "In a release, NASA said preliminary analysis suggests that the tail was ripped away when magnetic fields bumped together in an explosive process called "magnetic reconnection." Oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet "bumped into each" by the magnetic fields in the hurricane. Suddenly, these fields linked together--they "reconnected"--releasing a burst of energy that tore off the comet's tail. A similar process takes place in Earth's magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms fueling, among other things, the Northern Lights, NASA said."

coondoggie writes "Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Joint Quantum Institute said today that technological and security issues will stall maximum transmission rates at levels comparable to that of a single broadband connection, such as a cable modem, unless researchers reduce "dead times" in the detectors that receive quantum-encrypted messages."

coondoggie writes "Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Joint Quantum Institute said today that technological and security issues will stall maximum transmission rates at levels comparable to that of a single broadband connection, such as a cable modem, unless researchers reduce "dead times" in the detectors that receive quantum-encrypted messages."

Julie188 writes "Here's another little gotcha with Microsoft license validation, discovered by security and PowerShell expert Tyson Kopczynski. The Microsoft Office 2007 add-on site refuses to download legitimate add-ons for Office 2007 when a legitimate — but not yet activated — additional Microsoft product is installed on the computer. In Kopczynski's case, the product was Visio. He writes: 'Let's back this license train up and look at why this picture is wrong: 1. I have a valid copy of Office 2007. 2. The Visio installation only failed the validation because I haven't activated it. 3. Microsoft has presented me with a page to buy Office, which I have a valid copy of... Dear Microsoft, When used incorrectly and in direct conflict of something that you are promoting, DRM sucks! By making the usage of your software a hassle, you risk further pushing more users of your applications to other solutions."

BobB writes "A storm seems to be brewing in the IT job market. Pay raises have continued to outpace inflation, and bonuses are downright impressive — 11.6% on average. Yet, as the 2007 Network World Salary Survey finds, dissatisfaction over salary packages is rampant."

An anonymous reader writes to mention that even though Web 2.0 is just now starting to gain widespread acceptance, there are those who are already trying to hijack the term Web 3.0. According to Gartner, there are quite a few new technologies and incremental modifications to existing Web 2.0 technology, but nothing that could equal the level of fundamental change exhibited by the shift to Web 2.0.

coondoggie writes "The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division has awarded Lockheed Martin a $16 million contract to upgrade its central repository for criminal justice information services. 'The CJIS division operates national-level crime data systems that furnish name checks, fingerprints, criminal history data and other information to law enforcement officials. Keeping its systems on the leading edge should help CJIS with its goal of delivering getting timely and relevant criminal justice information to the FBI and all others in the law enforcement community. The new and upgraded servers will be part of the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.'"

coondoggie writes "The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division has awarded Lockheed Martin a $16 million contract to upgrade its central repository for criminal justice information services. 'The CJIS division operates national-level crime data systems that furnish name checks, fingerprints, criminal history data and other information to law enforcement officials. Keeping its systems on the leading edge should help CJIS with its goal of delivering getting timely and relevant criminal justice information to the FBI and all others in the law enforcement community. The new and upgraded servers will be part of the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.'"

alphadogg writes in with a Network World article that covers a Gartner open source conference, in which VP Mark Driver seems to be going out of his way to be provocative. "You can try to avoid open source, but it's probably easier to get out of the IT business altogether. By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code..." After this lead-in, in which open source seems to be regarded as some kind of communicable disease, the rest of the article outlines a perfectly rational plan for developing an open source strategy.

alphadogg writes to tell us that next week MIT will be throwing a 20th birthday party for their Kerberos authentication system. In celebration of this milestone they will also be launching a new consortium dedicated to preserving and evolving this standard for years to come. "Kerberos, originally created for MIT's Project Athena, is used mainly by enterprises and MIT's goal is to see the IETF security standard develop into a universal system for single sign-on. [...] 'Kerberos has.... become successful beyond MIT's internal capacity to respond to the world's demands for development, testing and support. So we need a new organizational structure that can accommodate the demand.'"

alphadogg writes "For a decade, IPv6 proponents have pushed this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol because of its three primary benefits: a gargantuan address space, end-to-end security, and easier network administration through automatic device configuration. Now it turns out that one of these IPv6 benefits — autoconfiguration — may not be such a boon for corporate network managers. A growing number of IPv6 experts say that corporations probably will skip autoconfiguration and instead stick with DHCP, which has been updated to support IPv6."

coondoggie writes "Earlier this week researchers with the company ESG Elektroniksystem in Germany demonstrated a form of 'strap-on jet wing' that lets a user truly fly through the air. The system, called Gryphon, consists of a six-foot wing and hand-held rotary controls for the rudder. The pilot has several different instruments available to him, including onboard oxygen and helmet that features a heads-up display. 'Researchers say the final version of the flying wing will contain an electronic system that will take care of some of the steering for the pilot which today can be a little tricky, researchers say. The company also plans to add small jets to the wing making it a true jetpack in the future.'"

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that following in the wake of their patent suit against Research in Motion (RIM), NTP has filed suit against Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile for infringing on several patents. All of the patents in question relate to the delivery of email on mobile devices. "Five of the eight patents being used in the telco cases were the subject of NTP's 2001 patent suit against Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry. In November 2002, a jury found that RIM infringed upon NTP's patents. The case continued to make headlines until 2006, when RIM agreed to pay NTP a settlement of $612.5 million, nearly four years after RIM had first been found guilty of infringing on NTP's patents."

alphadogg writes "Is the advent of the 802.11n wireless standard the 'end of Ethernet'... at least in terms of client access to the LAN? That's the provocative title, and thesis, of a new report in which the author began looking into the question when he heard a growing number of clients asking whether it was time to discontinue wired LAN deployments for connecting clients. Would 11n, the next generation high-throughput Wi-Fi, make the RJ45 connector in the office wall as obsolete as gaslights?"

coondoggie writes "NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing. Silicon carbide (SiC) chips can operate at 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-based electronics — limited to about 350 C — would fail. The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery. In particular, NASA said SiC applications will include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical drives."

coondoggie writes "NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing. Silicon carbide (SiC) chips can operate at 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-based electronics — limited to about 350 C — would fail. The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery. In particular, NASA said SiC applications will include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical drives."

bednarz writes "IBM has added a twist to its new commitment to help OpenOffice.org battle Microsoft Office by donating code that was originally derived in part from a Microsoft-developed technology. IBM's iAccessible2, code-named Project Missouri, is a specification for technology used to help the visually impaired interact with Open Document Format (ODF)-compliant applications and was developed in part using Microsoft Active Accessibility (MAA). 'When the specification was donated to the Linux Foundation, Oracle, Sun, and SAP committed to help with future development. Mozilla is committed to incorporating it into its Firefox browser, and vendors GW Micro and Freedom Scientific will also use it in their own screen reader products. In addition, Project Missouri has won accolades from the American Association of People with Disabilities, the American Foundation for the Blind, and the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science.'"

coondoggie writes to mention that a Las Vegas man faces about 20 years in prison today after pleading guilty in a case where he impersonated intellectual property lawyers and tried to bully owners out of their domain names. "According to the FBI, David Scali is charged with registering an e-mail account under an alias and then sending e-mails in which he claimed to be the intellectual property lawyer. In the e-mails, which were sent in late June and early July of 2006, Scali threatened to file $100,000 trademark infringement lawsuits against the owners of various Internet website names unless they gave up their domain name registrations within two days."

coondoggie writes to mention that a Las Vegas man faces about 20 years in prison today after pleading guilty in a case where he impersonated intellectual property lawyers and tried to bully owners out of their domain names. "According to the FBI, David Scali is charged with registering an e-mail account under an alias and then sending e-mails in which he claimed to be the intellectual property lawyer. In the e-mails, which were sent in late June and early July of 2006, Scali threatened to file $100,000 trademark infringement lawsuits against the owners of various Internet website names unless they gave up their domain name registrations within two days."

coondoggie writes "A European consortium has come up with a high-speed digital forensic computer dedicated to the task of quickly offloading and analyzing computer records. The TreCorder is a rugged forensic PC able to copy or clone up to three hard disks simultaneously, at a speed of up to 2 Gb/min., far faster than alternative equipment. The PC not only provides a complete mirror image of the hard disk and system memory — including deleted and reformatted data — but also eliminates any possibility of falsification in the process, meaning that the evidence it collects will stand up in court."

coondoggie writes "A European consortium has come up with a high-speed digital forensic computer dedicated to the task of quickly offloading and analyzing computer records. The TreCorder is a rugged forensic PC able to copy or clone up to three hard disks simultaneously, at a speed of up to 2 Gb/min., far faster than alternative equipment. The PC not only provides a complete mirror image of the hard disk and system memory — including deleted and reformatted data — but also eliminates any possibility of falsification in the process, meaning that the evidence it collects will stand up in court."

coondoggie writes "A new technique to save aging satellites promises to save millions of dollars by extending the life of communications spacecraft. A process developed by researchers from Purdue University and Lockheed Martin has already saved $60 million for unnamed broadcasters by extending the service life of two communications satellites. In a nutshell the technique works by applying an advanced simulation and a method that equalizes the amount of propellant in satellite fuel tanks so that the satellite consumes all of the fuel before being retired from service. Some aging communications satellites are each equipped with four fuel tanks. If one of the tanks empties before the others, the satellite loses control and should be decommissioned, wasting the remaining fuel in the other tanks."

coondoggie writes "A new technique to save aging satellites promises to save millions of dollars by extending the life of communications spacecraft. A process developed by researchers from Purdue University and Lockheed Martin has already saved $60 million for unnamed broadcasters by extending the service life of two communications satellites. In a nutshell the technique works by applying an advanced simulation and a method that equalizes the amount of propellant in satellite fuel tanks so that the satellite consumes all of the fuel before being retired from service. Some aging communications satellites are each equipped with four fuel tanks. If one of the tanks empties before the others, the satellite loses control and should be decommissioned, wasting the remaining fuel in the other tanks."

coondoggie writes "The FBI has made a number of big busts using the eBay and other online auction sites this year. Today comes news that it played a big role in the indictment of an Alabama man for wire fraud. Joseph Davidson, has been charged in U.S. District Court with wire fraud in connection with an eBay scheme in which he allegedly received approximately $77,000 for stolen goods sold on the auction site. "Online auction houses present an opportunity for a thief to turn a stolen item into cash. Thieves should know that law enforcement can surf sites too in investigating crime," the FBI said."

jpatokal writes "Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th, and a surprise awaits in the seat of every passenger: their personal Linux PC, running Red Hat. In addition to running the in-flight entertainment, passengers can also use a full copy of StarOffice, and there's a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse. Screen size is 10.6" (1280x768) in economy, 15.4" in business and a whopping 23" in first class (along with free noise-canceling headphones). The system is already available on current B777-300ER planes and will also be outfitted on the upcoming B787 Dreamliners."

We've gotten a number of submissions about the new tricks the massive Storm botnet has been up to. Estimates of the size of this botnet range from 250K-1M to 5M-10M compromised machines. Reader cottagetrees notes a writeup at Exploit Prevention Labs on a new social engineering attack involving YouTube. The emails, which may be targeted at people who use private domain registrations, warn the recipient that their "face is all over 'net" on a YouTube video. The link is to a Storm-infected bot that attacks using the Q4Rollup exploit (a package of about a dozen encrypted exploits). And reader thefickler writes that the recent wave of "confirmation spam" is also due to Storm, as was the earlier, months-long "e-card from a friend" series of attack emails.

coondoggie writes "The massive anti-terror database established by the US government has been criticized for keeping track of regular everyday citizens. Computerworld reports that as of September 17th, the database will be shut down. 'The Threat and Local Observation Notices or TALON, was established in 2002 by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as a way to collect and evaluate information about possible threats to U.S. service members and defense civilians all over the world. Congress and others protested its apparent use as an unauthorized citizen tracking database. The TALON system came under fire in 2005 for improperly storing information about some civilian individuals and non-government-affiliated groups on its database. The Air Force developed TALON... in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a way to gather data on possible terrorist threats. Anti-war groups and other organizations, protested after it was revealed last year that the military had monitored anti-war activities, organizations and individuals who attended peace rallies.'"

coondoggie writes "Internet service providers in the US experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its US network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot up over a length of a kilometer. 'Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable,' said a TeliaSonera spokesman. The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached for comment."

coondoggie writes "Internet service providers in the US experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its US network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot up over a length of a kilometer. 'Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable,' said a TeliaSonera spokesman. The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached for comment."

coondoggie writes to tell us that in a recent study e-mail has overtaken telephony as the most common workplace communication tool. "Research reveals that 100% of the end-users surveyed use e-mail, followed by fixed-line telephones (80%), mobile telephones (76%) and instant messaging (66%). The study points out the three most ubiquitous technologies increase productivity the most. Over 70% of the end-users surveyed say e-mail impacts positively on their productivity, followed by conventional fixed-line telephony (53%) and mobile telephony (52%). From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive, and could negatively impact productivity if not managed properly."

coondoggie writes to tell us that in a recent study e-mail has overtaken telephony as the most common workplace communication tool. "Research reveals that 100% of the end-users surveyed use e-mail, followed by fixed-line telephones (80%), mobile telephones (76%) and instant messaging (66%). The study points out the three most ubiquitous technologies increase productivity the most. Over 70% of the end-users surveyed say e-mail impacts positively on their productivity, followed by conventional fixed-line telephony (53%) and mobile telephony (52%). From a productivity point-of-view, the research shows that instant messaging, blogs and softphones are considered most disruptive, and could negatively impact productivity if not managed properly."

netbuzz writes "Seems like only yesterday to those of us of a certain age, but the CD turns 25 today. Philips, maker of the first CD on Aug. 17, 1982, estimates that more than 200 billion have been sold since. The younger set might have trouble appreciating the difference in auditory quality that the compact disc represented over vinyl or cassette tapes (some have probably never even seen a record). And all but true trivia buffs will have trouble coming up with the name of the artist on that first disc."

netbuzz writes "Seems like only yesterday to those of us of a certain age, but the CD turns 25 today. Philips, maker of the first CD on Aug. 17, 1982, estimates that more than 200 billion have been sold since. The younger set might have trouble appreciating the difference in auditory quality that the compact disc represented over vinyl or cassette tapes (some have probably never even seen a record). And all but true trivia buffs will have trouble coming up with the name of the artist on that first disc."

netbuzz writes "At issue is whether — or not — there was a minor fire in a house on Pine Grove Street in Needham, Mass., caused by a Verizon employee drilling through an electrical main. Everyone agrees that whatever happened — or didn't happen — was indeed the fault of the Verizon employee; it's "fire or no fire" that is at issue. Verizon says no fire, not even smoke. The Needham Fire Department begs to differ. New eye-witness reports are emerging ... and it's not looking good for Verizon."

netbuzz writes "At issue is whether — or not — there was a minor fire in a house on Pine Grove Street in Needham, Mass., caused by a Verizon employee drilling through an electrical main. Everyone agrees that whatever happened — or didn't happen — was indeed the fault of the Verizon employee; it's "fire or no fire" that is at issue. Verizon says no fire, not even smoke. The Needham Fire Department begs to differ. New eye-witness reports are emerging ... and it's not looking good for Verizon."

Julie188 writes "A team of four Thai students beat out 10,000 competitors to win the $25,000 prize in the Microsoft 2007 Imagine Cup. Their project is text-to-speech software in which computers read aloud typed and handwritten commands. The software will allow people who can't read to interact with a PC. Imagine Cup judge Rand Morimoto has been blogging on the whole experience — from his video of the opening ceremonies to how contestants swilled free Cokes to keep themselves awake during the 24-hour, no-sleep phase of the competition."

The Storm worm has been an increasing problem in the last few months, but a change in tactics may mean something big is going to happen. The article discusses a bit of back story about the worm, including the somewhat frightening numbers about the millions of spam emails carrying the worm payload. They estimate between a quarter and a million infected systems usable for spam or DDOS attacks.

netbuzz writes "A " State of the Net" survey to be released today by Consumer Reports contends that Americans lost $7 billion over the past two years to malware and myriad online scams. Not surprisingly, a significant portion of this financial pain appears to have been avoidable, as the survey reveals a widespread continuing negligence toward the use of home firewalls and virus protection. As for underage children using MySpace and the like? There, too, the risks in many case look to be self-inflicted, as 13 percent of children fail to meet the 14-year-old age minimum on MySpace, and, as the organization notes: "Those were just the ones the parents knew about."

netbuzz writes "A " State of the Net" survey to be released today by Consumer Reports contends that Americans lost $7 billion over the past two years to malware and myriad online scams. Not surprisingly, a significant portion of this financial pain appears to have been avoidable, as the survey reveals a widespread continuing negligence toward the use of home firewalls and virus protection. As for underage children using MySpace and the like? There, too, the risks in many case look to be self-inflicted, as 13 percent of children fail to meet the 14-year-old age minimum on MySpace, and, as the organization notes: "Those were just the ones the parents knew about."

BobB writes "Two universities — Bowdoin in Maine and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles — have entered a unique arrangement under which they are backing up each other's web sites, email and servers on different ends of the continent. They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow. From the article: 'When Bowdoin switched over to Exchange e-mail, so the schools would have similar e-mail infrastructure, LMU staffers were their guides and advisers. "We implemented that pretty quickly," says Davis, the Bowdoin CIO. "When we launched Exchange, we had just eight calls to our help desk." And the shared experience of the infrastructure components then forms a kind of informal help desk, where managers and staff can reach out for advice, brainstorm and troubleshoot problems with their colleagues a continent away.'"

coondoggie writes "Face recognition as a unique biometric is growing slowly in certain corporate and consumer applications, but researchers at the University of Houston (UH) are trying to make the technology far more ubiquitous and secure: they want it to replace the dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords and credit card numbers everyone uses every day. University researchers developed the URxD face recognition software that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person's face to create a unique biometric identifier."

coondoggie writes "Face recognition as a unique biometric is growing slowly in certain corporate and consumer applications, but researchers at the University of Houston (UH) are trying to make the technology far more ubiquitous and secure: they want it to replace the dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords and credit card numbers everyone uses every day. University researchers developed the URxD face recognition software that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person's face to create a unique biometric identifier."

jbrodkin writes "You don't need Ivy League-type cash to get a supercomputer anymore. Organizations with limited financial resources are snatching up IBM supercomputers now that Big Blue has lowered the price of Blue Gene/L. Alabama-Birmingham and other universities that previously couldn't afford such advanced technology are using supercomputers to cure diseases at the protein level and to solve equally challenging problems. IBM dropped the price of the Blue Gene/L to $800K late last year before releasing a more powerful model, Blue Gene/P, last month. Sales of Blue Gene/L have more than doubled since then, bringing supercomputing into more corners of the academic and research worlds."

coondoggie writes "Today IBM will announce it is consolidating nearly 4,000 small computer servers in six locations onto about 30 refrigerator-sized mainframes running Linux, saving $250 million in the process. The 4,000 replaced servers will be recycled by IBM Global Asset Recovery Services. The six data centers currently take up over 8 million square feet, or the size of nearly 140 football fields."

BobB writes "New IETF chair Russ Housley speaks out about bolting security on after the fact, the prospects for IPv6 and a new security technology called Hokey that could help safeguard wireless and wired networks."