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I thought I recognized her name... Alice Hill
--> http://www.alicehill.com/
--> http://www.realtechnews.com/
Which is in some way connected to http://www.digitalreviews.net/

p.s. anyone else find the quotation by John Pescatore completely unintelligible? Either he's very confused with his analogies or was misquoted.

This page places it in more coherent context:

After Microsoft's announcement last year, John Pescatore, a Gartner analyst, wasn't betting that consumers users would use Morro even if it was free, due to the fact that you would be installing one MS product to fix the security issues in another MS product (the OS). And that also, he indicated, was on reason why OneCare wasn't doing so well, either.

"Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products. Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, 'Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50.' Would you buy it?"

Even if 911 is allowed, other highly relevant calls cannot be made.

Please cite some examples of situations where 911 is not appropriate but yet you must make a phone call while driving? A call so important (but not important enough for 911) that it will actually make you safer if you do it while you are still driving instead of pulling to the side of the road or waiting for a stoplight.

How about facing the reality that bad things happen to stupid people doing stupid things, and teach kids to not be stupid?

That's all fine and good until stupid people start killing innocent people. The problem is that they often bring other people into the equation.

I think this is usually a game played at security/hacker conferences. Hook up unpatched windows box, time it until it gets an infection. From what I remember reading it generally takes less than a minute. As of 2005, one company's estimate was twelve minutes to infection. The last time I booted windows (box connected directly to the net without a router) I had the firewall in verbose mode and it registered an average of two intrusion attempts per minute.

Generally speaking, there's a reason that windows machines come with AV and firewalls these days. I'm sure the most conservative estimates of time-to-pwn would be less than the time it would take to download updates.

First, not sure why this is ranked categorized as funny, since it's true.
You don't even need step 1.
Step 0: Connect to the Internet

There was a day that if you took your Windows pc out of the box, put it on the internet, it would be infected before you could even download a service pack to patch the holes (assuming the service pack covered those). I realize this is an OLD article, and I have no experience with Vista, but I would be curious to see what the latest metrics are.
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1511

If I buy XP today or have it pre-installed, is SP2 now there by default?
Have there been any studies like this for Vista?
    And, at risk of being obnoxious, does it matter WHICH version of Vista?

Check out an in-depth review of OpenOffice 2.0 (www.openoffice.org) at http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1705. This is not NeoOffice but another open office alternative.

I am seeing some out-dated assumptions about the quality of open source software that may not be applicable here. Also, open-source is not about "free" as much as it is about harnessing a wider universe of talent and resource to create something truly outstanding for everyone's benefits. The long term benefits of exposing something like Open Office or Neo Office to a broad base of students is enormous and will ultimately increase the development and quality of the software as the user base increases.

I agree that it would have been wise of the NZME to provide some transition, especially because some of their existing MS Office documents may not import seamlessly into other formats (depending on the complexity of functionality used). However, the cost savings must be significant especially when considering licenses for multiple schools over multiple years. It seems a shame that the pain and resistance in this change might be greater than it need be, as there could be a lot of benefit for everyone involved.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3355 Sony Mylo: 5 Reasons Why the Sony Mylo is Doomed to Failure By Alice Hill RealTechNews 1. Expensive. $350 is a lot of money for a device that isn't a cell phone and doesn't play games, especially when that product is targeted to younger buyers. After the PlayStation 3 pricing debacle, you'd think Sony would hire a pricing analyst and come back to earth. 2. Ever heard of AIM or MSN? If you want to IM all the time, then why is the unit missing two of the biggest instant messaging platforms? AOL's AIM and Microsoft's MSN Messenger are simply too big 2 B 4gotten. 3. NO Games?? Sony botched the PSP by focusing on games, games, games and stranding users who wanted to use the PSP for its other built in features like viewing movies and listening to music. With all the hoops and hacks needed to enjoy the PSP, most people gave up and thus, Sony squandered another great shot at Walkman-level fame by crippling the PSP with a very limited focus. We mention this here because the Mylo is missing games all together. So now you can view movies and listen to music and so on, but a little Grand Theft Auto or Lemmings? No chance. Game over. 4. WiFI hotspots are No Picnic. In the golden era when most hotspots were unsecured, hopping on and off all over town (heck, all over the country) was fun and easy. Now you need a T-mobile account or a credit card to access the many hotspots in popular public areas. A college may have free WiFi, but for a device to be truly useful, you have to be able to fire it up all over the place - airports and so on. And that means the annoying act of getting online. At that point it is just easier to text, and you can bet this demographic owns a cell phone. 5. No Adult Crossover. As much as a handheld targeted to younger buyers sounds good on paper, adults actually make up a hidden demographic of users with very deep pockets. That means if you can get Mom and Dad to fire one up, the whole family is on board. (Think iPod and all the adults happily listening to music and watching video and so forth.) Even if adults choose not to IM all day, Sony is shooting the legs out from under that potential market by designing cartoony looking units that are missing that sleek design oomph that an adult will be proud to flaunt. Bottom line: An old associate of mine, Preston Grallla said it best: "So let's sum this up. It's a device for people who are devoted to instant messaging, but won't work with biggest IM networks in the world. It costs as much or more than handheld gaming devices, but won't let you play games. And the Skype capabilities are nice, but the target audience already has cellphones."

I hope it isn't this ultimate man-tool they're now missing. Because without it, how would they cut off all those useless four inch antennas?

• sent a wave of spam messages containing misleading information about Blue Security, and scurrilous attacks on its executives, urging members to cancel
• sent another wave of spam with threats against Blue Security members
• sent a third wave of Joe-Job spam purporting to be from "Blue Frog Member" with forged sender name, but describing Blue Security's operation in misleading terms. This spam is targetted to annoy those people on their spammer lists who usually complain the most
• mounted a denial of service attack on all Blue Security web sites. Although they claimed success, the www.bluesecurity.com web site was actually unable to cope with the deluge of interest from Slashdot readers!

According to this article BlueSecurity is the target of a DoS attack.

Also, here's their explanation of the spammer's countermeasure:

This sounds scary, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Blue Security's email address registry remains secure contrary to what this spammer would have you believe. The way subscribers' emails were obtained was by checking the spammer's own list of emails against the Do Not Intrude registry. Normally spammers will get the emails of those who subscribe returned to them and will then remove those emails from their spamming lists. This one, however, has taken another approach. Instead of taking those hits off of his spam lists, he is sending them these intimidating emails.

Makes sense to me, and explains why only BlueSecurity users are getting the emails.

I am a victim of the blackmail letter as well. It's easy to figure out how the spammers got my email address, they already had it. They simply backed up their address book, cleaned their list with Blue Security's tool, then "diffed" the database to figure out who was BlueSecurity member.

Another note, BlueSecurity is not Slashdotted. It is unavailable because of a DDoS attack started sometime earlier this week. The attack started submitting invalid PHP requests, making the site slow to a crawl and at times be completely unavailable.

I write about it on my blog. More on the attack here. The threating letter I received is also on my Slashdot journal.

For years I worked on a viable PC-for-the-car. This is before Microsoft had their operating system (failure) for car stereos, and before the CarPC was even a thought by the designer. My biggest problem was finding a cheap, small and capable 12DC-DC power supply. Even a few years ago they were basically impossible to find.

I'm glad to see there is now a market for these power supplies (although I'm sure this isn't for car applications). I wonder how efficient it is -- and how much heat it gives off. The article was a bit...sparse.

I miss my old car PC -- 8 years ago it could do so much more than anything else I've seen. Considering how much time I wasted, I wish I kept all the software and code.

A couple more links to the picoPSU:

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.A /id.417/.f

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/01/07/pico_psu/

http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&fi le=article&sid=718

http://www.realtechnews.com/page/2/

And, of course: http://www.digg.com/hardware/World_s_smallest_powe r_supply_-_the_picoPSU

Just found on Google News here and elsewhere. Symantec has been using a rootkit with SystemWorks. Maybe Symantec is supposed to be developing an easier way to rootkit *nix?

They're unprotected MP3's.

but also have some areas to catch up on

Like how to park?

If Yahoo employees can't even park, how can they ever hope to defeat Google?

You've apparently not heard the latest news that it takes 12 Minutes to be compromised...how long does it take you to do windows updates?

This from them reported here and here looks almost completey unlike what you're asking for.