juntunen - Slashdot User

Submission + - Black diamonds come from space

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:56PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Two teams of U.S. researchers have found that carbonados — or black diamonds — come from outer space. Helped with funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they discovered nitrogen and hydrogen in these porous black diamonds found only in Brazil and the Central African Republic. And these elements are not found in conventional diamonds extracted from mines from volcanic rocks. They think these carbonados were part of asteroids which landed on Earth about 3 billion years ago. Read more for additional explanations and a picture of such a not-so-pretty diamond."

Vendor AMD: Ultimate Solutions for Windows Vista

Submitted by OSTG Marketing on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:54PM

In an effort to promote an open platform strategy, AMD has introduced the Better by Design program. The initiative highlights superior technologies in desktop and notebook PCs, adding a level of information for PC users to make a smarter choice. "AMD's leading-edge ecosystem, which includes graphics from ATI and NVIDIA and wireless solutions from Airgo, Atheros and Broadcom, will be incorporated in the Better

Submission + - Another Hole in Microsoft Outlook

Submitted by J Dollaz on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:52PM

J Dollaz writes: International Business Times says "When Outlook opens a specially crafted .iCal meeting request and parses a malformed VEVENT request, it may corrupt system memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code and take complete control of an affected system."

UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In 162

Posted by kdawson on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:51PM from the apple-for-the-teacher dept.

Robert writes "UK schools and colleges that have signed up to Microsoft Corp's academic licensing programs face the significant potential of being locked in to the company's software, according to an interim review by Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in education. The report also states that most establishments surveyed do not believe that Microsoft's licensing agreements provide value for money." In a separate report, Becta offered the opinion that schools should avoid Vista for at least another year, since neither Vista nor Office 2007 offers any compelling reasons for schools to upgrade.

Submission + - Networking in Extreme Conditions?

Submitted by

222

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:33PM

222 writes: "Mission: Create an intermediate distribution frame. Difficulty: A few feet away, industrial equipment will be generating roughly 2000 degree heat. Bonus: Keep the network switches inside the IDF from melting.
Does anyone have experience in making IT work in such extreme conditions? Is there an enclosure in existence that can handle this type of abuse? This is essentially what I've been asked to accomplish, and now I'm asking my Slashdot brethren the questions; "Can it be done? Do we have the technology?""

NMR Shows That Nuclear Storage Degrades 385

Posted by kdawson on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:13PM from the quarter-million-years dept.

eldavojohn writes to point out recent research using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imagery that shows that certain nuclear waste storage containers may not be as safe as previously thought. From the article: "[R]adiation emitted from [plutonium] waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly than thought... The problem is that the radioactive waste damages the matrix that contains it. Many of the waste substances, including plutonium-239, emit alpha radiation, which travels for only very short distances (barely a few hundredths of a millimeter) in the ceramic, but creates havoc along the way."

Submission + - P World Editor Slain At California Home

Submitted by Petersko on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:08PM

Petersko writes: "A senior editor for PC World Magazine was fatally shot in his home in what authorities said Wednesday was a drug-related attack. Rex Farrance, 59, the San Francisco, California-based magazine's senior technical editor, was shot in the chest after four masked men broke into his home Tuesday evening, Pittsburg police said."

Submission + - Worlds smallest Vista-capable PC

Submitted by

AlHunt

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:04PM

AlHunt writes: "iTwire.com is reporting the "world's smallest Vista Capable PC:

By the end of Q1, 2007, OQO will launch a tiny, fully powered PC that runs Windows Vista, comes with EVDO wireless, plays music and videos, runs standard desktop applications, has 30Gb or 60Gb of space, a tablet interface, an inbuilt keyboard and runs for 3 or 6 hours depending on which battery you choose.

Some specs on the OQO model 2: it weighs only a pound, and will fit into a pocket. The processor is either 1.2 of 1.5Ghz, with a claimed six times increase in speed over the OQO model 1, can take up to 1Gb of memory and has a display more than six times brighter than its predecessor.

All this and starting at only $1499!"

Submission + - Sun Microsystems, the begrudging Linx vendor

Submitted by OSS_ilation on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:04PM

OSS_ilation writes: The Sun Microsystems marketing machine has been hard at work promoting its Solaris 10 operating system as of late, with special events for the press and analyst community. But market data suggests that it's Linux — not Solaris — that Sun customers want. How big is the demand for Linux on Sun boxes? According to the article, it's more than 60% of all Galaxy boxes shipped. Analysts see no indication that that will change, either. "I don't see this dynamic changing," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst with Nashua, N.H.-based Illuminata Inc. "I don't see the world rethinking Linux as some passing fad and going back to Solaris. Expect Linux to remain a significant portion of Sun's x64 business for some time.

Submission + - Is it dangerous to share my 802.11b/g?

Submitted by

oiarbovnb

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:58AM

oiarbovnb writes: "I recently moved into a new house and it took me a while to get my internet connected. For the first couple of weeks, I connected to an unsecured network one of my neighbors provided (they changed the name of the network, so I think they knew what they were doing, but left it open anyway). Now that I have my own internet (cable-modem), what are the problems with sharing this? I already know that they can read any non-encrypted information, but they cannot view information that is sent via https. I also know that I should install a software firewall and have anti-virus going and all that jazz. I named my network "Free!!! Be Nice!" in the hopes that if my neighbors do use my network, they don't try to hose my system. Karma-security I guess you could call it..."

Journal Journal: The Murphy Factor

Journal by Billosaur on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:58AM

Murphy's Law for IT: Systems will inevitably break down the day after your maintenance guy goes on vacation.

He hasn't been gone 24 hours and we've had: 1) a server quit working, 2) a user loses network connectivity to the network for no apparent reason, and 3) the firewalls go wonky.

Submission + - A penny for your thoughts...and location?

Submitted by Dalyryder on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:52AM

Dalyryder writes: CNN is reporting cases of American defense contrators being slipped Canadian coins with RF transmitters.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/11/spy.coins.ap/inde x.html

Submission + - Forwarding corporate mail to Web accounts

Submitted by weil8127 on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:42AM

weil8127 writes: NYT.com has an article on the practice of forwarding your [possibly sensitive] internal emails to a more accessible account. How big a problem does this really pose, and can the risks be mitigated without resorting to Draconian measures? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/technology/11ema il.html?hp&ex=1168578000&en=552c9e079982fece&ei=50 94&partner=homepage

Submission + - OSS Catalogue Released

Submitted by Maudib on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:36AM

Maudib writes: OSS Catalogue released that rates the enterprise readiness of 260 projects. The ratings are based on the real world experience of OSS developers, but some in the community feel the ratings are still biased.

Proper Ways to Dispose of Spam? 119

Posted by Cliff on Thursday January 11, 2007 @11:33AM from the let's-stop-wasting-bandwidth-on-useless-bounces dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "My domain name is being stolen by spammers; they forge outgoing mail using my poor innocent domain name. First, I'd like to plead with mail server administrators out there: please REJECT spam and undeliverable mail. If you reject instead of bouncing then legitimate mail senders will still know there is a problem. Second, do you have any tips for dealing with a flood of spam bounces? Exim is pitching the bounces pretty quickly, but my server is still getting overwhelmed." In the case of stolen sender addresses, SPF attempts to address this problem but has it been effective?

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