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Submission + - Aluminum Pellets As Alternative Fuel

Submitted by
s31523
s31523 writes: "As gas prices in the US creep towards $4.00 a gallon, there is more focus on alternative fuels. Researchers at Purdue University have created a system that generates hydrogen "on demand" using pellets made from pure aluminum and gallium. The gallium prevents a "skin" from forming and allows the aluminum to react with oxygen to form hydrogen and aluminum oxide. Although this reaction leaves behind aluminum oxide, which can be recycled, it solves the problem of stabilizing hydrogen. According to Purdue, this new method combines two methods of creating hydrogen, both of which have flaws that make them impractical, but combining the two seems to solve many of the problems."
Security

Submission + - $16,000 Bounty for Sendmail, Apache 0Day Flaws

Submitted by Famestay
Famestay writes: Verisign's iDefense is putting up a $16,000 prize for any hacker who can find a remotely exploitable vulnerability in six critical Internet infrastructure applications. The bounty is for a zero-day code execution hole on the following Internet infrastructure technologies: Apache httpd, Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) daemon, Sendmail SMTP daemon, OpenSSH sshd, Microsoft Internet Information (IIS) Server and Microsoft Exchange Server.
Networking

Broadband isn't Broadband Unless its 2Mbps? 351

Posted by Zonk from the time-for-a-bit-of-clarity dept.
quanticle writes "According to House Democrats, broadband isn't broadband unless its at least 2Mbps. The view of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications is that the FCC's data collection standards are hopelessly outdated, and is proposing a number of updates to their criteria. For one, they want 'broadband' reclassified to at least 2mbs, up from 200kbps. Another requirement will change the FCC's outlook on broadband availability. Just because one household in a zip code has broadband access, that will not longer mean everyone in the zip code does. 'The plan went over well with the consumer advocates who appeared before the subcommittee. Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America, said that the US is "stuck with a twentieth century Internet" and that he would support increasing the "broadband" definition to 2Mbps. Ben Scott of Free Press echoed that sentiment, suggesting that the definition needs to be an evolving standard that increases over time, which is in contrast to the current FCC definition; it has not changed in nine years. "We have always been limited by the FCC's inadequate and flawed data," he said.'"
Windows

Submission + - Only Windows Server, Not Client, to be 64bit-Only

Submitted by brunascle
brunascle writes: A post to the Windows Vista blog has stated that Bill Laing's comments about the end of 32-bit versions of Windows only applied to Windows Server, not Client. According to Alex Heaton, "we have not decided when Windows Client will follow Windows Server and become 64-bit only." This clears up previous discussions, including one here on Slashdot, that assumed the comments applied to both Server and Client.
Worms

Submission + - Symantec Anti-Virus software damages system files

Submitted by fleung
fleung writes: This morning (18 May 2007, Asia Pacific time), Symantec's worldwide customers fount their computer failed to reboot, while the helpdesk was plunged into a hot pot. The rough root course is that Norton released wrong virus code definition by identifing a few system files(.exe and .dll) as virus and removing them. This will cause system reboot failure. I tried on my Traditional Chinese XP SP2, no problem was found. Till now, only Simplified Chinese version Windows XP SP2 system is reported to be impacted. Two system files under C:\windows\system32: netapp32.dll, and lsass.exe are identified wrongly as virus. The solution is to copy the correct version of the above two files into windows\system32 and reboot the machine, stop the Norton.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to buy Aquantive for $6 billion

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a bid to boost its presence in advertising, Microsoft said Friday that it will pay $6 billion to acquire Aquantive, a digital marketing and services company.

The deal is Microsoft's largest ever, highlighting the importance of supporting more-advanced advertising products and technologies across areas including media planning, video on demand and Internet Protocol television. Aquantive produces the Atlas Media Console and Drive PM tools for advertisers and publishers, and owns interactive ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish.

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+buy+Aquantive+for +6+billion/2100-1030_3-6184778.html?tag=nefd.lede
Microsoft

Submission + - Competition from Linux Reshapes Windows Server '08

Submitted by yuna49
yuna49 writes: eWeek reports that "some of the changes in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 are a response to features and performance advantages that have made Linux an attractive option to Microsoft customers." The article cites Linux's smaller "surface area," which appears to mean having fewer exposed services and open ports. In addition, it appears that Windows Server 2008 will run without a GUI, as do many Linux servers now. Other areas where Microsoft is playing catch-up include clustering and web-serving.

However Linux, with Xen, appears to be less of a threat in the virtualization arena. According to the general manager of Windows server division, "We can tell which hypervisor they are running on and to be honest, I see zero on Linux. We see VMware rather than Xen because it's not really out there in production versions of Red Hat and SUSE. But the long-term issue around virtualization will be who had the best management tools."

Vista's 40 Million License Sales In Context 225

Posted by Zonk from the a-bit-of-background dept.
Overly Critical Guy writes "Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers. The myriad of factors involved in determining success in the market makes Microsoft's constant comparisons to Windows XP less reliable as a growth indicator — particularly with Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses. 'HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ... If Microsoft wasn't so hung up on XP comparisons as the benchmark, it could really demonstrate that Vista sales are increasing. The first 20 million figure really represented four months of sales, and that could have been positive data because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments. For free! Instead of making that point, Microsoft got carried away with making comparisons back to XP.'"
Digital

Submission + - What's the Matter with HDMI?

Submitted by mrnomas
mrnomas writes: "HDMI, as we've pointed out elsewhere, is a format which was designed primarily to serve the interests of the content-provider industries, not to serve the interests of the consumer. The result is a mess, and in particular, the signal is quite hard to route and switch, cable assemblies are unnecessarily complicated, and distance runs are chancy. Why is this, and what did the designers of the standard do wrong? And what can we do about it? The story begins with another badly-developed standard, DVI.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - iBurst Wireless Broadband makes it to the USA.

Submitted by
zophyx
zophyx writes: "Redwood Wireless Brings Kyocera's iBurst Technology to Sioux Falls, Marking the Broadband Technology's United States Debut.
The company touts that its service is 10 times faster than Internet service available on wireless provider networks
such as Verizon and Sprint. It's also faster than DSL and cable Internet service, representative Doolittle said."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Who's Sending The Most Tech Jobs Overseas?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: InformationWeek has obtained a a non-public government list of the 200 companies who received the most H-1B visa last year to hire foreign workers. Despite protestations from Bill Gates and NYTimes columnist Tom Friedman that there aren't enough qualified Americans, the 65,000 H-1B visa granted yearly depress IT salaries in the U.S. As the story points out, last year, 9 Indian firms collectively were issued 19,512 of the 65,000 H-1B visas granted. Who's on the list? Unisys is number one, with 4,908 visas. The Indian outsourcer WiPro is second. Microsoft is number three on the list, IBM number eight, and Oracle USA number nine. The New York City Public School system ranks twenty-second on the list, with 642 H-1B visas received last year.
Programming

Submission + - Is it bad design to have too many user roles?

Submitted by
Wanna Dogood
Wanna Dogood writes: "Hello,

When I was a kid, I worked in a small store which had one cash register with 52 departments on it. The clerks could never figure out what department to sell the ball point pen under, the clients always came away figuring the clerks were dummies and the assistant manager became a bitter, frustrated woman trying to balance the daily accounting.

Today I am a grown-up programmer analyst who is now working with a client who is building an application with 56 user roles in it. The test team is inadequate to the task of checking if each user role has access to the functionality it is designed to access and no more.

I've been blessed with the task of writing up a risks document, and would like to justify that putting in too many user roles is simply a known bad software design practice, but I can't find any academic reference for this point.

Does anyone have a good reference for this problem?

Thank you for your time and patience,
WD"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Build you own music streamer

Submitted by
bain
bain writes: "Rob Hardwick has turned his wireless router in to his own bespoke media streamer. The Netgear WGT634U uses OpenWrt and doesn't require a computer to control. The $180 (£90) project might be a lot more difficult than going to a shop but at least there's a sense of achievement."
Security

Submission + - Avoiding Business Continuity Planning Pitfalls

Submitted by
tomcat66_g500
tomcat66_g500 writes: "Increased risks, complexities, and new federal regulations have escalated the urgency to have an effective Business Continuity Program (BCP) that extends beyond the information technology domain. This article shows how to avoid eight common disaster recovery planning and management pitfalls."

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