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Security

Submission + - Amazon confirms EC2/S3 not PCI Level 1 compliant

Submitted by Jason
Jason writes: After months of digging though speculation and polar opposite opinions from PCI experts, I finally sent a direct request to Amazon's AWS sales team asking if they are in fact PCI compliant and will provide documentation attesting that they are as is required by PCI guidlines. I fully expecting them to dodge the question and refer me to a QSA, but to my relief, they replied with a refreshingly honest and absolute confirmation that it is currently impossible to meet PCI level 1 compliance using AWS services for card data storage. They also very strong suggest that cardnumbers never be stored on EC2 or S3 as those services are inherently noncompliant. For now at least, the official verdict is if you need to process credit cards, the Amazon cloud platform is off the table.
Security

Submission + - Are cloud services PCI Compliant?

Submitted by fooey
fooey writes: The company I work for is very strongly considering moving our business which handles millions of credit cards a year to an Amazon EC2 based platform. I've been digging everywhere but can't seem to find a definitive answer on whether or not public cloud services can actually meet PCI Compliance. Different PCI consultants are falling on both sides of the issue, with some taking the stance that it's no different than running on physical machines. While others point out that since cloud services are fundamentally shared storage, memory and processing on shared hardware there's no way cloud architectures could ever be considered PCI complaint. Does anyone with experience on the cloud frontier have advice? or has there been any public rulings from the PCI Council, Visa or Mastercard on where they stand?
Censorship

Submission + - Digg losing control of their site

Submitted by Fo0eY
Fo0eY writes: The folks at Digg.com have let the social news genie out of the bottle, and now they can't control it. Since the HD-DVD encryption code was discovered and published, readers at Digg have been repeatedly submitting stories with the 16 digit hex code in the titles and bodies. Just as quickly as these posts crawl up the Digg charts, admins seem to be deleting them.
Power

Submission + - Server power consumption doubled over past 5 years

Submitted by Watt's up
Watt's up writes: A new study shows an alarming increase in server power consumption over the past five years. In the US, servers (including cooling equipment) consumes 1.2% of all the electricity in 2005, up from 0.6% in 2000. The trend is the similar worldwide. 'If current trends continue, server electricity usage will jump 40 percent by 2010, driven in part by the rise of cheap blade servers, which increase overall power use faster than larger ones. Virtualization and consolidation of servers will work against this trend, though, and it's difficult to predict what will happen as data centers increasingly standardize on power-efficient chips.
Programming

'Daylight Savings Bugs' Loom 403

Posted by Zonk from the crush-those-critters dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has front page coverage of the looming daylight savings changeover, and the bugs that may crop up this year. With the extension of daylight savings time by four weeks, some engineers and programmers are warning that unprepared companies will experience serious problems in March. While companies like Microsoft have already patched their software, Gartner is warning that bugs in the travel and banking sectors could have unforeseen consequences in the coming months. ' In addition, trading applications might execute purchases and sales at the wrong time, and cell phone-billing software could charge peak rates at off-peak hours. On top of that, the effect is expected to be felt around the world: Canada and Bermuda are conforming to the U.S.-mandated change, and time zone shifts have happened in other locales as well.'" Is this just more Y2K doomsaying, or do you think there's a serious problem here?
AMD

Submission + - ATI is not supporting the All-in-Wonder in Vista

Submitted by Working-Person
Working-Person writes: Thinking about using your expensive All-in-Wonder with Vista? Think again. Here's the response from ATI when looking for Vista drivers "The product you purchased was not advertised or broadcasted as Vista Compliant it is fully functional and supported on the specified Operating Systems. The tuner on the board doesn't meet Windows Vista's requirements and is not compatable. That means it will not be supported and there will be no drivers or software release for the tuner on the ALL IN WONDER Board."
Windows

Submission + - Vista "express" upgrade program bungled

Submitted by Josh M.
Josh M. writes: Thousands of customers who purchased new Windows PCs this past Christmas are still waiting on their promised Windows Vista upgrades, despite the Vista launch occurring more than two weeks ago. Ars reports that Dell and HP have both pushed their shipping dates 6-8 weeks back after launch, meaning some people won't get their upgrades well into April. It turns out that because those customers get free Vista support, the OEMs are waiting for better driver support, hence the delay. So much for "express."
Power

Submission + - Data centers sucking down electricity bigtime

Submitted by
BobB
BobB writes: "Energy consumption in corporate data centers doubled between 2000 and 2005, due in large part to the spreading use of volume servers, according to a new report. The study, conducted by a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and a consulting professor at Stanford University, found that servers and associated infrastructure, such as cooling and uninterruptible power supplies, in U.S. data centers consumed about 45 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2005, accounting for about 1.2% of the country's electricity consumption, roughly equal to the power drawn by the nation's color televisions. The electricity costs for the servers and associated infrastructure reached $2.7 billion. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/021507-study .html"
HP

Submission + - 14 Hp's Secrets Spilled by Ex-Employee

Submitted by da5idnetlimit.com
da5idnetlimit.com writes: The Consumerist reports on an Ex Hp Emplyoee that felt compelled to reveal some truth about HP, truths the company considers trade secrets...
In this Fine Article, you'll learn why your El Cheapo HP Ink Printers tend to self destruct after a set page count, that there is a way to actually speak to a human when calling support, and also that it is standard policy to hang up on customers threatening to sue...
It's at this point that I want to remind you that HP's motto is "Actions speak louder than words", and seing from the article, HP really is the Bastard Manufacturer From Hell I always thought it is...
Television

Submission + - Comedic Rights Backlash

Submitted by
menciasteals
menciasteals writes: "After Joe Rogan confronted Carlos Mencia during a performance at the Comedy Store, a petition has been started in an attempt to remove Mencia's show "Mind of Mencia" from Comedy Central's lineup in an internet-based attack against comedic theft. Rogan has since been banned from performing at the Comedy Store and has ended his relationship with the Gersh Agency. From Rogan's post on his blog: "Now, when you work hard on a bit and polish and craft it, and then someone just disrespects the whole process, steps in, steals it and performs it as his own, that's a pretty intense creative violation." So what do you say, Slashdotters, are Comedians entitled to the same rights as musicians and authors?"
Education

Submission + - Teacher + porn malware + students = 40 yr sentence

Submitted by nettework
nettework writes: A jury in Norwich, CT has has convicted substitute teacher Julie Amero on four counts of risk of injury to a minor because she was viewing porn on the classroom computer during class. The 40-year-old and married Amero, who "did not even know how to turn off a monitor", was in charge of the class when the classroom computer (which was not behind a firewall because the school had failed to pay the bill) began spewing out pornographic images in windows she couldn't close. Because of a legal technicality, the jurors weren't allowed to see the full testimony of computer forensics experts Herb Horner, who (surprisingly!) discovered that the computer was infested with malware and spyware and that these pop-up images were the result. From a juror in the case:

The bottom line was that it didn't make a difference who or how the porn sites showed up on the computer...If you and your wife were watching an xxx rated movie the you put into the dvd player, you powered it up and you hit play, then went into the other room for a snack and your child or grandchild entered the room would you expect your wife to stop the dvd or just let it play because she didn't start it. No you would be upset as all get out.
She faces up to 40 years in prison, and her sentencing is March 2.

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