HrothgarReborn - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft: Vista adoption rate double that of XP

Submitted by thefickler on Monday March 26, 2007 @04:58PM

thefickler writes: More than 20 million copies of Windows Vista have been sold in its debut month, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft said that the adoption rate of Vista is more than double that of Windows XP, which took two months to reach sales of 17 million.

These sales figures must come as a pleasant surprise to Microsoft. Just over a month ago Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts that they were "somewhat too bullish" about the sales of Vista.

Submission + - Wireless LAN security myths that won't die

Submitted by

maggard

on Monday March 26, 2007 @04:27PM

maggard writes: "George Ou is a Ziff Davis / TechRepublic writer who actually knows his beat: Security.

Several years ago he wrote "The six dumbest ways to secure a wireless LAN", which articulated what most folks who do WiFi security (as opposed to repeat rumors about it) already knew. The article is still well regarded as a powerful document to be presented in IT staff discussions and to under-informed IT decision makers ("PHBs") dispelling accrued misinformation.

Ou has just written a follow-up column revisiting wireless security, what works, what is worth the effort, and what is just wasting time & effort that could be better spent on real security measures. Titled "Wireless LAN security myths that won't die" he makes strong cases against useless & even counter-productive WiFi security technologies & strategies.

Best of all, Ou names names and provides supporting hyperlinks, all in about 15 tightly written paragraphs. The entire article is well worth reading, however for general WiFi owners users the last two sentences in the article are probably the most important:

For small businesses and homes, all you need to do is use WPA-PSK security with a random alpha-numeric pass-phrase that's a minimum of 10 characters long. If WPA security isn't available to you, at least run WEP as a 10-minute deterrence mechanism.

I've regularly seen folks post here about how they're "hiding" their SSID "for security"; here's an easy introduction to the fact you're actually lessening your security by doing so. Also for those relying on static IP / MAC address filtering this is a reminder that all of your painful manual management, time that could have been spent on other more productive duties, can be trivially undone in a few seconds to minutes of automated cracking."

Submission + - Transparent FS: The OTHER "Best Paper" at

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Monday March 26, 2007 @04:24PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "SETI@home and folding@home are two compute-intensive projects that use "contributed" CPU cycles for Really Big Problems. But RBPs often have Really Big Datasets, so how about "contributed" storage? That's what "TFS: A Transparent File System for Contributory Storage" (pdf) aims to provide. The focus is low host overhead with five nines availability. Tying in the issues of host churn, network bandwidth and data replication, the authors provide a mathematical framework for analyzing contributory environments. They also test their prototype (download source here) against Ext2 and find that TFS offers better performance at 100% contribution than Ext2 does at 0%. Perhaps social networks will soon be able to provide their own storage, obviating the need for big storage farms. See a summary of the paper at StorageMojo."

Submission + - IBM doubles CPU cooling capabilities with simple m

Submitted by

duluoz

on Monday March 26, 2007 @04:09PM

duluoz writes: "According to a new paper released at the IEEE Semi-Therm conference, IBM has discovered a way to dramatically improve processor cooling. Unlike some other recent cooling breakthroughs, IBM's discovery appears to be one that should be relatively inexpensive to implement, and could have a significant impact on consumer microprocessors in the near future. Without fundamentally changing the approach to CPU cooling today and without the use of more advanced setups like water coolers, IBM says that they can double CPU cooling capacity while making it easier and safer to do so.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070325-ibm- doubles-cpu-cooling-capabilities-with-simple-manuf acturing-change.html"

Submission + - British ID cards

Submitted by Conlaw on Monday March 26, 2007 @04:01PM

Conlaw writes: It is being reported today that the former Cabinet member who was instrumental in passing the law requiring all British citizens to carry a National ID Card has now taken a job with Entrust which would like to be in charge of making the cards. The articles dutifully report that Mr. Blunket will not be working on UK projects and that he still thinks the cards are a great idea. Here's a link to one of the articles: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_headlin e=blunkett-takes-id-cards-job&method=full&objectid =18809390&siteid=89520-name_page.html

Comment Re:Yeah, this is chump change... (Score 1) 663

by HrothgarReborn on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @02:02PM (#18350553) Attached to: Billion Dollar Handout To Upgrade TVs

Get rid of manufacturing jobs and we'll all be working the fields, just like ancient Sumeria.

Ancient Sumeria had extensive clergy, politicians, breweries, architects, construction workers, shop keepers, Lawyers, boat builders, caravaneers, etc. Learn something about history before making these absurd statements.

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