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X - first letter to stay somewhat anonymous writes "Hello all...

We have a small network here at work which consists of a Windows Server 2003 Domain server, and several clients. Some clients have XP Professional or Vista Corp and thus are domain clients. Other clients are either XP home or Vista Home Premium, or are laptops that run off-site and thus aren't domainclients, but just access the network shares on the server.
The domain clients are set up such that their documents and desktop are being stored on the server, for backup reasons, so everytime we log off, docs and desktop will be synchronised. My system is one of these.

Now my boss comes to me that we need to hand over our passwords to our accounts, 'just in case'.
Besides that all significant data is on the server, and the administrator account can access the C-drive, and that my useraccount pass can be reset on the domain server, the only thing that's uniquely on my account, are the passwords stored in my browser for my personal email and some forums.
I have no personal data on this computer besides that.

Even though they can allready access everything should they need to, and hell, if you have physical access to a system, you can get into the system anyway, what additional purpose would the password serve?
The only reason I can figure is to have access to my system whenever they feel like it, without notifying me, because should they reset the password through the domain server, I'd definately know, and should they access the system through the administrator account, they can't access my private email.

What would you do? I don't know the legal situation around all this. I'm in the Netherlands and we have a couple of half-decent privacy laws, but I'm not a lawyer, and know little of all that. All I know is that I'm thoroughly pissed off about it.

They state that the password will be treated confidential and stored in a closed envelope, only to be opened in case of an accident or in agreement with me, and to be honest, I kinda do trust my boss, but I still don't feel good about this.
I currently listed my private password (having the Dvorak layout) to UgjtFrg even though the password actually is different. Hoping they notice the letter locations to 2 words on Qwerty when they (try to) use it.

Any ideas?"

Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer convicted in April of killing his wife, is offering to disclose the whereabouts of Nina Reiser's body in exchange for a reduced sentence. He faces a mandatory 25-to-life term and is seeking to reduce it to 15-to-life. He told jurors his wife abandoned his two children and moved to Russia after he accused her of bilking his Namesys software company that produced the ReiserFS filesystem.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/306399579/hans-reiser-off.html

An anonymous reader writes "A new digital publishing service called Smashwords launched its public beta this week — it allows anyone to become a published ebook author simply by uploading their manuscript in Microsoft Word. The site converts the file into several DRM-free ebook formats - .mobi (for the Kindle), .rtf, PDF, Palm .doc.txt, and offers online reading formats in HTML and Javascript. Authors set the price and sampling rights for their book, and receive 85% of the Net sales proceeds. The founder of the site, an author who himself was spurned by mainstream publishers, thinks it's time to put the power to publish back in the hands of authors. His new blog is here. Smashwords goes up against better funded self-publishing services such as Lulu who also offers ebook publishing and of course Amazon."
http://www.smashwords.com/

Xiph1980 writes "According to the latest press release, Yahoo rejected Microsoft's latest offer.

According to Yahoo, it feels that the offer by Microsoft wasn't justifyable to its shareholders, and is open for further offers. They specifically state that this is not a decision against Microsoft itself, and that they would also consider higher offers from them.

Yahoo added a section about the antitrust issue. They have discussed the issue with Microsoft, and asked them for extra information on March the 28'th. According to Yahoo, Microsoft hasn't supplied this info yet."

Xiph1980 writes "Hello everyone,

Sometime ago I saw something in someone's comment in some story about a wrapper for a program installation.
I think this had something to do with catching everything a program installs and wrapping it up again after installation, so that no processes are started at windows start. I guess something like a VM wrapper, but without the sysrequest translations...

Thus what I'm looking for is something that prevents all the shit programs install to start alongside windows, and slow down the system. Only to activate that stuff when you actually run those programs.

Is there something like that out there, and if so, which program would you advice?

Thanks in advance,
— X"

bednarz writes "WatchGuard Technologies this week confirmed that it had cancelled a contract with an unnamed India-based offshoring company due to repeat customer complaints about poor support and service. As of Oct. 15, the Seattle security appliance maker will no longer have any technical support staff in India, according to Director of Global Technical Services Bill Foreman. While he declined to name the company on the record, Foreman says: "We are not hiding from our customers that we are seeking alternatives for technical service and support stateside and in the Philippines." He went on to say poaching of staff by big players like IBM and Accenture is a problem: "In the high-tech industry we are a target for poaching. We require highly skilled networking professionals with hands-on experience to support our customers," Foreman says. "The attrition there was uncontrollable and we also had issues with the quality of staff available to us. Add onto that customer complaints and language barriers and the situation becomes a time and resources drain.""
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/091407-watchguard-outsourcing-india.html

It looks like the efforts of the anti-scammers at sites like 419eater, Scamwarners, Artists Against 419, and possibly others have become the target of the Storm botnet.

Spamnation has a post about it, and as of this writing none of the above listed sites are responding. Spamnation reports that CastleCops and other anti-spam forums are being DDOSed as well. Sounds like a massive, concerted effort against the folks who are fighting the good fight...
Although I hate it for the owners and admins of the above sites, I think it shows without a doubt that their efforts to 'get back' at the scammers are working, if the scammers have had to 'rent' Storm in an effort to try and knock them out.

I wonder if this had anything to do with the fake bank site I busted on Tuesday? ;)

You may call me Al writes "Hello slashdotters,

I'm working at an expanding business. It's still a small business, but we used to manage with only a basic network drive. We are looking at a real server setup now.

I think I've managed to talk my boss and collegues into taking an opensolaris system for atleast the file server, with its zfs thingy. This took me quite a bit, because the one my boss tells me to go to for the IT stuff, knows nothing about IT at all, and thinks that opensource stuff is some really crud amateur stuff, and that MS is the only real server-related business out there.
They still want a MS server for NAVision so we'll probably end up with two servers. I don't think I can convince them of the importance of a firewall etc. so I'll have to do with the basic firewall in the router.
Anyway, that's not really the point of this question, but more or less a hint to the types of collegues and bosses there, and the expected servers there.

What I would like to know is, if there's a piece of software out there that is installed on a server (microsoft or unix) that manages the incoming telephone lines (and perhaps a fax line) and with programs on the client computers (all MS Windows XP Pro) so that you can make / receive calls (+fax) over your own pc.
Any person calling the office would need to get a message saying something like "Good day, this is this company. If you know the extension number of the person you're trying to reach, please dial that now. If you do not, you'll be transferred to the front desk."

The server would need a multi-line modem ofcourse, but VoIP support would also be handy for future support.
Does anyone know of such a system?"

Researchers have created a new nanoparticle that could someday act as a virtually all-purpose diagnostic tool to detect many inflammatory diseases in their earliest stages, including heart disease, Alzheimer's, and arthritis. The specially-designed nanoparticles seek out hydrogen peroxide (thought to be overproduced in trace amounts in the early stages of most diseases that involve some sort of chronic inflammation in the body), and emit light when they encounter it.

Xiph1980 writes "The article seems to be poorly written, but talks about the new startupcompany Tilera and their multicore chip "TILE64"

Sorry for the not so correct topic, but there seems to be a topic missing for general CPU's, not by AMD, IBM or Intel..

Startup Tilera announced Monday that the company has begun shipping what you might call a "mega-multicore" chip, the TILE64, one that can scale to hundreds or thousands of cores.

Tilera actually builds in a tiny network switch into each core, which it calls iMesh (think "interactive," not Apple), which routes data to all the other network switches, and from there to the other processors. The combination of the switch plus the processor is called a "tile".
The iMesh provides each tile with more than a terabit of bandwidth, creating a more efficient distributed architecture and eliminating the on-chip data congestion, according to Tilera.

"

A test of 10 pairs of noise-canceling headphones reveals some unexpected stars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/technology/14pogue.html?ex=1339473600&en=f761b5e1dfca32c1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

An anonymous reader writes "Tech Crunch has an article about YouTube identifying and handing over a user's information after a request from Fox. 'Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, according to a report on InternetNews.com.'"

kog777 writes "Price competition is sparking up again between the world's largest chip makers, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD). As Intel took a technological lead late last year, AMD responded with "frantic price cuts" after a weak start to its first quarter, Needham analyst Y. Edwin Mok said in a note to clients on Tuesday."

John Suda writes " It's been over five years in the making and its nearly perfect. No, Im not referring to Microsofts vast new operating system named Windows Vista, but to the reference book Windows Vista: the Missing Manual, by author David Pogue. The book is the latest, and perhaps best, in the Missing Manual series published by Pogue Press/ OReilly Media, Inc. The Missing Manual series is the benchmark of quality for computer manuals. Unless youre a system administrator, programmer, or uber-geek, this is probably the only reference source you'll need to learn Microsofts Vista." Read below for the rest of John's review.

jlorenzatti writes "A substitute teacher in Winham Connecticut was convicted of exposing her students to pornography through pop-ups occurring on her classroom computer .

This story raises an interesting discussion:

Where does the responsibility lay for spyware/adware/viruses/porn pop-ups not occuring on a network? Is it the user, the IT Department, or both?"