rratss - Slashdot User

Residential Wi-Fi Mapping Database Revealed 167

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @03:54PM from the X-ICBM dept.

Talaria writes "An enormous database of home wifi routers and their locations has been revealed after the Internet Patrol did some digging following AOL's recent announcement of their new "Near Me" service, which allows AIM users to see which of their instant messenger buddies are geographically near them. The database, containing the unique IDs of more than 16 million wireless routers and their locations, has been compiled by AOL partner Skyhook Wireless, which claims to have mapped the majority of residences in the U.S. and Canada."

Submission + - Utah backs calls to boot porn from Port 80

Submitted by

jeevesbond

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @03:28PM

jeevesbond writes: "Utah's governor and state legislature has lent its weight to efforts to persuade Congress to pass laws requiring adult content providers to stay off port 80, which generally carries HTTP web surfing traffic.

Governor Jon Huntsman last week backed a resolution from the state's parliament calling for the net to be split into "adult content channel" and a "family content". Utah's support for the proposed Internet Community Ports Act lends support to anti-porn group CP80, though it has little bearing on whether Congress will back the idea."

Submission + - Microsoft Update Memory Leak

Submitted by

mksolid

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @02:46PM

mksolid writes: "I'm a computer technician for a small IT company and I have been driven absolutely crazy since Friday with a problem that occurred when I would boot up any Windows XP desktop machines. When I opened Task Manager to monitor the resource usage, I noticed that the 'svchost.exe' process (run by the SYSTEM account) would take up 99% CPU time and cause a massive memory leak for the first 5-10 minutes after logging into a user account. I did virus scans, anti-spyware scans and anything that I could to ensure that the problem wasn't related to malicious software, and I even setup a clean test system and still had the same problems. I finally decided to use TDIMonitor and check the network for the culprit resource hog, and I discovered that the system was repeatedly sending out requests for various Microsoft files. I simply disabled Microsoft Update from the Windows Update page and the problem has gone away. Our machines now startup and operate very smoothly within seconds. I suppose the discovery is that there is a bug in Microsoft Update that causes a massive memory leak and it needs further investigation by Microsoft."

Quirks and Tips For Upgrading To Vista 236

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @02:43PM from the clean-but-safe dept.

jcatcw writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie has some advice for those considering an upgrade to Vista. He praises the work Microsoft has done on the installation program, but thinks it still presents problems for those who wish to upgrade. He recommends the free Windows Vista Upgrade Adviser. Then, be sure to pick the best edition for your use." From the article: "Don't bother wiping your hard disk. Just run the in-place upgrade from your previous installation. You'll be given the option to perform either an Upgrade or Custom (advanced) installation. Opt for the Custom install to clean-install Vista, and Windows Vista Setup does something smart: It creates a folder called Windows.old in your root directory that contains your old Documents and Settings, Program Files and Windows folders. (Note that on my test machine, this added step used an additional 7GB of disk storage.)"

Submission + - SAN's and disk utilization

Submitted by

pnutjam

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @02:40PM

pnutjam writes: "I work for a small to medium mental health company as the Network Administrator. While I think a SAN is a bit of overkill for our dozen servers it was here when I got here. We currently boot 7 servers from our SAN and all their disks are also on the SAN. Several of them have started to show excessive disk load, notably our SQL server and our old file, print, & domain controller server. I am in the process of seperating our file/print server from our domain controller, but right now I get excessive disk load during the morning when people log on (we use roaming profiles). I think part of this is because the disks need to be defragged. I get different answers from everybody when I ask if I should defrag on the servers (windows 2003), or the SAN (xiotech), or both. I also get conflicting answers when I inquire whether I would get better throughput from newer fibre-channel cards (ours are PCI-x, PCI-e is significantly faster), or mixing in some local disks, or using multiple fibre channel cards.

I would like to know if anybody else has dealt with a similar situation or has some expertise in this area."

Submission + - Pirate Hounds Find Discs Worth $3 Million

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @02:31PM

eldavojohn writes: "Following a story from two days ago, the featured dogs of the article, Flo & Lucky have found illegal discs with a street value of $3 million USD in Malaysia. From the article, "First checks of computers found in the raid appeared to show they were used to host a Web site selling illegal recordings to customers in Singapore and other countries." Worth noting is that these stories are hitting right as Malaysia has entered talks to negotiate a free-trade pact with the United States."

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