efence - Slashdot User

VMware-Microsoft Battle Looming 258

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 26, 2007 @05:39AM from the he-who-controls-the-iron dept.

An anonymous reader writes "VMWare released a white paper detailing its concerns with license changes on Microsoft software that may limit the ability to move virtual-machine software around data centers to automate the management of computing work. Two choice quotes: '"Microsoft is looking for any way it can to gain the upper hand," said Diane Greene, the president of VMware.' And, '"This seems to be a far more subtle, informed and polished form of competitive aggression than we've seen from Microsoft in the past," said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. "And Microsoft has no obligation to facilitate a competitor."'"

Submission + - Sun released ODF plugin for Microsoft Office

Submitted by Verunks on Monday February 26, 2007 @04:50AM

Verunks writes: Microsoft Word users now can easily import and export to the OpenDocument Format.
The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview, a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 that allows users of Microsoft Word 2003 to read, edit and save to the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now available

Is Switching Jobs Too Often a Bad Thing? 208

Posted by Cliff on Monday February 26, 2007 @04:47AM from the do-you-have-to-settle-somewhere-careerwise dept.

Career Hot Potato asks: "I've been out of school for little more than a year and I have only good things to say about the job market. So far, there doesn't seem to be any lack of demand for a good .NET developer. I've got to admit, though, I feel a little disloyal at this point. Several great job offers have come my way and I've taken them. My resume is starting to make me look a bit restless and it worries me. Until now I've just chalked it up to 'I'm just settling in,' but now another opportunity has been dropped into my lap. Would I be digging my own grave by taking this job? It'd be my fourth job in 16 months but each offered a promotion and a 30% to 40% raise. I know better than to put a price on job satisfaction but I'm pretty certain I'd be happy there. Is being branded as a 'hot potato' enough to keep you from switching? What's your price on this stigma?"

Submission + - Gates-Backed High Tech High Flunks Out

Submitted by

theodp

on Monday February 26, 2007 @04:38AM

theodp writes: "On Sunday, Bill Gates' Washington Post Op-Ed on How to Keep America Competitive said the U.S. must build on the success of schools like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed High Tech High to remain competitive in the global economy and reduce the need for H-1B visas. Try telling that to High Tech High Bayshore parents and students, whose tears and desperate pleas fell on deaf ears Friday as the board of directors of the High Tech High Foundation voted unanimously to close their school. Perhaps someone at the Post — say Director Melinda French Gates — should see that a little fact-checking is done when they give Bill a bully pulpit."

Submission + - What Makes For Good Bank Security?

Submitted by on Monday February 26, 2007 @02:48AM

An anonymous reader writes: West Coast Bank recently enacted a new set of security measures to their login system augment their previous username & password only system. The new enhanced login security system(PDF) uses a scheme of cookies to identify known computers, and additional personality questions such as asking users about their favorite food in order to identify users coming from unknown computers. Upon first glance this seems to be an effectively trivial system that can be defeated by stealing cookies or personality answers, while still making the system harder to use for flaky customers such as myself that don't keep consistent answers to personality questions. However as I don't belong to any other banks I have no idea of how this compares to how other banks handle their security. Compared to other banks, is this system any good or is my bank just giving me the flim-flam on security in lieu of a real security system?

Award-Winning Ad Taken Off Air In Australia 471

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 26, 2007 @02:44AM from the nanny-state dept.

bol_kernal writes "An award-winning advertisement on Australian TV for the new Hyundai 4WD has been pulled from being broadcast after stations received 80 complaints from concerned parents. The ad consists of a small child, age around 2 years, cruising down the road, window down, arm out the window, in his new Hyundai 4WD. He sees a girl of the same age standing on the side of the road, pulls over picks her up, and they go to the beach together. All in all it's cute, funny, and very well done. The ad aired late in the evening (8:30 pm or later), but it was pulled due to concern from parents about the copycat risk. What I want to know is, where has the responsibility of parents gone? Is the world becoming so serious — or so frightened — that fantasy is no longer allowed?"

Submission + - UK government ministers hacked by impressionist

Submitted by crush on Sunday February 25, 2007 @10:57AM

crush writes: From the social-engineering-101 department: The well-known British impressionist and comedian Rory Bremner pulled off an amazing coup when he managed to get British cabinet ministers Peter Hain and Margaret Beckett to talk to him about highly confidential Labour Party internal matters. Imitating the (inimitable!) gruff scots accent of Gordon Brown (who is the likely succesor to Tony Blair) he was quickly transferred by Downing St. switchboard operators to the private lines of senior cabinet members. Margaret Beckett appears to have divulged 10 minutes of sensitive information to Bremner's tape-recorder. "Security is all about people" is hopefully a message to which this identity-card pushing government will wise up as a result of this exposure. Bremner is going to publish the tapes on the net.

Metalinks Tries to Simplify Downloads 62

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday February 25, 2007 @10:22AM from the but-i-like-huge-mirror-lists dept.

ant_tmwx writes "Metalinks collect information about files in an XML format used by programs that download. The information includes mirror lists, ways to retrieve the file on P2P networks, checksums for verifying and correcting downloads, operating system, language, and other details. Using Metalinks details the Free Software programs you can use to download them with. There are also clients on Mac and Windows. With a list of multiple ways to download a file, programs can switch to another method if one goes down. Or a file can be downloaded from multiple mirrors at once, usually making the download go much faster. Downloads can be repaired during transfer to guarantee no errors. All this makes things automatic which are usually not possible or at least difficult, and increases efficiency, availability, and reliability over regular download links. OpenOffice.org, openSUSE, and other Linux/BSD distributions use them for large downloads."

Journal Journal: Dell to Pre-install Linux on the Desktop (again)? 340

Journal by aileanmacraith on Sunday February 25, 2007 @09:24AM

In response to Dell's Idea Storm, Dell is looking at options to install Linux on desktop systems. From the article:

YouTube Set To Filter Content 76

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 25, 2007 @09:02AM from the can't-post-that dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld reports that Google is racing to head off a media industry backlash over its video Web site YouTube and will soon offer antipiracy technologies to help all copyright holders thwart unauthorized video sharing. But YouTube has also said that the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated and will require the cooperation of media company partners."

Submission + - Iran Claims Launch of First Space Rocket

Submitted by

chris_bloke

on Sunday February 25, 2007 @04:52AM

chris_bloke writes: "Iranian Students News Agency appears to be claiming that Iran has successfully launched its first space rocket. This claim is being reported in English by Radio Javan and now the Interational Herald Tribune. Sadly the Iranian Space Agency's English Language website is very much under construction and the News link doesn't work (and neither do most of the others)."

A Second Google Desktop Vulnerability 80

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 25, 2007 @04:47AM from the anti-anti-anti-DNS-pinning dept.

zakkie writes "According to InfoWorld, Google's Desktop indexing engine is vulnerable to an exploit (the second such flaw to be found) that could allow crackers to read files or execute code. By exploiting a cross-site scripting vulnerability on google.com, an attacker can grab all the data off a Google Desktop. Google is said to be investigating. A security researcher is quoted: 'The users really have very little ability to protect themselves against these attacks. It's very bad. Even the experts are afraid to click on each other's links anymore.'"

Submission + - SWIFT applies for Safe Harbor Protections

Submitted by KDR_11k on Sunday February 25, 2007 @03:42AM

KDR_11k writes: The Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT, the system used for all international bank transfers) is now applying for Safe Harbor protections in the US following a dispute with the EU over handing data to US authorities (of course with subpoenas). EU data protection laws don't allow giving peronal information to other entities without the consent of the person the information is about which already caused the dispute over handing passenger data to US authorities. SWIFT hopes that with these Safe Harbor protections they will no longer be forced to give up information they aren't allowed to but Safe Harbor does not apply to banking organizations. Now it depends on whether SWIFT is a banking institution (they claim they aren't) and whether they are a data processor or controller (they claim the former, apparently data protection laws only apply to the latter).

The EU's proposed solution is that SWIFT should abandon its US data center to bring its data out of range of US officials.

Submission + - Top Canadian Court strikes down detention law

Submitted by

athar

on Sunday February 25, 2007 @02:07AM

athar writes: "The Canadian Supreme Court, in an unanimous 9-0 decision, struck down the security certificate regime in Canada, whereby foreigners could be detained indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence, with no real ability to challenge their detention. The Court ruled that the regime violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and has given the government one year to rectify the regime. The decision is in stark contrast to the current legal situation in the United States."

XP On 8-MHz Pentium With 20 MB RAM 410

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 25, 2007 @01:55AM from the golden-hourglass dept.

swehack writes "The guys over at winhistory.de managed to get their Windows XP Professional running on a very minimal box: an Intel Pentium clocked down to 8 MHz with 20 MB of RAM. (The installer won't work with less than 64 MB, but after installing you can remove memory.) The link has plenty of pictures of their progress in achieving this dubious milestone. They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time.' What obscure hardware configurations have you managed to get Windows running on?"

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