Apple expected to unveil new laptops next week

Paul Mah — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:27:22 -0400

Apple will be unveiling new or updated laptops on October 14. Invitations have been issued to an event to be held at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, CA, which said only: "The spotlight turns to notebooks." Analysts raised the possibility of a drop in prices and a refreshed product line, as well as the possible appearance of "budget" laptops costing less than $800. Opinions are divided however, about whether Apple will simply price down on an existing product, or bring out an entirely new device created to mirror the red hot trend of cheap ultraportable laptops known as netbooks.

For more on this story:
- check out this article from Telegraph

Facebook: Growth is primary, revenue is secondary

Paul Mah — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:25:28 -0400

In an interview with a blogger for a German newspaper, the co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg declared that: "Growth is primary, revenue is secondary." Zuckerberg elaborates by noting that he doesn't believe social networks can be monetized the same way that search was. However, Facebook is certainly experimenting on getting the right revenue models. Zuckerberg appears confident that he still has plenty of time though. The timeframe he gave himself? Three years.

"In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is," Zuckerberg said. Still, I'll say that three years is a long time, especially given the state of the economy at this moment. Then again, this is Facebook.

To find out more about this story:
- check out this article from CNET News

Google releases tool to curb drunken digital correspondence

Paul Mah — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:23:28 -0400

Google has released a rather novel tool called Mail Googles, a new feature that will hopefully curb digital correspondence from being sent when the sender is potentially in a drunken stupor. Available from the "Labs" tab from within Gmail, it works by posing an on-the-spot "mental" checkup prior to sending an email. This is done by means of a series of math problems to be solved within the span of 60 seconds. Multiple levels of difficulties are available, probably to thwart drunken geniuses who might still have it in them. Before you cringe at having to do this every time, users are able to select days and times for the feature to be active. The default setting is between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on weekends. Stop sending mail that you will regret later.

To read more about this tool:
- check out this article

Apple fix more than 20 security flaws in October update

Paul Mah — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:20:28 -0400

The SA-2008-10-09 security update released by Apple on Thursday patches more than two dozen security flaws relating to both the Mac OS X as well as fixes to other bundled open-sourced projects. Some of the open-sourced packages are Apache, ClamAV, CUPS, PHP, MySQL, and Tomcat. Mac-specific software such as ColorSync and Finder are also patched in the latest update. The update is available either from the Software Update system preference, or from Apple's website. Indeed, security researchers criticized Apple's patching procedures for being "a mess" just a few weeks ago. The argument is that Apple's ad-hoc patching schedule doesn't exactly engender it to the enterprise, which needs to allocate time for testing before rolling it out.

To read up more about the security patches from Apple:
- check out this CNET News article

More than 10 security patches from Microsoft due next week

Paul Mah — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:17:14 -0400

Microsoft plans to ship up to 11 security updates next week for its October's Patch Tuesday. Four of these updates have been rated as critical, and could be exploited remotely. The critical updates involve Active Directory, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Host Integration Server. Fortunately, the Active Directory fix will affect only Windows 2000 Servers, though the Excel bug affects both the Windows and Mac OS X versions of the product. There are another six updates marked as "Important" with the last update--labeled as "Moderate"--affecting only Office XP SP3 (Service Pack 3). Additional information could be read from Microsoft's advance notification posted yesterday.

For more on the security patches from Microsoft:
- check out this NetworkWorld article

Survey: SMBs save by turning to Green IT

Paul Mah — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:10:34 -0400

Out of 250 IT decision makers of small businesses, nearly 70 percent said that environmentally friendly practices are important for their business. More interesting, 63 percent say that they have saved money through green initiatives, totaling an average of $19,200. Article

Hacker tells all about how to exploit Mifare Classic vulnerability

Paul Mah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:35:08 -0400

The cat is out of the bag. A full implementation of the algorithm to break the already compromised Mifare Classic RFID implementation has been published and is now available for download (pdf) from the Internet. According to RFID researcher Karsten Nohl, this new information, taken together with an earlier scientific paper on the flaws of the Mifare Classic will make it possible for "anyone" to implement real-world attacks. All that is required now is a $100 card reader and a little software. It is hard to know how things will turn out from now on: There are at least 60 or so major citywide RFID implementations that rely on the Mifare Classic technology, including subway systems in Amsterdam, Boston, Bangkok, and Delhi.

For more on this news:
- check out this article from CNET News

CA rolls out new version of data center automation package

Paul Mah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:32:32 -0400

Software maker CA will be unveiling a new version of its product aimed at helping IT staff offload server resource-provisioning duties and automate systems monitoring. The Data Center Automation (DCA) Manager r11.2, runs on a server and works with existing agents to gather the requisite information pertaining to the environment within the data center. For example, its integration with existing products allows the software to tap into data pertaining to network availability and application performance. The beauty is that the DCA Manager is able to monitor both utilization and performance across mixed-platform environments. As such, the relevant information could be displayed on customizable dashboards that can be easily monitored by the relevant senior IT staffer or data center manager.

To find out more:
- check out this article from NetworkWorld

Microsoft to scale out SQL Server 2008

Paul Mah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:31:52 -0400

Microsoft announced on Monday its intentions to bring its flagship SQL Server 2008 database product into the large warehousing space by 2010. This will be done by leveraging technology acquired from DATAllegro to build massive parallel systems that can scale out to the tune of hundreds of terabytes of data. Hardware partners will then build data warehousing appliances on top of the combined SQL Server and DATAllegro stack under a project code-named "Madison." The would be done to make business intelligence more accessible and less of the rocket science that it is now. These dedicated devices should be available by 2010, though preview versions should be available within the next 12 months.

To read more about Microsoft's move into BI:
- check out this Computerworld article

Holographic television could be a reality

Paul Mah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:29:56 -0400

The idea of watching television or movies rendered in holographic format could well be possible one day, if recent breakthroughs are any sign of things to come. Over at the University of Arizona, researchers have produced holographic displays that can be erased and rewritten within a matter of minutes. This feat broke through a previous technical barrier that prevented an updatable three-dimensional display. Obviously, this rewriting has to be improved at least multiple times per second before true holographic displays will be possible. Still, Dr. Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, is very optimistic that this can happen.

To read up more about the potential on holographic display technology:
- check out this CNN article

SAP will not meet sales expectations

Paul Mah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:27:52 -0400

In an ominous sign that the global financial crisis is already making its impact felt across the IT industry, SAP said on Monday that it would not be able to meet revenue expectations for the third quarter. The reason stems from a drop in orders attributed to the ongoing crisis, resulting in SAP expecting worldwide software revenue of between $1.02 billion and $1.04 billion. While those numbers represents an increase of between 4 and 5 percent from this time last year, they fall well short of the 20 percent increase initially forecast by analysts. The news caused shares of SAP to drop dramatically, by more than 13 percent.

For more on SAP:
- check out this InformationWeek article

California passes law to make RFID skimming illegal

Paul Mah — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:33:40 -0400

California this week passed a law that makes it illegal to skim data from RFID cards. Some exceptions are made, such as in the case of a healthcare worker who might need to scan an RFID-enabled health card in order to render aid, or by the police with a warrant. RFID technology is specifically vulnerable to attacks where the victim is left completely unaware, since an attacker armed with a portable reader only need to walk near to his victim in order to wirelessly access the targeted RFID card--an easy task in a crowded subway or city. It remains to be seen whether other states or countries will follow with similar laws specifically targeting this new vector.

To find out more this law:
- check out this article from PC World

Vendors scramble to fix bug that could crash Internet systems

Paul Mah — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:23:55 -0400

The security community is abuzz about critical vulnerabilities discovered in the TCP/IP protocol that underly the Internet. This comes on the heels of a blog posting by security researcher Robert Hansen in which he outlines some dire consequences of these flaws. Technical details have not been released to the public at this point, though the experts who discovered the problem--Robert Lee and Jack Louis from security vendor Outpost 2--say that they were able to knock-out Windows, Linux, embedded systems and even firewalls. Indeed, targeted machines could remain disabled even after the cessation of the denial of service (DOS) attack. As a result, even taking out an entire data center is a plausibility, given that the issue allows a system to mount a successful DOS attack with very little bandwidth.

For more on this issue:
- check out this article from PC World

Ballmer: Intel rubbish at making chips

Paul Mah — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:17:33 -0400

The Inquirer recently published a piece in which Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was reported to have made some decidedly uncomplimentary remarks about Intel at an event in London-- an event that, coincidentally or not so coincidentally, has Intel as one of its sponsors. Interviewed on stage at the "Technologies to Change your Business" event, Ballmer said that while Intel can double the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months, the microprocessor company has no way of using the traditional transistors to "make the chips run faster." What I found interesting is that Ballmer went on to lament Intel's shift from making faster processors to more processors, referring to Intel's extensive work on multi-core technology. The downside here, according to Ballmer, would be that this one change alone "mandates and necessitates ongoing OS innovation."

To read more about what Steve Ballmer said:
- check out this The Inquirer article

Skype caught in privacy snafus in China

Paul Mah — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:14:01 -0400

Skype has admitted that surveillance was carried out on instant messages sent from China, saying that local partner TOM Online was guilty of the eavesdropping. Apparently, a publicly acknowledged text-filter developed to block conversations with sensitive keywords was modified without the eBay subsidiary's knowledge to store and log conversations instead. The issue came to light when the eight insecure and publicly-accessible servers used to archive the millions of censored messages was discovered. Citizen Lab was able to read the messages and expose the eavesdropping (pdf). The revelation cast further doubts on the global firm's commitment to privacy, which had been promoting its Skype platform as a solution offering end-to-end encryption.

To read up more about this story:
- check out this Computerworld article