David Adams Archive

Federal and state police now have the power to use computer spyware to gather evidence in a broad range of investigations after legal changes last week. The Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant to use software surveillance technologies, including systems that track and log keystrokes on a computer keyboard. The law applies to the Australian Federal Police and to state police investigating Commonwealth offences. Read More ("smhguy/pass" to access)

Sun Microsystems' new Sun Ray Server 3.0 might actually bring thin clients into the ready for prime-time category. The big breakthrough is the bandwidth management software that allows these clients to run across standard high speed internet connections. Though they're still targeting large organizations, this new version opens up the home market, via internet providers. A company like AOL could market a totally managed thin client with a monthly service fee.

This tutorial outlines how to speed up Debian by using hdparm, getting sound and video to work, and finally wrapping it up with printing. Read more at Linuxtimes.net

IBM and Novell have teamed together to provide Independent Software Vendors and Linux developers with the opportunity to try out SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9) for IBM POWER, including 90 days of online updates. You can request a free evaluation kit.

The Xfce project finally finished the second release candidate for the upcoming Xfce Desktop Environment 4.2. This second release candidate is expected to be the last release candidate before the final release, which is planned to happen in about 2 or 3 weeks. This RC2 includes several bugfixes, esp. the window manager has seen quite a few important fixes, and it is the first release in the 4.2 branch that builds and runs on Solaris out of the box. As usual, prebuilt packages for several plattforms are already available (as a highlight: Debian/amd64 packages) and the graphical installers have been update to 4.2RC2. Please check the Xfce website for further details.

To really understand what is going on in your network, you must do more than deploy security devices, you must also monitor your security situation on a constant basis. Intrusion detection monitoring is a major trend in the security industry.

I was happy as an iMac G5 owner, now I am a happy Linux user again: good news is coming from the growing linux-on-mac community.

From Microsoft Watch: Microsoft quietly delivered a first private beta release of Windows Server "R2" to the first of about 1,000 testers on Wednesday, company officials confirmed Friday. Meanwhile, Microsoft is soliciting a wider pool of beta testers for a second R2 beta, which it is planning to deliver in the second quarter of 2005...

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Have you partaken in the conspiracy theories about Microsoft's recent investment in Vintela, a Unix-Windows integration software company? Vintela's association with SCO, and Microsoft's apparent interest in keeping SCO's legal battle against IBM afloat in order to undermine Linux, certainly provide plenty of kindling to keep the home fires burning at conspiracy central. But let's try to get the story straight first. OSNews interviewed Vintela President Dave Wilson.

This guide will show you how to secure Windows XP. While it covers the basics it also goes beyond them without going into "paranoid" mode...This guide is for home users in a stand-alone or workgroup environment. It is intended as a step-by-step guide and we highly suggest you read through the entire article before taking any action. We welcome suggestions and feedback.

A Gartner Research study of July-September sales data found that Microsoft's mobile OS outsold Palm's. During that period, Microsoft's OS accounted for 48.1% of worldwide shipments of PDAs, up from 41.2% the previous year. Palm's share dropped to 29.8% in Q3 2004 from 46.9%. The BlackBerry quadrupled its market share in twelve months to 19.8% from 4.9%.

A recent survey found that 3/4 of IT managers surveyed reported having morale problems among their staffs. Layoffs, uncertainty, high stress, and incompetent management all contribute to a feeling of malaise among tech workers today. Layoffs have left firms understaffed, and workers feel growing resentment towards their bosses, the survey suggests. How are you feeling about your job?

Tony Williams shares the joys and frustrations from a recent Macintosh migration from AppleShare IP (ASIP) under OS 9 to OS X Server 10.3. Although Apple tried to make this process as painless as possible, there are still some problems.