Monthly Archive:: January 2006

While the most high-profile security vulnerability of late was almost certainly the WMF hole recently patched by Microsoft, in terms of actual numbers of infections it was barely a blip on the radar. According to the anti-virus company F-Secure, one of the most populous and dangerous infections today is not some sophisticated bit of code exploiting a new and exotic security hole, but an old-school e-mail worm written in Visual Basic that spreads by tempting users with free pornography.

Hewlett-Packard executives are mulling plans to improve over the next 18 months the technology the company uses to manage its direct sales, while it continues with commercial printing efforts and acquisitions of software companies. Two weeks ago, HP CEO Mark Hurd, the company's board of directors and senior executives gathered at the computer giant's annual management retreat to discuss long-term strategies.

"I decided to do some simple tests to see how important RAM is when running applications under Rosetta. If you rely heavily on applications that are not yet universal make sure you load that new Intel Mac up with 1.5 - 3.77 times the RAM in your current PowerPC machine."

"With the traditional Microsoft news media turning their collective ear to the rest of the industry, you have to suspect a changing of the guard. But Linux companies don't seem to guage their efforts by what the industry says about Microsoft. Linux just keeps chugging along. So what does the Industry have to say about Microsoft? They say that though many people will swear by the invincibility of Microsoft's ship, it hasn't maneuvered all the icebergs. Collectively, the competition has started ringing up wins. With alternatives in Linux, FireFox, OpenOffice.org and Apple the Microsoft floating casino has begun to list and sway. Here's how and some of it might surprise you."

Geeks.com sent us a special edition of the Toshiba e800 Pocket PC PDA. What's special about this new revision we review today is that it comes by default with a very high capacity battery and the ability to use USB devices through its "presentation pack" accessory, making it a product best suited for professionals, but also for geeks.

A new version of the GPE PDA environment was released, version 2.7. It now includes a new web browser, a sync module, a Gaim and GkDial port and more. Screenshots here.

Want to share your stuff with Mac OS X Server? If you need to understand the basics of file sharing using Mac OS X Server, Ryan Faas walks you through both the underlying concepts and the actual steps involved in setting up file sharing and share points. This article is everything you need to know about creating a file server using Mac OS X Server: from the basics of share points to customizing user home directories and everything in-between.

If you've been coding in Java for awhile, you know how to write a method to test equality. Why write tests for something you can code in your sleep? Because, as Jeff Langr points out, you've probably made plenty of dumb mistakes in your career, either while asleep or while wide awake. It's simpler and safer to just think of tests as specifications that you always have to code.

"In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS, a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. This has the advantage that you can easily use web-based frontends to administrate your DNS records. MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted! I will also show how to set up a secondary DNS server, but I will not use normal zone transfers to get the records from the primary to the secondary DNS server; instead, I will use MySQL database replication. I will simply replicate the data from the primary to the secondary server."

"With little fanfare, Microsoft just announced that the x64 version of Windows Vista will require all kernel-mode code to be digitally signed. This is very different than the current WHQL program, where the user ultimately decides how they want to handle unsigned drivers. Vista driver developers must obtain a Publisher Identity Certificate (PIC) from Microsoft. Microsoft says they won't charge for it, but they require that you have a Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate from Verisign. This costs $500 per year, and as the name implies, is only available to commercial entities."

The second release candidate of PC-BSD 1.0 has been released. From the announcement: "The latest cut of PC-BSD, version 1.0RC2 is now available! This update adds KDE 3.5 support, as well as some additional features/bugfixes. ISO's may now be downloaded from our main download page. Users currently running under PC-BSD 1.0RC1 can also download a self-installing system update, which upgrades the system to 1.0RC2. This file is available on our Updates page, as Patch #6."

HP has gone really, really public about its support for Sun's Solaris 10 operating system by sending out an internal memo. HP has long 'officially' supported various versions of Solaris on its Xeon- and Opteron-based servers. Now, however, it's kind of ready to talk about this support. The company this week 'announced' support of Sun's version of Unix in a statement to staff, according to insiders. The Solaris embrace is being pitched as HP's answer to disgruntled Sun customers trying to make their way off SPARC systems and onto HP's x86 kit.

The personification of the duality-in-man, Paul Thurrot, takes a look at Windows Live. "In this article, I'll examine the genesis of Windows Live, and take a look at how Microsoft plans to capitalize on the integration of Windows with various Web-based services and products. Then, I'll briefly examine each of the Windows Live services that the company plans to ship this year, saving full reviews of each service for their eventual ship dates."

"The BSD Certification Group is a non-profit organization established to create and maintain a global certification standard for system administration on BSD-based operating systems. After a year of work, the group behind the BSD Certification project plans to complete the process for the first certification (BSD Associate) in the first half of this year, with the first exam to be available by the second quarter. We interviewed Dru Lavigne, BSD advocate and creator of the initiative."