IT Infrastructure - News

The issue is that when applications must be updated, installed or migrated, companies must ensure that disruptions are minimized to keep users productive throughout the process. Additionally, the process must be simple for the user. If application management isnÂ’t in place, the end user might make an erroneous decision on how to configure the software, such as installing it in the wrong directory, which leads to problems.

Adding to the challenges of application management is the arrival of Windows Vista, which Microsoft has designed to offer more features, advanced security, and higher functionality than any other Windows operating system to date.

These changes mean that before a company moves an application to Windows Vista desktops, it must validate the application to ensure it is compatible.

This could lead to two types of challenges. First, an application may not work with the new OS. Second, the application might be okay, but the packaging of the application for installation may cause problems.

That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

Before the House vote, which was a lopsided 409 to 2, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) held a press conference on Capitol Hill with John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted and Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Allen said the legislation--called the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act, or SAFE Act--will "ensure better reporting, investigation, and prosecution of those who use the Internet to distribute images of illegal child pornography."

The SAFE Act represents the latest in Congress' efforts--some of which have raised free speech and privacy concerns--to crack down on sex offenders and Internet predators. One bill introduced a year ago was even broader and would have forced Web sites and blogs to report illegal images. Another would require sex offenders to supply e-mail addresses and instant messaging user names.

Wednesday's vote caught Internet companies by surprise: the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation. It was introduced October 10, but has never received even one hearing or committee vote. In addition, the legislation approved this week has changed substantially since the earlier version and was not available for public review.

Not one Democrat opposed the SAFE Act. Two Republicans did: Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning presidential candidate from Texas, and Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia.

"It isn't that Microsoft isn't doing a better job," Paller said. "The reason (is that) it is so lucrative to find vulnerabilities in Excel and Word, so there are a lot of (hackers) searching for them."

Microsoft declined to comment for this story.

Throughout 2007, Microsoft officials have tried to downplay SP1, hoping to convince users that they donÂ’t need to wait for the first service pack before moving to Windows Vista. As a result, executives have been less-than-forthcoming when it comes to the performance gains they expect Vista SP1 will deliver.

Internally, however, the company is promising some pretty hefty improvements for users who install SP1, according to sources.

Microsoft is telling its own employees - whom it is hoping to convince to install the new escrow build of the Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) test build in order to give the code a final check before the company begins making it available to testers outside the company — that Vista SP1 will:

• Improve by 25 percent local file copying on the same disk on the same machine
• Improve by 45 percent the speed of copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
• Speed up by 50 percent the rate of copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system
• Improve the reading time for large images by roughly 50 percent
• Improve the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB hubs by about 18 percent
• Improve the performance of user login on corporate PCs outside of the corporate environment so that it is comparable with login inside companies

What else will Vista SP1 fix? Microsoft is dangling these other SP1 improvements in front of its employees internally, sources said, including:

• Reduction of the number of User Account Control (UAC) prompts from four to one when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location
• Improvement of compatibility with third-party diagnostic tools that rely on raw sockets
• Addition of a password hint during the initial set up of Vista SP1
• Resolution of many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Vista, especially those involving Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player and a number of other drivers included with Vista

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Vista performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

Although powerful notebooks have been available for years, whatÂ’s intriguing about these new systems is the potentially new ways businesses can tap the dual core processing capabilities of the machines.

For instance, Intel and Voice Over IP (VoIP) pioneer Skype announced a collaboration to optimize SkypeÂ’s software for Intel dual core processors.

Skype software can now be used for 10‑way voice conference calling. This is double the five caller limit when the software runs on systems with other processors. And as an added advantage, it saves money because the company does not have to pay for a conferencing service or a high end audio conferencing system.

The two companies are also working on ways to leverage dual core technology to improve videoconferencing sessions.

At the heart of this effort is a plan to split the audio and video portions of a videoconference and take advantage of the Intel Core Duo Processor.

Industry analysts believe other vendors will also likely optimize their software for Intel based dual core computers. This will enable mobile workers to do their jobs better, smarter and faster.

• Licensed. This state refers to an activated genuine copy of Windows Vista.
• Initial grace, or out-of-the-box grace. This is the period before the initial activation of a machine and lasts 30 days at first. You can restart this by issuing the command slmgr.vbs /rearm; this resets the counter to 30 days, but you can only re-arm this timer three times before activation becomes required.
• Nongenuine grace. This state is used when the Windows Genuine Advantage tool is installed and run on a machine and it fails the test. This grace period lasts 30 days.
• Out-of-tolerance grace. This state occurs when hardware changes exceed the activation threshold or if a KMS-managed computer has not reactivated itself via the KMS host in more than 180 days. This grace period lasts 30 days.
• Unlicensed. This is the state Windows Vista enters when any grace period ends. When a machine enters the unlicensed state, it runs in reduced functionality mode, or RFM, which limits users to one-hour sessions and disables some features and functions of Vista.

(Computerworld) -- The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has notified about 237,000 policy holders of a potential compromise of their personal data.

The warning followed the loss of three backup tapes containing the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and drivers license numbers of customers of the company's personnel lines claims center.

So far, there is no evidence that the tapes were stolen or that the information has been misused, a company spokeswoman said. Hartford Financial Services has no idea if the tapes were misplaced while in transit to another location or if they went missing inside the company. But the information contained on them could only be read with the use of sophisticated and expensive equipment, she added.

The Hartford breach is similar to scores of others in recent years involving the loss or theft of computers and media containing sensitive personal data. Security analysts have recommended that companies use encryption to mitigate potential data loss in such situations. Many companies that have been reluctant to do so because of cost concerns end up paying significantly more in notification and other costs when a breach occurs, analysts have previously noted.

FTP is the technology underpinning much of the information transmission conducted in todayÂ’s corporate enterprise. However, security concerns are changing this. FTP offers absolutely no security and is a fundamentally limiting technology; sweeping legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, GLBA, etc.) will not tolerate its use for the transmission of important or sensitive data.

Industry analysts predict that all companies, small, medium and large will discontinue their current methods of sending and sharing data information. Gartner, in particular, states that, Â…in the immediate future, most companies, regardless of industry, need to consider how they are securing and managing their file transfers. They must discontinue using the older, unsecured, and uncontrolled methods of sending and receiving information. Homegrown solutions are commonly used, although many users acknowledge the limitations of these tools when applied in an integration fi le transfer context. Internal and external security, management, and integration requirements will force companies to scrutinize and consider replacements to their homegrown solutions.

The much-hyped battle between opposing next-generation packaged media formats HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc still has no clear winner. While there was no answer, several things became more clear: Studios have learned some lessons over the past year, and both sides are still essentially guessing as to what will be most compelling to consumers. Adoption of next-generation players and media is still low compared with standard-definition fare, though consumer recognition of all things high-definition is growing, which should benefit both sides.

Talk of this so-called war is not new. But as more consumers buy high-definition television sets, and as the prices of next-generation set-top boxes and players come down and more people are exposed to the marketing push for high-definition discs from movie studios, retailers and hardware makers, they will be faced with a choice. Remaining neutral, though, is still what many are choosing.

Since this time last year, there has been some shift in the landscape of high-definition media. One of the most highly publicized changes was the Paramount decision to back off its Switzerland-like approach of offering its content on both formats and focus exclusively on HD DVD. The shift had a significant impact, at the very least on the perception of the format war, which up until that point appeared to be favoring Blu-ray.

Federal CIOs, who are aware of data breaches in both the public and private sectors that have compromised personal information of thousands of people, say that security of laptops,  the key to most telecommuter programs, is their biggest worry.

At the same time, government managers face existing federal laws dating back to 2000 that mandate tele-work programs. In addition, new pressure is being applied for them to encourage more government workers into telecommuting programs as an attempt to dramatically boost the number of work at home employees.

Some government CIOs say the best course of action is to follow best practices set down by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — the closest thing to certification available. NIST recommendations include basics such as installing, running and updating antivirus software; periodically scanning machines with spyware-removal software; and adopting a paranoia level of security awareness when writing personal firewall rules.

But now hear this: Mobile phone use may cause a slowing of brain activity.

Before anyone panics, the suggestion that frequent mobile phone use makes us behave a little unbalanced is, so far, based on a study of just 300 people conducted by researchers in Australia, England and the Netherlands.

The study, published in the International Journal of Neuroscience this month, looked at the group of 300 people over 2.4 years, but researchers plan to expand the study to gather data on 17,000 people over a longer period of time.

According to the study, frequent mobile phone users demonstrated slowed brain function -- but the slowed brain effects are still considered within normal brain functioning. A longer study with a larger sample group would address whether the slowed brain activity should be considered an adverse health effect, according to a statement from Brainclinics Diagnostics BV in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Brainclinics Diagnostics was one of the research groups that carried out the study.

The noted slowed brain function could not be explained by differences in personality, according to researchers. "In Alzheimer's dementia you also find a severe slowing of brain activity," said Martijn Arns, the main investigator for Brainclinics Diagnostics, in a statement. "However, the slowing found in this study, with mobile phone users, can still be considered within 'normal' limits." Nonetheless, Arns predicted that a longer-term study would show more severe effects.

In a rpreliminary eview it its browser market share data for it fall 2007 Browser Market Share Report , Janco has found that Google desktop is starting to gain wider acceptance among business users.  Their market share is small but it continues to increase.  At the same time, Netscape is rapidly losing acceptance.  Netscape 8 is a non-entity and looks like the primary driver behind Netscapes rapid fall from acceptance.

More information can be found on the Janco Associates site www.e-janco.com.

• Vista is resource intensive    both hardware and software
• Vistas security is not as good as promised
• Vista does not work well with VPNs
• Vista User Account Control is poorly designed
• Vista does not provide upward hardware and software compatibility
• Vista has too many versions and versions are in-compatible
• Vista performance is poor at best
• Vista has no killer feature that is a must have to justify upgrade from XP
• Vista is NOT STABLE  there are many reports of blue screens
• Vista is a tool not an application and XP is a tool that works NOW

PC World ranks the top ten cell phone-PDAs.  They are

1.     RIM Blackberry 8300 Curve  - An impressive contender for people seeking a smart phone with strong e-mail and multimedia features. PC World Rating: 90 (Superior)

2.     T-Mobile Wing - Offers clear calls and long battery life, but some of the buttons are difficult to press. PC World Rating: 85 (Very Good)

3.     T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6) - The upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 adds support for Microsoft's productivity applications to this already impressive phone. PC World Rating: 84 (Very Good)

4.     Nokia E62 - This affordable Symbian-based PDA phone is perfect for people who want to use productivity software. PC World Rating: 84 (Very Good)

5.     Apple iPhone  - This touch-screen phone is innovative, but it is expensive, lacks 3G network access, and has limited software. PC World Rating: 83 (Very Good)

6.     Samsung Blackjack - This lightweight multimedia phone features a slick design and excels at streaming via Cingular's high-speed 3G network.  PC World Rating: 82 (Very Good)

7.     Cingular 8525 - The very fast data access offered by this PDA phone is undermined by poor battery life and a bulky design.  PC World Rating: 81 (Very Good)

8.     T-Mobile Sidekick 3 - A great keyboard and stellar messaging make this an excellent option if you value data features more than voice calling. PC World Rating: 81 (Very Good)

9.     RIM BlackBerry 8800 - This phone's impressive features include excellent e-mail options and built-in GPS, as well as a sleek design.  PC World Rating: 79 (Good)

10.  RIM BlackBerry 8700g Bottom Line: The 8700g is more consumer-friendly than other BlackBerry devices, but it still lacks a camera. PC World Rating: 78 (Good)

When you get a new PC with Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 installed from the vendor you would think that all is well.  Try this then, install Microsoft Front Page on to that same system and you will find that mail merge does not work.

It seems that Front Page changes a setting that Word needs to communicate with Office.  No one at Microsoft knows what the setting is.  The solution they suggest is to UNINSTALL Office and Front Page.  Then  install Front Page, re-boot, open Front Page, Close Front Page, then re-install Office 2007. 

They say that works but my solution is to move to Dreamweaver and stay with Office 2003.