Mar 30 2009

Taming Conficker, the Easy Way

Dan Kaminsky writes “We may not know what the Conficker authors have in store for us on April 1st, but I doubt many network administrators want to find out. Maybe they don’t have to: I’ve been working with the Honeynet Project’sTillmann Werner and Felix Leder, who have been digging into Conficker’s profile on the network. What we’ve found is pretty cool: Conficker actually changes what Windows looks like on the network, and this change can be detected remotely, anonymously, and very, very quickly. You can literally ask a server if it’s infected with Conficker, and it will give you an honest answer. Tillmann and Felix have their own proof of concept scanner, and with the help of Securosis’ Rich Mogull and the multivendor Conficker Working Group, enterprise-class scanners should already be out from Tenable (Nessus), McAfee/Foundstone, nmap, ncircle, and Qualys. We figured this out on Friday, and got code put together for Monday. It’s been one heck of a weekend.”

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Mar 30 2009

10 Reasons Skype is the Biggest Winner of the Web 2.0 Era

A company that has 0 million in revenue, is profitable and growing, and has a shot at becoming the largest player in what is now a trillion (yes, “t” for trillion) market, should get more respect.

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Mar 30 2009

Is Linux ready for the "average" user?

The other day I realized that it had been a long time since I’d talked about Linux as a whole as opposed to looking at specific distros. Also, over the past few weeks I’ve spent quite a lot of time discussing Windows, in particular Windows 7, and Apple’s Mac OS X.

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Mar 30 2009

12 Coolest Geeky Shoes Ever

Shoes for the geeks. Some of the best ones out there.

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Mar 30 2009

Microsoft: broadband stimulus should help schools, hospitals

“With less than billion in recovery funds available, we believe it is impossible to blanket the nation with the broadband capacity that our local governments, anchor institutions, businesses and residents ultimately require,” Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer wrote to the Federal Communications Commission on March 25.

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Mar 30 2009

Attempting To Reframe "KDE Vs. GNOME"

jammag writes “Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the ‘better’ Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their disparate development approaches and asks, not which desktop is subjectively better, but which developmental approach is likely to be most successful in the next few years. ‘In the short term, GNOME’s gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator.’ In contrast, ‘you could say that KDE has done what’s necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long term, it has done what was necessary to thrive.'”

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Mar 30 2009

The Perfect MacBook Mini: Leak, Concept, or Fake?

I don’t know what this is and I don’t care. It may be a MacBook Mini concept. Or a crazy leak. Or just a perfect fake. Whatever it is, it’s beautiful. I want one badly.

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Mar 30 2009

MySpace shrinks as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo grab its users

The “Place for Friends” is starting to feel lonely. MySpace, the Rupert Murdoch-owned website once synonymous with social networking, is losing popularity and key staff in its biggest troubles since launching five years ago.Latest figures show that Murdoch is being beaten in the fight for social networks.

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Mar 30 2009

10 Creative & Rich UI interfaces & How to Create Them

There have been plenty of posts on the number of awesome javascript, Ajax and CSS techniques and where to find them. Today, we will have a look at 10 creative & rich UI interfaces in modern day websites and how you can create similar interfaces using the techniques mentioned in this post.

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Mar 30 2009

Reliability of Computer Memory?

olddoc writes “In the days of 512-MB systems, I remember reading about cosmic rays causing memory errors and how errors become more frequent with more RAM. Now, home PCs are stuffed with 6GB or 8GB and no one uses ECC memory in them. Recently I had consistent BSODs with Vista64 on a PC with 4GB; I tried memtest86 and it always failed within hours. Yet when I ran 64bit Ubuntu at 100% load and using all memory, it ran fine for days. I have two questions: 1) Do people trust a memtest86 error to mean a bad memory module or motherboard or CPU? 2) When I check my email on my desktop 16-GB PC next year, should I be running ECC memory?”

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