Salvance - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft laptop recipient auctioning laptop

Submitted by

Salvance

on Friday December 29, 2006 @03:09AM

Salvance writes: "While most bloggers who received the controversial Vista powered Acer from Microsoft are keeping them, Laughing Squid has decided to auction off his free laptop from Microsoft and donate all proceeds to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He saw this as a great opportunity to support a worthy cause, and some other bloggers are following suit.

What's both ironic and funny is that Microsoft is now backpedaling and telling bloggers to send back the laptops. Do they even have a legal right to do so?"

Submission + - New phone uses GPS to locate your contacts

Submitted by

Salvance

on Thursday November 16, 2006 @02:04AM

Salvance writes: "Palo Alto-based Loopt Inc. has announced an agreement with Sprint Nextel to immediately begin offering their cell phone mapping service to all 3.8 Million Sprint Boost subscribers (Sprint Boost is a service specifically targeting the under 25 market). This service will notify users when another subscriber in their contact list is within 25 miles, providing a real time map displaying their contacts' locations. According to the article, the only apparent privacy safeguard is to provide users the option to "temporarily cut out from being 'spotted' by their friends".

Given a retailer's propensity to package together extra services, and the average user's lack of knowledge regarding their phone's capabilities, this new service seems ripe for abuse."

Submission + - Google envisions free cell phones for all

Submitted by

Salvance

on Monday November 13, 2006 @03:10AM

Salvance writes: "Google's CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a day when all cell phones are free if the user agrees to watch targeted ads. While he provides no specific plans for Google to give away phones, the implication is that he expects such moves in the future given Google's current pilot successes with delivering text ads on phones."

Submission + - How to manage a security breach?

Submitted by

Salvance

on Sunday November 05, 2006 @01:13AM

Salvance writes: "Recently, a friend of mine has been very stressed over a security breach at the company he consults for. The company maintains dozens of Windows 98 desktops to support legacy software that cannot be easily replaced. Due to the inherent lack of security in Windows 98, a worm was able to infiltrate almost every computer and send gigabytes of data (possibly including sensitive company data) to a 'redirector' in Eastern Europe.

My friend was working on other security projects at this company, and in the course of doing so found this massive hole. He quickly convinced the company executives to remove internet access from all Win98 machines, purchase better firewalls, and implement other data protection strategies. However, the sticking point was on client notification.

Due to the nature of the legacy systems, there was no way to know what data was transferred. For this reason, the company wanted to play it safe and disclose nothing. Of course, my friend is all for disclosure and preventing use of the potentially leaked data.

My friend doesn't know what to do, so I thought I'd see what others here thought?"

Submission + - Oracle and Red Hat begin battle for the Enterprise

Submitted by

Salvance

on Monday October 30, 2006 @03:24AM

Salvance writes: "Yahoo News (via ComputerWire) is reporting that Oracle and Red Hat are turning up the heat in the battle over Oracle's new enterprise Linux offering. While Oracle claims they'll be able to offer their 'Unbreakable' version of Red Hat's Linux offering for half the price, Red Hat asserts that all the important security and hardware certifications would be invalidated on Oracle's offering.

At this point, the only thing that's certain is that Red Hat needs to figure out how to keep their large Oracle Enterprise clients on board or risk becoming a takeover target (undoubtably, with Oracle leading the list of potentially bidders)."

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