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this is a cool product that we have been waiting for now for a little while. It is nice to have the basic services that we are used to having on a corporate network at home. right now this is just for serving files but I would like to see it extended to media features, phone and of course email on demand to any wireless device in the house.

Exchange server at home…that would be cool.

New Windows Home Server Screenshots

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For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash……..
twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation” warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask “Are you sure?” before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.

Please share this with your friends who love - but sometimes hate - their computer!

An amazing thing has happened over the past decade: Laptop computers, once expensive niche products, have become commonplace devices. Many people now buy laptops that will never leave a desk, just because they like having all of the computer in one unit.

But as laptops have reached this mainstream status, they have not become a simpler purchase to make. That is to say, they’re marketed just like most other electronic items: Manufacturers routinely skimp on features and capabilities — to save themselves a few dollars or so they can “upsell” you other products and services — and it’s up to you to spot what got left out.

The biggest area of compromise these days is the battery. It’s bad enough that many laptop vendors act as if a machine’s battery life is either a state secret or a mystery.

But several of these companies seem to have also adopted one of the worst habits of the digital-camera business.

Just as some digicam manufacturers bundle “starter” memory cards that accommodate only a handful of photos, some laptop makers — including Dell, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard — now ship computers with batteries that will expire before you can finish watching a movie.

If you want a longer run time, you’ll have to upgrade to a heavier, sometimes larger replacement battery. If you don’t think to do this as you order the machine online, you wind up paying for two batteries, one of which will be doomed to collect dust in a closet somewhere.

Laptop weights are another area where customers can be led astray. The problem isn’t with the many “desktop replacement” models that weigh seven or more pounds and aren’t made to be taken anywhere (trust my shoulders, even six pounds is more than you want to lug around all day); the problem lies with laptops advertised as “thin and light.”

Once you set it up for any kind of portable computing, that featherweight may have bulked up. Those optional longer-life batteries can add half a pound by themselves, as can the AC adapter — many tip the scales at almost a pound, even though the adapters included by more thoughtful manufacturers weigh less than half as much.
Read the rest of this entry »

I know that you have received these emails on a regular basis over the last year because I certainly have. You get an email that says that this stock *** is about to EXPLODE! the market is hot! Jump in before it is too late.

Then I hit delete

Apparently other people do not hit delete and as we know that is the reason that spam exists in the first place.

E-mails typically promote penny shares in the hope of convincing people to buy into a company to raise its price. People who respond to the “pump and dump” scam can lose 8% of their investment in two days.

Conversely, the spammers who buy low-priced stock before sending the e-mails, typically see a return of between 4.9% and 6% when they sell. The study recently published on the Social Science Research Network say their conclusions prove the hypothesis that spammers “buy low and spam high”.

The researchers say that approximately 730 million spam e-mails are sent every week, 15% of which tout stocks. Other estimates of spam volumes are far higher.

The study, by Professor Laura Frieder of Purdue University in the US and Professor Jonathan Zittrain from Oxford University’s Internet Institute in the UK, analysed more than 75,000 unsolicited e-mails. All of the messages touting stocks and shares were sent between January 2004 and July 2005.

The e-mail messages had either been received by Professor Zittrain or been posted on a newsgroup, known as Nanas. Nanas is used to alert network administrators about new spam messages and the action they can take against them.

The researchers were then able to compare the estimated size of an e-mail campaign with trading activity and share prices immediately before and after the first arrival of a spam message. The team found that a spammer who bought shares the day before starting an e-mail campaign and then sold them the day after could make a return on his or her investment of 4.9%.

“If he or she were to be a particularly effective spammer, returns to this strategy would be roughly 6%,” they wrote.

Conversely, if someone who received the message chose to invest $1000 (£530) in a promoted company they would be left with $947.50 after two days. Victims of a large e-mail campaign could be left with $930 after two days. On average a victim loses $52.50 for every $1000 invested.

However, real losses would be even greater, the team suggest, because the victim would also have had to have paid fees to buy and sell the shares.

“Our analysis shows that spam works,” the team wrote.

“Among its millions of recipients are not only those who read it, but who also act upon it”

Security firms advise e-mail users to install a spam filter, delete unsolicited messages and never to respond to offers.

When you do a Windows Update on your PC and check to see what they are updating, one of the things that is being installed as a critical update is Windows Genuine Advantage. This small application queries your PC and then sends whatever information that Microsoft is looking for back to Microsoft. The problem with this application is that it is not alerting users that it is installing and Microsoft can use it to send whatever information they want back to Microsoft

Microsoft has been hit with a second lawsuit over Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), its antipiracy program that checks if the Windows operating system on a machine has a valid license.

The class-action suit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, just four days after the first one. The new suit lists its plaintiff as Engineered Process Controls and Univex, along with citizens Edward Misfud, David DiDomizio, and Martin Sifuentes, who are listed as owners of licensed copies of Windows XP running WGA.

The suit alleges WGA is spyware and that Microsoft mislead consumers by labeling it as a critical security update. The plaintiffs maintain Microsoft did not make users aware that WGA frequently contacted its central servers.

“WGA gathers data that can easily identify individual PCs, and WGA can be modified remotely to collect additional information at Microsoft’s initiation,” according to the filing.

WGA collects a computers IP address, BIOS data, system version and local language and settings information, the suit says.

Microsoft acknowledges WGA collects hardware and software data but maintains it is only used to verify that only one copy of an OS has been registered on one computer. If Microsoft finds a discrepancy, WGA can notify users their OS may be unlicensed through pop-up warnings.

Users have complained WGA is flawed, identifying legitimate copies of an OS as fraudulent. Microsoft blocks the download of some programs but allows security patches if an OS is judged to be invalid.

Last week, Microsoft changed some features of WGA, including adding an option that let users turn off warnings that their OS may be invalid and the frequency with which WGA communicated with its servers.

The suit asks for compensation and for Microsoft to warn users of the risks of WGA and produce tool to remove it.

Just pinging technorati to test the weblog tracking

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