October 27th, 2008

Posted by John Carroll

Identity theft is a fast-growing problem, and I’ve taken it seriously for quite awhile. I pay to have people monitor my credit to ensure someone doesn’t open accounts in my name, and I try to use temporary credit card numbers when I make online purchases. I shred personally identifiable information that I receive by mail, the better to deter “dumpster divers” who might use it. I’m also a stickler for using complex passwords on any site that provides access to financial information.

There are many, many ways, however, to have your identity stolen, and though from hindsight this should have seemed an obvious possibility, it wasn’t something that I had taken sufficient care to avoid.

As the title of this post implies, someone managed to fraudulently withdraw $2500 from my bank account using an ATM card that was a clone of the one my wife and I have in our wallets (I’m not sure whose card was the original source of the information). This was discovered the night before my birthday, and though I am sure to get all the money back (banks do insure for these kinds of things), it did mean that I spent all day Friday running around faxing, mailing, and filing police reports, which cialis 2.5mg wasn’t exactly the way I intended to spend the day.

According to a detective at the West Hollywood Sherrif’s department, a group of individuals had apparently installed a device inside a gas station pump in the area. This device had access to all information entered through the payment point. This includes full details of information stored on the magnetic strip on the back of cards (why, oh why, aren’t smartcards as common here as they are in Europe), as well as anything entered via the keypad, such as a PIN number or a zip code. The device included a wireless transmitter that broadcast 300-400 feet, allowing someone seated in a car located nearby to capture all the information generated at the pump. At the end of a hard day’s work, the thief would use this information to print the data onto card “blanks.” Given that my information was for an ATM card, they used it to visit bank machines far from my area of town.

I was somewhat surprised, however, that my bank’s fraud detection routines did not flag these transactions. The individual (or individuals) who made the withdrawals took out nearly the maximum amount that was allowed in a give day, and did so repeatedly over the course of three days. Perhaps the first transaction would have been overlooked, but the second and third (followed by a fourth and a fifth a few days later)?

What brought the problem to my attention was the fact that my ATM card was not working, though oddly enough, not because of the fraudulent use of my account.  Rather, the block was placed due to a “suspicious” transaction that sent some money overseas, and which was made by my wife. Foreign transactions, apparently, trigger a lockdown in ways that three straight days of withdrawals from my account (each of which was close to the daily limit) did not. I sure hope I never lose my ATM card in Las Vegas.

Anyway, I really should have been checking my bank account more frequently, and from now on, I’ll be a lot more careful about where I use an ATM or credit card. In fact, I used to be a lot more particular about that in the past. What changed, I think, was gas prices. Before, it never took more than $20 to fill my car.  More recently, the cost was often more than I had in my wallet as cash.

I should, in other words, make it a point to have more cash on hand, though it does occur to me that that has its own security issues. People can spike ATM machines with card detection devices as well. ATM machines, however, tend to be a bit more secure because they contain large quantities of cash. Barring an epidemic of electronically-altered ATM machines, I’m unlikely to go truly old school and wait in line to withdrawal my money from a human teller.

It is odd, however, to think that modern technology is creating its own hindrance to a cashless society. I certainly carry less cash on hand these days than was the case before, as digital payment alternatives have spread their reach over the years. Such payment mechanisms’ popularity, however, rests squarely on our ability to trust in their security. Credit cards and bank ATMs may be willing to reimburse us for fraudulent charges in order to encourage us to use them, but it is still wise to reduce our dependence on them. Perhaps this will motivate more bulletproof security mechanisms, provided security problems prove a sufficient inconvience to trump the convenience of easy digital payments.

By the way, I’ll be at the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles this week, thus continuing a trend wherein I opportunistically attend conferences as a member of the press when they come to my home town. I’ll be sure to write about anything I discover there (though keep an eye on Mary Jo Foley’s and Ed Bott’s blog, too, as they are both rumored to be in attendance).

October 24th, 2008

Posted by Ed Bott

As I noted earlier this week, I’ve begun using a MacBook (the basic white model) and keeping a log of my experiences.

Yesterday, I received the adapter cable I needed to hook this machine to an external monitor so that I could use it in a desktop configuration. (A note to the thrifty: Don’t pay Apple $29 for this mini-DVI cable. Instead, go to Monoprice.com and pick up the generic adapter for $9.96. With shipping, it was still under $12, and it works just fine.)

Now that I have this system up and running on a full-sized screen, I’m ready to make some head-to-head comparisons with Windows. Because this system has a mere 1GB of RAM, I was curious to get a sense of how thrifty OS X Leopard is when it comes to memory usage. I was especially curious to see how Leopard compares to Vista, which as been slammed by critics as a resource hog.

To get started I opened Safari and opened a single web page, then began playing an MP3 track in iTunes. With those tasks running, I checked the results from Activity Monitor:

As you can see, the OS reports that 581MB is in use, with 430MB free.

Next, I launched a similar set of tasks on a system running Windows Vista Ultimate. To make the comparison fair, I used the System Configuration utility to disable all but 1024MB of memory in the system, which has 4GB of RAM. This system is using the full Aero interface (disabling it had no significant impact on the RAM footprint). I opened Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, began playing the same MP3 tune and browsed to the same page cialis 2.5 that was open on the Macbook. Here’s what Task Manager showed for memory usage:

For those keeping score, the Vista machine is using 594MB of RAM, which is roughly 2% more than its Mac counterpart running the same set of tasks.

Vista gets a bad rap for lots of things, including its reputedly voracious appetite for memory. As you can see, Vista compares favorably to OS X in this regard and doesn’t deserve that reputation.

October 24th, 2008

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

For those interested in taking the latest incarnation of Ubuntu for a spin, you might like to know that a release candidate of Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” is available for download a few days ahead of the full release.

• Download cialis 10mg price target=”_blank”>here
• Release notes here

Only one thing stood out in the release notes to me:

The 71 and 96 series of proprietary nVidia drivers, as provided by the nvidia-glx-legacy and nvidia-glx packages in Ubuntu 8.04, are not compatible with the X.Org included in Ubuntu 8.10. Users with the nVidia TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 chipsets are affected and will be transitioned on upgrade to the free nv driver instead. This driver does not support 3D acceleration.

October 27th, 2008

Posted by Jason Hiner

We’re going to be hearing a lot about Windows 7 over the next two weeks as Microsoft convenes its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) — both in Los Angeles.

I recently discussed the five reasons why Windows Vista failed, and although Microsoft may continue to defend Vista as Steve Ballmer did at the Gartner Symposium on October 16, make no mistake that the company has already moved past Vista — psychologically and strategically.

Ballmer and company know that Vista has been rejected by businesses and that it has dreadful reputation among the general public. They know they screwed up. And Microsoft is nothing if not responsive to customers and public opinion. In fact, I’ve argued before that the company is actually hyper-responsive and that’s why they’ve crammed way too many features and way too much code into both Windows and Microsoft Office.

So how can Microsoft recover from the Vista debacle and breath life back into Windows? If nothing else, cialis 100 mg here are five things the company needs to do to start.

5. Speed it up significantly

One of the worst qualities of Windows Vista is that it is almost always slower than its predecessor Windows XP when running on the same hardware. And most of that performance drag is not simply due to the fancy graphics. Even if you turn off the Aero interface, Vista is still usually slower.

The problem is that the underlying Windows code is way too bloated — over 50 million lines of code in Vista — and even today’s ultra-fast multi-core processors can’t overcome that. The Windows development team has to find a way to streamline Windows 7 so that it’s faster and more stable than both XP and Vista, whether it’s running on netbooks and nettops with the Atom processor and only 1 GB of RAM or tomorrow’s 8-core machines with 10 GB of RAM.

That’s an extremely difficult task, but no one said this was going to be simple or easy. One way to start is by turning Windows into just the core OS and further modulizing it by making a lot of the other software such as the Media Center, Tablet PC, and Admin Tools available as downloadable add-ons.

4. Avoid compatibility problems

In the process of streamlining Windows 7, the developers can’t sacrifice software compatibility. One of the things that has killed Vista is that Microsoft spent so much effort trying making it more secure with User Access Control (UAC) that it broke a lot of software in the process.

You can argue that a lot of the stuff that broke in Windows Vista was poorly programmed to begin with and deserved to break so that it could be rewritten more securely. The problem is that not much of the software has been rewritten and the UAC approach has not worked because users get so many dialog boxes that they just blindly click OK until all of them go away. A better approach is needed — one that balances security and compatibility.

The other compatibility issue that Windows 7 has to juggle is the 32-bit vs. 64-bit split. While most modern processors are 64-bit, most of the software and device drivers are still written in 32-bit code. I’ve seen a number of PCs with 64-bit CPUs that have 32-bit Windows installed simply because it has better compatibility. I’ve also seen and heard about a number of business systems that have 64-bit Windows Vista installed, but are running into significant software and/or driver incompatibility problems.

Microsoft, Intel, and AMD need to lead the charge to get software vendors on-board with 64-bit before Windows 7 is officially released.

3. Undercut OS X on price

Mac sales have been growing much faster than the overall PC market and Mac OS X has continued to nibble away at Windows’ massive market share over the past two years. However, Apple showed the same chink in its armor that has long plagued it when it recently announced its new line of laptops and the cheapest one was priced at $999. The message being sent is that Apple wants to be a premium computer brand with high margins and has very little interest in selling low-margin, high-volume machines.

Over the next two to three years the lion’s share of the growth in computer sales is very likely going to be in the sub-$500 netbook and nettop market. These machines are essentially just glorified Web browsers in a diminuitive hardware package. The OS doesn’t matter much. As a result, Linux is a major threat to become the OS powering a lot of these machines, because of its minimal price.

However, with Apple relegating itself to the high end of the market and most users still not very comfortable with Linux, Microsoft has the opportunity to swoop in and deliver a Windows 7 that is fast and cheap and can run very well on these little machines, while also scaling all the way up to the fastest workstations. A lot of users and businesses would probably gravitate toward the idea of a common OS experience (and one that most users already know) in Windows, especially if the price is comparable between Linux and Windows machines.

The key here is making Windows very inexpensive and very scalable while preparing to sell it in larger volumes than ever before on the cheap machines that are going to flood the market over the next couple years.

2. Sell only one version

There were primarily two editions of Windows XP: Home and Professional. With Windows Vista, that doubled to four primary editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. It’s time to simplify and go back to just one version of Windows with one price.

This is a case of Microsoft just getting out of the way and letting Windows be Windows. Having just one edition of the client OS will make Windows 7 easier to understand, easier to purchase, and easier to support (for both Microsoft and IT departments).

Of course, the one version of Windows 7 needs to be cheaper than Mac OS X ($99), easier to use than Linux, and easier to set up and get started than any of the recent versions of Windows.

1.  Make it the last shrink-wrapped OS

The old way of building and packaging operating systems in shrink-wrapped boxes that are released every few years is just not fast enough or nimble enough to meet the demands to today’s Internet-driven computing environment. It’s also counterproductive for an OS maker because you end up competing against yourself the way XP and Vista are now competing against each other.

There’s only one Windows, and it has merely evolved over time. That’s the message Microsoft needs to drive home by making Windows 7 the last shrink-wrapped version of the OS. From here on out, Microsoft should simply make Windows a constantly evolving platform with new features and functionality enhancements added several times a year through Windows Update.

The business model would be to turn this into a subscription product, albeit a very inexpensive one. As long as you have a current Windows subscription then you can continue to download new features, patches, and updates. If your subscription lapses then Windows still works but you can no longer download the new stuff, or any add-ons, and you can only download highly critical security patches.

For enterprises that are currently using Software Assurance, they are already buying Windows as part of a subscription so there would be no change in the business model for them.  For consumers and small businesses who aren’t part of Software Assurance and typically buy Windows from OEMs such as Dell, Toshiba,  and Hewlett-Packard, the Windows license that comes with their PC could last for three years and then it’s up to the buyer to pay something like $30-$40/year to renew. For those who want to build their own system, a full version of the OS could cost something like $50-$75 for the first year.

Bottom line

Windows 7 needs to be fast, inexpensive, and widely compatible. Microsoft also needs to change the development and business models to make Windows one continually evolving OS.

Let’s face it, the OS is not as flashy as it once was. It’s also not nearly as relevant as it was a decade ago. The Web browser is gradually usurping its position as the most important application platform, as has long been predicted.

Because of that, Windows is at a crossroads where it could begin losing large chunks of market share to competitors that are better prepared to operate in this new reality, or it can greatly simplify its OS while turning into more of a background utility that makes good money off of a low-margin, high-volume business.

If it can pull that off and clearly communicate to businesses and consumers that Windows 7 is the start of a new approach to Windows then Windows 7 could be a watershed release. If Microsoft simply releases a mild revision to Vista and maintains the same development and business models, then Windows could become more vulnerable to its competitors than it’s been in almost two decades.

October 26th, 2008

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft isn’t going to show Windows 7 to attendees of the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles until Tuesday, October 28. But new info about what’s part of the pre-beta cheapest price for cialis build that will be provided to show-goers is beginning to trickle out.

According to a variety of sources, the build that will be distributed at PDC — and, a week-plus later, at the company’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) — will be one of the M3 (Milestone 3) builds. Like the build that leaked in September, this will be a 6801 numbered build, sources say. But it doesn’t seem to be the same one I saw a few weeks back. UX Evangelist blogger Stephen Chapman says it will likely be a 6801 M3 build which Microsoft finalized on October 20.

So what’s in this soon-to-be-delivered Windows 7 pre-beta build? Here are a few new features Microsoft will provide, according to various individuals who’ve had a chance to see and hear about the forthcoming PDC pre-beta build. (Note: I didn’t bother running this list by Microsoft for official comment, as I figure the response will be: Wait till Tuesday.)

* Device Stage – a central location for customers to more easily interact with devices, ranging from printers, cameras, cell phones, media players, etc. Device Stage will only recognize “Device-Stage-enabled” peripherals. According to additional info on Microsoft’s WinHEC site, “Device Stage is a new way for consumers to manage, explore, sync, print to, or do other common device-related tasks. (I wonder: Is this more than souped-up Plug and Play?)

* Action Center — a self-diagnosis feature to help users troubleshoot problems with their Windows 7 systems

* StreamOn — a way to control audio/video content on PCs and devices (Part of the next version of Windows Media Player? Or something to do with Live Mesh? I don’t have more info at this time.)

* A new animation framework for customizing animations (Is this akin to Apple’s Core Animation tool? I have no idea.)

* New task bar and shell integration (Hints of this emerged in the September M3 leak)

* Multi-touch and gesture recognition — something Microsoft showed off earlier this year in an early Windows 7 preview

* Improved Bluetooth support (Not clear if this goes beyond the new level of Bluetooth support Microsoft is adding via Vista Service Pack 2)

* Ribbons, ribbons everywhere. As was evident in the leaked September M3 build, Microsoft is adding its Ribbon UI to the applets that are part of Windows 7.

I’m hearing Microsoft is going to show off a number of other features during the Tuesday PDC keynote that aren’t yet part of the pre-beta that is being distributed to attendees. (Internally, Microsoft already is working on builds post the M3 cut that it is delivering on the 160 GB external drives on which it is delivering the pre-beta Windows 7 bits.)

I’m also still hearing that Microsoft is on track to deliver a public beta of Windows 7 by mid-December this year, and final by next year. With Vista’s growth rates nothing to write home about, I’m sure Microsoft — even with all of its quality controls — has a lot of incentive to get Windows 7 out there sooner rather than later….

Anyone else hearing about any new Windows 7 features we’ll see later this week? I’m especially interested in what Microsoft is planning to deliver in Windows 7 for enterprise users, as most of these features are consumer-focused.