Monday, February 19, 2007

Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability

"The Google engineers just published a paper on Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Based on a study of 100,000 disk drives over 5 years they find some interesting stuff. To quote from the abstract: 'Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.'"

Ballmer: Novell deal proves open source needs to ‘respect IP rights’

by Mary Jo Foley

The same week that Microsoft issued a press release providing further details about some of the technological advances that will result from the November 2006 technology agreement between Novell and Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street what he really thinks the deal means to Microsoft.

During a forecast update meeting for financial analysts and shareholders on February 15, Ballmer reiterated that, to him, the deal is more about Microsoft exerting intellectual property (IP) pressure on Novell than anything else.

Ballmer didn't talk up technological cross-collaboration. He didn't mention helping customers with interoperability challenges. He didn't mention new sales opportunities. Instead, he said:

"The deal that we announced at the end of last year with Novell I consider to be very important. It demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property even in the Open Source world. I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that Open Source is not free and Open Source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will."

Ballmer has riled the Novell management team more than once by hinting that Microsoft believes that Novell and other open-source vendors are violating Microsoft patents.

(This past weekend, in an interview with LinuxWorld, former Novell employee and lead Samba developer Jeremy Allison, when asked about supposed Microsoft threats over alleged open-source patent violations, said the rumors were true.

"I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using, which they then cannot redistribute. I think that would be the restriction. I would have to look quite carefully. So, essentially that’s not allowed. But they’re not telling anyone about it. They’re completely doing it off the record," Allison said.)

Until customers come forward and admit these Microsoft threats, it's gong to be tough to prove Allison's contention.

But it isn't difficult to see that Microsoft's brass sees the Microsoft-Novell deal as being, above all else, about setting a precedent by getting an open-source vendor to pay royalties for IP.

5 Things the Boss Should Know About Spam Fighting

"Sysadmins and email administrators were asked to identify the one thing they wish the CIO understood about their efforts to fight spam. The CIO website is now running their five most important tips, in an effort to educate the corporate brass. Recommendations are mostly along the lines of informing corporate management; letting bosses know that there is no 'silver bullet', and that the battle will never really end. There's also a suggestion to educate on technical matters, bringing executives into the loop on terms like SMTP and POP. Their first recommendation, though, is to make sure no mail is lost. 'This is a risk management practice, and you need to decide where you want to put your risk. Would you rather risk getting spam with lower risk of losing/delaying messages you actually wanted to get, or would you rather risk losing/delaying legitimate messages with lower risk of spam? You can't have both, no matter how loudly you scream.'"

Getting Clueful: Five Things You Should Know About Fighting Spam

The battle for your users' e-mail inboxes probably will never end, but it's not a failure of technology. Experienced e-mail and system administrators share the key points they really, really wish you understood.

By Esther Schindler

February 15, 2007

When you started your e-mail client this morning, you were prepared for the usual set of correspondence: your daily dose of corporate politics, a dollop of technical emergencies and the background hum of projects under way. Annoyingly, your inbox also contained a few messages advertising products you would never buy, and perhaps a phishing notice warning that your account was frozen at a financial institution where you don't have an account. Your company has antispam measures in place; surely, the IT staff should be able to keep this junk out of your inbox?

Perhaps they can, but the task of doing so has become much more difficult in recent years, partly because 85 percent or more of all e-mail traffic today is spam. If you haven't been listening closely to the dark mutterings in your e-mail administrator's office, you may have missed out on significant clues about the nature of the problem and what the IT department can do to address it. However, when you do listen to the technical staff, it's easy to get lost in their arcane acronyms, such as SPF and RBLs, and you may drown in more information than you really wanted to know.

To learn what's really happening in the technical trenches, we asked several e-mail administrators to tell us about the key items—the single key item, in fact—that they wish their IT management understood. If you read through their wish list, you may be able to understand the nature of their challenges and, perhaps, help them clean out your inbox.

In brief, says Keith Brooks, vice president at Vanessa Brooks, "Stopping spam is a mixture of luck, intelligence, alcohol and planning." With luck, he says, your CEO never hears about spam. "But without it, the CIO never stops hearing about this issue."

1. Lose No Mail.

The primary directive, for e-mail admins, is "lose no mail." If that means that an occasional spam message wends its merry way into users' mailboxes, so be it. E-mail administrators would prefer that users encounter a few annoyances than miss an important business message.

Dr. Ken Olum, a research assistant professor in the Tufts Institute of Cosmology, also maintains the institute's computers. Olum explains, "The most important thing is never to silently drop an important e-mail. If you just drop it, your correspondent thinks you aren't answering on purpose or forgets all about you. So suspected spam should always be rejected and never dropped. Sequestering it is only slightly better than dropping it, because you have to look through the sequestered spam, and most people don't bother."

Nonetheless, many CIOs ask their IT department to keep the e-mail boxes clear of anything offensive. Yet, according to Scott Kitterman of ControlledMail.com, "I want zero spam and I want to never ever miss a legitimate message" isn't feasible. Kitterman explains, "This is a risk management practice, and you need to decide where you want to put your risk. Would you rather risk getting spam with lower risk of losing/delaying messages you actually wanted to get, or would you rather risk losing/delaying legitimate messages with lower risk of spam? You can't have both, no matter how loudly you scream."

Tom Limoncelli, author of The Practice of System and Network Administration (Addison-Wesley) and Time Management for System Administrators (O'Reilly), stresses that because fighting spam is not an exact science, there always will be false positives and false negatives. The IT department has to cope with this. Limoncelli had a CTO complain when he missed an important message because it was caught in the spam filter. Says Limoncelli, "This system sent him e-mail once a day with a list of his messages that had been blocked; clicking on any of them 'releases' it from the quarantine. … He wanted a report for every message that was blocked. At least that was his initial request; he then realized that he had asked for an e-mail to warn him of every e-mail!"

2. There's No Silver Bullet.

In many areas of IT, the long-term solution is a simple one: Adopt the single right methodology, hire the right consultant, buy the most appropriate product. But your IT staff wants you to understand that spam isn't a problem that can be solved with a single technology, a single product or any one answer.

Vendors of spam-fighting hardware and software will tell you different—but they're wrong. Bill Cole, senior technical specialist at T-Systems North America, has been fighting spam for more than a decade. Everyone involved in that fight, he says, dreams of the "Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem." But, he cautions, people who yearn for a single answer may fall prey to a vendor's magical "answer," but "in a year or so, the magic is gone and the spammers have adapted." Then, he notes, "managers get upset, a new 'solution' gets deployed, and the cycle goes around again."

Brad Knowles, a consultant, author, and former senior Internet mail systems administrator for AOL, adds, "In almost all cases, the so-called 'simple' answers are the ones that don't work. In fact, they're almost always the ones that make the problem much worse than it already was. Since we've been fighting spam for over a decade, pretty much all the good simple ideas have already been thought of and implemented, and the spammers have already worked around them."

Unfortunately, the result is that fighting spam is a complex endeavor. Says Knowles, "You're probably going to have to use multiple solutions from multiple sources. You're going to have to keep a constant eye on things to make sure that, when they blow up, you find out as quickly as possible. And you [need] multiple layers of business continuity plans in place to handle the situation."

3. It's a Continuous Battle. Budget Accordingly.

Spammers succeed only when they get messages to user inboxes, so they are motivated to counter any barrier between them and their intended recipient. As a result, your IT department will never be done implementing solutions.

Points out David Linn, computer systems analyst III at Vanderbilt, "Spam pushers update their tools as fast as the spam defenders work out a defense to yesterday's attack type. This seems to be the thing that those who want to buy an off-the-shelf solution and then forget about it least understand and least want to understand. The very speed of innovation that makes 'Internet time' so attractive in other contexts is the enemy here."

Cole describes spam as mail that evolves and adapts and thus requires an adaptive and evolutionary approach to defense. Spam cannot be handled as a discrete project with a list of deliverables and a three-month project plan. While you may initially have success by doing so, he says, "Expect to repeat the exercise again next year, and the year after that, and on infinitely."

This is a major nuisance to managers, because they have to pay a staff of high-skill people (either directly or indirectly) for ongoing open-ended work. As Cole notes, "Like many other areas of security, it is a potential bottomless pit for computing resources and the best technical staff and hence for money, so drawing the lines on it are a managerial challenge."

Martin Schuster, in charge of IT at CenterPoint, argues the business case for spam defense by extending spam fighting past technical and ethical issues (such as, say, forcing everyone to use PNG instead of GIF, not use special characters in file names, and so on). Schuster focuses on the financial cost and motivations, from the cost of sending spam to the cost of removing it (from infrastructure to manually deleting messages). He comments, "Fighting spam costs money. If your mail server administrator talks to you about fighting spam, and wants equipment and time to implement it, listen to him. His haircut may seem weird, but he's talking about saving money."

Adam Moskowitz, a Boston-area independent consultant and author of Budgeting for Sysadmins, says, "If a sysadmin can't show that fighting spam is costing the company money, then that sysadmin has no business talking to management about the problem. If the sysadmin doesn't understand and can't demonstrate how fighting spam affects the company's bottom line, upper management certainly isn't going to be able to make the connection."

Does all this seem insurmountable, given your company's resources? If you aren't willing or able to manage the e-mail and spam measures yourself, outsource it. Plenty of hosted e-mail service providers can handle part or all of a company's e-mail system. According to Limoncelli, "The spam system has to be upgraded constantly. This can fill an entire full-time position. If you don't have that kind of staffing, the best solution is to let someone else handle it."

4. Understand the Basics of E-mail Technology.

Administrator Micheal Espinola Jr. says his primary wish is for "top management to understand the mechanics of how e-mail works. Then, and I believe only then, would they be able to grasp the concepts that elude most users of e-mail." When management has the right information, Espinola believes, it can make excellent decisions, but a lack of understanding can severely hinder that ability. "If the admin is wasting time troubleshooting or improvising because of subpar technology, it takes away from time spent for the productivity issues of others."

This doesn't mean you have to become a guru on the subject; just learn enough to understand what your e-mail administrator is telling you. Michael Silver, network administrator at Parkland Regional Library, emphasizes, "A great deal of difficulty arises when trying to address spam—and e-mail problems in general—if the people involved don't have a good understanding of how the mail system works, including a basic understanding of the different protocols, services, etc. I don't expect [CIOs] to know the ins and outs of configuring sendmail, but [they] should have a basic understanding of terms like POP, SMTP, IMAP, MTA and MUA." Added an admin named Eric, "If the CIO knows and understands the mechanisms of how e-mail is received and sent, then explaining the need for additional servers, bandwidth, storage, redundancy, etc., is accomplished much more easily. ... Once you understand that, you get a very good insight in the shortcomings of the SMTP protocol and how/why spam is becoming such a huge problem and cost nightmare."

While most admins want you to understand e-mail basics to make it easier to explain corporate challenges, sometimes it gets personal. Larry Ware, Federal Signal Global Network Boffin, is frustrated by managers who don't understand how the technology works. "They spent some money for some software; why is spam still getting in? Even worse: Why did the system block mail from my nephew? He is running a mail server on his cable modem; he clearly knows how to set up a mail system, why can't you? Explaining why his nephew's mail server is in dozens of public blocking lists for being a spam cannon is a lot harder than you might think. How do you do it without implying his nephew is an idiot?"

Another side effect of the lax understanding of e-mail technology is that the entire system is misused, with spam only one tiny part. Stewart Dean, a Unix system admin at Bard College, says, "The result is users who regard e-mail as a sort of problematic tool that might as well be magic. Not understanding it, they bang on it and misuse it in the most preposterous ways." According to Dean, that's why your e-mail admin screams when users attach a 200MB file to a mail message without knowing that it was 200MB or even what 200MB means. Then those same users wonder why it doesn't go through. Worse, they then repeatedly resend the message. Finally, Dean says, "they get furious at IT that the goddamn magic isn't working."

5. People are Making Money on Spam. Respond Appropriately.

Most of e-mail administrators' time is spent dealing with technology issues or trying to explain it to you in business terms. But for some, the issue is a larger one: someone else's business model. They want you to understand that spam is sent by an intelligent, adaptable and well-funded enemy. Some admins believe that with corporate budgets and legal resources, it's even possible to fight back.

Brent Jones, network technician at Smarsh Financial Technologies, wants IT management to understand that someone is working very hard to destroy the spam barriers administrators put in place. "There is a large financial incentive [for spammers] to get their spam into your mailbox," he says. "They will fight to get your eyes, and it costs them nothing to try everything in the book."

Nor are spammers ordinary businessmen. Alessandro Vesely, a freelance programmer and service provider in Milano, Italy, points out that "much spam is the result of criminal actions, such as infecting IT systems and using false identities. Technically, spam can be stopped if everybody else wants to be responsible for what they send. What lacks is the political will to do so."

Sam Varshavchik is an independent contract consultant who serves many of the better-known financial firms on Wall Street. He believes strongly that "CIOs should stop giving their business to Internet providers with a bad track record of engaging in spam support services and instead encourage and support—with their budgets—lesser-known but more socially responsible and respected providers of data and Internet service." If CIOs instituted a policy of disqualifying any vendor of Internet, data or communication services that appears anywhere on Spamhaus's top 10 list from doing any business with the company, Varshavchik feels, "the spam problem will pretty much disappear, mostly overnight." Few CIOs who are considering vendors take the time to do so, he says, and those few minutes can save an untold amount of grief.

Perhaps you'll take some of the e-mail admins' advice; perhaps not. But they desperately wish that company management would support them in the endeavor to clean up users' e-mail inboxes. Fritz Borgsted, a system engineer at Unicorn Communications who also leads the development of ASSP (Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy, an open-source project), believes that fighting spam reflects the quality of life in the digital age. Borgsted says, "A mailbox without spam is like a private restroom; with spam, it looks like a public one."

Monday, February 12, 2007

Creating an RSS Reader: the Reader

In this article we are going to discuss how to create a PHP-based RSS reader. It would be helpful if you know something about XML, but not really necessary. RSS documents have three main tags: Title, Link and Description. And they all do exactly what their names suggest. I will go into detail about these tags in my second article dealing with “building an RSS file.” For now, we will only focus on the “reading” part of the article.

A downloadable file is available for this article.

As an extra I will introduce a database aspect of the reader. We will use the database to store and retrieve the latest stories. To continue with this article you will need PHP 4 and higher and optionally MYSQL.

Below is an example text from an RSS document:

Start example text

<item>

<title>First example</title>

<link>www.mylink.com/someplace.html</link>

<description>Some description, blah,blah,blah
</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>Thousands set to attend todays celebration</title>

<link>http://
www.mylink.com/someplace.html /NewsTopStories?m=318</link>

<description>blah,blah,blah </description>

</item>

End example text

Code

To create an RSS Reader in PHP, we need to:

Create a function to read the start tag (start element).

Create a function to read the end tag (endElement).

Create function to read the text associated with the tags.

A typical RSS document will have the following structure:

<RSS>

<channel>

<item>

</item>

</channel>

</RSS>

A start tag is a tag without the “/” character, for example: <items>. An end tag is a tag with the “/” character, for example: </item>.

So the start and end tag functions will search for the “<item></item>” tags and once they have found those, it will be a simple matter of retrieving the text data from them to display.

Now, PHP provides us with several XML-related functions, a few of which we will be using here:

xml_parser_create() – Creates an instance of the xml parser object. Xml_parser_create() is a class. In order to use any class we need to instantiate it, or create a copy of it.

To create a new copy:

$xmlParser = xml_parser_create();

xml_set_element_handler() – Searches and sets the start and end elements(tags). This function sets the start and end tags for the parser. It accepts three parameters:

The parser: references the parser that is calling the handler.

The tagname: contains the name of the element for which the handler is called.

The attributes: an array that contains the element's attributes.

The parameters are used later in this article.

xml_set_character_data_handler() – This handles the text part of the tag elements. This function takes two parameters, the parser and data.

The parser: references the parser that is calling the handler.

The data: contains the character data as a string.

You can get more information about these and other XML functions at:

http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.xml.php

The first thing we do is set the global variables that are going to be used by the functions.

$GLOBALS['titletag'] = false;

$GLOBALS['linktag'] = false;

$GLOBALS['descriptiontag'] = false;

$GLOBALS['thetitletxt'] = null;

$GLOBALS['thelinktxt'] = null;

$GLOBALS['thedesctxt'] = null;

These variables are going to be used to read in tag information from the RSS file that is going to be used with this reader.

The function below deals with the starting element. This function searches through the document to find one of the three tags we discussed earlier:

function startTag( $parser, $tagName, $attrs ) {

switch( $tagName ) {

case 'TITLE':

$GLOBALS['titletag'] = true;

break;

case 'LINK':

$GLOBALS['linktag'] = true;

break;

case 'DESCRIPTION':

$GLOBALS['descriptiontag'] = true;

break;

}

}

This next function deals with the end tag:

function endTag( $parser, $tagName ) {

switch( $tagName ) {

case 'TITLE':

echo "" . $GLOBALS[the'titletxt'] . " ";

$GLOBALS['titletag'] = false;

$GLOBALS['thetitletxt'] = "";

break;

case 'LINK':

echo "Link: <a href="". $GLOBALS['thelinktxt'] . "">" .
$GLOBALS['thelinktxt'] . "</a> ";

$GLOBALS['linktag'] = false;

$GLOBALS['thelinktxt'] = "";

break;

case 'DESCRIPTION':

echo "Desc: " . $GLOBALS['thedesctxt'] . "";

$GLOBALS['descriptiontag'] = false;

$GLOBALS['thedesctxt'] = "";

break;

}

}

This next function verifies the tag that the text belongs to. Once we know which tag it is that we are dealing with, we set the global variable to true.

function txtTag( $parser, $text ) {

if( $GLOBALS['titletag'] == true ) {

$GLOBALS['thetitletxt'] .= htmlspecialchars( trim
($text) );

} else if( $GLOBALS['linktag'] == true ) {

$GLOBALS['thelinktxt'] .= trim( $text );

} else if( $GLOBALS['descriptiontag'] == true ) {

$GLOBALS['thedesctxt'] .= htmlspecialchars( trim
( $text ) );

}

}

Now that we have created the required functions, let's continue with the meat of the code:

function parsefile($RSSfile){

// Create an xml parser

$xmlParser = xml_parser_create();

// Set up element handler

xml_set_element_handler( $xmlParser, "startTag", "endTag" );

// Set up character handler

xml_set_character_data_handler( $xmlParser, "TxtTag" );

// Open connection to RSS XML file for parsing.

$fp = fopen( $RSSfile,"r" )

or die( "Cannot read RSS data file." );

// Parse XML data from RSS file.

while( $data = fread( $fp, 4096 ) ) {

xml_parse( $xmlParser, $data, feof( $fp ) );

or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d",
xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)),
xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));

}

// Close file open handler

fclose( $fp );

// Free xml parser from memory

xml_parser_free( $xmlParser );

}

The above function calls both the startTag/endTag functions to loop through the XML file and displays the contents.

While it is good to have an RSS reader that can read any RSS document, it would be even better if you could store that information in a database and read it at your leisure when you are not connected to the Internet. It would also be good to be able to update your RSS file through the use of the database. It is relatively easy to achieve this, so let's create a table from which we will add our data:

CREATE TABLE `rss_tbl` (

`feed_id` int(5) NOT NULL auto_increment,

`title` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',

`link` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',

`description` text NOT NULL,

`the_date` date NOT NULL default '0000-00-00',

PRIMARY KEY (`feed_id`)

) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

The table will store the individual links as they are read in by the RSS reader. Fill this table with data, using the following format:

Title – the title of your story.

Link – The link to your story.

Description – A short description of your story.

You can then use this data to write to your RSS file :

<?

$fp=fopen(“myrssfile”, “w+”);

if (!$fp){

echo “error opening file”;

exit;

}else{

$query1="Select *,DATE_FORMAT(the_date,'%W,%d %b %Y') as thedate
FROM rss_tbl WHERE DATE_SUB(CURDATE(),INTERVAL 30 DAY) ORDER BY
the_date DESC LIMIT 10 ";

$result=mysql_query($query1);

while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){

fwrite($fp,$row[‘title’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp,$row[‘link’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp,$row[‘description’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp,$row[‘thedate’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp, ” ”);

}//endwhile

fclose($fp);

}//end else

This code does two things. First, it opens (or creates) a file called "myrssfile":

$fp=fopen(“myrssfile”, “w+”);

The "w+" instructs PHP to create the file if it does not exist and to overwrite any contents that it might have. Then it checks to see if there are any problems opening the file:

if (!$fp){

echo “error opening file”;

exit;

If there are problems, the program displays a message and stops execution. If every thing is okay, a SQL query is run that retrieves ten articles from the database that were created in the last thirty days:

$query1="Select *,DATE_FORMAT(the_date,'%W,%d %b %Y') as
thedate FROM rss_tbl WHERE DATE_SUB(CURDATE(),INTERVAL 30 DAY)
ORDER BY the_date DESC LIMIT 10 ";

The DATE_FORMAT() function enables us to format the date column in what ever fashion we like. After this the code writes the database data to the file:

fwrite($fp,$row[‘title’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp,$row[‘link’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp,$row[‘description’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp,$row[‘thedate’]."\r\n");

fwrite($fp, ” ”);

That’s it. A file called "myrssfile" should now be available and contain ten articles from the database. With small changes to the table you can expand the database usage and create an RSS aggregator, which is like a online "newspaper" that is entirely made up of RSS feeds from different websites.

To actually enter the data into the database, you only need to create a form that will take the necessary input values and write them to the table. In one of the articles that I wrote about RSS, I discuss how to create and populate an RSS file through a form. Although in that particular article we transfer data from a form to a file, with some small changes you can transfer the data from a form to a database.

Conclusion

To use this code make sure to include “xmlparser.php” in whatever page you are using. Then just call the “parsefile(“yourRSSfileLocation”)” function and your file data will parsed. Also, you might have noticed that in some news sites, the news headlines are scrolling from right to left on the screen. You can achieve this by using the <marquee> HTML tag; Google it to find out how to use it.

Download the xmlparser.php here. This is the same file we link to at the beginning of this article. Next, I will be discussing how to build a RSS File. Till then have fun.

Intel demonstrates 80-core processor

Now that the Megahertz race has faded into the distance (we hear it was a myth), Intel is well and truly kicking off the start of a multi-core war with the demonstration of an 80-core research processor in San Francisco last week. It's not the first multi-core processor to reach double figures -- a company called ClearSpeed put 96 cores onto one of its CPUs -- but it's the first to be accompanied by the aim of making it generally available; an aim that Intel hopes to realize within a five year timeframe. The long time frame is required because current operating systems and software don't take full advantage of the benefits of multi-core processors. In order for Intel to successfully market processors with CPUs that have more than say, 4 cores, there needs to be an equal effort from software programmers, which is why producing an 80-core processor is only half the battle. On paper, 80-cores sounds impressive, but when the software isn't doing anything imaginative with them it's actually rather disappointing: during a demonstration, Intel could only manage to get 1 Teraflop out of the chip, a figure which many medium- to high-end graphics cards are easily capable of. The multi-core war may have begun, but the battle will be fought with software, although that's not to say that the hardware side has already been won: apparently the test chip is much larger than equivalent chips -- 275 mm squared, versus a typical Core 2 Duo's 143 mm squared -- and Intel currently has no way to hook up memory to the chip. Hopefully half a decade should be long enough to sort out these "issues."

[Thanks, Michael]

8 Things You Must Do If Your Identity Is Stolen

The dreaded phone call comes in: there has been some suspicious activity on your credit card and the bank would like to verify that you were the one spending thousands of dollars online. Shocked and appalled, it strikes you that your identity has been stolen and that you must act quickly to protect yourself from further damage. While the news can be overwhelming at first, and you most likely want to figure out how this even happened to you, there are a few steps you should immediately take to preserve your credit and your hard-earned money.

1) Call one of the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion)* to place a fraud alert on your credit report. It is unnecessary to call all three since the one that you contact will inform the other two agencies in addition to sending you a copy of your credit report for review. A fraud alert is extremely important since it requires companies to verify your identity before issuing a line a credit, thus preventing thieves from opening new accounts under your name.

2) If the perpetrators were able to open new accounts, contact each creditor and notify them of the fraudulent activity. They will close the accounts and most likely have you fill out a fraud affidavit.

3) For those accounts that you opened and are now compromised, contact the creditor and inform them that your identity has been stolen. Not only will they close the accounts, but many will read through the most recent charges to help you determine how long the abuse has been going on and how much has been charged to your name.

4) Contact your local police and alert them to the fraud under your name. A detective will be assigned to your case and ask for details such as where the charges occurred, how much was spent, and how your identity was stolen (internet, lost wallet, etc.). When you are finished providing the detective with all of your information, be sure to write down the detective’s name and the case number since many fraud affidavits will ask for these.

5) File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (the FTC) by calling 1-877-IDTHEFT.

6) Change all of the passwords that you use online. Since the thieves may have acquired your information through one of your password-protected accounts, think of a completely different word and try not to use the same one for all of your accounts. Also, while it may be inconvenient to type your passwords each time you want to log-in, never save your passwords online or on your computer.

7) If you lost your entire wallet or you believe that someone is using your driver’s license, visit the DMV, Secretary of State, etc. as soon as possible to get a new driver’s license number and card. Even if you just renewed your license, you will be required to take a new picture and pay all of the regular fees.

8) KEEP RECORDS!! Throughout your dealings with creditors, companies, and detectives, always write down the name of the individual you spoke with, their employer, the date and time, and a short summary of your discussion. Keep all of this information in a centralized location and make sure that it is in a safe place since it can be used as evidence in your case. While you may be more diligent at the beginning, important information may come to light later so be sure to track everything until all of your disputes are resolved.

Identity theft doesn’t have to ruin your life or your credit. By staying calm, getting organized, and taking these crucial steps, you can bounce back from this stressful situation and stop thieves dead in their tracks.

RUN Command

NAMA UTILITY - PERINTAH/COMMAND

Accessibility Controls - access.cpl
Add Hardware Wizard - hdwwiz.cpl
Add/Remove Programs - appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools - control admintools
Automatic Updates - wuaucpl.cpl
Bluetooth Transfer Wizard - fsquirt
Calculator - calc
Certificate Manager - certmgr.msc
Character Map - charmap
Check Disk Utility - chkdsk
Clipboard Viewer - clipbrd
Command Prompt - cmd
Component Services - dcomcnfg
Computer Management - compmgmt.msc
Date and Time Properties - timedate.cpl
DDE Shares - ddeshare
Device Manager - devmgmt.msc
Direct X Control Panel (If Installed)* - directx.cpl
Direct X Troubleshooter - dxdiag
Disk Cleanup Utility - cleanmgr
Disk Defragment - dfrg.msc
Disk Management - diskmgmt.msc
Disk Partition Manager - diskpart
Display Properties - control desktop
Display Properties - desk.cpl
Display Properties (w/Appearance Tab Preselected) - control color
Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility - drwtsn32
Driver Verifier Utility - verifier
Event Viewer - eventvwr.msc
File Signature Verification Tool - sigverif
Findfast - findfast.cpl
Folders Properties - control folders
Fonts - control fonts
Fonts Folder - fonts
Free Cell Card Game - freecell
Game Controllers - joy.cpl
Group Policy Editor (XP Prof) - gpedit.msc
Hearts Card Game - mshearts
Iexpress Wizard - iexpress
Indexing Service - ciadv.msc
Internet Properties - inetcpl.cpl
IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration) - ipconfig /all
IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents) - ipconfig /displaydns
IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents) - ipconfig /flushdns
IP Configuration (Release All Connections) - ipconfig /release
IP Configuration (Renew All Connections) - ipconfig /renew
IP Configuration (Refreshes DHCP & Re - Registers DNS) - ipconfig /registerdns
IP Configuration (Display DHCP Class ID) - ipconfig /showclassid
IP Configuration (Modifies DHCP Class ID) - ipconfig /setclassid
Java Control Panel (If Installed) - jpicpl32.cpl
Java Control Panel (If Installed) - javaws
Keyboard Properties - control keyboard
Local Security Settings - secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups - lusrmgr.msc
Logs You Out Of Windows - logoff
Microsoft Chat - winchat
Minesweeper Game - winmine
Mouse Properties - control mouse
Mouse Properties - main.cpl
Network Connections - control netconnections
Network Connections - ncpa.cpl
Network Setup Wizard - netsetup.cpl
Notepad - notepad
Nview Desktop Manager (If Installed) - nvtuicpl.cpl
Object Packager - packager
ODBC Data Source Administrator - odbccp32.cpl
On Screen Keyboard - osk
Opens AC3 Filter (If Installed) - ac3filter.cpl
Password Properties - password.cpl
Performance Monitor - perfmon.msc
Performance Monitor - perfmon
Phone and Modem Options - telephon.cpl
Power Configuration - powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes - control printers
Printers Folder - printers
Private Character Editor - eudcedit
Quicktime (If Installed) - QuickTime.cpl
Regional Settings - intl.cpl
Registry Editor - regedit
Registry Editor - regedit32
Remote Desktop - mstsc
Removable Storage - ntmsmgr.msc
Removable Storage Operator Requests - ntmsoprq.msc
Resultant Set of Policy (XP Prof) - rsop.msc
Scanners and Cameras - sticpl.cpl
Scheduled Tasks - control schedtasks
Security Center - wscui.cpl
Services - services.msc
Shared Folders - fsmgmt.msc
Shuts Down Windows - shutdown
Sounds and Audio - mmsys.cpl
Spider Solitare Card Game - spider
SQL Client Configuration - cliconfg
System Configuration Editor - sysedit
System Configuration Utility - msconfig
System File Checker Utility (Scan Immediately) - sfc /scannow
System File Checker Utility (Scan Once At Next Boot) - sfc /scanonce
System File Checker Utility (Scan On Every Boot) - sfc /scanboot
System File Checker Utility (Return to Default Setting) - sfc /revert
System File Checker Utility (Purge File Cache) - sfc /purgecache
System File Checker Utility (Set Cache Size to size x) - sfc /cachesize=x
System Properties - sysdm.cpl
Task Manager - taskmgr
Telnet Client - telnet
User Account Management - nusrmgr.cpl
Utility Manager - utilman
Windows Firewall - firewall.cpl
Windows Magnifier - magnify
Windows Management Infrastructure - wmimgmt.msc
Windows System Security Tool - syskey
Windows Update Launches - wupdmgr
Windows XP Tour Wizard - tourstart
Wordpad - write

Article by :

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U.S. cyber counterattack: Bomb 'em one way or the other

National Cyber Response Coordination Group establishing proper response to cyberattacks

By Ellen Messmer, Network World, 02/08/07

San Francisco — If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nation’s critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source.

The primary group responsible for analyzing the need for any cyber counterstrike is the National Cyber Response Coordination Group (NCRCG). The three key members of the NCRCG, who hail from the US-CERT computer-readiness team, the Department of Justice and the Defense Department, this week described how they would seek to coordinate a national response in the event of a major cyber-event from a known attacker.

This week’s massive but unsuccessful denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the Internet’s root DNS, which targeted military and other networks, did not rise to the level of requiring response, but made the possibility of a massive Internet collapse more real than theoretical. Had the attack been successful there may have been a cyber counterstrike from the United States, said Mark Hall, director of the international information assurance program for the Defense Department and the Defense Department co-chair to the NCRCG, who spoke on the topic of cyber-response during the RSA Conference here.

“We have to be able to respond,” Hall said. “We need to be in a coordinated response.”

He noted that the Defense Department networks, subject to millions of probes each day, has “the biggest target on its back.”

But a smooth cyber-response remains a work in progress. The NCRCG’s three co-chairs acknowledge it’s not simple coordinating communications and information-gathering across government and industry even in the best of circumstances, much less if a significant portion of the Internet or traditional voice communications were suddenly struck down. But they asserted the NCRCG is “ready to stand up” to confront a catastrophic cyber-event to defend the country.

“We’re working with key vendors to bring the right talent together for a mitigation strategy,” said Jerry Dixon, deputy director for operations for the National Cyber Security Division at US-CERT. “We recognize much infrastructure is operated by the private sector.” The U.S. government has conducted cyber war games in its CyberStorm exercise last year and is planning a second one.

Computer Software and Services Trends

--Downsizing: Distributed computing with client/server solutions
is most common in corporate IT, in conjunction with keeping the
economical functions of the mainframe environment, preferably
with identical GUIs and operation procedures. Major suppliers
catering to this trend are Novell; NSC Group (Legacy Downsizing);
Downsizing Systems; Suite Software; Fenger + Graetzer.

--Client/Server Solutions: This trend combines equipment from
different manufacturers, performance classes, and applications in
a network with the server managing data transaction, and the
client handling the presentation and local application
processing. As a result of the trend toward distributed
networking, standard software products must be able to run on
various platforms and in a variety of network configurations.
Thus, suppliers of utilities/tools software can create new
features and functions to allow the end-user to utilize the
expanded application areas. Major suppliers to this segment are:
Oracle; Novell; ACI; dc soft; CAI; CA; WIN!; Wilken; Onmis
Software.

-- Outsourcing: Outsourcing of software and IT services is
becoming more and more popular in medium-sized and even smaller
firms who engage specialist teams for specialist IT tasks such as
web server operation and maintenance. This trend should allow
U.S. software suppliers to find profitable niches, although these
clients usually prefer the "outsource" to be "in-country. " Major
outsourcing software suppliers in Germany are: AC Service; IIS
Infotech; IBM; SBS; SAP; Debis, and J.D. Edwards.

--Integrated Standard Software: Competition in the standard
packaged software segment has become harder over the past two to
three years. As a result, prices have decidedly dropped and this
pressure is expected to continue. Thus, the trend is away from
standard software and toward a component software product; still,
it does remain a receptive market for standard software
products which are priced competitively, especially business
application products and enterprise resource planning (ERP)
systems. Important suppliers in this segment are: SAP; Baan;
SSA; JDE; JBA; CA; PeopleSoft; Oracle.

--Implementation of MIS (Management Information Systems): A large
number of corporations have meanwhile installed data warehouses.
In order to fully achieve a competitive advantage, experts
recommend a combination of data warehousing with "data mining,"
the latest in "intelligent" data management, which combines
statistical with artificial intelligence functions to detect
patterns and trends in an otherwise fully automated data
analysis. Data mining tools can perform classifications and
segmentation resulting in large cost-savings and are used in
determining future customer behavior or structuring a complex
target group. MIS processes encompass everything from statistical
methods to expert systems to fuzzy logic to neuro-networks. Major
suppliers to this trend are: Angoss; Datamind; IBM; ISL; Isoft;
NeoVista; Pilot; SAS; Silicon Graphics; SPSS; Syllogic; Thinking
Machines; Informix; NCR; Oracle; and Xsys. Major local suppliers
are: Bissantz; Kueppers and Co.; Business Objects; and Cognos.

--Business Reengineering: Software supporting process-oriented
taskings such as identifying core operations; intensifying
customer orientation; improving the information flow; shortening
processing time; precisely allocating processing costs; and
reducing delivery times and amount of stored goods, will continue
to meet high demand in. Suppliers of respective software
tools are: Aeneis; Aris; Bonapart; BPWin; ERWin; Logichain;
Moogo; Proplan; and Sycat.