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Infosys Is Microsoft’s Tech Helper
Apr 13th
Infosys, a big outsourcing company based in India, got a nice win on Tuesday, grabbing a three-year contract to handle all the technology services and support for Microsoft itself.
The announcement prompts two lines of thought.
First, can’t Microsoft get its own technology to work by itself?
Second, the contract may say something about Microsoft’s More >
Windows 7 Less Vulnerable Without Admin Rights
Mar 29th
Taking away the administrative rights from Microsoft Windows 7 users will lessen the risk posed by 90% of the critical Windows 7 vulnerabilities reported to date and 100% of the Microsoft Office vulnerabilities reported last year.
It will also mitigate the risk of 94% of vulnerabilities reported in all versions of Internet More >
China censorship leaks outside Great Firewall via root server
Mar 25th
On Wednesday, someone from the Chilean domain registry .cl noticed that one of the DNS root servers was responding in a very strange way to queries for domain names like facebook.com, youtube.com, and twitter.com. Normally, root servers only provide a pointer to the correct set of Top Level Domain servers—in this More >
Google’s Traffic Is Giant, Which Is Why It Should be Your ISP
Mar 17th
Everybody knows Google is one of the net’s big kids, but how big is it exactly?
Well, as Arbor Networks measures it, if Google were an ISP it would be the third largest in the world and the fastest growing — if you are measuring the amount of traffic passed from its network to More >
Associated Bank to Save $115K Per Year on Green Data Centers
Feb 19th
Associated Bank, Green Bay, Wis., has converted its two Wisconsin data centers from air-cooled systems to glycol "free cooling" systems. Focus on Energy, Wisconsin’s statewide resource for energy efficiency and renewable energy, in partnership with Wisconsin Public Service, awarded Associated Bank $116,000 to help get the projects completed.
The new systems allow the More >
Cloud computing and ‘commodity’
Feb 17th
One of my favorite bloggers (and long-time cloud pundit), Simon Wardley, once wrote a short post that clarified the meanings of two words that are key to understanding the value of cloud computing:
I thought I’d just re-iterate the distinction between [two] terms that was first identified by Douglas Rushkoff:-
Commodification (mid to More >
Malware and social network attacks surge in 2009
Feb 17th
Malware-carrying spam and attacks via Twitter and Facebook grew dramatically in the second half 2009, says a report (PDF) released Tuesday by security company M86 Security.
The volume of spam shot up last year to more than 200 billion each day, or 80 percent to 90 percent of all inbound e-mail More >
California Plans Major Data Center Consolidation
Feb 10th
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued an executive order calling for a drastic reduction in the state’s data center footprint and energy consumption and requiring all state agencies to appoint CIOs and information security officers.
The state aims to reduce its data center space by 50% by July 2011 and More >
U.S. broadband speeds rise in 2009
Feb 10th
Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 28 percent last year, while upload speeds increased 16 percent compared with the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday by In-Stat.
The average broadband download speed in the U.S. is now 7.12 megabits per second, while the average upload speed is 2.42Mbps, More >