Your Favorite Offer Is Back: Get a Free Second Shot on Your Exam (Worldwide)

Your Favorite Offer Is Back: Get a Free Second Shot on Your Exam (Worldwide)

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Microsoft's Second Shot offer, which gives you a free second chance to pass your IT professional, developer, or Microsoft Dynamics exam, is available again to help you show off your industry-leading IT skills with less stress. Second Shot helps you get certified..[/FONT]

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(Microsoft) Performance-Based Testing Flies Into Pilot Phase

(Microsoft) Performance-Based Testing Flies Into Pilot Phase

Microsoft offers up version of exam that tests new performance-based questions covering Active Directory implementation with Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft turns performance-based testing up a notch with twist: an exam with question types that you answer by working within an emulated environment. According to a blog post from Microsoft Learning marketing communications team member Trika Harms zum Spreckel that provides loads of detail on the new performance-based tests, the new exam type differs from simulations in that the environment that you're being tested on is a working environment, and the task you're asked to perform may be done using several different paths, rather than a prescribed or recommendeded route that's often hard-coded into a simulation.

Read the story here.

-Ken

Security Woes Up, as PHP and OSS Make the List

Security Woes Up, as PHP and OSS Make the List

Software vulnerabilities are up this year, especially Web browser-based ones, according to a new report from IBM Internet Security Systems. The X-Force 2008 Mid-Year Trend Statistics Report, released in late July, defined the problem broadly. A vulnerability is anything that results "in a weakening or breakdown of the confidentiality, integrity, or accessibility of the computing system."

Topping the list of companies reporting the most vulnerabilities were such tech mainstays as IBM, Microsoft, Apple and Cisco Systems. Microsoft had the third most reported vulnerabilities. However, an interesting dimension to this year's report is that open source software (OSS) or free software groups, such as Mozilla's Firefox, WordPress and Joomla, also made the list of programs with security holes in them.

Read the whole story here.

-Ken

Intel takes aim at Nvidia, AMD’s ATI

Intel takes aim at Nvidia, AMD’s ATI

Intel is wading into the graphics chip market and its wake could roil Nvidia and AMD’s ATI.

On Monday, Intel is disclosing details (Techmeme) about Larrabee, a chip that will have stand alone graphics processing and aim for the gaming market. While Nvidia and AMD will poke holes in Larrabee the effort may miss the point. Intel can ruin pricing and squeeze its counterparts by just revealing its hand. Larrabee will land in 2009 or 2010.

Read the whole story here.

-Ken

CWNP Announces Update to Industry Standard CWNA Exam

CWNP Announces Update to Industry Standard CWNA Exam

New Technologies to be tested will include Single Channel Architecture and 802.11n
ATLANTA, Georgia - August 5, 2008 - CWNP, the industry standard for wireless LAN training and certification announces an update to the CWNA exam.

Launched in July of 2001, the CWNA exam is now in its 4th revision. IT professionals from over 120 countries are CWNA certified. Version 4 of the CWNA exam will incorporate two new major technological advances to enterprise 802.11 deployment: Single Channel Architecture (SCA) and 802.11n.

The new CWNA exam will be available at all Prometric and VUE testing centers worldwide on November 3, 2008. The new exam number will be PW0-104. With the release of the of the new exam PWO-104, exam number PW0-100 will no longer be available as of close of business on November 2, 2008.

To read the whole thing, see here....

ITCH seeks volunteers

ITCH seeks volunteers

IT Can Help (ITCH), which assists disabled people with computer technology problems, is looking for volunteers to join them in the Midlands region.

Charles Etchells, ITCH area organiser for the Central West region explains: 'Our volunteer teams in the central belt cover nine counties each with a county co-ordinator role. I'm currently recruiting three volunteer co-ordinators to cover Staffordshire, Worcester and Derbyshire.'

The job involves promoting the services of IT Can Help to the community in the area, supporting existing volunteers and recruiting new ones when needed, and most importantly acting as the local contact for the group and receiving requests for help from disabled people and then allocating the requests to the most appropriate volunteer in the area.

To read the whole article, see here.

So if you want to gain useful experience for that first...

Vista SP1 won't install on dual-boot systems: Microsoft

Vista SP1 won't install on dual-boot systems: Microsoft

Are you currently running Windows and Linux in a dual-boot setup? You're going to have major headaches with Vista SP1, Microsoft has admitted.

If you’re dualbooting Windows Vista Enterprise or Ultimate alongside a Linux distro, and have installed the Linux bootloader into the MBR, then you’re guaranteed to run into problems when installing Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft has admitted.

The service pack has a couple of prerequisite updates and one of them, KB935509, contains an update to the Windows Vista bootloader. However, this bootloader is often replaced by open source bootloaders like Grub when installing Linux onto a system.

Microsoft has excused itself by saying Vista SP1 contains an update to the BitLocker feature, and replacing the bootloader is a necessary prerequisite just in case the system being serviced contains a drive encrypted with BitLocker or worse, an...

DNS Attack writer a victim of his own creation

DNS Attack writer a victim of his own creation

HD Moore has been owned. That's hacker talk, meaning that Moore, the creator of the popular Metasploit hacking toolkit, has become the victim of a computer attack.

It happened on Tuesday morning, when Moore's company, BreakingPoint, had some of its Internet traffic redirected to a fake Google page that was being run by a scammer. According to Moore, the hacker was able to do this by launching what's known as a cache poisoning attack on a DNS server on AT&T's network that was serving the Austin, Texas, area. One of BreakingPoint's servers was forwarding DNS traffic to the AT&T server, so when it was compromised, so was HD Moore's company.

When Moore tried to visit Google.com, he was actually redirected to a fake page that served up a Google page in one HTML frame along with three other pages designed to automatically click on advertisements.

To read the whole article, see...

Microsoft prepares for end of Windows with Midori

Microsoft prepares for end of Windows with Midori

With the Internet increasingly taking on the role of the PC operating system and the growing prevalence of virtualization technologies, there will be a day when the Microsoft Windows client OS as it's been developed for the past 20-odd years becomes obsolete.

Microsoft seems to be preparing for that day with an incubation project code-named Midori, which seeks to create a componentized, non-Windows OS that will take advantage of technologies not available when Windows first was conceived, according to published reports.

Although Microsoft won't comment publicly on what Midori is, the company has confirmed that it exists. Several reports -- the most comprehensive to date published on...

Microsoft's Open source Guru faces slings & Arrows

Microsoft's Open source Guru faces slings & Arrows

Microsoft's Sam Ramji is like a turkey knocking on Thanksgiving's door. Ramji has the unenviable task of stretching his neck out into the open source world as Microsoft's representative. And on top of it, his employer has preheated the oven with years of hubris, sleights of hand and broken promises.

Ramji's Sisyphean task was evident last week in Portland at the Open Source Conference (OSCon) and will likely be fuel for chatter at next week's LinuxWorld gathering in San Francisco. (Disclosure: Network World's parent company IDG sponsors LinuxWorld.)

In Portland, Ramji, who runs the Open Source Software Lab for Microsoft and is the company's director of open source technology strategy, gave a 15-minute presentation highlighting Microsoft's work with open source, the company's first code submission ever to the PHP community and a $100,000 investment to become one of only three Platinum...