Trio Convicted Of Ripping Off Microsoft Sentenced To Prison

Trio Convicted Of Ripping Off Microsoft Sentenced To Prison

Three people convicted of scamming Microsoft Corp. out of millions by buying sharply discounted software intended for schools and reselling it to nonacademic customers were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Federal prosecutors said Mirza Ali, 60, and his wife, Sameena Ali, 52, orchestrated the scheme that illegally exploited a Microsoft program that let companies buy its products cheaply if they were to be resold exclusively to educational institutions.

Story can be found at www.ktvu.com.

Free Chapter: Cisco IOS IP Accounting Features

Free Chapter: Cisco IOS IP Accounting Features

IP Accounting is a very useful accounting feature in Cisco IOS, but it’s not as well known as other features, such as NetFlow. The fact that Cisco has considered replacing IP Accounting by adding new features to NetFlow potentially turns IP Accounting into a corner case solution. However, compared to NetFlow, IP Accounting offers some advantages that make it an interesting feature to investigate: easy results retrieval via a MIB and limited resource consumption. Furthermore, access-list accounting currently cannot be solved with the NetFlow implementation. Note that NetFlow recently added the export of the MAC address as a new information element. Refer to coverage of NetFlow Layer 2 and the Security Monitoring Exports feature in Chapter 7, “NetFlow.”

Read the rest and download the free chapter at CiscoPress.com.

Microsoft buys £120m stake in Facebook

Microsoft buys £120m stake in Facebook

Software giant Microsoft is investing around £120 million for a 1.6 per cent stake in the social networking website Facebook.

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will be the exclusive advertising platform for Facebook which has nearly 50 million registered users.

To see the whole news article, click here.

-ken

Microsoft Certified Application Specialist Exam Free Retake Promotion

Microsoft Certified Application Specialist Exam Free Retake Promotion

Microsoft and Certiport are offering free exam retakes for select Microsoft Certified Application Specialist exams through the end of the year, with the Microsoft Certified Application Specialist Exam Free Retake Promotion. See details below.

This offer is only available to Certiport Testing Centers. If you are a test candidate please visit the Certiport Testing Center Locator to find a participating testing center near you to take advantage of the Microsoft Application Specialist Certification Exam Free Retake Promotion.

Exams covered by this Free Retake Promotion:

Using Microsoft Office Word 2007
Using Microsoft Office Excel® 2007
Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007
Using Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007
Using Microsoft Office...

No skills shortage just poor recruitment practices

No skills shortage just poor recruitment practices

An undesirable side effect of the buoyant market for IT staff appears to be that the largest employers of IT skills are artificially inflating rates and creating an environment where the best candidates are unable to access the best jobs.

The primary reason a situation like this has been allowed to develop more or less unnoticed is due in no small part to the industry predilection towards blaming a 'skills shortage' for any fluctuation in the market.

To read the whole article, see here.

So, whose to blame? IMO, recruitment companies that go thru your CV with a check box sheet then send their candiate in, in order so that they get their commission

-ken

Tesco sell computers with Ubuntu pre-installed - Linux on the up?

Tesco sell computers with Ubuntu pre-installed - Linux on the up?

Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, has started selling entry level PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed. Could this brave move give Linux based operating systems a much needed boost in the UK? Tesco is the world's third largest grocery retailer, and also sells everything from clothes to electrical equipment. In their latest Tesco Direct online catalogue they have a selection of personal computers on offer. The top range of course offers the ubiquitous Windows Vista as the inbuilt operating system. The mid range towers on offer still have Windows XP built in. It's actually the two lowest priced machines on offer which have Ubuntu pre-installed.

Story found at tech.blorge.com.

New e-book: Integrate Oracle and SQL Server

New e-book: Integrate Oracle and SQL Server

The amount of data generated and retained by the typical enterprise is growing exponentially, with terabyte-sized databases becoming increasingly common and data sources becoming more diverse. New versions of database management systems (DBMSs) come out every two or three years, and complex new data types, company mergers, globalization and regulatory compliance only add to the proliferation of independent data silos. This e-book from SearchOracle.com provides an overview of the data integration features in two leading DBMSs, Oracle and SQL Server. It offers an expert's take on the market and technology and describes emerging integration trends such as data as a service.

Read more and download the free e-book from SearchSQLServer.com.

Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat

Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat

Details: Malicious content inserted into a file, such as a document, could trigger a buffer overflow if the file is distilled to PDF with Adobe Acrobat. A buffer overflow can cause Acrobat to crash and can result in malicious code execution.

Full Details, and details on patch, [url="http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb06-09.html]Here[/url]

(Wouldnt normally post this, but everyone has PDF stuff - and its not often that Adobe Reader presents security flaws)

JSON in ASP.NET Ajax: First words

JSON in ASP.NET Ajax: First words

If you are a web developer, and you haven't been living under a rock for most of the past year, you must at least have heard of JSON. In the wake of the tremendous hype relating to everything even vaguely AJAX-related, JSON has climbed in record time the list of the top 10 technologies a web developer has to master. Let's make it clear from the start: JSON does deserve a top spot in such a list, if nothing else because it's the skeleton that keeps the whole AJAX paradigm on its feet. Even more so for us .NET programmers. In fact, we'd be more accurate if we called it AJAJ, although I agree that would feel quite stupid. As a matter of fact, when using ASP.NET AJAX, most of the communication between client and server is serialized in JSON format rather than XML, at least when using the default settings. And there's good reason for that.

Have a look at the rest of this blog at...

Windows Live developer platform services Source code free to download

Windows Live developer platform services: Source code free to download

In order to highlight the features of the Windows Live developer platform services we have developed a number of social networking sites featuring Windows Live, Hotmail and Messenger contacts data, Silverlight Streaming, Windows Live Spaces, Virtual Earth mapping, Windows Live Search, gadgets, authentication and much more.

So why not download free the source code! Once you have this you will also be able to build your own site
quickly and easily and choose which Windows Live elements you would like to feature.

See here for the MS Site.

-Ken

Is this another step in Microsoft's plan for open source software?