Recycled Green Tech News
Sorting truly sustainable tech from greenwash
Wednesday 31 October 2007, 11:26 AM
New green site launches today: Smartplanet
It's only a soft-launch, no fan-fares or dancing girls, but the latest website to launch from ZDNet.co.uk's parent company CNET Networks is dedicated to all things green.
It goes by the name of Smartplanet and already has some really interesting content including an interview with environmental guru Jonathan Porritt.
SP: Sure, but in the UK, is it the case that greener living is something only the middle classes can afford and have the time to think about -- or do the middle classes just getter richer as they consume more?
JP: Well, yes, you can think of it like the latter. I've always resisted this notion that environmentalism is a sad elitist middle class phenomenon of Guardian-reading muesli-eating twats. Better-off people can always buy their way out of degraded environments. The people who suffer most from degraded environments are not middle class people -- it's those who are born into or end up in them that are stuck with them.
Porritt is supposed to be green but he's actually quite blue - the interview is littered with profanity - creative profanity but profanity none the less.
Swearing environmentalists (mentalists?) aside - the site is looking great and should provide a lot of useful resources for anyone struggling to make their life-style more sustainable - tune in and check it out.
Monday 29 October 2007, 9:10 AM
Forget the iPhone, the Mac is back
Siliconvalley.com is reporting that Apple's latest quarterly results show that sales of the Mac are up 39.9 percent year on year to 10bn a record sales year.
What is more, sales of the Mac are growing at twice that of the overall PC market. However Apple has still only got a 3 percent slice of the market despite this growth.
It would be nice to think Apple can expand that but then with smart and cheap laptops on the market such as the Asus Eee price as an issue is still a big inhibitor for Apple. Then again a Mac Mini, which is what I have got at home, in less than £400, has no fan, is compatible with PC peripherals via USB, and looks great.
Apple's new star: Mac computer
http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_7285824?nclick_check=1
Tuesday 23 October 2007, 5:02 PM
RSA Europe: How do you justify attending a conference?
Chatting on Tuesday to Tim Pickard, who runs RSA's European conference, about what the business of getting IT people to attend shows, I wondered what is expected on an IT pro in terms of justifying their time at one of these events?
As Pickard pointed out, they can be expensive not just in terms of money for travel, hotels etc but also in terms of time.(RSA Europe is two and half days but the US show is five). As a journalist, my time is hopefully justified in terms of the content I create which tends to be a fair amount and the contacts I make. (At this show, we have actually got four of us here thanks mostly to shooting video which is pretty resource heavy.)
But I have always wondered (maybe I need to get out more) what normal attendees are expected to produce after attending a show I see a lot of you scribbling away and taking notes but how much of this information is converted into a proper report and how much logged away for a rainy day? Or are conferences purely see as part of training and development a perk in some senses with no concrete outcomes expected? I guess I know the answer really which is a combination of both but it would be interesting to get some feedback on how much practical- and I hate to the use the word actionable information results from these events.
Tuesday 23 October 2007, 4:46 PM
RSA Europe: Turn off your wireless modem (unless you're using it that is)
Mooching around the show floor at RSA Conference Europe, on Tuesday, I had an interesting chat with Nicholas Miller, chief executive of a wireless security specialist called AirPatrol. It's a story that they have been pushing for a while now but not one that I have seen spoken about in much depth before.
Most people are aware of the war-driving phenomenon, where armed with some simply hardware, you can find unsecured corporate networks its a story that was splashed all over the place a couple of years ago. Well Miller has moved the story on and has got pretty excited about a different wireless vulnerability - connected not with unsecured networks but unsecured laptops. By simply leaving your wireless modem switch on in a laptop, you could be exposing your company network to attack.
Thanks to the handy feature in Windows that automatically roams on to wireless networks that have been authenticated before say a network called Linksys or Netgear for example hackers can use this as a backdoor into a laptop. Miller showed off a wireless dongle that allows the user to see all the wireless networks in the immediate area and all the wireless laptops that are connected to them but not only that it also shows any laptop which has its wireless laptop switched on.
Hackers can also get hold of similar tools and according to Miller, can simply create a wireless network with the same name as the one the person happens to be connected to. If someone reconnects Windows y mathen automatically roam onto the hacker's network and with some more tinkering a hacker can get access to any shared files on your system pretty easily. A more experience hacker could use this back-door to do more damage, particularly in an organisation that may think it is locked down by not allowing its employees to use wireless but having no policy to prevent them from accidentally turning their wireless modem on.
Unsurprisingly, AirPatrol has come up with a fix for this problem basically a software utility that alerts the user if their wireless modem is on when they are connected to a wired network cable. You'd think that this would be an easy utility that any IT department could create for their users but AirPatrol have actually patented it. They tried to get Microsoft to adopt it for Vista but according to Miller, "Microsoft were more interested in taking things off the list of stuff they were supposed to include in Vista so weren't really interested in me trying to get them to add something else."
When pushed Miller couldn't actually cite an instance of anyone actually using this alleged back door for hacking but he is adamant it exists and is a real threat. I am not sure how much of a threat it is as I usually remember to switch off my modem as it sucks battery for one thing but maybe there a lot of people out there who don't. I am sure there are other solutions to the problem - beyond AirPartrols or simply switching off your modem but it's an interesting yarn nonetheless.
Tuesday 23 October 2007, 11:04 AM
RSA Europe: Microsoft discusses securing applications
It may comes as a surprise to some of you but Microsoft claims to have a very sophisticated system for making sure its products are as secure as they can be before they ship.
Speaking at the RSA Conference Europe event in London's docklands, Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development, Windows, Microsoft, said, "The single biggest thing that has changed at Microsoft is the security development lifecycle how to develop secure software every single product goes through this cycle."
The cycle is made up of the following stages: Requirements, design, implementation, verification, release, response.
The firt stage involves security program managers who examine how a product or feature can be attacked. Does it have APIs that are public does it have web services what are the ways a hacker could use those interfaces?
Microsoft also uses white hat hackers to try and break into the products and find the bugs and fix them before they are released.
Fahi adds: "Last year 300 products that went through this cycle, they go through this process multiple times and if they do not pass then they don't ship. Three products were not released which affected the release cycle but was the right thing to do for our customers"
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