Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Searching Blogs - compared
I found this link on Mary Hodder's blog, which I found here. It's interesting to note that no major search engine (Google, Msn Search, or Yahoo) currently supports real-time or near-real-time searches of blogs.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Intel on multi-core processing
this article found on Intel website outlines their view on multi-core processors.
I totally agree with first 'take-away':
"For software executives, the first priority is to make sure your applications effectively take advantage of parallel proccessing capabilities of the multicore processors"
and mostly agree with the second:
"For enterprise IT management, multicore capabilities present major opportunities to lower the cost of computing through server consolidation"
Intel predicts that by the end of '06, expected run rate of dual-core CPUs on the desktop would exceed 70%, and hit 85% on servers.
Those suggestions are compatible with my suggestions in my MSDN Magazine article on hyperthreading, only more so - while hyperthreading has shown a modest performance boost, multi-core shows a greater persformance boost. This strengthens the position that future software performance boosts will depend on being able to write scalable multi-threaded applications.
I totally agree with first 'take-away':
"For software executives, the first priority is to make sure your applications effectively take advantage of parallel proccessing capabilities of the multicore processors"
and mostly agree with the second:
"For enterprise IT management, multicore capabilities present major opportunities to lower the cost of computing through server consolidation"
Intel predicts that by the end of '06, expected run rate of dual-core CPUs on the desktop would exceed 70%, and hit 85% on servers.
Those suggestions are compatible with my suggestions in my MSDN Magazine article on hyperthreading, only more so - while hyperthreading has shown a modest performance boost, multi-core shows a greater persformance boost. This strengthens the position that future software performance boosts will depend on being able to write scalable multi-threaded applications.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Microsoft Certification upcoming changes
According to this article and other sources, the current Microsoft certifications, such as MCSD, MCSE, an MCDBA, will be retired (or at least no longer offered) around September.
They will be replaced with 3 levels of certification:
Tier 1: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
Tier 2: Microsoft Certified IT Professional & Professional Developer
Recertification will be required to maintain status at this level.
Tier 3: Microsoft Certified Architect
A board-level certification that requires recertification.
Additional blog post on the subject is on here.
As I post, the Microsoft certification page does not specify that any certifications are being discontinued, so the official story is not available.
They will be replaced with 3 levels of certification:
Tier 1: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
Tier 2: Microsoft Certified IT Professional & Professional Developer
Recertification will be required to maintain status at this level.
Tier 3: Microsoft Certified Architect
A board-level certification that requires recertification.
Additional blog post on the subject is on here.
As I post, the Microsoft certification page does not specify that any certifications are being discontinued, so the official story is not available.
Monday, July 18, 2005
SHA-1 break paper available
Recently, a paper by Xiaoyun Wang et al describes how collusions can be found on the common hashing technique SHA-1.
"In this paper, we present new collusion search attack on SHA-1".
This cryptographic volnurability has some far reaching implications as to the security of encryption systems.
For example, since digital signatures normally signs the hash of a document, an attacker might be able to forge a signature on a Word .DOC file - by taking a legitimate document D and modifying it (by adding spaces, changing file format, etc) to have a hash signature of another document.
As most cryptographic issues, there may or may not be an immediate issue, and solutions will have to be provided by cryptographic libraries providers. But it is a fascinating read - assumptions we made out-of-hand just years ago keep getting proven wrong. There's a lesson in it somewhere, if only I could find it.
Tags: software cryptography
"In this paper, we present new collusion search attack on SHA-1".
This cryptographic volnurability has some far reaching implications as to the security of encryption systems.
For example, since digital signatures normally signs the hash of a document, an attacker might be able to forge a signature on a Word .DOC file - by taking a legitimate document D and modifying it (by adding spaces, changing file format, etc) to have a hash signature of another document.
As most cryptographic issues, there may or may not be an immediate issue, and solutions will have to be provided by cryptographic libraries providers. But it is a fascinating read - assumptions we made out-of-hand just years ago keep getting proven wrong. There's a lesson in it somewhere, if only I could find it.
Tags: software cryptography
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Wardriving illegal?
this CNN.com article discusses how a man was charged with stealing Wi-Fi signal. AFAIK, this is the first time anyone is prosecuted for that. But totally insecure Wi-Fi networks are still a big percentage of home WiFi networks - even tho' securing them (to some degree, at least - even by specifying acceptable MAC addresses) is nearly trivial.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Indigo patents not a barrier to interoperability
This article states:
Microsoft said its willingness to file patents on its planned Indigo Web-services technology will not affect the software’s ability to interoperate with other vendors’ software.
Interesting read, but not that much meat in the article.
Microsoft said its willingness to file patents on its planned Indigo Web-services technology will not affect the software’s ability to interoperate with other vendors’ software.
Interesting read, but not that much meat in the article.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
AMD vs Intel
Mary Jo Foley writes on the AMD vs Intel antitrust case.
Great read, although I don't always agree with Mary's perspective on the industry.
Great read, although I don't always agree with Mary's perspective on the industry.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
I will be contibuting to an Indigo Book
...With Scott Seely and Brian Nantz - read more about it here
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Privacy: Data for sale in Russia
as discussed on Schneier 's blog, information such as "database of vehicles registered in the Moscow region" is available for easy sale. I tis just too easy to steal and sell PII these days.
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