Western Digital’s latest Scorpio SATA hard drive sets a new capacity standard of 250G for the 2.5in form factor.

Designed for use in notebooks and portable storage, the company claims the drive is quieter, cooler and uses less power. The capacity is achieved with two 125G platters using perpendicular magnetic recording technology.

Power consumption and noise levels are reduced by employing head seek algorithms that adjust the speed of the actuator so the head reaches the target position just in time to read or write the data. According to Western Digital officials, this smooth motion reduces power usage by more than 60 percent. Despite this, the average seek time is 12ms with an average latency of 5.5ms

The 5400rpm drive also features an 8M cache. Mechanical improvements further reduce the noise levels while providing excellent shock tolerance to help protect data in mobile applications.

“The WD Scorpio 250G hard drive is a direct result of the significant investments WD has made in proprietary head technologies as well as significant system level feature innovation,” said Jim Morris, vice president and general manager of notebook storage.

The retail price of the 250G Scorpio drive is expected to be $US199.99.

Source: itwire

~LC

A proof of concept macro worm attacking OpenOffice on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux has been received by security software company Sophos but not yet detected in the wild.

The BadBunny worm arrives in an OpenOffice Draw file called badbunny.odg, and attempts to uses different techniques to propagate according to the platform it finds itself on.

“This harks back to the old days of malware when it was written to show off computer prowess,” observed SophosLabs director Mark Harris, but “this particular author seems to have trouble because the sample we received didn’t work… my message to the author is, don’t bother, get a real job, but don’t bother applying to join SophosLabs. In fact judging by the poor quality of what was submitted, I would recommend a completely different career.”

BadBunny uses JavaScript viruses on Windows, Ruby on Mac, and Perl on Linux. It tries to spread to other computers by sending itself via XChat or mIRC file transfers.

This is not a piece of malware which we expect to see spreading in the wild, despite its use of a photograph of unusual wildlife,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

The name comes from a pornographic picture of a man dressed as a rabbit that is downloaded and displayed by the worm.

Source: itwire

~LC

One Laptop Per Child
“It’s an education project, not a laptop project.”

— Nicholas Negroponte

I’ve been keeping an eye on this project for awhile now. When I first heard the idea I thought it was just crazy enough to be great. Some people instantly thought it was simply insane and would never take off.
MIT Professor, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC is working hard to realize his dream of every child in the world owning their own computer.

CBS’s 60 Minutes did a piece on OLPC Sunday night.

Seeing the children with their laptops, exploring a new and exciting world was amazing. I can’t imagine how they feel, seeing things they could never have dreamed of. Some of these children have never seen electricity, let alone a computer.

In countries like Nigeria and Pakistan, 50% of the children do not attend school, there are no schools. Imagine what one of these computers would mean for them.

In order to make this happen, Nicholas knew he would need to find a way to manufacture a very inexpensive laptop.
After 2 years in the making, the first batch of prototypes are out.

Out of necessity, these laptops have become cutting edge technology. They are able to pick up wifi 3 to 4 times better than a $3000 laptop, they are sand and water proof and Nicholas said that when they are done tweaking the battery, it will hold a charge for up to 10/12 hours. The battery can be recharged several ways, 2 of them being by hand, either with a few cranks of a handle or pulls of a cord.

Of course, like any other great idea, competition is now becoming an issue. Intel, among others, is trying to get in on the market. Negropontes says “It’s just – it’s just shameless.” I agree, suddenly the name Intel leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

When asked if these laptops would ever be available commercially, Negroponte’s answer gave me goosebumps and I absolutely LOVE this concept; “Yes, but you’ll have to buy two, one for your child and one for a child in a poor country”

OLPC Links:

CBS OLPC Article

OLPC.org

OLPCNews.com

OLPCWiki

~LC

VectorLinux has been one of my favorite projects since my first test of the distribution almost 18 months ago. I like VectorLinux because its roots are firmly planted in the stability and simplicity of Slackware, yet it comes with an extensive software base and lots of out-of-the-box great looks; in other words, a rock solid foundation with eye candy and useful functionality. While standard VectorLinux comes with the Xfce desktop environment and a variety of general-purpose applications, VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO offers the KDE desktop and a host of applications for small and home office users.

(This is one of the non-Debian based distro’s that I have tried and really liked. Really a slick smooth running distro,Baldy)

Source: VectorLinux SOHO: A better Slackware than Slackware

Ever find yourself with too many passwords to remember and no idea where to keep them so that only you can find the password list? Creating a password.txt file in your root directory is out of the question, as is a password-protected OpenOffice.org…

(This little trick has been around for years. It’s about time people started talking about it,Baldy)

 

Technorati tags: Security, How-to

Source: Four ways to hide information inside image and sound objects