Information and Study Online

Linux growing, Windows declining among Eclipse users

2009-06-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

Ian Skerrett just posted six insights from the Eclipse community survey. They're all very interesting, but Insight No. 1 is really surprising. Ian writes: "Insight #1 – Linux is doing really well at the expense of Windows." Ian bases this on the following data:

It's long been held that developers build applications on Windows regardless of which operating system the (server side) application will be deployed on. This Eclipse data suggests a change might be under way.
It's long been held that developers build applications on Windows regardless of which operating system the (server side) application will be deployed on. This Eclipse data suggests a change might be under way.

Is anyone else surprised that nearly half (27 percent vs. 64 percent) as many Eclipse users build applications on Linux as they do on Windows? Frankly, I've worked with more customers whose developers build applications on Mac OS X than on Linux; emphasis on the word "on" versus "for." Nonetheless, this data should definitely get some attention from folks at Microsoft.

Yes, these results are based on Eclipse users and do not account for the Visual Studio developers who are 100 percent on Windows. But let's say Eclipse and Eclipse-based tooling is used by (as little as?) one-third of all enterprise developers; it's still a large enough audience that Microsoft needs to keep on Windows. Maybe there's work that Microsoft could do to optimize Eclipse for Windows, much like Microsoft has done with PHP and Windows?

More worrisome (to Microsoft) is the fact that Linux has secured the No. 1 position for deployment operating systems among Eclipse users. In related news, Sun Solaris/OpenSolaris fared no better, declining from 8 percent in 2007 to 5.2 percent in 2009. My data analysis spidey senses are tingling. I'd love to have more time with this data! But alas, life calls...

Former MySQL CEO joins cloud management vendor

2009-06-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL, has joined the board of directors of RightScale, which provides cloud computing management, RightScale said on Thursday.

Mickos had been MySQL CEO from 2001 to 2008, when the open source database company was acquired by Sun. He then held the position of senior vice president of the database group at Sun until leaving the company earlier this year.

"I look forward to offering my experience as a member of the RightScale board to help the company maintain and expand its leadership in a rapidly growing market," Mickos said in a statement released by RightScale.

"Marten has proven to be one of the industry's most innovative leaders, and we hope to tap his experience as we aggressively expand RightScale's cloud management offerings to new markets," RightScale CEO Michael Crandell said, also in a statement.

The saga of MySQL recently took an interesting twist, with Sun now in the process of being acquired by commercial database giant Oracle.

Mau Mencari Blogger Satu Kota atau Satu Daerah ? Nih Tipsnya !

2009-05-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

Ada yang kangen teman lama ? atau mungkin mau mencari blog-blog teman ? atau mungkin aja hanya ingin tahu blogger yang berada satu kota dengan lo ? Kalau nggak, mau lihat blogger-blogger dari kota lain ?
Nih ada tipsnya !

Kalau mau cari blogger seluruh Indonesia gini nih :
http://www.blogger.com/profile-find.g?t=l&loc0=ID

Dan kalau blogger dalam satu provinsi :
http://www.blogger.com/profile-find.g?t=l&loc0=ID&loc1=Jawa+Barat

Terakhir, blogger dalam satu kota/ kabupaten :
http://www.blogger.com/profile-find.g?t=l&loc0=ID&loc1=Jawa+Barat&loc2=Bandung

Keterangan : ganti aja huruf yang berwarna hijau sesuai dengan kode negara, nama provinsi dan nama kota yang ingin lo cari...
ID : kode untuk Indonesia nih !
Jawa+Barat : nama provinsi. Tanda + berfungsi sebagai spasi pada nama provinsi dengan dua kata atau lebih.
Bandung : nama kota/kabupaten. .

Share, share !

Bugs hit Facebook application verification program

2009-05-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

Facebook's Application Verification Program, controversial due to its concept of charging developers to have their applications certified as "trustworthy," has run into technical problems.

Announced in November and launched on Wednesday, the program has system bugs that are preventing developers from reaping some benefits of having paid to have their applications reviewed and approved.

In a thread on the official Facebook developer forum, developers who shelled out the $375 review fee began reporting a variety of system problems on Wednesday.

In that same thread, Facebook on Thursday afternoon acknowledged that at least three of the bugs reported exist and that the company is working to fix them.

For example, the special green checkmark that denotes verified applications' special status isn't appearing in the Applications Directory search results. Consequently, without that special badge, the applications look no different from those posted by developers who didn't pay for the verification.

In addition, some developers are reporting that they can't submit their applications for review because the link to do so doesn't work, another bug Facebook has acknowledged exists for some applications.

Another bug Facebook has acknowledged is that the boost in user notifications and requests that verified applications get isn't always showing up in the developer's control panel stats.

Other developers complained in the thread that they couldn't find their applications at all-- green checkmark or not -- although this may be due to the way the Facebook algorithms work in displaying certain applications to certain people and not others.

The program became instantly controversial when it was announced in November because critics said developers shouldn't have to pay to have their applications labeled "trustworthy." They argued that it should be up to Facebook to ensure that applications built for its site comply with this requirement.

In response, Facebook has said that, in fact, all of the more than 52,000 applications on its platform must comply with requirements and policies that make them trustworthy. The Application Verification Program, which is optional, gives developers a chance to make their applications stand out by adopting an additional set of best practices for them regarding user experience and user communications, according to Facebook.

Still, some Facebook developers remain unconvinced about the value of the program, and even more so now with the technical issues affecting it.

"I will not pay to be approved. It's not worth the money. Any good application will do just fine without it," said Christopher Bourton, games developer and consultant at Lethos Designs in London, which has developed three Facebook applications and is building two more.

Bourton, contacted via e-mail on Thursday, said he fears that the program will create "an elitist two-tier system" in which large developers that can pay the fee will get the benefits, while smaller developers with fewer resources will not be able to afford it.

Applications approved through the system get the verified status for 12 months, after which developers must re-submit them for review and pay the $375 fee again.

Other developers are more positive about the program, like Tim O'Shaughnessy, CEO of LivingSocial, which has created about 10 applications for Facebook, including its very popular namesake and Visual Bookshelf.

"The verification program is a nice way of allowing users to weed through the noise and know [that] if they're adding a [verified] application, there is a sense of trust behind that add," O'Shaughnessy said via e-mail.

Living Social submitted Visual Bookshelf for verification and got it approved, but while the process was fairly simple and straightforward, it took Facebook longer than O'Shaughnessy expected to complete its review. "Now that the initial applicants have been verified, however, my guess is the process will be much shorter in the future," he said.

For O'Shaughnessy, a big question regarding the value of the program is whether it will truly give Facebook users a sense of security towards verified applications. He also hopes that Facebook will continue to evolve the program.

"As new Facebook features and functionality are made available, will the verification program keep up with new, relevant additions? This seems like a necessity in order for the program to have long-term value," he said.

Gartner analyst Ray Valdes thinks that establishing the program was a good move by Facebook. "Facebook's value proposition is having a quality user experience and that includes the experience of applications," Valdes said in a phone interview. "As the number of applications has grown, the quality of the experience has decreased. This is part of their ongoing maintenance and cultivation of the user experience."

IDC analyst Al Hilwa concurs that end users will benefit from having a set of applications that Facebook has certified as meeting special criteria for user experience and trust. "I think this is a welcome move to rein in what could potentially be a tiring process of finding well-behaved and trustworthy apps," he said via e-mail.

"Relying on market forces to sort out the wheat from the chaff may work in the long run and sounds good as an ideal, but with the velocity of business these days, and the ephemeral stickiness of online sites, it is maybe too late for a platform to be successful to wait for that process to settle down," Hilwa added.

On Wednesday, Facebook launched the program with an initial set of 120 verified applications, but it expects developer interest to pick up considerably now that the program has been launched.

MySQL, Forked beyond repair?

2009-05-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

One month after Oracle announced its takeover of Sun Microsystems, the future of MySQL remains up in the air. Can the leading lightweight open source database still thrive when it's controlled by the leading proprietary commercial database vendor? So far, the prognosis doesn't look good.

Even before the Oracle buyout, there were signs of strain within the MySQL community. Not long after Sun acquired MySQL in 2008, key MySQL employees began exiting the company, including CEO Mårten Mickos and cofounder Monty Widenius. Widenius, in particular, was vocally critical of the MySQL development process under Sun's stewardship, citing rushed release cycles and poor quality control. Another MySQL cofounder, David Axmark, left out of frustration with the bureaucracy and tedium of Sun's buttoned-down corporate culture.

In the wake of this exodus came another ominous development: Forks of the MySQL codebase began to appear, including Drizzle and MariaDB, offering users and contributors ways around Sun's control of the main branch. Drizzle is an attempt to shed some of the feature bloat that has crept into recent MySQL releases, in favor of a lightweight database server aimed at cloud computing and Web applications. MariaDB, on the other hand, aims to be feature-compatible with MySQL, but it uses a brand-new, transaction-capable storage engine by default. And perhaps even more significantly, MariaDB is spearheaded by none other than Widenius himself.

If that wasn't troubling enough for MySQL's new minders at Oracle, Widenius has since dropped the other shoe. Last week, he announced the formation of the Open Database Alliance, a "vendor-neutral consortium" whose stated aim is to become "the industry hub for the MySQL open source database, including MySQL and derivative code, binaries, training, support, and other enhancements for the MySQL community and partner ecosystem." Notably, no one from Oracle is listed among the Open Database Alliance's contacts.

If all this leaves you scratching your head, you're not alone. In March, former MySQL employee and Drizzle developer Patrick Galbraith wondered aloud just which branch of MySQL should be considered "official" these days. The ultimate answer to that question will determine the fate of the MySQL database.

Can Oracle keep the MySQL product relevant?
Of course, there can only be one real, official version of MySQL: It's the one that was originally developed by MySQL, was later bought by Sun, and was finally acquired by Oracle. Oracle now owns all the copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual property associated with the MySQL name -- and that intellectual property has always been defended vigorously. MySQL had even been known to send trademark-violation notices to partners that had the temerity to call their service offerings "MySQL support" instead of "support for MySQL databases."

While that's all well and good, however, the MySQL brand alone isn't likely to comfort customers who worry that an open source database won't get the attention it needs from one of the world's largest commercial software companies. Already some customers must be questioning Oracle's commitment to a low-end product like MySQL, when it has a lucrative, proprietary database to sell. And as the MySQL community fragments and begins turning to alternatives, the economics of Oracle's MySQL business become steadily less attractive.

But if MySQL's approval ratings are slumping, all the more reason for Oracle to move decisively. Oracle must work to regain the trust and support of the MySQL community or risk losing mindshare to a fork, such as Drizzle or MariaDB. To do that, it has to avoid making the mistakes that Sun made when it acquired MySQL. In a sense, to succeed with MySQL, Oracle will have to stop acting like Oracle.

Open source customers are a notoriously fickle bunch. If one project doesn't deliver what users need, the users go elsewhere -- and the same goes for developers. Forks are a fact of life in the open source community, and arguably an entirely healthy one. Oracle just better hope it doesn't end up on the wrong side of the fork.

When projects fork, there are winners and losers
Coincidentally, a similar drama is playing out elsewhere in the open source world right now. This one concerns glibc, the Gnu standard C library that is used by practically every piece of software running on Linux systems. Earlier this month, the Debian Project opted to switch its entire distribution from using standard glibc to a fork called eglibc. Ostensibly the new fork works better for embedded systems programming, but the community scuttlebutt says the switch was really the result of ongoing problems with glibc's notoriously obstinate maintainer, Ulrich Drepper. (One contributor even went so far as to file a bug report describing the problem.)

The name eglibc is surely no accident. It echoes an earlier, contentious incident in which a group of developers working on gcc, the Gnu C compiler, frustrated by the project's restrictive contribution model, split off to form a new fork called egcs. Freed from excessive bureaucracy, the fork thrived, while development on the main gcc branch stagnated. Eventually it died off completely; all that was left was for egcs to formally change its name back to gcc. The fork became the main branch -- and according to some egcs developers, that had been their intention from the very beginning. It seems likely that the eglibc maintainers have something similar in mind.

There's a real lesson to be learned here for Oracle and other maintainers of open source projects. Creeping authoritarianism in the development and contribution processes is something that many users of open source software are simply unwilling to tolerate; quite naturally, the contributors with the most to offer are the most likely to become frustrated when they feel stymied by red tape (or simple pigheadedness). Projects that are maintained by commercial entities are particularly susceptible to this tendency. Twelve years after Eric S. Raymond published his landmark essay, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," too many projects -- and companies in particular -- can't seem to let go of their cathedral mentalities.

That's why the best course of action for Oracle would be to join the Open Database Alliance and take an active role in the ongoing development of MySQL in an open, community-driven way. Oracle acquired MySQL as an asset of Sun, but Sun never knew what it had in the first place, nor how to manage it. If Oracle can't figure out how to do what Sun couldn't, it will still own the MySQL name; unfortunately, however, that name won't mean much.

VMware vSphere 4, The once and future virtualization king

2009-05-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

VMware vSphere 4, out today, is a big release, with plenty of new features and changes, but it's not your run-of-the-mill major update. The new features, which range from VM clustering to agentless VM backup, are especially significant in that they may mark the moment when virtualization shifted from the effort to provide a stable replica of a traditional infrastructure to significantly enhancing the capabilities of a virtual environment.

In short, if you're running a VMware infrastructure, life should get easier. For anyone who's ever tried to provide rock-solid OS-based clustering services, the new VM clustering feature, called Fault Tolerance, should be a vast improvement. Hot Add of CPUs and RAM has never really been an option for most shops, but it suddenly is (with the right OS, of course). These moves show that VMware is still pushing the virtualization envelope.

Considering the scope of the upgrade, perhaps "VMware Infrastructure" did warrant a new name, but let's hope that VMware stops there. The company has a bad habit of changing the names of its products every few months, and it's getting tiresome trying to explain why VirtualCenter, vCenter, VI3, V3i, ESX, ESXi, and now vSphere are all basically the same product or parts of the same product suite.

Along with new features and improvements, vSphere brings more hardware resources to VMs. You can now add up to eight vCPUs to a single VM; previously, VMs were limited to four. The new RAM limit is 255GB, up from 64GB. The ESX hosts themselves can now support up to 64 cores and 512GB of RAM. Also -- though I haven't had a chance to test this -- it appears that you can map raw PCI devices to a specific VM.

VMware's also making some noise about performance enhancement for key technologies, such as claims of 20 percent performance improvement in Microsoft SQL Server throughput, and a claim of a 10x performance bump for iSCSI. That last claim may be just a bit exaggerated, as it appears to be based on the support of 10Gig iSCSI interfaces, rather than an improvement in VMware's internal iSCSI software initiator, which has always been a bit sluggish.

Speaking of performance, the performance graphs and data available in vSphere is much improved over the current release, with a more intuitive layout and better overall access to specific information regarding the performance of a VM or a host.

Microsoft, HP expand unified communications push

2009-05-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have expanded their partnership to develop and sell a common platform for delivering voice, video, and messaging services to office workers.

The companies plan to spend $180 million over the next four years on developing products and services for unified communications, and on sales and marketing for those products, said Meg Shea-Chiles, worldwide director for HP's partnership efforts with Microsoft.

The work will include development around HP's ProCurve networking products and Microsoft's Office Communications Server, Office SharePoint Server and Exchange products. HP will also certify its TouchSmart Business PCs and some smartphones for Microsoft's communications software, as well as some new IP desk phones that HP plans to develop.

Unified communications lets workers do things such as listen to a voice-mail from within an e-mail program and make calls from an IM client. It includes presence software to show when people are online and what communications systems they have access to at that moment, as well as software that aims to simplify management on the back end.

Vendors such as Microsoft and Cisco are pushing unified communications as a way to make office workers more productive while keeping costs down. Many have latched onto the recession as a good time to promote these products, especially when companies are cutting back on travel and in-person meetings.

Microsoft and HP have an existing unified communications partnership that goes back several years. In 2006 they said they would deliver unified communications systems using Microsoft software and HP's blade servers, storage gear, and professional services.

HP also partners with Cisco for unified communications. Its ProCurve gear has made the two companies compete more directly, but Shea-Chiles said HP's Cisco partnership continues unchanged.

She wouldn't say how many joint unified communications customers Microsoft and HP have today, but she said the investment they plan to make is "significantly" more than it has been. She also wouldn't say how much of the money they plan to invest is for product development and how much for sales and marketing.

The joint work will also involve adding greater support for Microsoft's Office Communications Server in HP's Business Technology Optimization software, including the ability to provide real-time quality-of-service metrics for IP-based voice and video traffic. OCS users will also be able to join telepresence meetings conducted with HP's Halo system.

New Windows netbooks may harbor malware

2009-05-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

After discovering attack code on a brand new Windows XP netbook, antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs warned users yesterday that they should scan virgin systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet.

When Kaspersky developers installed their recently-released Security for Ultra Portables on an M&A Companion Touch netbook purchased for testing, "they thought something strange was going on," said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior antivirus researcher with the Moscow-based firm. Schouwenberg scanned the machine -- a $499 netbook designed for the school market -- and found three pieces of malware.

"This was done at the factory," said Schouwenberg. "It was completely brand new, still in its packaging."

With a little more digging, Schouwenberg found multiple Windows system restore points, typically an indication that the machine had been updated with new drivers or software had been installed before it left the factory. One of the restore points, stamped with a February date, included the malware, indicating that it had been put on the machine before then. And the malware itself hinted how the netbook had been infected.

"In February, the manufacturer was busy installing some drivers for an Intel product in the netbook," said Schouwenberg, citing the restore point. Among the three pieces of malware was a variant of the AutoRun worm, which spreads via infected USB flash drives.

"The USB stick they used to install the drivers onto the machine was infected, and [it] then infected the machine," said Schouwenberg. Installed along with the worm was a rootkit and a password stealer that harvests log-in credentials for online games such as World of Warcraft.

Kaspersky has reported its findings to M&A, said Schouwenberg, but the netbook maker has not been in contact with the security company since then.

Although factory-installed malware is rarely found on consumer electronics, there have been cases. Last December, for example, Amazon.com told customers it had sold Samsung digital photo frames before the holidays that came with a driver installation CD infected with a Trojan downloader. "These [cases involving computers] are much rarer than picture frames," said Schouwenberg.

To ensure that a new PC is malware-free, Schouwenberg recommended that before users connect the machine to the Internet, they install security software, update it by retrieving the latest definition file on another computer and transferring that update to the new system, then running a full antivirus scan.

"That's the best course of action, even though it sounds like a lot of work," said Schouwenberg.

Why More Megapixels Don't Make Better Pix ?

2009-05-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

When it comes to electronics, more is better. Consumers want more features, more hard-drive space, more cellphone minutes and more battery life.

But with digital cameras, it's not that simple. Many stores will tell you that the worth of a camera is measured in megapixels. The more manufacturers can pack in, the better, right?

Not necessarily, says Amit Gupta, founder of Photojojo.com, an online newsletter for camera tips and projects.

A high-megapixel count doesn't always equate to better image quality. Actually, if camera designers try to cram too many megapixels into a small camera, it can have the opposite effect.

Such a counterintuitive snag mostly affects tiny digital cameras, the ones compact enough to fit in your pocket.

To keep sizes down, manufacturers place itty-bitty image sensors inside their point-and-shoot models. These small parts perform well within a certain range. But when companies try to raise the megapixel count without increasing the dimensions of the camera, the same size sensor now has to do more work.

The result are larger but less accurate images, Gupta says. The overburdened sensor can lose sharpness, struggle in low-light situations and add "noise" (small blotches or odd colors).

Digital SLR cameras are bulkier than sleek point-and-shoots, but the extra room allows for much bigger sensors and often better image quality per megapixel.

Cameras are rarely advertised on their sensor sizes, which makes the warning difficult to act on. But the problem usually pops up when companies release two very similar models, one with more megapixels and, most likely, a higher price. In those situations, the extra few hundred dollars doesn't necessarily buy you a better camera.

Sensor technology improves all the time, making the issue of cramped megapixels less important each year. Improved lenses and anti-shake features also dampen the effect.

But even if companies could make a flawless 18-megapixel camera the size of a deck of cards, few people will ever need that much, Gupta says.

Tips Trik Firefox ...

2009-04-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

Aku punya sedikit tips trik nii buat para firefox holic ..
Bagi yang udah tahu, sebarin atuh...
Masih banyak temen-temen yg blm tahu tuh ... !!!!

Dan bagi yang belum tahu, silahkan mencoba tips trik ini ...

1. chrome://browser/content/browser.xul - Membukan jendela firefox baru di dalam satu jendela Firefox lo...
2. chrome://browser/content/preferences/preferences.xul - Membuka options dialog box lo dalam tab firefox..
3. chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul - Membuka “Bookmarks Manager” dalam satu firefox,,
4. chrome://browser/content/history/history-panel.xul - Membuka Panel History dalam tab firefox. !!!
5. chrome://mozapps/content/extensions/extensions.xul?type=extensions - Membuka jendela Extensions dalam tab firefox.,,
6. chrome://browser/content/preferences/cookies.xul - Membuka jendela “cookies” di dalam tab jendela firefox.,,.
7. chrome://browser/content/preferences/sanitize.xul - Membuka jendela “Clear Private Data” dalam tab firefox...,
8. chrome://browser/content/aboutDialog.xul - Membuka jendela “About Firefox” Dialog box dalam tab firefox..,.
9. chrome://browser/content/credits.xhtml - Membuka scrolling list kontributor pembuat firefox,,.
10. chrome://global/content/alerts/alert.xul - Firefox dancing.

Moga bermanfaat ...

Facebook Gets New Governing Rules

2009-04-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

The votes are in, and the initial tally shows that Facebook users want a new set of governing documents.

The vote came about a few months after thousands of outraged Facebook users slammed the social networking site for taking too much control over their content. In a move to make amends, and to give the angry users more say in what happens to their content, Facebook late last week announced that it would let them choose between two terms-of-service options - the current terms of use and a new set of rules called the Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Voters overwhelming selected the new set of principles and rights rules over the existing terms of use. Ted Ullyot, Facebook's general counsel, said in a blog post today that the new rules were preferred by 74.4% of the 600,000 voters. Voting closed at 11:59 p.m. last night.

However large, the turnout was far smaller than Facebook had hoped for.

In a blog post announcing the vote late last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that at least 30% of active Facebook users -- that's 60 million people - would have had to vote for the results to be binding. But Ullyot said that while only 600,000 users voted, Facebook will nonetheless adopt the Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as the governing documents for the site.

"We'd hoped to have a bigger turnout for this inaugural vote, but it is important to keep in mind that this vote was a first for users, just like it was a first for Facebook," said Ullyot. "We are hopeful that there will be greater participation in future votes. In the meantime, we're going to consider lowering the 30% threshold that the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities establishes for a user vote to be binding."

He added that he believes the new documents satisfy concerns that unhappy users had raised a few months ago.

"We're pleased that users supported the proposed documents and validated our efforts to respond to their concerns," wrote Ullyot. "You can expect to see the new documents on the site in the coming weeks. After that, all future proposed changes to the Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities will be subject to the notice, comment and voting provisions of the documents."

"I think these new terms on data ownership and usage will go a long way toward assuaging the feelings of those who protested earlier," said Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., in an earlier interview. "Facebook's new terms and conditions are much more readable than the typical legalese in the last version. It clearly outlines Facebook's terms of service in a way that should be understandable to the majority of users. The terms are also more user-friendly."

Five-year-old Facebook announced earlier this month that it had hit a major milestone as an influx of older users helped it reach the 200 million user mark.

Menemukan File Tersembunyi di Windows ..

2009-04-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

Pernah gak lo bingung menemukan atau menampilkan file yang tersembunyi???
Pasti lo kalau gak mau marah, mau nangis...
hahahahah..

nii ada sedikit tips atau trik untuk menemukan dan menampilkan file, folder bahkan directory yang tersembunyi :

First Trik :
Mungkin banyak yg udah pada tahu deh !!! tpii buat yg blm, nii aku kasih tahu..

* Buka Windows Explorer
* Pilih Tools –> Folder Options –> View –> Advanced Settings
* Cari di bagian Hidden Files and Folders, pilih atau isi bulatan kosong di depan bagian Show Hidden Files and Folders.
* Klik OK.
* Trik tersebut akan menampilkan semua file, folder, atau directory yang tersembunyi di semua drive...

Trik Kedua :
Buat yang suka bermain di command prompt, nih ada caranya...

* Buka command prompt dengan hak Administrative
* Pastikan Anda berada di directory “C:\Windows”
* Lalu ketik dir /ah/p/w, sebagai contoh C:\Windows\dir /ah/p/w
* Ketik Enter, dan perintah tersebut akan menampilkan semua file yang tersembunyi dalam directory.

Nah, kalau pilihan "Show Hidden Files and Folders" hilang atau tidak ada di menu Tools -> Folder Options -> View gak tahu kemana,
lo bisa membuat pilihan tersebut melalui registry
Bagi yang master di registry psti tahu nih ...

* Buka Run, ketik regedit
* Temukan : [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentV ersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden]
* Modifik asi string value “Type” dan masukkan “Group” sebagai value data
* Setelah editing selesai, tekan F5 untuk refresh, dan lihat ke Windows Explorer, untuk melihat munculnya pilihan Folder Options di menu Tools.

Sekian tips trik dari saya...
Semoga bermanfaat..

Prepare Microsoft Windows 8 !!!

2009-04-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

Windows 7 information may not be fully released, because Microsoft has been preparing the next generation operating system, Windows 8. Microsoft says that the initial work is focused on data management system and Windows 8. Microsoft has created its own ads for the presence of 8 Windows developer and tester to send the 'improvisation' of this system.

Indications of the 8 form of Windows that Microsoft tried to develop a management file among the extensive network and the Internet, also make WinFS system to make the scale more than the Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 is even not final. Microsoft will also build in file sharing applications, such as Windows Live Messenger and online meeting system Windows Meeting Spaces.

"We will start the improvisation 8 for Windows, including the innovative features that will merevolusi file access in branch offices." Said the Microsoft. In a blog called www.codenamewindows.com mentioned, Microsoft will start to recruit a developer to develop a special system is Windows 8. In blog also said that Microsoft began to post the job April 14.

In addition, in the blog also mentioned that there was a posting news about Windows 8, starting 16 April, focused on making 8 of Windows Server or Windows Server 2011 or in another name. If Microsoft still attached schedule with the launch of Windows 7, Windows 8 will be then be released in the year 2011 or 2012.

Fresh US-Russian talks raise hope of nuclear cuts ..

2009-04-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

Russia and the US began landmark negotiations yesterday to cut their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Officials opened talks in Rome with the intention of replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which expires in December. Both sides cut their nuclear arsenals under that treaty to a maximum of 5,000 weapons each, compared with a peak of 30,000 in the Cold War.

The talks follow a declaration by President Obama and President Medvedev in London on April 1 that the United States and Russia wished to work towards a world free of nuclear weapons. The negotiating teams have been told to report back by July, when Mr Obama is expected to make his first official visit to Moscow.

Experts believe that Russia and America are ready to cut their arsenals to 1,500 weapons each. The US has 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed, and Russia 2,800.

Yesterday's meeting focused on procedural matters for the start of negotiations in May. Rose Gottemoeller, the US Assistant Secretary of State, responsible for verification and compliance, said that the talks were “very productive”. Mr Medvedev said this week that the treaty should “limit the delivery systems of the nuclear warheads, not only the quantity of warheads”.

Facebook Changes Set TOS

2009-04-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

After the voting phase to determine the changes in the TOS (Term of Services) for a week ago, the Facebook parties agree to make changes that fundamental rights in terms of setting up each account data members. Article TOS that the new member states that have full rights and control the information they post of their respective their Facebook account. By the changes outlined in Facebook Facebook Statement of Principles and Rights and Responsibilities.

Voting and decisions on changes to this TOS is a form of protest against Facebook's millions of its member rights associated with ownership and control access to member information in this social networking site. Previously, in its TOS Facebook has the right to declare member data information that has been posted in it.

Open to encompass the aspirations of the Facebook member is conducted for about one week, followed by about 600 thousand Facebook member. This amount was expected to represent more than 200 million Facebook members worldwide. Steps taken by the changes that Facebook is considered by many as a step responsive and aspiratif, given as one of the social networking site, Facebook is currently the largest social networking in the world.

Apple updates server line

2009-04-21T02:50:00.000-07:00

The company said it will feature the new Xeon models in its next line of Xserve rack-mount servers.

IT buyers will be able to purchase the servers with a pair of the new processors, each running at up to 2.93ghz.

The quadcore version of XServe server will start at AUD$5899 in Australia, the eight-core at $7099.

For an additional cost, users will have the option of adding additional hard drives up to 3TB or the option of using faster, more efficient solid-state hard drives.

Apple claims that the new processors will allow the XServe models to run at twice the speed of previous systems with a performance per watt improvement of roughly 89 per cent.

"With up to twice the performance, better power efficiency and an innovative SSD drive option, this is the best Xserve we’ve ever made," proclaimed Apple worldwide vice president of Mac product marketing David Moody.

The move adds Apple to the growing list of server vendors to offer the new Intel Xeon chips since the line was formally released early last week. Dell, IBM are among the vendors to feature the new chip in their offerings.

Victoria University overhauls data centres

2009-04-20T02:48:00.000-07:00

The University, which caters to some 45,000 students, will run both centres in an ‘active-active' configuration, instead of the existing ‘primary-secondary' set-up.

This means the two centres will operate as a single logical data centre across two physical sites, rather than have one data centre act as the ‘main' and have a second used only for disaster recovery (DR) purposes.

The two sites are to be connected by redundant 1-2 Gbps fibre paths using the VERNet network.

Although part of the "incentive" to build the new 100 square metre facility in Sunshine, approximately 11km away, was initially DR, it is also intended the new facility will form part of energy efficiency initiatives being rolled out across the institution, according to director of information technology services Phil County.

IBM has been contracted to design and build the Sunshine data centre. It will replace an end-of-life secondary facility located at Footscray Park.

Arrangements for re-development of the primary facility, also in Footscray Park and currently the University's main data centre, haven't been announced.

"We've got one main data centre at the moment that we're keeping but will be rebuilt inside and out," County said.

"We've also got a smaller one like a back-up that is going to be replaced by the new [IBM-designed] one."

IBM said it had adopted a modular design employing a combination of in-row cooling targeted at the heat load source, combined with free cooling chiller plant technology.

Smaller uninterruptible power supply (UPS) modules will be used in the design, according to Malcolm Mackay, executive for site and facilities services at IBM Australia.

The University is one of the first in Australia to implement a free cooling system. Fujitsu has previously announced its intention to run a similar set-up in its new data centre in Perth.

The free cooling system will only cut in when the outside temperature in Melbourne drops under 15°C.

"It'll do it automatically," County said.

The data centre is also being designed to maximise air flows and floor grate positioning in a hot/cold aisle configuration.

Although IBM admitted the free cooling system would add a premium to the cost of the centre, County believed the return on investment was there.

"It pays itself back within the first year in our situation," he said.

The new combined total of data centre floor space in the facilities will be 340 square metres.

County said the University had already rationalised some 350 servers down to 240 using VMware as part of a previous server centralisation project, but he was unsure the University would continue down this path with respect to further virtualisation in the centres.

Both Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xensource are understood to be being considered as alternatives, given the University's reliance on Unix, Linux and Windows systems.

County said he is also actively exploring cloud computing.

"If you want to provision something that isn't critical it doesn't always have to be in your own data centre," he said.

Security experts uncover first ever SMS virus

2009-04-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

The company's Q1 2009 Security Threat Summary charted the first ever SMS virus, and a rise in social networking exploits during the first quarter of 2009.

F-Secure described the SymbOS/Yxe worm as the most significant threat to emerge over the period. Although mainly confined to China, the potential remains for similar attacks elsewhere around the world.

The worm spreads by sending an SMS promising a 'sexy view', with links to a malicious site prompting the user to download the malware. It will then use the victim's contact list to spread.

"Sexy View is the first text message worm ever. It's also the first mobile phone worm that circumvents the signature checks that are meant to secure the latest smartphones," said F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen.

"And the motive behind it seems to be to collect information for mobile phone spamming purposes. Mobile phone spam is already a big problem in some parts of the world, and eventually it will be an issue everywhere."

Meanwhile, social networking sites have become an increasingly attractive target for online fraudsters, as the number of users grows ever larger, warned F-Secure.

"When you get a message via Facebook from a friend, you tend to trust the message to be real," said Hypponen. "And when people follow a 'funny link' to a video and are prompted to 'update' their player, they easily fall for these attacks."

F-Secure highlighted the Koobface worm, which spreads through Facebook stealing user credentials, as one of the most high-profile threats over the period.

The first quarter of 2009 was also dominated by Conficker. The malware's complex code and sophisticated understanding of how to subvert security software is a sign of things to come, according to F-Secure.

Security firms warned today that Conficker may be about to launch a major attack.

AMD offers discounts on Opteron upgrades

2009-04-17T02:41:00.000-07:00

The AMD Opteron Upgrade Programme covers the 2000 series and 8000 series dual-core and quad-core Opteron chips, and enables customers to receive a discount of up to 35 per cent on the purchase cost of newer drop-in replacements.

AMD business development director John Fruehe explained in a blog post that the company designs its processors with the ability to upgrade in mind.

"In August 2006 we introduced the Socket F1207 to the world, initially with dual-core AMD Opteron processors. Later Barcelona, our first quad-core processor, was also able to plug into those sockets. Today's Shanghai processors also fit in those sockets as well," he wrote.

The company's upcoming six-core Opterons, codenamed Istanbul, will also fit the same infrastructure and will be part of the upgrade programme, AMD said.

Fruehe claimed that upgrading is a simple process and delivers an immediate boost. "In 15 minutes you can go from dual-core Rev F processors to the latest Shanghai quad cores, giving you up to 200 per cent more performance," he said.

AMD partners such as Rackable Systems and Cray are already reaping the benefits from this program, according to the firm, because it provides a route to fast and seamless upgrades in the data centre.

Obama's open data era 'coming soon'

2009-04-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

The U.S. may be close to making it easier for application developers to tear into government data as early as next month on its new Web site, data.gov.

Meanwhile, the Web 2.0 era of data openness will get a boost next week by the availability for download of campaign and lobbying data collected by a private group.

The Center for Responsive Politics, best known for its OpenSecrets.org Web site, has been standardizing, cleaning and organizing campaign and lobbying data on its Web site. It now intends to allow anyone to download compressed CSV text files of its data without charge beginning sometime next week.

It is the center's hope that application developers will take the data and merge, combine and otherwise mash it up with other data sets to reveal new associations and patterns in lobbying and campaign activities.

"We are hoping that putting this data in more hands has a greater impact," said Massie Ritsche, the center's spokesman. The group is calling the new approach an "open data" model.

The center's goal is similar to the approach President Obama's new federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, intends to take. Kundra plans to make federal data similarly available for the same purpose on data.gov.

As late as last Saturday, there was a message on the data.gov site announcing that it would launch in late May, but it has since been replaced with a less definitive message: Coming Soon.

One of Obama's first acts as president was to issue a memorandum to all federal department heads that he wanted a government that was transparent and participatory. There are questions about how willingly or quickly the government will be in converting data into open formats, but one area expected to get a lot of attention will be lobbying activities, (especially among IT vendors) around the massive stimulus plan.

U.S. agencies already make much of their data available online and have built their methods and approaches for searching through that data. The approach that the Obama administration intends to take is to make the underlying data available in standard formats, and in doing so, harness private sector creativity and technical acumen to make the data available in new ways.

Private groups are already acting in advance of the unveiling of data.gov to stimulate discussion about how the government should collect and organize its data. The Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that is pushing for transparency is, for instance, suggesting methods for achieving openness.

The foundation this week unveiled designs for forms and search templates as a means to more quickly disclose the activities of lobbyists.

John Wonderlich, the foundation's policy director, said the federal government will collect and organize the data in a way that will help developers. Wonderlich said the group has "pretty strong hopes" that the needs of developers will be well-served.

Cisco taps VMware for data centre blade play

2009-04-14T03:25:00.000-07:00

Best known for its network infrastructure kit, Cisco today unveiled its Unified Computing System (UCS), which combines separate networks for carrying data, storage and server cluster traffic into a single unified fabric, and sees the introduction of Cisco blade server hardware.

Cisco's servers are based on new Intel Nehalem chips that have yet to be officially announced but are widely expected to be available within the next month or two.

The servers will fit into an eight-bay chassis designed to take seven blades and one of Cisco's Nexus switches.

Pricing has not been announced.

The other element of the architecture is a unified network fabric based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet and supporting Fibre Channel over Ethernet for connecting storage.

Together with virtualisation technology from VMware, the platform is intended to turn data centre infrastructure into a more scalable and flexible environment for delivery of IT as a service.

Martin Niemer, group product marketing manager for VMware Infrastructure, said that VMware has been working with Cisco for the past three years on the project, which integrates the UCS with VMware vCenter Suite for management.

However, despite this partnership, customers buying into Cisco's platform will be able to use other virtualisation software such as Microsoft's Hyper-V.

"Ultimately, it's up to customers what virtualisation platform they use," Niemer said.

Cisco also announced support from BMC Software, EMC, Emulex, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Novell, Oracle, QLogic and Red Hat.

As part of the VMware agreement, Cisco will become a VMware Authorised Consultant partner, able to resell VMware's ESX and VI products along with its own hardware.

The move puts Cisco in direct competition with experienced and long-established server vendors such as HP and IBM, and has already drawn flak from others within the industry, who perceive it as an attempt by Cisco to lock customers into its own platform.

"IBM and HP offer open low cost solutions, have decades of experience delivering such solutions, and it will not take customers very long to see through Cisco's 'my way or the highway' tactic," commented Vikram Mehta, chief executive at Blade Network Technologies.

Ovum analyst Tim Stammers said Cisco is as much about system management as it is blade servers and virtualisation.

"If Cisco's customers have to buy their blade servers from HP or Dell, then the door is open for either of those two to offer their management tools to customers, or to tailor their blades to work better with those tools," he said.

"Moving into more direct competition with those players - and with other systems management players such as IBM and BMC - is a price that Cisco cannot avoid paying unless it wants to be sidelined in the future."

Stammers doesn't feel the competition will hurt Cisco's relationships with big hardware players. Co-opetition, he says, is "hardly new."

"Cisco is already in competition with HP and IBM on the networking front," he said.

Struggling with supersized storage

2009-04-13T03:21:00.000-07:00

Tasty Baking Co. produces more than 4.8 million cakes, doughnuts, cookies and pies each day. And the Philadelphia-based snack food giant also manages to generate another crucial commodity -- computer data -- in equally impressive amounts. "It's something to be concerned about," says Brendan O'Malley, Tasty Baking's vice president and CIO.

Like a growing number of businesses worldwide, Tasty Baking is facing a data explosion. The use of e-mail and rich media applications plus the need to stay on top of regulatory compliance are stretching storage resources to the limit at a time when budgets are shrinking. Handling rapidly spiraling storage needs without spending tons of money is a challenge that's facing just about all IT managers. O'Malley crystallizes the need into a single phrase: "More space for the money."

To get a handle on storage demands, IT managers need to carefully examine internal storage practices, use specialized software tools and find appropriate storage systems for various kinds of data. Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., says that they must look first at the two best ways of cutting storage costs. "One is using more-dense drives, and the other is reducing your footprint," he says.

Footprint reduction is relatively easy, says Reichman, asking, "Can you use the Delete key?" But David Hill, founder of The Mesabi Group, a storage management consultancy in Westwood, Mass., notes that many businesses, particularly those in regulated industries, are scared stiff of deleting anything other than spam. "There are a lot of legal reasons, tax reasons," he says. "You have to be careful about how you go about getting rid of data."
Fixed vs. Fluid

Although managers may be reluctant to flush files, they can bring greater efficiencyand cost savings to their storage processes by organizing data more efficiently. Hill recommends separating fixed content -- e-mails, boilerplate documents and other rarely modified files -- from active archives that contain more fluid types of data, such as transactional data.
Virtual Storage Headaches

What is the top challenge related to storage for your virtual server environment?

* Maintaining high performance: 23%
* Completing backups on time: 19%
* Efficiently managing storage capacity: 14%
* Controlling costs: 11%
* Provisioning storage: 8%
* Deploying tiered storage solutions: 7%
* Performing effective application restores: 6%
* Generating accurate and useful reports on the environment: 6%
* Maintaining a high backup success rate: 3%
* Deploying effective multipath solutions: 2%
* Other: 1%

Source:Forrester Research Inc. survey of 124 global IT decision-makers currently using x86 server virtualization technology, September-October, 2008

Hill notes that many businesses unthinkingly use costly, high-performance Fibre Channel storage environments for both types of data. Yet splitting up fixed and active data makes it possible to use less-expensive storage technologies for less volatile information. "You can use what's called capacity storage instead of performance storage," Hill says.

Capacity storage usually comes in the form of Serial ATA drives, which have higher capacity but cost less than other options. "So you get more bang for your buck," Hill says. "That's one thing that businesses can do: move some of their data to these lower-cost drives."

O'Malley agrees that organizing content is a relatively easy way to cut costs. "We have some high-performance applications that run on Fibre Channel, and other applications that don't need that kind of performance that we run on regular SATA types of disks, where we have a better price for performance," he says.

Data de-duplication -- the process of eliminating redundant files -- can also save precious storage space. Backup products that de-duplicate data at the host level include Asigra's Televaulting, EMC's Avamar and Symantec's Veritas NetBackup PureDisk. Disk libraries from Data Domain, Diligent Technologies, EMC, Quantum and Sepaton de-duplicate data at the target level, such as the desktop. Both methods determine whether data segments or files are identical by running a file-level comparison or using a hashing algorithm.

Even relatively insignificant files can pile up to create a big storage headache, says Dave Richerson, manager of infrastructure services at Republic Bank in Louisville, Ky. "If we send a Word document out, that doesn't make a huge impact on the e-mail system," he says. "But 15 people might store that Word document on their home directory as something to refer to down the road and, well, that's 15 copies."

To create space-efficient backups without endangering critical data, Republic uses Avamar for its branch office backups and EMC Disk Library for data center backups. "We've had this system in place for about four months and have seen an immediate, positive improvement in storage efficiency," Richerson says.

De-duplication vendors often claim that their tools can provide a specific ratio of data reduction. Actual data de-duplication ratios can vary widely from customer to customer, of course, but Richerson says he was "floored" by the ratio his deployment achieved. "We see a de-dupe of 8-to-1, or basically 24TB of data is de-duped down to 3TB," he says.

Virtual Efficiency

At the cutting edge of storage, virtualization promises to help businesses archive data with unprecedented efficiency. Greg Thompson, director of IT at Northeast Bank, is relying on the EqualLogic PS5000 Series virtualized storage-area network from Dell Inc. to store corporate data. The systems are based on a virtualized modular storage architecture that enables Lewiston, Maine-based Northeast to purchase storage as it is needed, preventing overprovisioning.

For Thompson, the new technology marked a welcome departure from local server-based storage. "Local storage on servers gets unruly," he says. "When you run out of space, what do you do, buy another server? So we decided central storage was the answer for us."

Thompson says he opted to tie central storage together with virtualization for server and storage consolidation. "The whole process has worked really well for us," he says, noting that storage can now be scaled easily and efficiently whenever the need arises.

Thompson also appreciates the virtualized environment's inherent redundancy. "If we do have a critical, fatal error happening here at the primary data center, we can have access to just about all our network data within a matter of hours," he says.

Like Thompson, O'Malley says that virtualization can give a big boost to businesses striving for better storage efficiency. Tasty Baking now uses a FAS3020 system from NetApp Inc. (download PDF) to provide Fibre Channel-based storage resources to 40 virtual servers running on 10 physical servers. "We moved away from having any local storage on servers or having any sort of direct-attached storage or anything of that kind," O'Malley says. "Now everything runs off NetApp."

Before O'Malley and his team moved to the virtualized environment, adding storage was both a challenge and a puzzle. "If we were out of storage on a particular server, we wondered if we should find more slots where we could put more disks in, or maybe attach some storage directly to that box," he recalls. "You might have storage space on another server, but you couldn't really share it over to that machine."

The new environment allows O'Malley to consolidate and optimize storage resources. "We've got one place where everybody is going for storage," he says. "With the thin provisioning, and the ability to move storage, we have one bucket that we're pulling from, and we can get by with a lot less overhead."

The virtualized arrangement allows for more planning flexibility. "We don't have to determine what the maximum possible storage might be for an application over the next three years," O'Malley says. "We don't have to ask that question before we start and advise the server to hold that."

Virtualization also frees storage from constraints imposed by a server's physical configuration. "It's now just a question of finding more storage from the single pool on NetApp," O'Malley says.

He notes that storage efficiency and simplicity meshes well with Tasty Baking's corporate philosophy. "When you think about it, we're just like a corner bakery, only a thousand times bigger," O'Malley says. "What's key for us is keeping our environments as simple as we can."

Google adds Java to App Engine cloud service

2009-04-12T03:18:00.000-07:00

Google on Tuesday evening announced a new version of its App Engine application-hosting service that adds multiple capabilities, including an early look at support for the Java programming language.

Improvements are intended to make the App Engine infrastructure available to all developers, ranging from those at startups to IT administrators inside the enterprise, Google said. In addition to Java support, other features in the updated version of App Engine include database import and export, access to firewalled data, and "cron" support, which enables configuration of regularly scheduled tasks to operate at defined times. App Engine is built for deploying Web applications.

Google has been running internal and external applications on App Engine and it has not been without difficulty, said Kevin Gibbs, tech lead for Google App Engine, in a blog post on Tuesday evening.

"Tonight at Campfire One, we released a new set of features -- based on community and internal feedback -- that helps App Engine interface more easily with businesses' existing technologies,"Gibbs wrote. Campfire One features a gathering of developers at company facilities.

Early support for Java includes a Java runtime, integration with the Google Web Toolkit 1.6, and a Google Plugin for Eclipse. Developers can program against Java Data Objects or Java Persistence API. Thus far, App Engine has leveraged the Python language.

Also highlighted in the App Engine upgrade were Google Secure Data Connector, for centrally managed access to on-premise data, and a data import tool to move gigabytes of data into App Engine. Cron support, according to a link to the blog, is geared to the Python language.

"By reducing the administrative headaches that come with scaling and distributing an application, we hope that App Engine will continue to let developers do what they do best: launch services that delight users," Gibbs said.

In the past six months, Google has launched nearly 50 projects and small products on Google App Engine, including Google Moderator, for distributed communities to vote on subjects, Gibbs said.

"In all cases we found it quicker, easier, and more cost-effective to leave the infrastructure to App Engine and the actual product-building to our engineering teams," said Gibbs.

Vista Lemot? Percepatlah..

2009-04-11T04:02:00.000-07:00

Jika lo pernah merasa kesal karena kinerja PC atau laptop yang menjadi lambat setelah menginstal Vista, maka lo tak perlu tergesa-gesa beralih ke system Windows XP. Disini ada beberapa trik untuk meningkatkan performance Windows Vista lo supaya gak kyk siput jalannya :

* Kliklah “My Computer” lo pake mouse, pilih “Manage” (gak tahu? kebangetan akh!)
* Pilih “Device Manager”, pilih Disk Drive, bisa akan muncul SATA Disk(merk euy!) ataupun tipe harddisk lo lainnya.
* Klik kanan, pilih properties.
* Aktifkan “Enable Advanced Performance” untuk meningkatkan kinerja system, klik OK.
* Restart PC ataupun laptop lo (blm punya? ntar dech kl lo ada rezeki y..).

Ada beberapa hal lagi,

* lo juga dapat menambah kapasitas memory untuk peningkatan kinerja PC atau laptop lo, dengan menggunakan Windows ReadyBoost dalam paket Vista, yakni dengan menggunakan memory dari USB flash drive untuk menambah memory. Kalau vista lo bajakan, y alamat dah..
* Rawatlah hardware PC atau laptop dengan maintenance harddisk secara berkala, seperti melakukan Disk Defragmenter atau Disk Cleanup, juga menghapus program-program yang tidak sering atau tidak pernah digunakan agar dapat mengurangi beban memory. (nii trik berlaku buat semua OS.. hhehhe)

Thanks's before to visit my blog..

Yahoo to expand BOSS dev tools, boost cloud research

2009-04-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Yahoo is adding new developer tools to its service for building custom search engines, BOSS, and expanding its efforts to foster cloud computing research in academia.

Yahoo will announce on Thursday that BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) developers can now access content from the company's popular Delicious social bookmarking site, such as saved site links and descriptive tags for these links.

Another new feature is the filtering of results by language, as well as the ability for the BOSS news search component to sort results by date or by a specific date range.

Separately, Yahoo will also announce a partnership with three major universities for research into cloud computing systems and applications.

The schools are the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

They join existing partner Carnegie Mellon University. In the project, Yahoo makes cloud computing resources available to universities so that they can conduct research on large-scale systems and applications.

Carnegie Mellon has been using Yahoo's M45 cluster for more than a year. It has approximately 4,000 processor cores and 1.5 petabytes of disk storage and runs Hadoop, an open source implementation of the MapReduce programming model for processing large data sets in processor clusters.

Yahoo officials have said that the company believes academia will play a crucial part in developing the "next generation" of cloud infrastructure and Web applications.

In July 2008, Yahoo partnered with Hewlett-Packard and Intel for cloud computing research and education. The three vendors at the time said they wanted to help advance the development and adoption of large-scale, data-intensive, Internet-hosted applications and related IT infrastructure.

The initiative with HP and Intel, called Cloud Computing Test Bed, also counts among its participants the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the National Science Foundation, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Happy Easter 2009

2009-04-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

Mungkin sudah banyak yang tahu tentang simbol-simbol dan tradisi Hari Paskah,, Dipostingan 9uw kali ini akan membahas lagi tentang simbol dan tradisi Paskah.
Oh, iya, buat semua yang merayakan, Selamat Hari Paskah 2009..

Paskah, berasal bahasa Yunani, yang artinya Πάσχα atau Paskha. Paskah identik dengan Yesus atau yang disebut Paulus sebagai Anak Domba Paskah, dimana jemaat Kristiani percaya bahwa Yesus disalibkan, mati, dan dikubur, lalu pada hari ketiga bangkit dari antara orang mati. Paskah merupakan perayaan penting untuk kebangkitan Kristus dan perayaan yang paling sacral dalam hidup Yesus.

Perayaan Paskah
Hari raya Paskah dari bahasa Inggris dan Jerman, yaitu Easter dan Ostern, diambil dari nama Dewi Musim Semi, dewi Eastre atau dewi Austra. Memang Paskah selalu jatuh di musim semi, sehingga lambang dan nama yang semula tidak terdapat dalam Alkitab telah diambil alih. Pada awalnya, para misionaris Kristiani mendatangi suku Teutonic, Roma Utara untuk menyebarkan agama Kristen Katholik. Supaya ajarannya diterima oleh penduduk lokal, maka mereka mengkombinasikannya dengan adapt istiadat local, yakni sebuah festival untuk meghormati dewi Eastre atau dewi musim semi, yang kebetulan juga bertepatan dengan hari raya Paskah. Hal itulah yang menyebabkan gereja-gereja yang berbahasa Inggris memakai istilah Easter untuk menyebut perayaan Paskah, hingga sekarang.

Tanggal Perayaan Paskah
Pada tahun 325, dalam Konsili Nicaea yang diadakan oleh Raja Konstantin, ditetapkan aturan yang menyatakan bahwa Paskah hendaknya dirayakan pada hari Minggu pertama sesudah bulan purnama pertama atau pada saat matahari melewati garis khatulistiwa setelah musim semi, yang jatuh pada tanggal 21 Maret. Maka, Paskah harus dirayakan pada hari Minggu di antara tanggal 22 Maret sampai dengan tanggal 25 April.

Simbol telur Paskah
Pepatah Latin Omne Vivum ex Ovo (artinya seluruh kehidupan ini berasal dari sebuah telur) menunjukkan betapa mesranya hubungan manusia dengan telur. Kemudian, dalam ajaran Kristiani, telur diakitkan dengan symbol makam batu dimana Yesus keluar menyongsong hidup baru melalui kebangkitan-Nya. Selain itu, dulu telur merupakan salah satu makanan pantang selama Masa Prapaskah. Telur yang sudah direbus, kemudian diberi hiasan warna-warni yang cerah di hari Kamis Putih, lalu meminta berkat atasnya, menyantapnya, serta memberikannya kepada teman dan sahabat sebagai hadiah Paskah. Hiasan warna telur tersebut pada awalnya dilakukan oleh bangsa Mesir dan Persia. Di kebanyakan negara, telur-telur diberi warna polos dengan pewarna dari tumbuh-tumbuhan. Di daerah Jerman dan Austria, telur diberi warna hijau, sedangkan orang Slavia membuat pola istimewa menggunakan warna emas dan perak. Di Jerman, telur biasanya diberikan sebagai hadiah untuk anak atas perilaku baik yang dilakukan sepanjang tahun. Di wilayah utara Inggris dan Skotlandia, anak biasanya berkeliling mencari telur, dan di Polandia, telur merupakan simbol untuk menyatakan perasaan suka dari kaum perempuan kepada laki-laki.

Simbol kelinci Paskah
Kelinci paskah pertama dibuat sekitar tahun 1800-an. Kelinci Paskah berasal dari tradisi kesuburan masyarakat sebelum masa Kristiani. Kelinci merupakan binatang yang paling subur menurut para leluhur, karena kelinci dikenal sebagai binatang yang memiliki anak yang banyak, sehingga kemudian dipergunakan sebagai simbol kehidupan baru yang melimpah di masa musim semi. Kelinci Paskah sebenarnya tidak memiliki makna religius dalam perayaan Paskah, meskipun dagingnya yang putih, sering dikaitkan dengan lambing kemurnian dan tak bercela. Gereja pun tidak pernah memberikan pemberkatan istimewa bagi kelinci. Namun demikian, kelinci mendapat peran yang menyenangkan dalam perayaan Paskah sebagai tokoh legenda penghasil telur-telur Paskah bagi anak-anak di berbagai negara.

Simbol anak domba Paskah
Symbol anak domba adalah yang paling penting dalam perayaan Paskah. Anak Domba Paskah, merupakan lambang Kristus, dengan bendera kemenangan, dapat dilihat dalam lukisan-lukisan yang dipasang di rumah-rumah keluarga Eropa. Beberapa abad silam, menjadi tanda keberuntungan jika orang menjumpai anak domba, teristimewa pada masa Paskah, dan terdapat sebuah takhayul populer bahwa iblis, yang dapat mengambil wujud segala macam binatang, tidak pernah diperkenankan menampakkan diri dalam wujud anak domba karena simbol religiusnya. Tradiri kuno anak domba Paskah juga mengilhami umat Kristiani untuk menyajikan daging anak domba sebagai hidangan populer pada masa Paskah, hingga sekarang khususnya di daerah Eropa timur. Daging anak domba juga bisa digantikan dengan roti dan kue Paskah yang istimewa, berbentuk anak domba.

Simbol babi
Babi dianggap selalu melambangkan keberuntungan dan kemakmuran di kalangan orang-orang Indo-Eropa. Babi memberikan dagingnya sebagai hidangan dalam jamuan Paskah tradisional. erwujudan dari tradisi kuno ini juga dapat ditunjukkan dengan adanya celengan berbentuk babi. Merupakan tradisi yang diwariskan turun-temurun dari masa sebelum masa Kristiani, untuk makan daging babi dalam berbagai perayaan, khususnya di berbagai wilayah di Eropa.

Simbol bunga Bakung
Bunga bakung Paskah merupakan tambahan yang baru-baru saja dalam perayaan Paskah. Bunga bakung Paskah yang putih bersih diperkenalkan di Bermuda dari Jepang pada pertengahan 1800-an. Oleh karena bunga ini termasuk salah satu dari bunga-bunga bakung pertama yang mekar pada musim semi, maka ia segera dikenal sebagai “Bunga Bakung Paskah”. Dalam ikonografi Kristiani, bunga-bunga bakung putih senantiasa menjadi simbol keindahan, kemurnian dan kesucian, dan biasanya digunakan untuk hiasan di gereja. Terdapat suatu legenda yang menyebutkan bahwa semua bunga bakung pada hari Kamis Putih, di Taman Getsemani, menundukkan kepala mereka dalam duka sebab sengsara yang diderita oleh Yesus.

Simbol Salib
Salib adalah simbol Penyaliban Kristus, sebagai kebalikan dari Kebangkitan. Tetapi, dalam Konsili Nicaea di tahun 325, Konstantin memutuskan bahwa Salib adalah simbol resmi Ke-Kristenan. Salib bukan hanya simbol Paskah, tetapi digunakan secara lebih luas, terutama di Gereja Katolik, sebagai simbol iman Katolik sepanjang tahun

Keranjang Paskah
Keranjang-keranjang Paskah, jauh sebelum masa orang mengisinya dengan permen, coklat dan marshmallow, diisi dengan roti-roti istimewa dan telur-telur yang dipersiapkan untuk perayaan Paskah. Keranjang-keranjang ini dibawa ke gereja pada pagi Sabtu Paskah di mana keranjang-keranjang diberkati oleh imam. Beberapa paroki di berbagai negara masih tetap meneruskan kebiasaan memberkati keranjang-keranjang Paskah ini.

Lonceng Paskah
Tradisi lonceng muncul pertama kali dari Perancis atau Italia. Instrumen ini dibunyikan pada hari Kamis Putih atau hari kamis sebelum Paskah, lalu dibiarkan diam. Masa diam (period of silent) ini dimaksudkan sebagai masa merenung. Lonceng ini kemudian berdentang lagi pada hari Paskah pada perayaan kemenangan atas maut dimana maut berhasil dikalahkan dan hidup yang baru kembali diraih.

Baju berwarna putih
Baju baru juga memiliki makna khusus. Pada masa Gereja Perdana, pada Malam Paskah, mereka yang dibaptis mengenakan busana putih, yang dikenakan sepanjang pekan Paskah. Seperti yang dinyatakan dalam ritual kita sekarang, busana putih ini merupakan lambang bahwa orang tersebut telah dilahirkan kembali dalam pembaptisan, dibebaskan dari dosa, dipenuhi rahmat dan diberi martabat dan identitas Kristiani yang baru. Meski umat beriman lainnya, yang telah dibaptis, tidak mengenakan busana putih, biasanya mereka mengenakan baju-baju baru untuk menunjukkan bahwa mereka telah bangkit ke dalam kehidupan baru melalui doa, puasa dan matiraga Masa Prapaskah. Busana putih dan baju baru merupakan tanda lahiriah akan pembaharuan iman dalam Kristus.

Some University to Learning About Facebook and Twitter

2009-04-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

A university has to offer master's level teaching students about social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo. The course was held for 1 year at Birmingham City University, who will teach the importance of social networking sites as a tool of communication and marketing. Courses are planned to be held in 2010 to come, and have been advertised in the video website in the university.

However, unfortunately, this course is not free, or have to pay quite expensive, is $ 6,564. This course not only discusses the social networking site, but also a matter of setup a blog and podcast publication. Jon Hickam, pioneering the course said that he has received a good response from students. "Homework is not just for IT geek, but also the laity and all the people. During the course, we will provide information on what can be done with Facebook and Twitter, as well as how the site can be used for the purpose of communication and marketing. This course will teach you how to become a professional in the field of journalism or PR (Public Relation). "Hickman said.

Meanwhile, a student from the same University, Jamie Waterman (20), it is revealed that the course is not only useful and discard the time-course. "In fact all people have the networking site Facebook and Twitter, and blogs, and podcasts. The virtual, all content of the course is still on the basic level, so that it can actually be yourself. All this is just to remove the time and resources university course. "Waterman said.

Cetak Website atau Gambar yang Diblokir

2009-04-05T01:03:00.000-07:00

Mau mencetak gambar di sebuah website di Internet, namun diblokir? atau Anda ingin mencetak atau menyimpan seluruh halaman web? nii ada sedikit tips yang mungkin saja dapat membantu Anda.

* Buka halaman website atau gambar yang ingin lo cetak, pastikan pointer mouse tidak berada di tengah gambar yang ingin dicetak.
* Tekan “Ctrl” dan tombol “Print Screen” dari keyboard. Hal tersebut akan menyimpan semua halaman yang sedang lo buka/lihat.
* Click tombol “Start – All Programs”, dan pilih “Microsoft Word. – File – New”.
* Paste atau klik kanan di mouse, pilih “Paste”.
* Klik kanan di dokumen Word tersebut, dan pilih “Format Picture”.
* Sebuah box dialog akan tertampil untuk mengatur cropping gambar, atau klik anak panah di empat box cropping, Right, Left, Top, Bottom, lalu klik OK.
* Jika lo ingin mencetak gambar lebih besar, lo dapat memperbesar gambar dengan meletakkan cursor mouse di pojok image hingga lo dapat menemukan double anak panah, lalu lebarkan image untuk dicetak.
* Pilih “File – Print“ untuk mencetak dokumen jika sudah siap.

Microsoft Word Document merupakan aplikasi yang digunakan dalam tips ini karena kemampuannya untuk menampilkan image foto, namun untuk aplikasi lain juga dapat melakukan hal yang sama, seperti aplikasi bawaan Windows, Paint, atau Adobe Photoshop, dan sebagainya.

thx 4 u r attention..

Open Jobs After Removing 200 Employees

2009-04-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

After this week Google is adding 200 employees in the field of marketing and sales for the third time this year, now Google is still looking for employment for 360 people. Opening of jobs specific to the position of the Google software engineer to a sales and marketing, and one position for the Supply Chain Manager of Foodservices at Google headquarters, California.

Company Internet giant has been doing immediately after the recruitment of 200 employees removed, Thursday. Previously, Google also has to eliminate as many as 100 full-time employees in January, and the second in February, Google's 40 employees to reduce the position radio broadcasting business ad own. Meanwhile, the Google spokesman, Matt Furman, said that Google is a company with a large number of employees of some 200,000 people with a variety of job positions.

Furman confirmed that list jobs in the Google website is now open and the job is still related to the employee removed Thursday. As many as half of the 360 jobs open for Google in the United States, while the rest will be placed in other locations, such as in Ireland and Australia. According to Furman, Google is now doing perampingan since the new head of finance, Patrick Pichette to control costs as the biggest priority.

Have a Some Virus?

2009-04-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has trained a little virus to do the researchers, on Thursday (02 / 4) yesterday, who believed that the virus can make more powerful lithium batteries and efficient. The virus is changed to two genes by researchers, who were given the name of the virus MI3, and apat do two things that build a framework that is made from iron phosphate, and then enter into a carbon nanotube electrode to create a small and powerful.

According to Angela Belcher, the leader of the researchers from the same institute, the electrode can make a memory more powerful devices, such as in MP3 player or mobile phone, and more environmentally friendly than battery technology generally. "Users can use the iPod about 3 hours longer than normal iPod battery. We also create a large scale for the car. All of that because there is a battery in which the virus is able to increase the power performance, battery, better than normal batteries. "Belcher said.

Battery technology, including environmentally friendly because it has a virus in it. "We have been developing organism, regulating temperature, and water in which organisms can live. This is a clean technology. "Belcher added. Material forfat iron is not a good conductor, but can make the material more useful when the battery is made in nano-scale, ie, molecular-scale mikroskopik.

Lithium battery is very powerful and lightweight, but they do not release electrons quickly, and virus organisms are able to do so, so that they can provide excessive battery power. This battery technology also can be published if it is ready, add Belcher.

Indonesian Is Target? Why?

2009-04-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

A report from the Tracking GhostNet, journal reports on the network cyber detective from IWM, said that a network of electronic-eye based in China have made the government infiltration to the computer in the world. They said there are 1295 computers in 103 countries that have been 'infected' The World Spy. Computers are the property including prime ministers and foreign embassies, and all associated with the Tibetan spiritual leader,.

However, until now not proven that the Chinese government is behind the problem, even Beijing also refuses to comments. The report appears after the investigation for 10 months by Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), companies and researchers from the Ottawa Center Biksu for International Students at the University of Toronto.

The World Spy pretend to ask the Tibetan spiritual leader the office to check whether the computer is in Tibet have been affected by infiltration. From the IWM researchers have found that several target minister in the world, in countries such as Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan. System that has been in-hack also found in the offices of embassies, such as India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Thailand, Germany and Pakistan.

As mentioned in the BBC News, hackers can take control computers have several prime ministers and foreign embassies in the world using malware. In this case, the malware will provide power for the hacker to send and receive certain data, using audio, video recorder, to monitor the computer has been infected

Buat Karakter Spesial di Word

2009-04-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Mungkin lo ingin menambah karakter atau symbol khusus, seperti Castañeda, mungkin aja artikel berikut dapat membantu lo untuk menemukan kunci shortcut untuk membuat karakater khusus nan unik nan lucu...

1. Pastikan tombol indicator “Num Lock” lo menyala
2. Tekan tombol “Alt” bersamaan dengan penekanan tombol nomor 164 di keypad numeric computer lo.. (tuch tombol-tombol yang di pojok)
Untuk kasus huruf besar (upper case) Ñ, lo bisa membuatnya dengan menekan “Alt+165”

Nih ada contoh symbol-symbol lainnya :

* Tanda trademark (™ alt 0153)
* Tanda prefix eksklamasi Spanyol (¡ alt 0161)
* Tanda anak panah double ke kiri (« alt 0171)
* Tanda plus minus (± alt 0177, seperti contoh DVD±RW drive)
* Tanda anak panah double ke kanan (« alt 0187)
* Tanda perkalian (× alt 0215)
* Tanda pembagian (÷ alt 0247)
* Tanda derajat (° alt 0176)
* Tanda copyright (© alt 0169)
* Tanda registered (® alt 0174)
* Tanda question mark terbalik (¿ alt 0191)
* Tanda mata uang pound Inggris (£ alt 0163)
* Tanda mata uang Yen Jepang (¥ alt 0165)
* Tanda Euro (€ alt 0128)
* Tanda cent (¢ alt 0162)

Sementara untuk number pad kode 1 hingga 30 (alt+1 hingga alt+30):

+1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
☺.☻♥.♦.♣.♠.•. ◘.○. ◙ . ♂ . ♀ . ♪ . ♫. ☼. ►. ◄ . ↕ .. ‼ .. ¶ .. §. ▬ .↨ .. ↑ .. ↓ .→. ←. ∟. ↔. ▲

nah, the keys shortcut karakter khusus ini hanya bekerja dengan program yang menerima input kode ASCII, seperti di Microsoft Word, email, notepad, wordpad, dan sebagainya. Selain itu encoding karakter juga bisa berbeda di masing-masing system, baik untuk Windows ataupun berbeda di Macintosh. Shortcut di atas hanya bekerja di number pad di PC desktop, tidak di notebook, laptop, dan sebagainya, kecuali terdapat numeric pad seperti di desktop.

lo juga dapat melihat karakter special tersebut di Windows dengan memilih menu “Run”, lalu ketik “charmap”. Atau juga bisa dengan memilih “All programs – utilities atau accessories – System Tools – Character Map”.

mudah-mudahan aja bisa bermanfaat..

Kreatif Klik Kanan Windows

2009-04-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

lo mau membuat sebuah file dan folder, juga subfolder ato apa aja yang ada dalam Windows Explorer, yang memang tidak disediakan dalam fasilitas default Windows, nii ada sekedar tips mudah untuk membuatnya .

Buka Notepad, ketikkan tulisan berikut :

dir /a /-p /o:gen >filelisting.txt

Simpan Notepad dengan nama file berekstensi .bat di “C:\Windows\”

Membuat sebuah daftar list file dan folder

* Buka Windows Explorer, klik menu “Tools - Folder Options”, pilih tab “File Types – Folder – Advanced – New”.
* Ketikkan tulisan berikut ini :
* Menu File di “C:\Windows\namafile.bat“
* Klik OK.
* Untuk mengeceknya apa file ini jalan, klik kanan pada sembarang folder, dan akan tertampil opsi “Menu File” yang telah lo buat tadi.

New Features From Gmail

2009-04-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Icon Google's webmail service, Gmail is now being celebrated the fifth birthday this week. In connection with the birthday, a lot of speculation that Google will create a new improvisation feature to Gmail. According to a technology news site, Electricpig, Google will make the announcement the new features in Gmail, Monday (30 / 3) this.

When Google first launched this in the webmail service on 1 April 2004, many technology industry experts who think that Google is only making an "April MOP", although since it turns out, Gmail webmail service developed into the most popular. Google then move to provide webmail storage capacity that is almost infinite, and concentrate on the mail function, with the help of Ajax technology, so it is able to push up the market a web-based email is new.

But, however, not all pleased with the attendance of Google Gmail. This is because many communities in the mare using Twitter account to complain about the Gmail service, and change its brand to become Gfail. Google also became the subject of the complaint U.S. Federal Trade Commission and perusahannon-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) on the standard security cloud computing services from Google, including Gmail.

Epic rate that Google does not do encryption of information on the server, however, now Gmail have extended wings in the consumer and corporate market.

Facebook users wage condom campaign against Pope

2009-03-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

Critics took to the social networking site Facebook to voice their fury over Pope Benedict's remark that condoms do not prevent HIV.

Thousands have pledged to send the pontiff millions of condoms to protest the controversial comment he made to journalists as he flew to Cameroon last week.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Pope Benedict XVI has made it clear he intends to uphold the traditional Catholic teaching on artificial contraception. The Vatican has long opposed the use of condoms and other forms of birth control and encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

About a dozen Facebook groups have sprang up, mostly from European countries, criticizing the pontiff.

"The clergy aren't supposed to have sex at all, but they are free to tell people how to conduct themselves? That's like a girl who wears no make-up as the CEO of CoverGirl," one member posted on the page, "Condoms for Pope Benedict XVI."

"It frightens me that a man who has devoted his life to moral guidance ... and is undeniably a learned, intelligent man can be at the same time so narrow-minded, bigoted and irresponsible," posted another person on a different page.

The online campaign added another voice to a deluge of criticism, which includes the governments of France, Germany and Belgium. Aid agencies and other health organizations have also chimed in.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, urged the pope Saturday to issue a retraction for the "outrageous and wildly inaccurate" statement to journalists aboard his plane.

"When any influential person, be it a religious or political leader, makes a false scientific statement that could be devastating to the health of millions of people, they should retract or correct the public record," The Lancet said in an editorial.

"Anything less from Pope Benedict would be an immense disservice to the public and health advocates, including many thousands of Catholics, who work tirelessly to try and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide."

Some in the Catholic Church have rallied to the pontiff's support.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Bishops Conference, told Times Online in Britain that Benedict was simply pointing out that condoms "had not solved and could not solve the AIDS problem."

Despite the controversy, the pope's pilgrimage spurred excitement in Africa. An estimated 1 million people turned out to hear him preach a Mass in Angola on Sunday, the last major event of his trip. He spoke of the need for reconciliation in the country, which has endured a brutal civil war.

"Look to the future with hope, trust in God's promises and live in his truth. In this way you will build something that will stand and endure," he said.

Swiss Banks Call Tax Evader Label Unfair

2009-03-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

The Swiss Bankers Association has launched a blistering attack against the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calling the OECD's treatment of Switzerland disgraceful. The bankers say the OECD's threat to put Switzerland on a blacklist of countries that allegedly shield tax evaders is unacceptable and seriously damages the OECD's credibility.

The President of the Swiss Bankers Association, Pierre Mirabaud, categorically denies that Switzerland is a tax haven. He says 99.9 percent of tax evaders do not have a bank account in Switzerland.

He says Switzerland is an easy target to attack because there is no political risk involved. He says the Swiss have no powerful lobby in the United States or the European Union that it can mobilize. "As a banker I know what my clients are in my bank and I talk to a lot of bankers in Switzerland and I see what they are doing," said Mirabaud. "And, I can tell you that it is completely absurd to think that the Swiss private banking industry is based on tax evasion. This, I am sorry to say, is a very good story, but it is not the truth."

Swiss bank secrecy laws made neutral Switzerland a popular destination for capital during World War II, and for generations the confidentiality of bank customers has been a hallmark of the country's banking business.

Earlier this month, Switzerland agreed to ease its rules on banking secrecy. It said it would cooperate with other countries on cases of tax evasion and would no longer protect wealthy foreigners accused of stashing billions of dollars in secret bank vaults. Switzerland said it would adopt international rules on tax cooperation to avoid being blacklisted at next week's G20 meeting in London.

Mirabaud accuses Germany and France of backing the move to blacklist Switzerland in order to divert attention from their own tax loopholes and overly complicated tax systems. He says efforts by these two nations to punish Switzerland for failing to cooperate in tax investigations stems from their jealousy of his country's financial industry.

He says the OECD has had a long established blacklist of suspect countries, but Switzerland has never been on that list. "And, all of a sudden because Germany and France asked Mr. Guria to change the list, they did it without discussing it neither in the commission, which treats the question of tax things, nor with the country which were going to be put on the list, like Luxembourg, who was not on the list before, like Austria, which was not on the list before," said Mirabaud.

Mirabeaud says, as far as he knows, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Austria will not appear on the G20 blacklist and will not be liable for economic sanctions.

U.S. President Barack Obama supports moves to crack down on tax havens around the world that cost the United States an estimated $100 billion in tax revenue every year. Relations between Washington and Bern have dipped over illegal activities committed by Switzerland's largest bank, UBS in the United States. The American government has been pressuring Switzerland to release the names of alleged tax evaders.

Mirabaud says before pointing fingers at others, the United States should put its own house in order. He says he believes there are more tax evaders with accounts in Florida and Delaware than in Switzerland.

Adobe details secret PDF patches

2009-03-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Adobe Systems Inc. revealed Tuesday that it patched five critical vulnerabilities behind the scenes when it updated its Reader and Acrobat applications earlier this month to fix a bug already under attack.

According to a security bulletin issued Tuesday, the updates to Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1 that Adobe delivered on March 10 included patches for not just one bug -- as Adobe indicated at the time -- but for five other vulnerabilities as well.

Foremost among the five were a quartet of bugs in Adobe's handling of JBIG2 compressed images, which was also at the root of the original vulnerability made public in February. When Adobe updated Reader and Acrobat to Version 9.1 two weeks ago, it fixed all five JBIG2 flaws, though it admitted only to the one at the time.

That bug has been used by hackers since at least early January, when they began sending malformed PDF files to users as e-mail attachments.

"The way we always handle this," said Brad Arkin, Adobe's director of product security and privacy, "is, will publicly released information help more users than not releasing the information?" Adobe, said Arkin Tuesday, decided the answer was "no," since it had yet to issue updates for all users when it first patched the software on March 10.

The decision was prompted by the staggered release of the Reader and Acrobat updates. Although Adobe patched the Windows and Mac OS X editions of the two apps on March 10, offered updates to the Version 8 line on March 17, and didn't issue Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1 for Unix until Tuesday. It also didn't produce a fix for the even-older Version 7 until Tuesday.

"With this JBIG security incident, we wanted to patch as soon as possible," said Arkin, "and staggering the updates like we did was going to get the patches to the biggest demographic as soon as possible." More users run Version 9 on Windows and Mac than any other edition of Reader and Acrobat, Arkin added.

The four newly revealed JBIG2 vulnerabilities were reported to Adobe after Symantec Corp. said it had found a new Reader bug in the wild, said Arkin, but there was enough time before the March 10 update deadline to add fixes for them to Version 9.1.

That matches the schedule spelled out by iDefense Labs, a computer security research arm of VeriSign Inc. In its own bulletin Tuesday, iDefense said it had notified Adobe of a JBIG2 bug on Feb. 24, and provided the company with proof-of-concept code a day later.

All four of the already-patched JBIG2 bugs were classified by Adobe as critical, and could "lead to remote code execution," according to the bulletin.

The fifth vulnerability detailed Tuesday was also critical, and had actually been patched in the Unix edition of Reader 8.1.3 and Acrobat 8.1.3 last November. "That had not been ported over to the other platforms, however," said Arkin, referring to the Windows and Mac versions of the software.

One security researcher said that while he agreed with Adobe's call, the company could have done better at communicating about what it was doing. "It does make some sense if you are forced into doing a staggered release," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. "There's no sense in exposing users any more than necessary. But what gives us the bad taste is how they aren't being upfront about it now," referring to the security bulletin, which doesn't mention the newly revealed bugs in its summary, but tucks them deeper in the document.

Users who have already updated to Reader or Acrobat 9.1 or 8.1.4 -- the versions pushed out March 10 and 17, respectively -- don't need to take any further action, Adobe's Arkin said, because they're fully patched against all the flaws, including those announced Tuesday.

Indonesian dam burst toll rises

2009-03-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

Rescue workers have resumed searching for more than 100 people feared missing after about 400 homes were deluged in the Tangerang district early on Friday.

Visiting the scene, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to help families reconstruct their homes and pledged to rebuild the dam.

Residents likened the onrush of water to the impact of a tsunami.

Torrents of water mixed with boulders and debris crashed through a 70m (230ft) gash in the dam, sweeping away buildings in the Cirendeu suburb.

The deluge destroyed hastily erected flimsy wooden houses as well as more solid concrete buildings.

Local police chief Ngisa Asngari told the Associated Press on Saturday that hundreds of soldiers, police and volunteers were continuing to dig through piles of mud and debris, searching for survivors or bodies.

The BBC's Katherine Demopoulos in Jakarta says funerals for many of the dead have already been held.

In Islamic practice the dead are supposed to be buried by sunset on the day they died.

Maintenance questions

The Situ Gintung dam, which stood 16m high and held back a lake of two million cubic metres of water, was built out of dirt by Dutch colonialists in 1933.

Experts told the BBC that little maintenance had been carried out on the dam since then, and warned that many dams in Indonesia are in a similar state.

The Jakarta Globe newspaper reported that Cirendeu residents had spotted cracks in the dam a year ago.

They were so fearful of a flood that they had even practised evacuation drills, the newspaper reported.

But following hours of heavy rain during Thursday evening, the dam burst at 0200 (1900 GMT Thursday) when most people were asleep.

Our correspondent says the city has an ageing, poorly maintained drainage system which struggles to cope with heavy rainfall.

Inquiry promised

After touring the disaster site, Mr Yudhoyono told Indonesia's Antara news agency the dam "must be rebuilt".

"We will design the new structure in a proper way so that it will not cause any further public concern," he said.

"The government will help residents reconstruct their damaged houses," Mr Yudhoyono said.

The government promised millions of dollars in cash aid for the victims.

Local officials have promised to investigate the cause of the disaster.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7969397.stm

150 Million Photos Pictures Has Been Lost?

2009-03-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Facebook is still a matter of facing a new problem. What if the image of those who are lost in Facebook suddenly?

In blog.facebook.com, mentioned that Sunday (08/03) yesterday, as many as 10 to 15 percent or about 150 million images from the billions of photos on Facebook, has experienced problems in the database storage. Photos are missing, as quoted in the blog is then replaced with the image question.

However, according to Facebook engineer, Evan Priestley, the loss of the photographs are not permanent, and his side are improving around the third and hope to improve in all consecutive. "We still have all the images the user because we save by using multiple copies of data, in order to guard when there is damage to hardware such as this." Priestley said. However, the company Facebook is still debatable with the cause of the occurrence of incident.

"During our routine software upgrade since Friday (06/03), we conducted a pilot project with the image problem that we have in storage, and in fact some of the drive where we store the image the user, a failure at that time also. We try to understand the conditions that occur, because the hardware is very rare when used at the same time, direct experience failure. "Priestley said.

Save Your Facebook

2009-03-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

Lately we hear flare businesses piercing Facebook account around us. How this can happen? While most of us have been very trust social networking service in this day-to-day communication. Then, at least the next question is how do we secure the Facebook account of this threat .

In the following steps are anticipated to be taken to secure our Facebook account.

1. Avoid Login http://www.facebook.com through, as this page is not encrypted. Your login information is encrypted, but because the login form is in a frame, the user can not see whether or not all encrypted.
2. Make the process of your login page: https: / / login.facebook.com / login.php? Login_attempt = 1. You can ensure that the login you would secure the right to check the bottom of the browser to display the 'lock signed'.
3. Login Do not continue the process if there is a danger warning (security alert). You can immediately stop the process that are 'not safe' with key 'ESC'.
4. Do not forget to always do after Logout access your Facebook account. With only turn off the browser without the Logout process, means that you have to leave 'session' for you to access other people. Therefore it is important to always make you Logout.
5. Do not work to the right as the system administrator. Akan very dangerous if you open the email, images and documents with the practice administrator account, as this will open the possibility for cyber criminals to get your computer.
6. Vigilant against Malicious Facebook Widget. Widget or application can provide additional opportunities for the author to work in coding the program to access important information from the target computer. Until now, there are two types of Malicious Facebook Widget is reported that the Facebook users, and the Secret Crush Error Check System.
7. Be careful in selecting a computer for use. If your computer to use a public or keep changing the computer, such as rental or in Internet cafés (cafe), then you should be careful in selecting and practice. This is not a guaranteed maximum security update from the computer. While the computer has been infected Koobface Worm, or Keylogger can steal user data and its password.
8. Be careful in selecting the network connection Wi-Fi Internet. Only the Facebook login process handle encrypted SSL / TLS (https). Mean while cookies Facebook will very easily be taken from the air (through the signal connection Wi-Fi Internet). Wi-Fi protected with a WEP encryption easy to be broken within 10 minutes. Currently, anyone can easily create any hotspot and provide free-access to you. But you must be carefull level of security access is offered, because access to the Facebook network connections that are not protected, the same private data you provide for free.
9. Think about security issues before you make a click on the 'Wall'. Post on the Wall is a way Koobface dissemination or other malware, so you should be careful access.
10. The latter is how we will increase awareness of safety hazards on Facebook is the people around us. Due to the increasing awareness in the people around us will also support our security.

Save The Earth!

2009-03-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

Global warming is now starting to feel the impact all over the world . Climate change is more about the earth, the rightly concern us together. Temperature rise which is the earth where we live has brought a lot of damage to our natural habitation, from the changing mountain ice (glacier) to the polar water, to a hole in the ozone or forest fires resulting in damage to the ecosystem.

In response to this, through the Director of the WWF, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu James Leape, invites people around the world to proclaim their concern over saving the earth. Not only for the generation that currently exist, but also for the earth's sustainability for generations to come .

The form of appeal to be conducted simultaneously by all the people in this world is to shut off electricity for 60 minutes or 1 hour on 28 March 2009. For Indonesia alone, the people who care about saving the earth will be this willingness to turn off the electric start at 20:30 until 21:30 WIB (60 minutes). It is expected that the mass awareness of environmental action will knock the heart all the world leaders and business owners to be more attention to saving the earth and the environment as a place where we live today and for generations to come .

Climate change is a real world of alarm for the whole world community about the increasing damage to the condition of the earth that we don't give a response, as well as a reminder for us to hasten to take the initiative to save the earth before more late.

Hacked filter reveals blacklist in 30 seconds

2009-03-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

The vulnerability, leaked to iTnews over the weekend and verified by IT security consultants, is due to a flaw in the Integard internet filtering software developed by Brisbane's Race River Corporation.

A source claimed to iTnews that Integard can be reverse-engineered with a hex editor to reveal material the software is designed to keep secret.

iTnews asked three IT security specialists for their opinions.

They all refused to go on the record but they said the list of banned URLs is exposed in a process that takes about 30 seconds.

"Put it this way: it took longer to download Integard than to hack it," said a senior security researcher speaking on condition of anonymity.

iTnews has been asking Integard managing director John Hedges for comment since yesterday.

ISP's and content hosts in Australia are required by law to remove locally-hosted websites deemed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to be illegal under Australian law.

Sites deemed illegal that are hosted overseas are added to a blacklist ACMA sends as regular updates to the manufacturers of client-based internet filters. These sites would potentially be blocked under the network-level mandatory ISP filtering scheme currently on trial.

Cara Cerdas Mengurangi Beban Kinerja Komputer Anda!

2009-03-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

Komputer yang luw gunakan lama kelamaan dan lama- lama bakal alias pasti alias dah kagak bisa diganggu gugat lagi bkal terasa makin lambat dan ‘berat’ (kegemukan sih luw!) , tuh dikarenakan beban kinerja komputer kita makin berat.
Berikut 9w ada sedikit demi sebanyak memberikan beberapa tips untuk mengurangi beban kinerja komputer anda.. Catet!

- First
Langkah pertama mempercepat boot via BIOS.

- Second
Untuk Windows XP, mulai dengan membuka System Configuration Utility.(Start–>Run–>ketik “msconfig”).
Pada tab BOOT.INI, beri tanda centang pada “/NOGUIBOOT”, ini akan mempersingkat waktu boot dengan menghilangkan Windows startup screen.
Pada tab Startup, hilangkan centang service-service yang benar-benar sangat tidak dibutuhkan.
Pada tab service lakukan hal yang sama seperti pada tab Startup.

- Third
Setting ini dapat anda lakukan jika luw mementingkan kecepatan Windows XP dari pada grafis atau tampilan Windows XP.
Setting ulang interface ini dapat menambah kecepatan.
Masuk ke Control Panel dan klik System, lalu pilih tab Advanced.
Pada pilihan Performance klik Settings, kemudian pada tab Visual Effects pilih “Adjust for Best Performance”.

- Fourth
Tidak menggunakan wallpaper dan minimalisasi jumlah desktop icon juga dapat mempercepat PC luw.

- Fifth
Tidak menggunakan suara pada event Start Windows juga dapat mempercepat proses boot.
Masuk ke Control Panel dan klik “Sounds and Audio Devices” lalu pilih tab Sounds.
Pada Sound scheme pilih No Sounds.

- Sixth
Kurangi jumlah font yang tidak begitu penting pada Windows luw.
karena makin banyak jumlah font yang terinstal akan menambah berat beban kerja PC luw.
Windows secara default menyertakan sejumlah kurang dari 100 font.
Usahakan jumlah font yang terinstal tidak lebih 150 font.

- Seventh
Luw harus rajin meng-update driver, karena file-file yang masih menggunakan driver lama dapat memperlambat PC luw.. Suweeeeeeeeeeeer dah!.

Membuat Proses Shutdown Anda Cepat

2009-03-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

Pernah mengalami proses shutdown yang sangat lemot alias lambat alias naek becak gak? Pasti nyebelin banget kan! Apalagi kalau komputer yg luw beli itu masih baru alias baru ngutang .
Nih ada sedikit tips n trik dari 9w.. sapa tahu aja bermanfaat..

1. Menutup semua aplikasi pada saat shutdown (auto kill ) (<<< class="emoticon" src="http://sidekick.mysinablog.com/resserver.php?resource=187078-%E6%B0%B4%E8%8D%89%E8%88%9E.gif" alt=":woooh:" title=":woooh:" width="50" height="50">.
- Masuk ke registry editor anda ( Start –> Run –> Ketik regedit )
- Masuk ke registry berikut
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
- Cari key dengan nama “AutoEndTasks” dan klik kanan key tersebut lalu pilih Modify, ubah Value Data menjadi 1.

2. Merubah waktu menutup suatu aplikasi jika ada aplikasi yang Hang (bukan hangout..).
- Masuk ke registry editor anda ( Start –> Run –> Ketik regedit )
- Masuk ke registry berikut
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
- Cari key dengan nama “WaitToKillAppTimeout” dan “HungAppTimeout”.
- Klik kanan masing-masing key tersebut lalu pilih Modify dan ubah Value Data menjadi 1000.

3. Menonaktifkan fasilitas Clearing Paging File.
Sebelum menggunakan langkah ini anda bisa lihat apa kegunaan paging file disini http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging_file.
- Masuk ke registry editor anda ( Start –> Run –> Ketik regedit )
- Masuk ke registry berikut
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management
- Cari key dengan nama “ClearPageFileOnShutdown”.
- Klik kanan key tersebut lalu pilih Modify dan ubah Value Data menjadi 0 jika Value Data belum sama dengan 0.

moga-moga bisa dijadiin bahan pembelajaran dech..

Facebook changes coming in response to user complaints

2009-03-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

Facebook users haven't exactly been reticent about their dislike for Facebook's recent redesign. And Facebook staff want you to know they're listening.

Facebook has been deluged with feedback on its new layout, much of it negative but constructive, according to a blog posted Tuesday by Product Director Christopher Cox. Hundreds of thousands of people gave the redesign a thumbs-down in a user poll. And groups like "MEMBERS WANT THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK!" have formed to voice their discontent.

While the social network isn't reverting back to the old page design, they are making a handful of changes to appease some of the outraged masses, according to Cox, who has also worked as director of human resources and software engineer at the company.

Some of the changes already in the works include:

* Live updating: Users will have the ability to turn on auto updating so they don't have to refresh the page to see what's new.

* Photo tags: Facebook will add photos tagged with a person's friends to her stream.

* Applications: Users will have the ability to cut down on the application-related content that's showing up in streams.

* Highlights: This section in the right-hand column will update more frequently and show more content so it'll be more like the old News Feed.

* Requests: Friend requests and event invites will be moved to the top of the right-hand column so they're more prominent.

* Friends lists: Users will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter their streams.

From the post: "Over time, we'll continue to give you more control over what's in your main stream and how you consume it. We have the eventual goal of building filters that summarize this activity so you can see a more condensed view of what's been going on. We're also thinking about ways of filtering out some of the Wall posts and content directed to specific people to focus more on posts shared with everyone."

No specific timeframe was mentioned for most of the updates, though they did say the photo tag update would happen "in the coming weeks."

To be sure, it can't be easy to redesign a site with 175 million users. For one thing, different people use the site very differently, so one man's feature is another's peeve. Many of Facebook's users are online and interacting with the site for hours each day and no doubt have a personal connection to what goes on there. And as Cox points out in his post, sometimes change is just hard to take.

With SUSE Linux 11, Novell draws even closer to Microsoft

2009-03-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

The latest version of SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell Inc.'s commercial distribution of the open-source operating system, bears more fruit from Novell's controversial two-and-a-half-year-old interoperability alliance with Microsoft Corp.

One version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, what Novell likes to call SLE 11, will allow companies to run applications built with Microsoft's .Net platform to work on Linux without recompiling them. That version, called Mono Extension, even runs on IBM's System z, enabling IBM'S mainframe computers to run .Net apps.

The desktop version of SLE 11 includes Moonlight, a Firefox browser extension for Linux, and Unix operating systems that enables users to view rich media built for Microsoft's Silverlight platform. The two companies have been talking about Moonlight for several years, though the first mature release, Moonlight 1.0, was made available only in January.

SLE 11 desktop can also play Windows multimedia-formatted files and bundles the Novell version of OpenOffice.org, which supports the latest Microsoft Office 2007 Open XML document formats. SLE 11 also includes a number of back-end improvements that make it more manageable both as a physical and virtual operating system by Windows system administrators.

"We want SUSE to be the best-managed Linux under Microsoft System Center," said Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing.

When rival Red Hat Inc. signed an interoperability agreement with Microsoft in February, some took that as a sign that Red Hat was displacing Novell as its most-favored open-source vendor.

Steinman was quick to disagree. "The only thing that Red Hat and Microsoft did was to agree to participate in each other's public software validation programs. It was a lot of noise about something that is pretty basic and simple," Steinman said. "What we're doing with Microsoft remains a much broader partnership."

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., agreed. "Red Hat and Microsoft still essentially just tolerate each other. So it's fair to say that Novell has a deeper relationship with Microsoft than Red Hat does," he said.

In the most recent figures from IDC, Red Hat had 66% of the Linux market in 2006, more than double Novell's 26% share.

The economic downturn may boost the prospects for commercial Linux -- though, how much is unsure.

Novell touts a recent IDC survey it sponsored that shows 72% of IT executives are actively evaluating or have already decided to boost adoption of Linux server this year, with 68% reporting the same for desktop Linux.

According to a revised forecast by IDC in December, Linux revenues will grow 20% a year until 2012, from $649 million last year to $1.23 billion in 2012. Its share of the worldwide operating system market by revenue will grow to a total of 3.6% in 2012.

However, Linux by 2012 will still only be the fourth most popular platform, behind Windows, Unix and mainframes, according to IDC. Sales of Windows, worth $21.6 billion last year, will grow to $27.4 billion by 2012, and hold 81% of the market, according to the research firm.

Other new features in SLE 11 include support for Citrix Systems Inc.'s Xen hypervisor, a high-availability version for clustered data centers that will be available in April, and a real-time version for time-sensitive, mission-critical apps due out later this year.

Symantec's Altiris 7 boosts Mac, Linux desktop PC management

2009-03-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

Symantec Corp. today announced Version 7.0 of its Altiris client and server management suite. The upgrade, the first released since Symantec's acquisition of Altiris almost two years ago, includes new features for remotely deploying and managing Mac and Linux desktop PCs and, on the server side, improved performance monitoring of physical and virtual machines.

A new native Mac OS X agent enables Altiris 7 to automatically discover, catalog and inventory software on Mac desktops, and deliver that software from a central console or allow users to download it themselves.

The features significantly boost Altiris' Mac management features, which it began adding in 2002.

In terms of Altiris 7's desktop management ability, "this probably puts Macs on parity with Windows PCs," said Christine Ewing, director of product marketing.

Most of those new features are also now available for Linux PCs, Ewing said. Altiris is supporting Novell Inc.'s SUSE and Red Hat Inc.'s Linux distributions, she said.

Altiris 7 also lets IT managers save energy costs by setting policies for putting PCs into sleep or hibernation modes, Ewing said. The control is even more fine-tuned if the PCs have processors that include Intel Corp.'s vPro technology.

A perpetual license for Altiris 7 costs $95 per desktop PC. Altiris' chief competitors, according to Gartner Inc., include Avocent Corp.'s LANDesk and Microsoft Corp.'s System Center.

On the server side, Altiris 7 offers both agent and agentless monitoring and can be set to automatically choose the best monitoring method. Event data is collected and normalized so that unusual events and significant performance issues can be more easily detected.

Historical data is now collected to allow IT managers to drill down into any problems. The software also manages virtual machines created by both VMware ESX as well as Microsoft's Hyper-V.

The software costs $399 per server.

Symantec is holding its annual ManageFusion conference in Las Vegas today through Thursday. The last major release of Altiris, Version 6.0, was in early 2004.

VMware to manage virtual machines from mobile phones

2009-03-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

VMware is set to release in the beginning of April a technology preview of a new feature that will let vCenter Mobile Access VMware users manage their infrastructure from mobile phones, it said on a company blog on Friday.

Using vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) IT administrators will, for example, be able to search for virtual machines in the datacenter or migrate virtual machines from one host to another using VMware's vMotion feature. The company paints a scenario where IT administrators will be able to restart a virtual machine when sitting in a meeting or get an alarm when attending a kid's soccer game.

In order for the tool to work, users will first have to install a vCMA server, which comes in the shape of a virtual appliance. The vCMA server must be connected to VMware vCenter or any of the ESX servers that is going to be managed.

A demo, using a BlackBerry emulator, shows a user logging onto the server using the vCenter IP address, user name, and password. The next screen shows a number of icons, including search, migrate, site recovery, scheduled tasks, and alarms that the administrator can select.

VCMA is designed to be used from mobile phone browsers, so it should work on a wide variety of devices, writes VMware's Ben Kolin on a forum dedicated to the new tool. VMware has done some testing with Symbian (Nokia E71), iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile, according to Kolin.

The announcement also underscores a current trend to allow IT departments to do more using mobile phones, giving administrators greater flexibility. This is what VMware wants to achieve with vCMA, according to Fredrik Sjöstedt, director of EMEA product marketing at VMware.

But what users can do is limited by the smaller screens, according to Leif-Olof Wallin, research vice president at Gartner. The small screen makes it more difficult to get a good overview, and to ensure that everything is done correctly, he said.

The same concern is echoed by Lars-Gunnar Nyqvist, head of IT at Kommuninvest of Sweden, a public sector owned and guaranteed credit market company

"I'd feel safer using a real keyboard," he said, but will still have a look at the tool to see what it can add.