A while ago on Slashdot, I read about a contest titled “We’re Linux”. The Linux Foundation has asked the community to develop their own “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC…” style commercials. I watched a handful of the other submissions, littered with cheesy jokes and poor production quality. However, the simplistic approach fared quite well. Here is the winner:

Apple, Linux, Linux Foundation, Mac, microsoft, Operating Systems, Personal computer, slashdot Hide

So apparently Microsoft claims that some crazy piece of shit dubbed WARP10, a new feature in Windows 7, will allow people to play modern games on obsolete hardware. This sounds too good to be true. Hopefully they don’t make you sign over your soul first. I fail to believe that running Crysis would even be playable.

According to Microsoft,

When WARP10 is running on the CPU, we are limited compared to a graphics card in a number of ways. The front side bus speed of a CPU is typically around or under 10 GB/s whereas a graphics card often has dedicated memory that is able to take advantage of 20-100 GB/s or more of graphics bandwidth. Graphics hardware also has fixed function units that can perform complex and expensive tasks like texture filtering, format decompression or conversions asynchronously with very little overhead or power cost. Performing these operations on a typical CPU is expensive in terms of both power consumption and performance cost in cycles.

* Fully supports all Direct3D 10 and 10.1 feature
o Fully supports all the precision requirements of the Direct3D 10 and 10.1 specification
o Supports Direct3D 11 when used with FeatureLevel 9_1, 9_2, 9_3, 10_0 and 10_1
o Supports all optional texture formats, such as multi-sample render targets and sampling from float surfaces.
o Supports anti-aliased, high quality rendering up to 8x MSAA.
o Supports anisotropic filtering
o Supports 32 and 64 bit applications as well as large address aware 32 bit applications.
* The minimum specification for WARP10 is the same as Windows Vista, specifically:
o Minimum 800MHz CPU.
o MMX, SSE or SSE2 is *not* required
o Minimum 512MB of RAM.

Read more at Toms Hardware

Related articles by Zemanta

• Windows 7 Won’t Require Graphics Hardware for Effects [Windows 7]
• Windows 7 WARP system to allow for DirectX 10 CPU acceleration
• Vista SP2 due next April, says report
• Windows Vista SP2 will be available to Download by March
• Vista SP2 to land in April 2009-ish?
• Kouziro Frontier Netbook
• DirectX 11 in Windows 7
• Windows 7 Shows Off Better Battery Life
• Direct3D WARP10 to enable you to play DX10 Crysis using software renderer only, albeit slowly
• DirectX 11 Won’t Repeat The Windows-Exclusive Sins Of It’s Father [Pc Games]

Direct3D, microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Random-access memory, Streaming SIMD Extensions, Window Vista, Windows 7 Hide

Image via CrunchBase

Here at the Microsoft Security Response Center, we investigate thousands of security reports every year. In some cases, we find that a report describes a bona fide security vulnerability resulting from a flaw in one of our products; when this happens, we develop a patch as quickly as possible to correct the error. (See “A Tour of the Microsoft Security Response Center”). In other cases, the reported problems simply result from a mistake someone made in using the product. But many fall in between. They discuss real security problems, but the problems don’t result from product flaws. Over the years, we’ve developed a list of issues like these, that we call the 10 Immutable Laws of Security.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a patch that will protect you from the issues we’ll discuss below. It isn’t possible for Microsoft—or any software vendor—to “fix” them, because they result from the way computers work. But don’t abandon all hope yet—sound judgment is the key to protecting yourself against these issues, and if you keep them in mind, you can significantly improve the security of your systems.

On This Page

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it’s not your computer anymore
Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it’s not your computer anymore
Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it’s not your computer anymore
Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it’s not your website any more
Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security
Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy
Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key
Law #8: An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all
Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn’t practical, in real life or on the Web
Law #10: Technology is not a panacea

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it’s not your computer anymore

It’s an unfortunate fact of computer science: when a computer program runs, it will do what it’s programmed to do, even if it’s programmed to be harmful. When you choose to run a program, you are making a decision to turn over control of your computer to it. Once a program is running, it can do anything, up to the limits of what you yourself can do on the computer. It could monitor your keystrokes and send them to a website. It could open every document on the computer, and change the word “will” to “won’t” in all of them. It could send rude emails to all your friends. It could install a virus. It could create a “back door” that lets someone remotely control your computer. It could dial up an ISP in Katmandu. Or it could just reformat your hard drive.

That’s why it’s important to never run, or even download, a program from an untrusted source—and by “source,” I mean the person who wrote it, not the person who gave it to you. There’s a nice analogy between running a program and eating a sandwich. If a stranger walked up to you and handed you a sandwich, would you eat it? Probably not. How about if your best friend gave you a sandwich? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t—it depends on whether she made it or found it lying in the street. Apply the same critical thought to a program that you would to a sandwich, and you’ll usually be safe.

Top Of Page

Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it’s not your computer anymore

In the end, an operating system is just a series of ones and zeroes that, when interpreted by the processor, cause the computer to do certain things. Change the ones and zeroes, and it will do something different. Where are the ones and zeroes stored? Why, on the computer, right along with everything else! They’re just files, and if other people who use the computer are permitted to change those files, it’s “game over”.

To understand why, consider that operating system files are among the most trusted ones on the computer, and they generally run with system-level privileges. That is, they can do absolutely anything. Among other things, they’re trusted to manage user accounts, handle password changes, and enforce the rules governing who can do what on the computer. If a bad guy can change them, the now-untrustworthy files will do his bidding, and there’s no limit to what he can do. He can steal passwords, make himself an administrator on the computer, or add entirely new functions to the operating system. To prevent this type of attack, make sure that the system files (and the registry, for that matter) are well protected. (The security checklists on the Microsoft Security website will help you do this).

Top Of Page

Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it’s not your computer anymore

Oh, the things a bad guy can do if he can lay his hands on your computer! Here’s a sampling, going from Stone Age to Space Age:

• He could mount the ultimate low-tech denial of service attack, and smash your computer with a sledgehammer.
• He could unplug the computer, haul it out of your building, and hold it for ransom.
• He could boot the computer from a floppy disk, and reformat your hard drive. But wait, you say, I’ve configured the BIOS on my computer to prompt for a password when I turn the power on. No problem – if he can open the case and get his hands on the system hardware, he could just replace the BIOS chips. (Actually, there are even easier ways).
• He could remove the hard drive from your computer, install it into his computer, and read it.
• He could make a duplicate of your hard drive and take it back his lair. Once there, he’d have all the time in the world to conduct brute-force attacks, such as trying every possible logon password. Programs are available to automate this and, given enough time, it’s almost certain that he would succeed. Once that happens, Laws #1 and #2 above apply.
• He could replace your keyboard with one that contains a radio transmitter. He could then monitor everything you type, including your password.

Always make sure that a computer is physically protected in a way that’s consistent with its value—and remember that the value of a computer includes not only the value of the hardware itself, but the value of the data on it, and the value of the access to your network that a bad guy could gain. At a minimum, business-critical computers like domain controllers, database servers, and print/file servers should always be in a locked room that only people charged with administration and maintenance can access. But you may want to consider protecting other computers as well, and potentially using additional protective measures.

If you travel with a laptop, it’s absolutely critical that you protect it. The same features that make laptops great to travel with – small size, light weight, and so forth—also make them easy to steal. There are a variety of locks and alarms available for laptops, and some models let you remove the hard drive and carry it with you. You also can use features like the Encrypting File System in Microsoft Windows® 2000 to mitigate the damage if someone succeeded in stealing the computer. But the only way you can know with 100% certainty that your data is safe and the hardware hasn’t been tampered with is to keep the laptop on your person at all times while traveling.

Related articles

• Threat to computers for industrial systems now serious
• Microsoft security maturing fast
• Microsoft to seek credit for finding vulnerabilities
• The Ethics of Vulnerability Research
• Microsoft rushes out emergency Windows security fix
• Hackers eye Macs, iPhones
• Microsoft’s urgent security update: What it means
• 10 essential (and free!) security downloads for Windows
• Intel’s Moorestown would make iPhone less secure
• The DNS Vulnerability
• Brian Gardner’s Revolution 2 - INCREDIBLE Premium WordPress Themes
• WordPress Showcase. Brightest WordPress Stars
• WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 available…
• WordPress 2.7 delayed (beta available)
• WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 is out, November 10 release gets delayed

Business, Computer, Computer security, microsoft, Microsoft Security Response Center, Operating system, Security, Vulnerability Hide

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst expects the enterprise open source software business to emerge from the economic crisis stronger than the proprietary market.

In August Red Hat posted second quarter revenue 29 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago, while its subscription revenue also enjoyed double-digit growth to beat analysts’ estimates. Whitehurst said that while predictions of a recession will likely mean fewer new projects, the economic benefits of going open source are already encouraging proprietary customers to switch.

“I’ve had a couple of conversations with CIOs who said ‘we’re a Microsoft shop and we don’t use any open source whatsoever, but we’re already getting pressure to reduce our operating costs and we need you to help put together a plan for us to help us use open source to reduce our costs’.

“And we’ve had other customers literally looking at ripping and replacing WebLogic or WebSphere for JBoss, so I do think that we will pick up quite a bit of new business where companies are looking to save money from what they are doing…I think we’ll know in about six to nine months but there is no question that open source will come out of this in relatively better shape than our proprietary competitors,” he told Computerworld.

Whitehurst, who visited Australia last week to promote the Open Source Collaborative Innovation program, said telecommunications is his company’s largest represented sector at around 12 percent, followed by government and the financial services sectors each about 10 percent of Red Hat’s business.

Since arriving at Red Hat at the beginning of the year, Whitehurst said it became clear that his company’s offerings are most popular among high-tech companies that use IT for a competitive advantage - something he is working to change.

“We’ve been working to build a commercial ecosystem that almost mirrors our technical ecosystem…We make open source consumable for the enterprise by the testing we do, by the certifications, the performance testing, the Service Level Agreements, the documentation, the localisation and ultimately the support. The obvious next step for our business model is to do an even better job at making that software easier to consume for less sophisticated customers.”

What Red Hat offers that other enterprise Linux distributions don’t, Whitehurst says, is an insistence that any changes to its OS make it upstream into the Linux kernel.

“There have been times frankly when we’ve had customers that are frustrated and say ‘we want this change just put it in’ and we’ll say no, because if we can’t get it upstream the next time there is an update of Linux you are going to be non-standard and it’s going to be a separate thing that you’re going to have to support. 

Related articles 

• Red Hat plots re-org to deal with JBoss woes
• Red Hat buys Qumranet, sidesteps Microsoft
• Red Hat CEO: The secret to open-source success is iteration
• Looming IT talent shortage sidesteps FOSS folks
• Microsoft and Novell take open stab at China
• Why Linux isn’t yet ready for synchronized release cycles
• Red Hat revenue jumps 32 percent in Q1
• Red Hat’s new CEO aims Linux at the cloud
• BALUG: Mark Shuttleworth and Digital Tipping Point
• ‘Critical’ Linux kernel bugs discovered

economy, Linux, Linux distribution, Linux kernel, microsoft, Open Source, Operating Systems, Red Hat, Whitehurst Hide