If you take your Net safety seriously, you will probably have antivirus and a firewall and perhaps even an anti-spam program to stop the malicious software and messages getting at your home PC. On your browser you may have a pop-up blocker that stops the irritating adverts imposing themselves between you and what you want to look at. But this does not cover all the possible ways that the bad guys are trying to catch you out. Increasingly the makers of adware, spyware and viruses are using ordinary-looking Web sites as launch pads for their malicious creations that try to compromise your Windows computer when you visit.

On June 8, The SCO Group reported results for its fiscal second quarter, which ended April 30. The news wasn’t good. SCO, the Unix and wireless software company best known for its rounds of Linux and IBM lawsuits, showed revenue for the second quarter of $7.126 million. For the comparable quarter last year, the company realized $9.258 million of revenue. The net loss for the second quarter of fiscal year 2006 was over 4.5 million, a loss of 22 cents per diluted common share.

Learn how to install, configure, and test a Linux, Apache, Informix, and PHP (LAIP) server. LAIP provides a very powerful and dynamic mixture for a Web server. This article assumes the use of an RPM-based 32-bit Linux system. The steps provided have been completed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and SUSE Linux 9. However, the overall ideas can be conveyed across any Linux distribution.

The popular IBM System i DASD monitoring tool from Centerfield Technology has been enhanced with an email notification feature. Used by many large System i shops to detect and point to the root causes of unusually rapid disk consumption, disk/HUNTER has always by default sent a message to QSYSOPR whenever pre-set thresholds are reached, but now automatically sends both notification and diagnostic reports to designated contacts via email. Centerfield’s disk/HUNTER successfully completed interoperability testing with IBM’s System Storage products and has been confirmed as IBM System Storage Proven. The IBM System Storage Proven program builds on IBM’s already extensive interoperability efforts to develop and deliver products and solutions that work together with third party products.

A computer hacker got into the U.S. agency that guards the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile and stole the personal records of at least 1,500 employees and contractors, a senior U.S. lawmaker said on Friday. The target of the hacker, the National Nuclear Safety Administration, is the latest agency to reveal that sensitive private information about government workers was stolen.

We’re often quite annoyed by Google, even though we also work with them from time-to-time. But there are issues that go beyond Google and Amazon and eBay and ZATZ. One is the so-called net-neutrality thing, which the oh-so-annoying U.S. Congress has just shat upon. Bottom line: a law designed to prevent ISPs from filtering your access to the Web didn’t make it. For example, Big Company A could pay Big ISP B to muck with how you access your favorite search engine. So, for example, each time you tried to go to Search Engine C, ISP B could choose to take you to Search Engine A instead. Or, each time you chose to access a ZATZ page talking about your legal rights, the ISP could legally take you to a page with just the opposite perspective. They could slow down access to sites who don’t pay to allow traffic through to their sites, and worse. Google, who’s anything but perfect, has written an interesting letter, which we recommend you read.

Microsoft and Mozilla have acknowledged that a security hole in their Web browsers could let an intruder nab files, but say it is tough to exploit and so not that high a risk. Internet Explorer and Firefox, as well as other Mozilla browsers, are flawed in the way they handle JavaScript, security experts warned this week. An attacker could use the problem to launch surreptitious file uploads, jeopardizing people’s personal data, they said. But exploiting the flaw requires so much user interaction that Microsoft and Mozilla don’t think it poses much of a danger.

Despite considerable progress, industry leaders and gender advocates make no bones about stating that women are still largely underrepresented in technology, put off by uneven salaries, difficulties balancing home life with the long hours demanded, and a perception that IT is still very much an all boys environment. Yet, much of this is changing as more women stake their claim on the tech world each year, aided by an improved economy, advocacy groups, recruitment programs and the explosion in the range of perk and flex plans offered by employers.

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers will soon take on the role of chairman of the board. On Wednesday the company’s board of directors named Chambers to succeed current chairman John P. Morgridge, effective at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on November 15, 2006. Chambers will retain his position as CEO.

Stolen personal data for 26.5 million veterans and military personnel may have been erased by teenagers who sold the computer equipment, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday. He explained that the burglary occurred in an Aspen Hill, Md., neighborhood in which there had been a pattern of thefts by young burglars who took computer equipment, wiped them clean of the data and then sold them on college campus or high schools. "We remain hopeful this was a common random theft and that no use will be made of this data," Nicholson said. "However, certainly we cannot count on that."