super chip with quadruple memory capacity

Metaram, a new start up company is set to announce a technology that overcomes traditional server memory limitations and allows users to quadruple memory without adding new hardware.

The ability to plug four times the memory into a slot on a motherboard is very attractive and allows servers to perform better, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. "If you can put a terabyte of memory in a system, your entire Oracle database can sit in the memory. That's a rocket booster," Brookwood said.

It also results in cost savings, Brookwood said. Users can add four times the memory capacity without adding CPUs, he said.

Memory manufacturers can plug the chipset on existing memory modules, according to the company. Hynix and Smart Modular Technologies are supplying the technologies in the memory modules, according to Metaram.

a cheaper, better, chipset for our computer servers, definitely good news for business out there, whose system often crashes down due to lack of memory, but can't afford an upgrade due to the expensive cost.

source: Agam Shah, IDG News Service
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142780-c,sdram/article.html

facebook and myspace attacked!

this is a disturbing piece of news. in this day and age when i thought that software security is at its best, hackers were able to penetrate Aurigma Inc.'s Image Uploader, the photo uploader used by facebook and myspace.

Attacks begin when users receive spam or an instant message with an embedded link, said Darren Kemp, the Symantec analyst who authored the advisory. The link takes users to a bogus MySpace log-in page, which tries to steal members' credentials as it also silently probes the their computers for vulnerabilities in Uploader, Apple Inc.'s QuickTime, Windows and Yahoo Music Jukebox.

Symantec has been tracking attacks against the Aurigma vulnerabilities most of the month. More than three weeks, ago, for example, another of its analysts reported seeing evidence of a new multi-exploit hacker toolkit -- presumably the same one analyzed by Kemp -- that included an Image Uploader attack.

Exploits against ActiveX controls are nothing unusual; scores of bugs in the Microsoft-made technology were uncovered and exploited in 2007, according to Symantec. It counted 210 ActiveX vulnerabilities in the first half of last year alone, a prime factor in making IE a popular attack target.

In fact, after the Uploader and Yahoo Music Jukebox vulnerabilities were disclosed, the U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, recommended IE users disable ActiveX.

Kemp, however, saw the social networking angle as just as important. "Given the growing popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, attacks leveraging vulnerabilities in their client-side components are not surprising," he wrote in the warning.

Symantec urged users to update the Image Uploader ActiveX control to version 4.5.57.1.

news by respected writer Gregg Keizer
source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9064298&intsrc=news_ts_head

impending computer gridlock

last year i read a news article about the impending gridlock that our internet servers is due to suffer by 2010. it sent shivers down my spine. what will happen? how will we survive? now that we are almost 100% dependent on the internet.

Annabella Bulacan - AHN News Writer, stated in her article that United States-based analyst firm Nemertes Research on Saturday warned over the emerging internet gridlock by 2010 as it further noted that upgrading would cost around $137 billion globally.
In a report that was partly funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) which campaigns for universal broadband in the United States Nemertes expressed alarm on the alleged "drastic slowdown as the network struggles with the amount of data being carried on it."
"We must take the necessary steps to build out network capacity or potentially face internet gridlock that could wreak havoc on internet services," stressed Larry Irving, co-chairman of the IIA in a report by BBC News.

what does this mean for us end users?