The gluttony of today's society for more storage has a new warning on it – higher discovery cost. Businesses are imposing stricter adherence to retention policies for backups and making attempts to "clean house" on server storage. Who is thinking about controlling sizes of the networked PC local hard drive that are often requested to be forensically imaged in litigation?
With the potential need to make forensic copies of hard drives and costs involved with such, consideration should be made for the purchase of networked computers for users with smaller local hard drives. Although most manufacturers today do not make a drive smaller than 40 GB, there is still stock available for the 20 – 40 GB drives.
Adobe Systems announced their acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity at the Adobe Max conference on October 2nd. Virtual Ubiquity produces Buzzwords, an online word processing application. According to the "buzz" this is a feature-rich word processor, with some very slick real-time online collaboration built in. They are only allowing a limited number of people to preview Buzzwords, so you will have to put your name in the hat like everyone else.
Lately Microsoft has been finding real competition within the word processing arena, with the announcement of both software and online word processing applications, including Zoho, Google Docs, Lotus Symphony, Zimbra, plus nods to the standbys such as WordPerfect, OpenOffice, StarOffice, and Page 08 for Mac. Don't let it be said that there isn't a choice for word processing programs. However, making a choice will become more complex as the deciding factors will be cost, compatibility, and collaboration, in addition to feature set.
I'm feeling syntactically clueless here. I don't know about you, but when I read about the RC4 stream cipher at the heart of the WEP protocol that encrypts packets of my information in a 24-bit initialization vector (IV to those of you who care) which is then "concatenated with the secret 104-bit RC4 common key to form the 128-bit per packet or session key" I get that English-major-sick-to-my-stomach-oh-no-Geekspeak-not-spoken-here feeling. There, I'm feeling better now, honest.
Seriously, I'd like to get "with-it." I'd even like to know why I should be aware of "aircrack-twp which uses the aircrack-ng toolkit" which I'm told is "readily available on the Web as a key recovery tool." Alas, I feel somewhat ambivalent about spending the time to find out what all this means since I suspect it will all be outdated by the time I figure out what I'm reading. Well, those of you who need a little hand-holding from an English major lost in Geeksville, here's what you need to know:
Beware. If you have a wireless set-up on your computer - wireless local area network (WLAN) -- especially if someone else installed it for you, check to see if the network is set up with a WEP protocol - look in your manual. The problem may be that the device still has the out-of-the-box default settings: username "admin" with no password. Yikes. This is as safe as hiding the key to your house under the doormat at your front door. Ok, get it out of there.
As to your WEP problem, change the username and use a strong password which is at least 8 digits and combines numbers, letters, and symbols. "Password" happens to be a "key-under-the-doormat" password and is most often taped in the bottom of your top right drawer of your desk. Ok, you've got to change that, too. Don't feel too bad about the WEP business. A security survey found that only 49% of wireless access point operators in New York City have upgraded from WEP to the more secure Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). Oh, and that aircrack-twp, it can recover a 104-bit WEP key in less than 60 seconds, which may not be a fair speed record because I suspect the WEP key is probably "Password" anyway.
Most Windows users know the importance of applying Microsoft security updates for Windows, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Office products. The second Tuesday of the month is "Patch Tuesday," when Microsoft regularly releases its updates. Microsoft's Security Central web page includes links to the latest security updates and other security information. It is equally important to promptly install security updates for other operating systems, browsers and application software. For example, Adobe recently released a security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat. According to the Security Bulletin, it addresses critical vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to take control of an affected computer when these products are used with Windows XP and Internet Explored 7. The exploit could be installed when a user opens a malicious PDF file. Apple, Mozilla, and Skype have also recently released security updates. It is critical to address everything installed on a computer.
Here's a handy free tool from Bartels Media. Turn off AutoCorrect in Word and let PhraseExpress store your stock phrases and addresses and have them pop up whenever you type pre-set hotkeys and codewords.
You do not have to insert one photograph and resize them one at a time! PowerPoint 2007 makes it pretty easy, especially if you are not using Sanction, Verdical or Trial Director.
- Click on the Insert tab.
- Click on the Photo Album button.
- Click on the Insert picture from: File/Disk… button and browse out to select the photographs that you would like to include and select Insert.
- Arrange the order by selecting the image and clicking on the up or down order buttons. You can also rotate and adjust the contrast and brightness.
- Select the Picture Layout drop-down to specify how many pictures per slide and the default size. Fit to slide will resize every photo to fit the entire length and width of the slide.
- Finally, select Create.
TIP: This feature is found under the Insert menu bar option in previous versions of PowerPoint .
On July 20, 2007, the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dismissed a case accusing a former defendant’s attorneys of copyright infringement and seeking spoliation sanctions. Healthcare Advocates was the plaintiff in an earlier lawsuit that asserted claims for trademark infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets against a competitor. The Harding firm represented the defendants in that lawsuit, which was dismissed on summary judgment. After losing the first infringement suit, Healthcare Advocates turned their attention to the defendant’s attorneys. Healthcare Advocates claimed that, during the discovery phase of the previous suit, the Harding firm infringed on its copyright rights by viewing and printing copies of the archived images of the Healthcare Advocates' web pages. The Harding firm used a website operated by the Internet Archive to view archived screenshots of Healthcare Advocates' website via a tool called the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine allowed the Harding firm to see what Healthcare Advocates' public website looked like prior to the date the complaint was filed. The Harding firm printed copies of each archived screenshot and used the images during the course of the underlying litigation. However, the Harding firm did not actively save any of the screenshots they viewed onto their computer hard drives. Healthcare Advocates claimed that the firm’s use of the screenshots constituted copyright infringement. The court disagreed and granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment, finding that the Harding firm’s infringing use was excusable under the fair use doctrine. The court further rejected Healthcare Advocates’ request for spoliation sanctions. Specifically, Healthcare Advocates had argued that, since the Harding firm did not save the images directly to their hard drives, the firm had a duty to save the temporary or cache files that a computer automatically stores. Healthcare Advocates argued that if these temporary cache files had been preserved, they would have been able to determine if the Harding firm used the archived images for any purpose other than what had been alleged or admitted. Healthcare Advocates argued it was prejudiced without this evidence, and that the loss of these temporary files entitled it to a spoliation inference at trial. The court found that the Harding firm had no reason to anticipate that using a public website to view images of another public website would subject them to a civil lawsuit containing allegations of infringement, or that temporary cache files would be sought. The court found that very little fault could be attributed to the Harding firm for the loss of these temporary cache files. The court also found that Healthcare Advocates had not suffered significant prejudice from not being able to look at these temporary files, and concluded that sanctions were not appropriate. The full opinion of the court may be found here .
Looks like 2008 will be a great year for a Mac Track at ABA TECHSHOW. The New York Times reported in its October 21st edition that Apple will move into third place in the US computer market behind HP and Dell when it announces product shipments for the final quarter of 2007. While Apple's share of the market is still not huge, it's recent sales surge represents growth of 37% as many people have decided to try a Mac after purchasing an iPod or iPhone. Industry watchers believe that the introduction of the new Leopard version of the Mac OS X operating system will continue to drive a shift to Macs, particularly the iBook. 2007 is the first year that laptops made up more than 50% of all computers sold, however, two thirds of all Apple computers sold are laptops.