Real World Computing
It's Vista time!
Does this represent a real risk? Well, attaching a physical device to a FireWire port could be done while you're out of the room, and you can't rely on a machine being secure just because, when you left it, it had a password-secured screensaver running, for example. If I kept sensitive information on my laptop (and I don't), I'd think twice before leaving it running where someone might get access to it. But then, if I mistrusted them that much, it might be more likely to get stolen than hacked.
Hence my mixed emotions on this matter. What's clear is that not enough thought has been given to locking down computers in a secure fashion. Yes, with Vista you can lock down USB ports using Active Directory and Global Policy, but it's clear we need to go further still.
MinWin and Hyper-V Server
Mr Networking Contributing Editor Cassidy and I drove to Cannes last week for the European VMware conference. And very interesting it was, too, especially the mood change among the most senior Microsoft people. Six months ago, we met them at the previous VMware conference in San Francisco and it was clear they were very edgy. This time, they were as smooth as melted butter. I've witnessed this phenomenon several times before among Microsofties: the headless chicken panic that prevails until the moment they've worked out The Big Plan, after which they're happy and purring like contented cats.
One snippet that came out was the passing quip that the forthcoming Hyper-V Server edition doesn't rely at all on the rumoured MinWin kernel, so my speculations on that front last month were a little premature. Still, they made sense at the time, and there's still plenty of time for things to change.
Tesco's quad-core desktop
A few months back, I surprised everyone, not least myself, by buying a PC from Tesco. This isn't a retailer I'd normally associate with high-end desktop computing, but I just couldn't argue with the machine's specification, put together by PC vendor Medion for Tesco Direct. I was half expecting the purchase to prove a disaster in long-term use, and was fully prepared to come back here to crow about its unreliability, about corner-cutting, and about how sometimes too cheap is just too cheap...
The horrid truth, though, is that after several months' bashing around in my lab, this Tescotron is still going strong. The machine seems robust in a computational Land Rover kind of way, and there are few workloads it can't chew up and spit out in little pieces. Around the lab, it's even become affectionately known as "White Stripey", a reference to a famous range of value products I'm told Tesco sells in its stores.
I was even more surprised by the flood of email I received from readers of that previous column, most prophesying that I'd end up with an expensive tin box on my hands and would regret the purchase within days. Some even refused to believe the price I paid and quoted in the column was right: for example, David Partridge wrote to say: "Tesco selling Xeon-based machine with that spec at £492 plus the VAT! You really had me believing it for a moment. Then I spotted the cover date was April! Nice one... (It was an April Fool, wasn't it???)".
To be honest, I had no idea of the cover date of that issue, as we all work to issue numbers rather than months (for example, this is column 164), so I can't claim it as an April Fool. I can see why people might think that, though, because it would appear that the offer has been and gone, which is somewhat annoying, because now I wish I'd bought two!
