I’ve been told that hackers can redirect a tab that has been left open so that although you navigate to a valid page, if you then switch tabs for a while and then go back and enter (say) your bank details the page is no longer the valid one and you’ve been scammed.

Sounds a bit far fetched but I haven’t seen any “it’s a hoax” information either - not on here or on snopes which is my usual first port of call when “I don’t believe it!”

Do your own search or check out http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/06/10/tab-napping-the-new-kind-of-phishing/

Well it’s a small and coincidental world but my company’s election for works council members finished yesterday and as I am yet to receive a ballot paper I have some fellow feeling with http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8666457.stm

Mistakes organising a company ballot aren’t good but surely as a country we are capable of allowing our citizens (subjects?) a chance to use the vote they have?

It could all be done on line but would I trust it? The problem is computer cock-ups tend to be more major and anyway if it was a government IT scheme you can be sure that it would cost a fortune and wouldn’t be ready on time…

HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100428xa.html

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/mar10/03-18DesktopVirtPR.mspx

Or just google microsoft virtualization for reports like http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3871741/Microsoft-Citrix-Partner-in-Virtualization-Technology-Blitz.htm

Seem to say MS is giving some new push into virtualization.

RemoteFX  is supposed to deliver serious graphics like You Tube (did I say serious? well serious in client / server graphics) remotely. My understanding is that currently whilst simple graphics run on the host and the GDI commands are pushed to the client to draw locally, video requires the client to run the graphics processing, not what a thin client is built for. This new technology is what MS bought Calista for and could be good stuff if it does what it says on the press release.

MS servers will also be allocating VM memory dynamically - der, is that hard? I had assumed that was one of the benefits of client server computing but apparently servers apportioned the max memory a client could have and reserved it from start up. So if you had 1000 clients who all might need 2G of memory for 10% of the time you needed 2000G most of which wasn’t in use most of the time!

Dynamic allocation could make a real difference to server requirements - 900 clients are using 1G only 100 are using 2G you just saved 900G .  Imagine all the PC’s in your office / organistaion could swap memory at need:
“Can I just borrow a Gigabyte for an hour? I need to run the coffee-rota spreadsheet, you can have it back when I go back to ebaying later.”

Of course this is assuming all the clients don’t need there max memory at the same time - like when a really amusing You Tube video is released.

I get a bit fed up with “Happy Holidays”; it sounds so American and anyway I am a Christian and I’m celebrating Christmas - the birth of Christ. However, I appreciate there are plenty of people celebrating Hanuka or Winter Solstice or just celebrating each other or their new presents…

So here’s my compromise, Happy Holy Days (what “holiday” stems from). I expect some people will still be offended as they are atheist enough to believe nothing is “holy” but there you go, I think they are wrong. I may not have everything right and I don’t believe in anyone has a monopoly on the truth but if you can’t find anything holy I’m hoping that one day you can and I’m definitely wishing you can be (at some level) happy.

So I’m wishing you all “Happy Holy Days!”

And if life is too rubbish at the moment for you to manage that, then I hope you find some peace and rest for now and some happiness when you can.

Over at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/17/eds_mainframe/ you can read what happens when you count beans and think that is all that matters.

It appears that a crucial system at RBS went down because no one was looking after it. Why was no one looking after it? It was an EDS system, and when good old HP bought EDS they laid off all that dead wood, useless, engineery types. Hmmm, maybe they didn’t have lots of meetings with power point but perhaps they did have uses after all…

I’ve been listening to “Dear Granny Smith” (you can catch some at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pgm7r) a blog on the demise of the Royal Mail. One story really caught my attention,  management base route times on some software that simulates walking the routes (pegasus?). OK maybe you can walk the route but what about actually delivering letters? Walking up drives, filling in “you weren’t in” forms… Classic, management completely ignoring what the actual job function is.

You might as well figure out how long I should spend writing code by the amount of time it takes to type it. Or decide you don’t need support staff because nothing goes wrong - oo when they aren’t there things do go wrong, how did that happen?