Here's a great example of going GREEN

Microsoft, Clinton group form green partnership
By Reutershttp://news.com.com/Microsoft%2C+Clinton+group+form+green+partnership/2100-11392_3-6184543.html Story last modified Thu May 17 06:40:35 PDT 2007
The William J. Clinton Foundation and Microsoft on Thursday announced a partnership to develop new technology tools to help large cities create, track and share strategies to reduce carbon emissions.
The new software and Web applications are part of broader set of programs being introduced by the foundation led by former President Bill Clinton, who is speaking at the C40 climate summit this week for the mayors of the world's largest cities.
The software tools aim to create a standardized way for cities all around world to measure their greenhouse gas emissions. With a common standard, cities would be able track the effectiveness of carbon-reduction programs.
The C40 summit of leaders from the world's major cities, which first met in London in 2005, was started with the aim of helping cities share ideas and band together to force down the price of technology to combat global warming.
Urban areas consume 75 percent of the world's energy and produce 80 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions.
"This new software tool will be an important resource in our work with cities around the world to fight global warming in practical, measurable and significant ways," Bruce Lindsey, chief executive of the Clinton Foundation, said in a statement.
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Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, said it will provide the software and services for free and aims to have a product in place by the end of 2007.
Most of the technical details have not been finalized, but many of the tools would be Web-based and accessed through an Internet browser. They would incorporate features allowing cities to share data and effective policies.
Based on a formula developed by environmental groups, a city using the software would add up various factors like commercial space, residential buildings and transportation usage to gauge how much carbon dioxide a city produces.
Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

MS is Moving to Telecommunication Business!!!

According to recently news, "Microsoft is planning to launch around 15 phones and devices to attach with its unified communications beta program. The new devices will be usable with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. They will connect the workplace phone to e-mail, instant messaging, real-time presence information, conferencing, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and mobile communications. The companies involved in this project include: Asus, LG-Nortel, NEC, Plantronics, Polycom, Sansung, Tatung, ViTELiX, etc.
These new generation devices will include Internet Protocol (IP) phones, Universal Serial Bus (USB) phones, conferencing phones, wired and wireless headsets, laptops, and LCD monitors.

Furthermore, Microsoft and SanDisk plan memory-storage devices that hold the contents of an entire computer on a card the size of a pack of gum, allowing users to take the data anywhere.”

In my viewpoint, telecommunication could be the trend for involving from several firms in order to expand its market share. As Microsoft is not the only one extending to this business, in the future, so many technology companies will do the same thing? The communication will be unpredictable growth that could be over supply? Or it will be the generation of communication!

Another look at Green IT

The “greening” of the IT departments nationwide is has now become not only an environmentally conscious movement, but a way to increase profitability in a time of rising energy costs. Centralized data center energy management will allow improvement in efficiencies as well as overall sustainability of hardware by better managing times of use and inactivity. The same is true on the client side, where domain controllers can not only manage enterprise level systems networks, but also power configurations and monitor usage. In optimizing power consumption only in times of need, IT departments worldwide can help fight global warming by being smart about IT. In this position paper I’d like to focus on Green policies in terms of energy consumption and not recycling or waste issues which were covered in class.

Although PCs account for less than one percent of the total global Carbon Dioxide emissions, it is the combined consumption of all sectors of IT including the telecommunications industry that makes it comparable to airline industry emissions. Now that the government has awoken from a seven year slumber and announced it will some regulate automobile emissions, it will not be long before other government agencies will follow suit to monitor businesses corporate responsibilities in being a sustainable partner in the fight against global warming. The correlation between green IT practices and intelligent business owners is probably very high and can be viewed likewise by customers looking in. Seeing that the US is the largest contributor to CO2 emissions and global warming, what can we do to make up for the accelerated deterioration of our planet? Will business strategies trump the environment if businesses struggle to survive through weather oddities and increasing natural disasters?

One way in which IT managers can efficiently make use of hardware and software is by using data to promote centralized data centers to be used universally accessed allowing many companies to have employees to work from home and collect data on customers remotely as well. The energy savings in providing home based employment and services to customers would greatly reduce travel costs and CO2 emissions for each company that employs it. Data can also improve a company’s performance by monitoring segments of the company that may be underperforming due to inefficiencies or monitoring for defects and quality issues that result in wasteful spending and energy consumption.

Data is power, and how IT can influence positive “green” policies within organizations is by using knowledge to the advantage of the environment. For example, an IT person who is building an Intranet for an company can ad a place for a rideshare bulletin board within the organization, or even provide links to resources on environmentally friendly practices for companies wanted to GO Green.

I took this “Green IT” poll below and I think its amazing, but realisitic to think the majority of IT professionals aren’t thinking green, yet… I truly believe regulation and a huge wake up call by the environment is right around the corner and these results will flip flop 5 years from now.
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http://quizzes.cio.com/green_it_quiz/index.php

Motorola's iPhone

Motorola CEO Ed Zander announced that Motorola is introducing a media-centric iPhone on Tuesday. Unlike the Apple iPhone, the Motorola phone will have 3G capability for fast Internet and it will also come with an SD slot which Motorola plans to fill with preloaded video and audio. Lets see what happens this Tuesday and if Motorola can keep its word.

Read more Here

Internet Security Follow-up

Rokeshia Robinson
Follow up Paper #2
Internet Security & Security Issues
May 9, 2006


Too often, some businesses just do not take security seriously. Common statements range from “We don’t have data of any value”, “Nothing will happen to us”. The problem seems to stem from a misunderstanding of how organizations’ resources could be violated and used. A common misconception is that hackers only go after the “big fish”. Not much thought is given to the idea that their resources may be used for things other than a DOS (denail of service) attack. Organizations cannot afford to lose time, money, or integrity due to security incidents. Businesses can suffer immeasurable security incidents, such as, losses because a data center has a production outage as a result of a worm or virus, or from a hacker who defaces a website.

To avoid becoming a victim of misguided pranksters or cyber-crime, organizations should take the time to examine the security of their customers and personal data. In our security presentation we talked about some devices and solutions that organziations use to decrease vulnerabilities within their organization.

read more......

IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force 2006 Trend Statistics

I addition to the “Top Attack and Internet Security” report that Nancy provided, I also came across another report by IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force® research and development team, which also observed and recorded new vulnerabilities and the status of varying threats from the year 1999 to 2006. This data has been compiled in this report. Click Here

The above link takes us to the full report and also takes us to the images of each section of the report like Vulnerabilities, Spam and Pishing, Web Content, Malcode, and Web browser Exploitation.

Open Source Java finally ready

Its about a year now when Sun Microsystems promised to release Java to Open source. It seems that its time now and open source Java is coming out within next couple of weeks. Read more here