Tag: Tech

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End of the Barcode?

Saw this one coming…..especially with RFID here.

The End of the Barcode
valdean writes “The University of Wisconsin RFID Lab, principally funded by a dozen Wal-mart suppliers including 3M, Kraft Foods, and S.C. Johnson & Son, believes that RFID could spell the end of the ubiquitous bar code. The big draw? Speeding up supply-chain management. Wal-mart’s warehouse conveyor belts presently move products at 600 feet per minute… but they want to be faster. And better informed.”

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Zotob Virus Suspects Caught?

This is an Interesting development…

FBI nabs Zotob virus writers
WASHINGTON (AP) – Authorities in Morocco and Turkey have arrested two people believed to be responsible for unleashing a computer worm that infected networks at U.S. companies and government agencies earlier this month, the FBI said Friday.

Farid Essebar, 18, was arrested in Morocco, while Atilla Ekici, 21, was arrested in Turkey on Thursday, the FBI said. They will be prosecuted in those countries, the FBI said.

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HOW-TO: Laptop resurrection and upgrade

Interesting… Hack-a-day always has a lot of cool hacks, but this one peaked my interested.

Read on about this guy resurrecting his laptop, especially the part about his battery.

HOW-TO: Laptop resurrection and upgrade – hack a day – www.hackaday.com _
I have been known to keep old hardware alive, long past it’s use-by date. Over the last year I acquired a couple of laptops. One of them had been smashed up (I think someone sat on it..) and the other got a drink spilled in to the keyboard. So I ended up with enough parts to make a cheap laptop.

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Connecting to a SQL Server database from a Linux box with UnixODBC/PHP

Found this via Newsforge. I can talk to a MS-SQL server from linux using the Zend IDE, but I havne’t tried using unixODBC…

Green Leaf Technologies – Connecting to a SQL Server database from a Linux box with UnixODBC/PHP
This article explains how to connect from a Linux (or Unix) based server to an MS SQL Server using a combination of unixODBC and PHP. PHP’s documentation covers connecting to a SQL Server from a Windows machine running PHP, but not a Unix/Linux machine.

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Security strategy for IE7

Once again, I wonder how misguided the IE team is. In this clip I have highlighted below, Rob Franco states:

IEBlog : Security strategy for IE7: Beta 1 overview, Beta 2 preview
Powerful add-ons like ActiveX controls are part of what make browsing such a rich experience but any extensibility can also introduce threats to browser security.

It is the first part I take issue with. It is NOT ActiveX controls that make browsing a rich experience. It is the great web standards that we have (ie CSS and Javascript…). I use Firefox exclusivly, I dont use ActiveX and sites like Google Maps and others seem pretty rich to me. Point being that I think that they need to focus on making IE standards complient, and secure.

Now that second part of that sentence, I do agree with.