Conficker infected critical hospital equipment.

April 23, 2009

heart_monitor1“It was not widespread, but it raises the awareness of what we would do if there were millions” of computers infected at hospitals or in critical infrastructure locations, Marcus Sachs told CNET News after the session. Sachs is the director of the SANS Internet Storm Center and a former White House cybersecurity official.

It is unclear how the devices, which control things like heart monitors and MRI machines, and the PCs got infected, he said. The computers are older machines running Windows NT and Windows 2000 in a local area network that was not supposed to have access to the Internet, however, the network was connected to one that has direct Internet access and so they were infected, he said. Read the full article on CNet


Enterprises Chucking Windows Choose Macintosh

April 17, 2009

xserve_new_rsna“…Windows Vista dissatisfaction and concerns about Windows 7 compatibility and deployment costs have some enterprises looking at alternatives, according to the research. The economy is a factor, too, but more to the benefit of Linux than either Mac OS X or Windows. The number of businesses considering “an alternative to adopting Windows Vista or Windows 7″ is 50 percent, up from 42 percent in 2008, according to the report.” Read the full article on Apple Watch.


A Windows Guru spends two weeks with a Mac

April 16, 2009

preston“…I’ve been on the front lines of the Mac-PC war for as long as I can remember. My first work computer was an IBM PC with an 8088 CPU. I liked it so much I forked out the money to buy my own machine: an IBM PC XT clone running an 8086 chip, and bulging with 640KB of RAM and a whopping 20MB hard disk.

Since then, I’ve written dozens of books and hundreds or thousands of articles, columns and blogs about PCs and Windows. Along the way, I’ve earned the unending enmity of plenty of Mac folks.” Read the full article on ComputerWorld.Com


Texas state Senate bans Vista from use in government agencies

April 6, 2009

shattered_vistaAccording to Sen. Juan Hinojosa, vice chairman of the Finance Committee who proposed the ban, he did so because “of the many reports of problems with Vista.” He goes on to say that:

“We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Microsoft, but the problems with this particular [operating] system are known nationwide. And the XP operating system is working very well.” Read the full article on ComputerWorld.Com found via TUAW.Com