One thing that does seem to confuse an awful lot of people is the additional /r and /n tags which are used in post cases to indicate a new line in an email. The problem with this, is a) getting the tags in the right order, and b) knowing exactly how they will effect individual email clients.

This article will discuss both of those points, and as always I invite your feedback on the article.

So lets start with the /r and /n tags and putting them in the right order. This one is quite simple, normally the tags go in “/r/n” exactly like that with no spacing. This is useful at the end of a paragraph, or to split up differing lines of information (Such as a username and password being displayed on seperate lines).

Well that was refreshingly easy, unfortunately there is a problem with this when it comes down to continuity. Not all email servers process those commands in exactly the same way, which means that they can be displayed differently depending on the email client being used.

Email clients all render emails in different ways, some conform to the standards set out by the RFC and some don’t. Unfortunately this means that in some cases two clear lines will be sent out on an email instead of 1.

To be honest there doesn’t seem to be a set way of telling how a particular email client will work, so the best option is normally to provide an online version of anything you’ve provided, or work only in plain text, where the user will be less likely to notice any double spacing.

To measure the size of your laptop, measure the lid diagonally in inches. If you’re buying the computer backpack in store you could bring your laptop along to make sure it fits but if you’re buying it online you have to be sure you have the measurement right.

With the size of the backpack, you need to think about what you’ll be carrying. You don’t want to squeeze too much into the bag when the laptops there. You’ll have the laptop, the charger and perhaps you wallet and keys. What about papers? Books? Plan ahead for what you might need. If you carry a lot then make sure there is plenty of room. Better you carry a bag a little bigger than you crack your laptop screen.

When it comes to security in a computer backpack, you want something which holds the laptop snugly and has enough padding to take a shock. You always want to make sure the bag itself is reliable. There is no use having all the padding in the world if the stitching falls through.

Some computer backpacks have extra features. Some will have mobile phone or stationary compartments. Some have security feature to help prevent theft of the laptop.

When it comes to the look of a computer backpack there is more to think about then fashion. If you carry a plain black bag with the logo of whichever brand, it screams laptop. What I mean is, for any potential thieves looking for someone with valuables, you will stand out.

Computer backpacks come in many colours and styles. You can get a personal one matching whatever your taste is or even a plain professional one but at get one which looks like a plain backpack.

The price of a computer backpack can be pretty high. They can vary from as little as $20 to upwards of $2000. You can just put your laptop in a normal backpack, you wouldn’t be the first to use a jumper as padding and do so.

For more information of the iPhone 3g click here

Without further adieu here we go.

Fring

This app is great, it lets you access msn, yahoo messenger, AIM, twiter and a few other IM programs all from one app. Another great thing is it lets you access skype to make calls using wifi for free anywhere in the world to other Skype users.

Shazam

Ever had this common problem, your listening to a song and you don’t know what the song is. Now with the Shazam app all you have to do is hold your iPhone up to the music and after about 15-20 seconds it will tell you what the song is. It’s remarkable accurate.

Convertbot

As you all know there are a lot of diffrent types of measurements out there. To measure mass there’s grams, grains, pounds, stones, tons, and more. And if you want a tool that can convert units then convertbot is the app for you. There are 15 diffrent catagories all with 4 to 138 units with in them. It even converts currency.

Classics

This app was once featured in an iPhone ad. It contains 23 full length classic novels to read with a book like interface. Once your selected the book you want to read you just slide your finger accross the screen like your turning a page, and well… it turns the page. Titles range from Odyssey to 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Wikiamo

Wikiamo is a easy to use wikipedia reader for the iPhone. Browse any article in any language that is offered by wikipedia. Also once your on a page you can skip to different sections with the touch of a button. (Just remember that anyone can edit wikipedia so beware what you believe, click here for funny article about wikipedia edits)

Flixter

This app lets you browse recently released movies, ratings, reviews, cast lists and much more. It also lets you view trailors and find out whats playing and where amongst you’re local theaters. A must have for any movie buff.

Paintshop Mobile

This app lets you take photos that you take on your phone and edit them with basic effects. Crop, lighten, increase contrast, soften, and add others effects such as black and white. The edited photos then can be saved back into your camera roll.

Remote

This app is just like its title, a remote. With it you can change the song playing on your itunes to anything else in your library as well as change the volume. This app uses wifi so it will work from anywhere your wifi reaches.

Looptastic

There are a few looptastic apps all done by sound trends. They all work the same way, you drag different loops onto a remix board to create your own looping soundtrack, control tempo, volume, and adjust different effects. A very fun app and a must have anyone interested in music.

AirVideo

One of my all time favorites. It solves a common problem, you have tons of movies on your computer but cant watch them on your phone because you haven’t converted them to a compatable format. After you set it up you can select what you want to watch and watch it with live conversion. This works from anywhere in the world with wifi or even 3g (although beware it could use up your 3g usage rather quickly)

Image via Wikipedia

Charles Babbage (1792 to 1871) was an English scientist, mathematician and philosopher who was born in a small house in London. The house still stands and there is a special blue plaque on the wall at the junction of the street which is awarded by English Heritage and denotes that it is a place with special historical links.

Image via Wikipedia

This mathematician drew up his plans for a fully programmable digital computer in 1834 but he never saw it completed.

Image via Wikipedia

His analytical engine was an advanced development of the adding machine which he had invented twenty years before and it was designed to be programmed by a series of punched cards and made calculations by utilising a memory store and then printed out the answers. It could operate at the speed of one addition per second which was lightening fast at the time.

Although the machines designed by Babbage were very bulky compared to today’s sleek models, the general layout was the same and the memory and data were separate and their operation was based on instruction.

The British government had invested the huge sum of seventeen thousand pounds in the engine and Charles Babbage managed to raise a further six thousand pounds to get the project off the ground, but a very high degree of precision was required to produce the component pieces needed and it turned out to be beyond the capabilities of even the best of Victorian engineers.

Image via Wikipedia

At this point (1842) everyone started to lose enthusiasm for the project and after the Astronomer Royal, George Airy, had publicly announced that the project was useless and therefore worthless, the government withdrew its support.  Babbage did struggle on in the hope of completing what he knew would be a successful design, but struggled unsuccessfully because of the lack of funds and support until his death thirty years later.

So, we all had to wait for Bill Gates to come along with his Windows operating systems before computers really became accessible and affordable for everyone to use.

Motorola Droid is the newest entrant to the smart phone battlefield. It is powered by Android, the open source operating system that has the full backing of Google™. This smart phone already has the blessings of technology pundits as the breakaway winner of smart phones. This is even before Verizon drop date, November 6.

Verizon commercials already poke fun at things that iPhone lacks. The ‘iDon’t’ blitz has attracted the attention of young population. The full-page ads on major newspapers also help. However, iPhones are not there in the Verizon network. It will pose a threat to another cutie, Blackberry, which dominate the smart phone segment of Verizon network.

Motorola Droid would spell an end Blackberry’s domination in Verizon networks. AT&T network does not have any Android phones in its network yet, but has all the iPhones in the US.

Although Verizon and Motorola would love to target iPhone users, it will be very difficult for them since AT&T customers have signed multi-year service agreements at the time they purchased an iPhone. Switching the network would attract hefty fines.

Droid boasts a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 385 minutes talktime and 270 hours standby time. Email support for IMAP and POP, Macmail, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL mail is pretty news. The display is a 3.7″ 480×854 WVGA screen, with a display resolution of 400,000 pixels. HTML5 browser, support for different audio and video formats, a 5 mega pixel camera, 16GB memory card, etc are other specifications.

If that is not enough, Motorola/Verizon Droid also supports more than 10,000 apps – to do anything and everything a smart phone is supposed to do.

Going by present trends, anyone can reasonably expect Android phones to dominate the smart phone market. Experts believe there will be as much as 40 such phones in the market before the end of 2010. Other major Android phones are:

HTC Dream
HTC Magic
HTC Hero
Huawei U8230
Samsung Galaxy
HTC Tattoo/HTC Click
Motorola CLIQ
Samsung Moment/InstinctQ

There are dozens others, rumored to hit the market in the coming months.

Change Your Router Password

Most wireless routers ship out with an easy to guess password like “admin”, or nothing at all. To create your unique password, you’ll need to find out the ip address of your router. An ip address is simply a bunch of numbers like 192.168.2.2 that act like a web page. The instruction manual that comes with your wireless router should have the ip address for your router on it somewhere.

The ip address will tell you all about your router, the security settings; etc. In fact, all of the following information in this article can be accessed from your router’s ip address. The first time you access this page you’ll need to enter the router’s easy to guess password. After this is done, you should immediately change your router’s password to something more complicated.

Make your password difficult for hackers to guess. Do not make it a logical word that you find in the dictionary because that will just make it easier to crack. You should use numbers, special characters; upper case and lowercase letters. As for how long you should make the password, try and make it around twelve characters or more. Oh, and do write it down. If you should forget this password, then you will be locked out of your wireless routers’ settings. And that’s no fun.

Enable Encryption

Encrypting the signal that your wireless router broadcasts will make it more difficult for your neighbors to steal your wifi signal. Enabling encryption is a fairly simple process that will oftentimes be done via the CD that comes with your wireless router. If no CD came with your router, then you will just have to use the ip address for your router again.

As for the type of encryption that you should use, currently WAP or WAP2 is best. If you have the option, you should enable AES encryption instead of TKIP to be even more secure. Whatever you do, do not use WEP encryption. It’s far too easy to hack into. Also, you will have to have another password to enable encryption. You should not use the same password that you used to secure your router. This new password that you will be using will have to be installed on all of the machines that will be connecting to your wireless network.

This password can be installed manually by you via keystrokes, or you can use a flash drive media device to install the password on all of the machines (no typing). Just so you know, you will not have to enter this password every time you try to access the Internet. Just once. However, if you alter some of the settings in the wireless router then you may have to enter the password again.

And of course, if you should change the password for the encryption then you will need to adjust it for all of the other computers. It can be a pain, especially if you have a lot of devices connecting to your wireless network. Keep in mind that since this password only has to be entered one time on all of your computers, you would benefit greatly by making it an incredibly long and complicated password (be sure to write it down as well). The maximum number of characters for many router passwords is around sixty-four or so. It would behoove you to not take advantage of this. In fact, there are many websites that have a character combo software program that will randomly generate your password. To see one of these, click here.

Enable the Firewall

This is a no brainer. Almost everyone knows what a firewall does. But if you’re not a technical type of person, then just know that a firewall helps to shield your computer from viruses, trojans; etc. Bad stuff. By default, the firewall option should already be active in most modern wireless routers. But if you notice that yours is not, then you really should turn it on.

Once the firewall for your wireless router is enabled, you can choose to disable or uninstall any software firewalls that you may have been using (like Zonealarm). It is not a requirement, though. If you feel more comfortable having a software firewall around, then you can choose to leave it on. It may cause you some grief though if it interferes with your router’s connection. Your choice. Also should you ever be in a public wifi zone with your computer, it might be nice to have an active software firewall. Or at least a disabled one that can be turned back on.

Activate Mac Address Filtering

Using mac address filtering basically just creates another level of security for you. A mac address, simply put, is a random set of characters (38:83:A3:22:05:U3). Each computer or electronic device will have a different mac address. These mac addresses are quite difficult to guess, and as such, hackers have a difficult time trying to figure out what they are. So you could say that your mac address is another type of password. Just remember that you can not change your mac address, but it’s still very important when it comes to adding another layer of security for your wireless network.

WAN Ping Blocking

Hackers oftentimes ping various electronic devices (like your wireless router) in order to find a weakness that they can exploit. But if you enable WAN ping blocking, then the hackers will not take notice of your wireless routers signal. This doesn’t make you one hundred percent secure (not by a long shot), but every little bit helps.

Hide SSID

Okay, this one is debatable. If you choose to hide your SSID address, then whatever network name you have chosen will not show up on other computers. Your network will be hidden. In fact, even your own computers will not see your network. You will need to manually inform each of your electronic devices as to the name and location of your network. However, hackers have software tools that can easily locate hidden networks. And this kind of takes the point away from hiding your network. Plus, hiding your network can slow down connection times. So it may not be worth the effort.

The Kill Switch

Remember the router password that was discussed earlier in this incredibly long article? Well, if you should lose it then you will no longer be able to access the settings on your wireless router. This is not a huge deal if everything is working perfectly. But if you should have problems, then you will need to access your wireless router. There are two solutions to this. The first one is to try and guess your password; thus, you are now trying to hack your own network.

A better option is for you to simply reset your router to the factory default settings. To do this, you need to locate a small button that is normally on the back of your router. After you find the button, simply insert a small paper clip into it and gently push the button to reset the router. It should take between five and ten seconds for the router to reset itself.

If successful, all of the glowing buttons on your router should vanish and then return in under a minute’s time. Unfortunately, you will have to reconfigure everything. This means you need to create a password for your router, the encryption, the mac addresses need to be re-entered; etc. Everything. Though, you can use the same passwords as you did before, so that’s one less thing for you to think about.

Creating a secure wireless network can be a bit of a pain, but it’s worth it in the end. The idea of someone accessing your wireless network and doing all sorts of nefarious things to it is a far greater pain. But it’s your network.

The analyst firm IDC estimates that roughly ten percent of the approximately $64 billion spent on business applications worldwide in 2008 was spent on cloud computing applications – being those entirely delivered on a remote basis. Many analysts, including Gartner, project growth rates for cloud computing in excess of 20% or more for years to come. The growth rate over the next few years could be as high as 30%, with analysts estimating that the global market for cloud computing services could reach $42 billion by 2012.

Why cloud – and why now? According to the results of Kelton Research’s 2009 Cloud Computing Survey, surveying over 500 IT decision-makers, the shift to cloud computing can be seen as organizations are increasingly “turning to new technologies to cut costs, rather than cutting back on their technology uptake.” Cloud computing is also by no means an “all or nothing” proposition. Indeed, it has been seen in practice that cloud involvement often starts when organizations initially use cloud resources for part of their non-mission-critical applications or as resources for test projects.

The cloud model presents three new dimensions for computing.

1. The illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand, thereby eliminating the need for cloud computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning.
2. The elimination of an up-front commitment by cloud users, thereby allowing companies to start small and increase hardware resources only when there is an increase in their needs.
3. The ability to pay for use of computing resources on a short-term basis as needed (e.g., processors by the hour and storage by the day) and release them as needed, thereby rewarding conservation by letting machines and storage go when they are no longer useful.

The Cloud and Government Information Technology Spending in the Federal Government

Many analysts believe that the present economic situation – and its resulting financial strain placed on governments – will only serve to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing in the public sector. As Bernard Golden recently observed, cloud computing offers “undeniable financial payback—higher utilization, lower energy use, and better application availability. The benefits are so large that IT organizations have been willing—eager, even—to tolerate the challenges that accompany the technology.” Indeed, a July 2009 Computerworld report found that the larger the organization, the greater the likelihood that it would be engaged in using cloud computing.

The economy and the resulting tightness of all governmental budgets – on every level – may indeed speed and heighten the rise of cloud computing. Dan Israel, an executive with Google’s federal group, recently observed that: “Given that we’re in a very tight budget situation, looking to the cloud is a very cost-effective means of bringing new technologies into the government. By moving to cloud computing, we can also help government IT get out of the business of using and managing servers and focusing instead on more mission-critical technology projects in their agencies.” As such, cloud computing gives organizations greater abilities to focus on their core business. Likewise, Ron Ross, Director of Security for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, recently commented that: “In an era where there’s going to be tight resources, there will be compelling ways to do things more effectively on the IT side…(But) we have to be able to do that in an environment that is well protected.”

In this budgetary context, the forecasts for the impact of cloud computing on federal IT spending are certainly eye-opening. The public sector market analyst firm, INPUT (2009), recently projected that over the next five years, overall federal IT spending will grow at a compound annual rate of 3.5%, reaching $90 billion by 2014. INPUT forecasts that federal cloud computing-related spending will grow almost eight times as fast, with a growth rate of approximately 30% annually over the same time frame. According to INPUT’s projections, federal spending on cloud computing services will triple over the next five years, growing from $277 million in 2008 to $792 million annually by 2013. This would mean that by 2014, over $1 billion of the federal IT budget would be devoted to cloud computing. According to Market Research Media, cloud computing thus represents “a fundamental re-examination of investments in technology infrastructure.”

The fast-growth of federal spending in this area is being driven by top-level commitment to transform the federal IT infrastructure through increased adoption of cloud-based architectures, with the expectations of cost savings and efficiencies to be achieved. Analysts have observed that such spending – and the executive commitment behind it – will mean that the federal government will not lag the private sector in the shift to cloud computing. In fact, the public sector may in many ways set the pace for cloud adoption. As the Chief Information Officerof the federal government, Vivek Kundra recently stated: “The cloud computing investment in the 2010 budget reflects the administration’s desire to drive down costs, drive innovation across the federal government, and make sure we’re making available technologies to the workforce that may be available to them elsewhere.” Thus, cloud computing appears to be fundamental to the Obama Administration’s technology strategy to try to gain efficiency from and rationalization of federal IT, while expanding applications, interoperability, and communications.

In May 2009, the Obama Administration expressed its commitment to transforming the architecture of federal information technology through cloud computing in a supplement to their budget proposal for the 2010 fiscal year. In the Office of Management and Budget’s Analytical Perspectives, cloud computing was a central part of an effort to fundamentally realign the government’s information technology infrastructure and IT strategy, calling for:

The Federal Government will transform its Information Technology Infrastructure by virtualizing data centers, consolidating data centers and operations, and ultimately adopting a cloud-computing business model. Initial pilots conducted in collaboration with Federal agencies will serve as test beds to demonstrate capabilities, including appropriate security and privacy protection at or exceeding current best practices, developing standards, gathering data, and benchmarking costs and performance. The pilots will evolve into migrations of major agency capabilities from agency computing platforms to base agency IT processes and data in the cloud. Expected savings in the outyears, as more agencies reduce their costs of hosting systems in their own data centers, should be many times the original investment in this area.

The pilot categories outlined by the Office of Management and Budget in the 2010 budget proposal include the following broad areas:

•  End-user communications and computing – secure provisioning, support (help desk), and operation of end-user applications across a spectrum of devices; addressing telework and a mobile workforce.
• Secure virtualized data centers, with Government-to-Government, Government-to-Contractor, and Contractor-to-Contractor modes of service delivery.
• Portals, collaboration and messaging—secure data dissemination, citizen and other stakeholder engagement, and workforce productivity.
• Content, information, and records management – delivery of services to citizens and workforce productivity.
• Workflow and case management- delivery of services to citizens and workforce productivity.
• Data analytics, visualization, and reporting – transparency and management.
• Enterprise Software-as-a-Service – for example, in financial management.

Observers have commented that this budget commitment makes clear that the initial pilot projects and seed investments are but the “beachhead for a broader shift” in federal information technology strategy – and spending – under the Obama Administration and CIO Kundra. Cloud computing today has been termed as being in the “wonderful ‘discovery’ phase of a technology,” with great forecasts, but few guidelines on how to properly make use of the technology. What we have seen to date in the federal government are a series of small cloud computing pilot projects – as various agencies have undertaken what have been termed as “science experiments” in the use of the technology. Definitely, we are in the “early adopter” phased of the product life-cycle of cloud computing, and some have urged that the federal government, due to its market power, should help to propel the movement and become an early adopter of cloud computing. Leading cloud proponents have urged the Obama Administration to adopt “pro-cloud” policies and promote cloud computing to ensure that the U.S. remains at the forefront of this computing revolution, urging that: “It’s high time to ensure that the cloud’s promise as an opportunity for U.S. wealth generation, job creation, and business and technology leadership does not pass our country by.”

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, observed that: “Many of these governments are saddled with incredible legacy data center expenses. They’re just some of the world’s largest enterprises and they accrue a lot of legacy, often custom systems that are hard for them to maintain and also then hard for them to replace.” Cloud computing could thus represent an opportunity to break free from the costly and problematic model of managing internal legacy IT systems and operations and move to a more outsourced model of IT operations. Indeed, Michelle Warren, a Senior Analyst for Info-Tech Research, recently observed that: “We’re moving toward a world where IT is outsourced.”

Analysis

We have seen predictions that due to the cost and operational benefits of cloud computing, more and more companies will find themselves outsourcing most – if not all – of their IT to cloud providers, creating what have been termed as “server-less” companies. And this will not be true just for small enterprises, as it has been predicted that organizations of all sizes will find it beneficial to concentrate on and optimize their business processes by outsourcing the IT function. So, why not “server-less government”? Perhaps not outsourcing all of IT and all data storage/handling – that may be impossible for a governmental body – however, particularly for cities, counties, colleges and universities, and even perhaps state agencies, this may be a viable proposition, particularly as cloud offerings expand and are made more secure and reliable.

Finally, a recent Harvard Business School publication criticized IT leaders, stating that “the dirty secret of corporate IT is that its primary mission is to serve yesterday’s technology needs, even if that means strangling tomorrow’s technology solutions.” In the public sector, too often we speak in terms not just dealing with “information silos,” but a legacy of outdated systems that run in programming that is cumbersome and difficult to work with. The prime example of this is found in the federal government, with the fact that many agencies still rely on COBOL for critical applications. Cloud computing can further the application modernization movement underway to help move federal agencies away from the “COBOL world” in a fraction of the time and a far less cost than rewriting or replacing these critical applications.

For private sector IT executives, there is a reluctance to shift core, mission-critical data storage or applications to public cloud environments, even if the cost savings and efficiency arguments are there, over concerns about the reliability and security of cloud offerings. Take for instance the case of the Princeton, New Jersey-based Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT and other standardized tests. While the Educational Testing Service uses Software as a Service platforms from Salesforce.com and other vendors for non-core functions, the firm’s Chief Information Officer, Daniel Wakeman, recently expressed his reluctance to shift data storage and processing for the tests themselves to a cloud environment. This is in spite of the fact that due to the highly cyclical nature of test administrations, scoring, and reporting around specific testing schedules throughout the year, the Educational Testing Service has an average server utilization rate of just around eight percent, making the firm a prime candidate for acquiring computing resources on-demand. Wakeman simply stated that due to security issues which have yet to be worked-out in what he and other perceive to be an “immature market,” Educational Testing Service will monitor developments in the cloud marketplace and “not (be) putting anything up there that we really care about.”

Cloud providers typically guarantee a particular benchmark for the availability of their services through what are known as service-level agreements. Yet, for all the reliance on service-level agreements, there is misunderstanding as to what they really guarantee – and what can be done should a cloud provider fail to live-up to their promises. In many instances, collecting on the rebate provided for in the SLA may not be a routine matter. It also may not mean much if the outage comes at a critical moment that no amount of money can make-up for. As one commentator opined, “Frankly, I think SLA and $3 will get you a coffee.” Still, avoiding cloud computing solely on the basis that service-level agreements invariably can’t cover actual business losses from downtime or outages is a rationalization, not a reason for not engaging the cloud computing model.

One of the truths about cloud computing is that in-house IT can rarely match the service levels provided by commercial cloud providers. For a cloud provider to offer a service-level agreement with “four-9s performance,” they would be guaranteeing 99.99% up-time. Translated into “real life,” four nines availability translates into just 52 minutes of downtime per year! If there was more downtime or unavailability than that .01%, then the cloud provider would be liable for penalties or rebates. To assure this level of service, cloud service costs typically rise as the service-level agreement escalates from 3, 4 or even now some “five-9s” levels of performance. Service-level agreements have been criticized for not protecting cloud procuring organizations from a loss of system up-time, but protecting cloud providers from financial and legal exposure due to their failure to deliver. As such, they have been labeled as only applying “after-the-fact” and basically being a vehicle for lawyers to argue over after the damage is done.

For the public sector, service-level agreements may be especially vacuous if a data breach occurs and a law is broken – as the bar is raised much higher for a government client. As analyst Eric Chabrow recently commented, in such instances:

“The government doesn’t have the luxury of just saying, ‘Oh, give me my money back.’ They need to follow laws that have been specifically laid out to protect national security, to protect personal liberties; so, it’s really not just a commercial transaction. They really need to understand the details within these infrastructures. It’s not enough to say, ‘Oh, yes, it’s secure.’ The government has to understand how it is secure, why it is secure, what are the risks. If the government can’t see that, then it’s very difficult for them to leverage that type of service.”

Cloud providers invest a great deal in their systems to provide for reliability and assure that their services – and user data – will be available on demand. For instance, Amazon Web Services has a feature in its EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) dubbed “fail-over,” where if an user’s application fails to run in one of Amazon’s data centers, a second center will automatically take-over and run the application. There are even early versions of cloud applications that can be run offline – in the absence of a network connection. Developments in this area would enable cloud computing to move to the edge of the network and be functional in remote areas where there is spotty connectivity – defeating one of the exclusionary rationales for not making use of cloud-based offerings.

Analogies have been drawn between the advent of cloud computing today with the introduction of wireless technologies a decade ago. As Ron Ross, Director of Security for the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently observed, “When wireless came along, we didn’t really know a lot about how to protect it, but we developed that understanding as we went forward, and now we do a pretty good job of protecting wireless.” However, Wyatt Kash, who is the Editor-in-Chief for Government Computer News, warned that the shift to cloud computing could be slowed by what he termed as “a darker cloud of Internet security vulnerabilities.”

As the reliability of a cloud provider’s system is of utmost concern for public IT executives considering shifting functions and data to the clouds, security is a front-burner issue as well. Indeed, the security of cloud computing is an issue that will inevitably “blow-up” each time data breaches occur in cloud offerings and hit the media. If a cloud provider sees a data breach occur, this calls into question the efficacy of storing files and information on-line, causing huge security concerns for all affected users and not just the target cloud provider, but indeed, the whole cloud computing universe, which could be painted with a broad brush in such security matters. Yet, as Stephanie Condon recently observed, “Perfect security on the cloud is an illusory goal…and the vulnerabilities of the cloud will have to be weighed against (its) benefits.” Indeed, many security experts believe that the notion of putting more data and more applications on the Internet via the cloud model could present vast new opportunities for criminal activity through identity theft and misappropriating intellectual property, hacking, and other forms of malicious activities.

Cloud providers have been characterized as addressing such security concerns by going “over the top” with their physical and data security measures, which one writer labeled as measures that “could easily outdo anything ever seen on Mission: Impossible.” For instance, Salesforce.com’s data center employs “five levels of biometric hand geometry scanners and even ‘man trap’ cages designed to spring on those without the proper clearances.” This is evidence that cloud providers are very much aware of and attune to both their clients’ concerns in the security area and the legal and regulatory risks that are being taken on by both the client and their firm by accepting a sizable portion of the client’s IT operations.

There are signs that there is some backlash against cloud providers to improve their security safeguards and practices. For instance, in response to a data breach that occurred with Google Docs, The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google’s privacy and security measures for Gmail and Google Apps. Likewise, the Constitution Project, concerned that a user’s personal information has weaker privacy protections in the cloud than when contained on a single device, has called for the cloud computing industry to set privacy standards and for the Congress to examine the privacy issues as well.

And for the concerns about security and privacy, centralizing operations in a cloud environment may not just make computing more secure, but make compliance easier – and cheaper – as well. From the viewpoint of the federal government’s CIO, Vivek Kundra, “When you look at security, it’s easier to secure when you concentrate things than when you distribute them across the government.” Cloud providers have been characterized as addressing such security concerns by going “over the top” with their physical and data security measures, which one writer labeled as measures that could “easily outdo anything ever seen on Mission: Impossible.” He cites the fact that at Salesforce.com’s data center employs “five levels of biometric hand geometry scanners and even ‘man trap’ cages designed to spring on those without the proper clearances.” This is evidence that cloud providers are very much aware of and attune to both their clients’ concerns in the security area and the legal and regulatory risks that are being taken on by both the client and their firm by accepting a sizable portion of the client’s IT operations (Golden, 2009c).

There are signs that there is some backlash against cloud providers to improve their security safeguards and practices. For instance, in response to a data breach that occurred with Google Docs, The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google’s privacy and security measures for Gmail and Google Apps. Likewise, the Constitution Project, concerned that a user’s personal information has weaker privacy protections in the cloud than when contained on a single device, has called for the cloud computing industry to set privacy standards and for the Congress to examine the privacy issues as well.

And for the concerns about security and privacy, centralizing operations in a cloud environment may not just make computing more secure, but make compliance easier – and cheaper – as well. From the viewpoint of Federal CIO Kundra, “When you look at security, it’s easier to secure when you concentrate things than when you distribute them across the government.”

Yet, as Bernard Golden recently observed, those who view cloud computing as too risky may be “overly optimistic” in their view on how well there own security and risk management efforts work – both in reality and in comparison to the cloud model. He remarked that: “This attitude reflects a common human condition: underestimating the risks associated with current conditions while overestimating the risks of something new. However, criticizing cloud computing as incapable of supporting risk management while overlooking current risk management shortcomings doesn’t really help, and can make the person criticizing look reactive rather than reflective.”

In the end, improved cloud security measures, combined with enforceable and meaningful service level agreements, may garner more confidence in the cloud model. Time is also on the side of the proponents of cloud computing, as the rising generation in the information technology workforce – comfortable in their use of and reliance upon a whole host of web-based tools and services – will be much more willing to shift operations and data to the cloud than will be the current generation of computing decision makers. They see their older peers’ reliability and security concerns regarding the use of cloud computing as “exaggerated and quaint.” Thus, in a matter of a few short years, we may come to see the cloud as a more reliable and more secure version of computing than what is available in-house and on our desktops and laptops today.

What The Task Manager Tells Me

Upon opening the task manager a list of programs will populate the box. This is all the programs or processes that are currently running on the computer. These programs are generally those screens or programs that you are running, but one thing that the task manager can detail is if any of those programs are not running correctly or not responding. Sometimes pages or programs that are not responding correctly will not allow the user to close them out, this can be done from the task manager screen though. In other words the task manager can be opened by hitting the control, alt and delete keys at the same time and will give you a quick rundown of every program running on your computer.

Processes & Slow Computers

Sometimes computers run slow, programs will not respond and individuals cannot figure out what the problem is. Opening up the task manager allows the user to see all the processes and what percentage of the computer’s memory or processes that they are currently receiving. Some of these are programs that might be trying to open or even processes that are not known by the user. The task manager will allow a user to stop the processes, with the exception of the critical operating system. These processes are not allowed to be stopped because they would not allow the computer to work effectively and could possibly even cause severe damage, if closed, to the operating system.

Using Task Manager To Detect Problems

The task manager can detail a number of problems to a computers user. From the amount of memory that a particular program or process is drawing to an unresponsive file. By having this information it is easier to determine what type of problem might be causing the computer to not work effectively. For example, the normal processes of the computer taking up a high percentage of the CPU’s resources might suggest that the computer does not have sufficient memory or there may be something bogging the computer down. Also looking at which processes are running and determining whether or not they are critical can allow a user to delete or remove them from the computer, therefore rectifying the problem.

About The Author: Storagepipe Solutions privides online backup software for PCs, and online server backup systems as well.

You can research the top 300 on Distrowatch. Perhaps if the Linux community pooled together its resources in the top 297 and came out with three amazing Linux products (complete with grandmother-easy-to-install installations – even easier to install than Microsoft), the community might not keep bemoaning the behemoths Microsoft or Apple. Currently, it’s easy to install but not that easy.

Make it the Top Three Distributions instead of 300, then Microsoft and Apple will both have a problem on their hands. Until then, they’ll laugh all the way to the bank.