Security Focus has a nice two part article on tracking a hacker (family member or employee) on your system. It shows how you can use some readily available tools to search internet browser caches.

I must be as good as this guy … or at least a tenth as good. Cnet reports that incoming CEO at HP, Mark Hurd, will draw a $2,000,000 signing bonus and $1,400,000 annually plus stock options. He isn’t alone in making such amazing amounts of money, but what makes one person that valuable? The last CEO did pretty well for herself as well, despite nearly crashing the company into the side of the proverbial mountain.

This guy has been around for a while of course. Back in 1998, then Vice President of Marketing for NCR’s Computer Systems Group, Hurd said, “As a leading provider of enterprise solutions to customers with mission-critical computing needs, NCR is always looking for new ways to improve the reliability and manageability of the business solutions we sell.” Does that actuallyl mean anything? Maybe the problem is that I say things that make sense. I should try changing that as it apparently works because he later became the CEO at NCR.

Here is what he now says about NCR:
“I’m very proud of what NCR has achieved during my tenure as CEO and I’m confident that with the company’s leading technologies and attractive markets, coupled with the management team’s focus on execution, the momentum will continue.” Okay Mark, congratulations on the new job, and may the confusing sentences be with you! We’ll be focusing on execution now too, thanks for clueing us in.

Microsoft is further investing in the to-go video market to support the Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Center. For $20 a year for a premium membership, you get content from many big name partners including Fox Network, MSNBC and so forth. Because these sources already underwrite the cost of production, they can afford to fill this market with content. It will be interesting to see how to-go videos, podcasts, and other items like this that give people alternatives to reading a magazine or the paper on their commute or wait time.

Toshiba has announced a new lithium-ion battery that will recharge in minutes as detailed in this story. Now there is something I could use. Everything I have takes longer to recharge than discharge, with the possible exception of my Dewalt Power Tool batteries when put to certain uses, like drilling that are start and stop in nature. The initial uses will be industrial and automotive, but I want something like this for my laptop. Come on, Toshiba is making the thing — why not for laptops? My kid has a little car he charges in seconds and it zips around for another five or ten minutes. Micro-remotes I think it they are called. I hope the same concept soon arrives on my laptop’s doorstep.

Our site has been suffering from what appears to be a mild DOS attack over the last few days and that may have caused it to be slow to respond and in some cases not to respond at all for brief periods. We apologize for the problem and we are doing everything we can to rectify the issue in a timely manner.

Today’s news all seems to be about control over the Internet, first we have the UN ITU, who think that they should have more control over tasks normally handled by ICANN, IETF and the WWWC. To me this seems to be the usual anti-US thing, take something that isn’t broken, and shake it up by handing it to an untested and untried body that is outside the current US control.

Next we have the usual Microsoft verses open standards for Web services. The short of this article, is that you either tie yourself entirely to Microsoft and pay them lots of money, or you walk the slightly harder but significantly cheaper (at least in terms of license costs) course of open standards and interoperability.

Lastly, is the ongoing battle between Movie and Music heavyweights and the technologists. The movie and music big wigs were convinced the VCR was the end of their cash cow, in the end it turned out to be a massive money earner for them. They were also wrong about broadcast music and tape recorders killing record sales. In fact it is probably safe to say they have been convincingly wrong about every prediction of their doom at the hands of new technology since the phono player first came out. And these guys now want us to believe them in their current rantings (and litigation) that P2P and other file sharing methods are going to seriously hurt Hollywood and the music industry? I’m guessing that certain types of people just can’t handle and grow with change.

Microsoft and the EC have arrived at a name for the version of Windows to be released without having MediaPlayer embedded in it. The new names are Windows XP Home N, and Windows XP Professional N. The N apparently stands for “No media player”. Microsoft are said to be somewhat unhappy with the name but are complying anyway. My personal feeling is that the N should stand for “Not a big deal” since any supplier using the new Windows would likely be bundling it with alternative media facilities like those found in RealPlayer, assuming the EC can make Microsoft enable all media functions to use the new player software. Actually, that’s probably why Microsoft are not particularly happy about it.