HP quadruples income for Q4 ... Hackers post Windows 2000 exploit

HIGHLIGHTS
News: HP quadruples income for fourth quarter
News: Attack code posted for latest Microsoft bugs
News: Wall Street Beat: Open source in turmoil
News: Avaya buys Traverse to make voice mail easy
Storage Tip: RAID 6 to Replace RAID 5
Podcast: Today's IT news audio update
ITwhirled: Geek comic of the week: Double Helix


NEWS UPDATES

HP quadruples income for fourth quarter
Capping a year when it reclaimed the title of world's largest PC vendor despite a boardroom scandal, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) on Thursday reported net income of $1.7 billion for the fourth quarter, more than four times its mark for that period last year.

Attack code posted for latest Microsoft bugs
Hackers have posted code that could be used to target Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system in a worm attack. It takes advantage of a flaw in the Windows Workstation service, which Windows uses to do things like file-sharing or printing over the network.

Wall Street Beat: Open source in turmoil
Major software vendors are shaking up the open-source market. Microsoft Corp.'s deal with Novell Inc. and Oracle Corp.'s move to support Red Hat Linux have sent IT investors scurrying to figure out what it all means.

Avaya buys Traverse to make voice mail easy
Avaya Inc. moved to make voice mail easier to use on the road, acquiring a maker of software that lets users get their office messages without dialing in.

YouTube strikes video deals to dodge lawsuits
Google Inc.'s YouTube signed a contract with the National Hockey League (NHL) to offer game highlights, the latest deal struck by the video sharing sensation as it attempts to stamp out pirated clips from its site and avoid copyright lawsuits.

IBM blasts energy-efficiency of HP's blade servers
IBM Thursday released test results that show that its BladeCenter line of servers uses up to 30 percent less electricity than HP's BladeSystem servers. Although the tests were done internally by IBM, a company executive said IBM would welcome an independent analysis of the energy efficiency of both company's systems.

SugarCRM supports full open-source stack
SugarCRM Inc. became the latest open-source player to offer users a way to more simply install and support a full software stack comprising its own CRM (customer relationship management) application and other third-party offerings.

Google hires spreadsheet company founders
Google Inc. may be planning to beef up its online spreadsheet offering by hiring the founders of iRows, a browser-based spreadsheet service.


STORAGE TIP

RAID 6 to Replace RAID 5
By David Hill, Mesabi Group

The introduction of RAID technology has been a boon that made the use of open systems storage for a wide range of business applications (including mission-critical) practical. To continue to harp on a subject that has been discussed previously, RAID is great, but only one failure can safely be tolerated. Enterprises run a risk during the time that it takes to rebuild an array after a disk failure. That risk is having a much longer downtime than can be tolerated with today’s 24X7 applications to rebuild from tape if a second disk fails. Multiple-parity RAID is the solution. RAID 6 is the currently most popular implementation of multiple-parity RAID.


PODCAST

Daily IT News Audio Update
Skype launches mobile VOIP service ... Google looks to protect YouTube from lawsuits ... Hackers post Windows 2000 exploit


ITWHIRLED

Geek comic of the week: Double Helix
Ned and Traslar are two vaguely unkempt white-lab-coated fellows who star in this comic. Probably at some point they were supposed to be scientists of some kind, but today they mostly trade comics and video-game related bon mots while all hell breaks loose around them.