Windows Vista : What is BitLocker Drive Encryption?

BitLocker Drive Encryption is an integral new security feature in the Windows Vista operating system that provides considerable protection for the operating system on your computer and data stored on the operating system volume. BitLocker ensures that data stored on a computer running Windows Vista remains encrypted even if the computer is tampered with when the operating system is not running. This helps protect against "offline attacks," attacks made by disabling or circumventing the installed operating system, or made by physically removing the hard drive to attack the data separately.

BitLocker uses a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to provide enhanced protection for your data and to assure early boot component integrity. This helps protect your data from theft or unauthorized viewing by encrypting the entire Windows volume.

BitLocker is designed to offer a seamless user experience. It is designed for systems that have a compatible TPM microchip and BIOS. A compatible TPM is defined as a version 1.2 TPM. A compatible BIOS must support the TPM and the Static Root of Trust Measurement as defined by the Trusted Computing Group. For more information about TPM specifications, visit the TPM Specifications section of the Trusted Computing Group's Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=72757).

The TPM interacts with BitLocker to help provide seamless protection at system startup. This is transparent to the user, and the user logon experience is unchanged. However, if the TPM is missing or changed, or if the startup information has changed, BitLocker will enter recovery mode, and you will need a recovery password to regain access to the data.

Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

Microsoft has made an offer to buy Yahoo for about $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, in a mix of cash and stock.

It is not clear how Yahoo’s board will react to Microsoft’s offer.

Job Losses Raise Recession Fears

US employers eliminated 17,000 jobs in January, the government reported Friday, the first decline in the work force in more than four years, and the strongest signal yet that the United States may be in the early stages of a recession.

The broad weakness in the job market, which affected many sectors, shows how the collapse of the housing bubble is rippling through the rest of the economy and suggests the likelihood of more pain for millions of American families in the months ahead from job losses, lower real wages and fewer working hours.

Employment has been weakening for months. While employers continued to add jobs last year, they did so at an ever slower pace, averaging just 42,000 jobs a month in the fourth quarter and 95,000 jobs a month for all of last year. That was down sharply from 175,000 a month in 2006, when the recovery from the 2001 recession was still in full swing.

Middle Class Indians to realize their dreams of owning a car

Ratan Tata has changed the dynamics of auto industry and silenced scores of his detractors. He is the Chairman of Tata Group and Chairman of India’s investment Commission. But Ratan Tata has also faced brickbats from the satraps in the Tata Empire after he took over as Chairman of Tata Sons in 1991 and form India Inc who has dismissed him as a man of no consequence with little business sense. He is not a mere
dreamer, but a winner too who can help tens of millions growing middle class Indians to realize their dreams of owning a car.

Tata’s name is reaching new geographies through an aggressive merger and acquisition around the globe. The group has a presence in 40 countries and exports to 140. In 2007 Ratan Tata successfully engineered the group’s acquisition of Europe’s largest steel maker,Corus, in a US $ 12-billion deal that has been hailed as a turning point for the Indian business.

In one of his recent book, India’s Global Wealth Club, Geoff Hiscock, a leading expert on Asian business observes: “ The Corus takeover, the biggest yet by an Indian company, was one more step in a 15 year process that has seen Ratan Tata reorganize and rejuvenate a group widely seen as too unwieldy, lethargic and
Under-performing.” Tatas continue their acquisition spree around the globe and is likely to pursue more in the coming months.

When Tata revealed his dream of making a people ‘s car, analysts predicted his ruin. His rival car maker Maruti Suzuki Corporation that holds fifty percent of the passenger car market,ex-chief Osama Suzuki dismissed the feasibility of such a low-priced car and that it cannot be produced without compromising on safety and environmental standards. Now that Tata has done it, his detractors are eating their words fearing about their bottom lines that may go southward in years to come. Ratan Tata has shown the world that he not only inherited the mantle of the vast Tata empire but also the legacy of JRD of being the most respected and admired businessman in India.

What Celebs Can Teach Us About Success

By Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com Editor

Do you remember your first or worst job? Did it have anything to do with what you're doing today or where you want to be tomorrow?

Consider this - Jennifer Aniston used to wait tables, Madonna served donuts at Dunkin' Donuts and Jerry Seinfeld hawked lightbulbs as a telemarketer.

All careers start with a good foundation. The same is true for those of the rich and famous. They worked their way into their thriving careers by starting at the bottom and paying their dues. The skills and experience they gained at their first jobs helped to catapult them into future success. So what can they teach us?
Read full story at http://msn.careerbuilder.com/custom/msn/careeradvice/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=449&SiteId=cbmsn4449&sc_extcmp=JS_449_advice&catid=

New Blu-ray 2.0 spec makes PS3 the most future-proof player

By Ben Kuchera | Published: January 18, 2008 - 10:13AM CT

With the sudden and unexpected announcement from Warner that the studio would be abandoning HD DVD titles in favor of Blu-ray, it seemed to many observers that the high-def format war was all over, bar the shouting.

With the upcoming 2.0 player profile requiring Blu-ray players to be networked, Sony finally gets to play its trump card: the PlayStation 3, which has clearly emerged as one of the best Blu-ray players on the market—and is likely to remain so for some time. Why? Because the first player now becomes the most versatile, sporting a future-proof Blu-ray setup.

Before we can understand why the PlayStation 3 is able to so easily deal with new profiles, we must first look at the difference between the 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 profiles to see why a simple firmware update isn't enough to make a player compliant.

• 1.0 is the launch profile, and secondary audio and video decoders are optional, as is local storage and network connectivity. The majority of standalone players fit into this category.
• 1.1 is the newer profile, and to take advantage of these discs, players need a secondary audio and video decoder to handle picture-in-picture, as well as at least 256MB of local storage for content.
  
• 2.0 is the profile of the future, requiring the two secondary decoders, 1GB of local storage for updates and content, and an Internet connection.
  

HD DVD players have included networking as standard since the beginning, but Blu-ray has not, and the evolving standard may become a large problem for early adopters. The 2.0 profile actually changes the minimum requirements for full compatibility. In other words, there is only one player currently on the market that will be 2.0 compatible: the PlayStation 3, which, with its upgradeable hard drive, Ethernet port, and powerful graphics capabilities, will be able to adapt to any and all future updates. This is quite the slap in the face to consumers who paid several hundred dollars for players that won't able to be updated to take advantage of the 1.1 profile, much less the upcoming 2.0

Read the whole story at http://www.arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html

No, The Tech Skills Shortage Doesn't Exist

Employers game the system and misrepresent the key market indicators.
By Ron Hira InformationWeek January 12, 2008 12:02 AM (From the January 14, 2008 issue)

Employers claim there is a severe shortage of IT workers in the United States. Listen in on any klatch of CIOs, and the conversation inevitably turns to their difficulties finding talent. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Bill Gates, Intel (NSDQ: INTC)'s Craig Barrett, and other captains of tech industry argue that the situation has reached crisis proportions.

But moving beyond anecdotal impressions and vested interests, the employment and economic data paint another picture--one in which the IT labor market is clearing and none of the indicators demonstrates a systemic shortage. While exceptional talent or skills in emerging technologies will always, by definition, be in short supply, the most relevant market indicators--wages and employee risk--clearly show there's no broad-based scarcity of U.S. IT workers. In their zeal to enlist government help to expand the supply of tech workers through foreign guest worker programs, employers are misrepresenting IT labor market conditions.

key indicator of tightness in any labor market is wages--more specifically, whether wages are rising much faster than the norm. IT worker wages grew by a modest 2.9% in constant dollar terms from 2003 to 2005, according to Department of Labor data compiled by the Commission on Professionals in Science & Technology (CPST). This increase is indeed greater than the average 0.6% growth for all professional occupations, but the gains for IT workers were hardly robust and don't indicate any significant scarcity. More recently, we've seen some growth in the wages for newly minted bachelor's degree computer scientists, according to the National Association for Colleges & Employers. Salaries for those entry-level jobs rose from $50,744 in 2006 to $53,051 in 2007, an increase of 4.5%. But those gains were almost completely gobbled up by inflation, which ran about 4.3% in 2007.
Another factor in considering the relative health of the IT job market is the level of risk employees face. As any investor will tell you, riskier investments should have the higher potential payoffs. It's no different with careers. While there are no formal measures of the risk and uncertainty of IT careers, it's obvious that they have soared over the past few years. The train wreck of 2002-2004 in the IT labor market derailed the careers of many professionals; some tech pros haven't come back.

Meantime, employer norms have shifted radically. Long gone are the days when IBM (NYSE: IBM) never laid off a worker. Nowadays, companies don't think twice about shipping IT work overseas or bringing in lower-cost foreign workers to replace U.S. employees, and even asking American workers to train their replacements. Intel's Barrett writes an op-ed piece about the shortage of U.S. workers even when his own company is in the process of major layoffs, shedding 14% of its workforce over the past two years.

In addition, the risk of technological obsolescence and age discrimination are higher in IT relative to other professions. How many physicians or pharmacists become obsolete at age 40? Put in this context, it's hard to believe that the very modest wage gains of the past few years balance the increases in IT employee risk.

The consequences of this new equilibrium play out most prominently in career choices for those attending college. Enrollment of undergraduate computer science majors in major U.S. colleges and universities has plummeted an astounding 40% over the past four years, according to a survey by the Computing Research Association. Many blame a lack of interest in the tech field among young people, or our failing K-12 education system. But the most likely explanation is that students, using an array of information at their disposal, including advice from relatives in the field, have decided that IT isn't as attractive an option as it once was.

Read the whole story at http://www.informationweek.com/outsourcing/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601556&pgno=1&queryText=h-1b