Google boosts log-in protection for its users

Google will offer its hundreds of millions of users the option of adding a second verification step when signing into their accounts, to complement the existing password-only authentication mechanism.

Users who choose to add this second step to their Google log-in process would reduce the likelihood of having their accounts hijacked if their password is stolen.

Google will begin to roll out the option for two-step verification on Thursday, and it will take a few days for it to be available to all users.

Google estimates that activating this feature could take up to 15 minutes. Once set up, it inevitably makes the log-in process longer, because in addition to the password, users will have to also enter a one-time code.

Server Types

Different servers do different jobs, from serving e-mail and video to protecting internal networks and hosting Web sites. Learn about the many types of servers used today.

This list, courtesy of ServerWatch.com, categorizes the many different types of servers used in the marketplace today. Click on the type of server you'd like to know more about, and you will be taken directly to a serverwatch.com page that provides additional information and resources.

Cisco Poised To Launch New Cloud Computing Channel Programs

Cisco Senior Vice President, U.S. and Canada Partners, Jim Sherriff Thursday said the networking giant is poised to launch new cloud computing channel programs at its partner summit later this month.

Sherriff said partners will see a Cisco "deep dive around cloud" with new programs aimed at giving partners multiple cloud computing opportunities that range from building clouds to operating clouds to reselling clouds. "We'll put out a comprehensive plan at the Partner Summit (Feb. 28- March 3 in New Orleans)," he said.

Sherriff made the cloud computing comments in an interview with CRN after a keynote session at the annual sales kickoff for NWN, the Waltham Mass. headquartered $263 million national solution provider which grew its Cisco data center business by a whopping 601 percent last year.

Sherriff said the cloud computing opportunity is "intertwined" with the massive Cisco data center offensive which Cisco estimates as a $45 billion opportunity. "A big portion of that is going towards the cloud," he said. Cisco sees the cloud computing opportunity separately as at least another $10 billion opportunity.

Cisco Poised To Launch New Cloud Computing Channel Programs

Cisco Senior Vice President, U.S. and Canada Partners, Jim Sherriff Thursday said the networking giant is poised to launch new cloud computing channel programs at its partner summit later this month.

Sherriff said partners will see a Cisco "deep dive around cloud" with new programs aimed at giving partners multiple cloud computing opportunities that range from building clouds to operating clouds to reselling clouds. "We'll put out a comprehensive plan at the Partner Summit (Feb. 28- March 3 in New Orleans)," he said.

Sherriff made the cloud computing comments in an interview with CRN after a keynote session at the annual sales kickoff for NWN, the Waltham Mass. headquartered $263 million national solution provider which grew its Cisco data center business by a whopping 601 percent last year.

Sherriff said the cloud computing opportunity is "intertwined" with the massive Cisco data center offensive which Cisco estimates as a $45 billion opportunity. "A big portion of that is going towards the cloud," he said. Cisco sees the cloud computing opportunity separately as at least another $10 billion opportunity.

Google extensions could aid Java security

Google is developing a set of extensions for Java that should aid in better securing Java programs against buffer overflow attacks.

Last Friday, Google announced that it open sourced a project that its engineers were working on to add a new functionality into Java called Contracts, or Design-By-Contract (DBC).

Google's implementation, called Contracts For Java, or Cofoja for short, is based off ofModern Jass, a set of Java annotations developed by Johannes Rieken.

Primarily touted as a technique to ease programming, Contracts could also provide an easy way for developers to guard against buffer overflow attacks, the researchers said.

One of the oldest techniques in the attacker's virtual arsenal, buffer overflows remain a problem. In December, Microsoft identified 2.6 million possible attacks that could be waged using a stack-based buffer overflow in the JRE (Java Runtime Engine).

In a nutshell, Contracts requires that each time a method is called in a running program, any values passed to the method must meet a set of predefined criteria. Likewise, each time a method returns a value, it must also meet a set of criteria.

Bing Tops Google in Search Accuracy

According to research by Experian Hitwise, Bing (and Yahoo Search powered by Bing) achieved a success rate of 81 percent for January 2011; Google, meanwhile, managed only a 65 percent success rate. Both of those figures are unchanged from December 2010.

Experian defines "success rate" as inducing a user to click on one of the search results, which does leave Google with some possible excuses. For example, perhaps users are finding the information they're looking for right there on Google's results page and don't need to click on any of the links. After all, lots of people like to use Google as a spelling checker these days.

On the bright side for Google, it is still the heavyweight champion when it comes to overall usage, pulling 68 percent of all U.S. searches. However, it can't rest on those laurels. That 68 percent figure for January is down from 70 percent in December 2010, while Bing jumped from 10.6 percent to nearly 13 percent, an increase of 21 percent month over month.

AMD is Ahead -- Thanks to Intel's Sandy Bridge Woes -- But Not on Top

The winds of change are blowing at AMD: The chipmaker has shed some excess weight in the form of outgoing execs, plus it's claiming to be cashing in on the spoils of Intel's Sandy Bridge fiasco.

These recent events will likely give AMD a much-needed boost as it continues its ongoing race against Intel, but what remains to be seen is whether the company will have the wherewithal to gain ground on mobile chip upstarts like Qualcomm and ARM.

Not surprisingly, Intel's loss is proving to be AMD's gain: AMD told reports that customers and retailers alike are calling on AMD in search of an alternative to Intel's faulty hardware. "We have some customers and retailers who have come to us specifically as a result of Intel's chip problem. Some retailers have had to take things off their shelves, so they call us to ask what they could get from our OEMs that's similar. And OEMs are asking us for product as well," AMD VP of product and platform marketing Leslie Sobon told Dow Jones Newswires.

Add to that the success AMD has seen thus far with its new Fusion APU (accelerated processing unit): The company reported shipping more than one million chips for entry-level PCs last month, as well as surpassing the 35 million mark on DirectX 11-class GPUs (graphic processing units).

Can IE9 stop Microsoft's steady browser decline?

Especially in retrospect, Internet Explorer really did used to suck. Even though browsers were all about standards from the beginning, Microsoft used to think of it purely as a vehicle for pushing proprietary features. Not anymore. IE9 Release Candidate is available, today, and things really are different.

Microsoft's public relations and technical docs for IE9 are all about high performance, security and safety and a high level of standards compliance. It's too early to tell if it really is as good at these characteristics as they say it is, but they are at the very least saying the right things.

The new browser could stop the bleeding though. It's not logical to think that IE share will go all the way to nothing, especially since it really is a good browser. There will likely come a point where all the people who really care about their browser have at least tried alternatives. At that point, things will get interesting.

Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate: what's new, what's changed

Click the title to see the first photos of Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate.

Social engineering: 3 examples of human hacking

Chris Hadnagy gets paid to fool people, and he's gotten pretty good at it over the years. A co-founder of social-engineering.org and author of Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking, Hadnagy has been using manipulation tactics for more than a decade to show clients how criminals get inside information.

Hadnagy outlines three memorable stories of social engineering tests that he's included in his new book (you can also read a short excerpt), and points out what organizations can learn from these results.


Click the title for an interesting review.

The changing security battlefield

Over the years, I have heard some of the leading thinkers in the intelligence and military fields talk about history, as they often do. They turn and gaze back on the fields in which wars were won and lost, and discuss what caused those victories or defeats.

In the 16th century, Sir Walter Raleigh famously said, "He who controls the seas controls the world." In the 20th century, that saying became, "He who controls the air controls the world," and now in the 21st century it has become, "He who controls cyberspace controls the world." The battlefields have changed, but the game remains the same and it's increasingly difficult to mount an effective defense.

Throughout history, alliances have been born that allowed nations with like-minded interests to pool their resources to achieve their goals, whether they sought economic advantage, strategic protection or conquest. Most recently, we learned from The New York Times that the United States and Israel may have collaborated in the development of the Stuxnet worm.


Click the title.

Microsoft sets Feb. 22 as Windows 7 SP1 public launch

Microsoft today announced that it had wrapped up work on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and would start delivering the major upgrade on Feb. 22 through Windows Update.

The company said it had reached the "release to manufacturing," or RTM milestone for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and was shipping the code to PC and server makers today.

Customers who subscribe to either TechNet or the Microsoft Software Developer Network (MSDN) can download Windows 7 SP1 starting Wednesday, Feb. 16, the same day companies with volume license agreements can grab the upgrade.

The general public must wait until Tuesday, Feb. 22, when SP1 hits the Windows Update service. Microsoft typically reserves the last Tuesday of each month for shipping non-security updates.

Microsoft announced Windows 7 SP1 less than a year ago and delivered a public beta of SP1 in July 2010.

Cloud testing: The next generation

One of the risks of deploying Internet-scale infrastructure and applications is that, until they are put to the test, you can't have 100% confidence that they will scale as expected. Applications and infrastructure that perform well - and correctly - at nominal scale may begin to act wonky as load increases.

Cloud computing and virtualization bring new challenges to testing the scalability of an application deployment. Applications deployed in a cloud environment may be designed to auto-scale "infinitely" which implies you need the same capability in a testing solution.

That's no small trick. Traditionally, organizations would leverage a load testing solution capable of generating enough clients and traffic to push an application and its infrastructure to the limits. But given increases in raw compute power and parallel improvements in capacity and performance of infrastructure solutions, the cost of a tool capable of generating the kind of Internet-scale load necessary is prohibitive...

Click the title.

Android market share soars at expense of Symbian

Android's market share grew by a colossal 888 per cent over the past 12 months, placing it hot on the heels of the Symbian platform, which saw its lead cut by half, according to new figures from Gartner.

Symbian devices were outsold by Android handsets during the fourth quarter of 2010, but the use of the Nokia-owned operating system in Fujitsu, Sharp and legacy products from Sony Ericsson and Samsung allowed the platform to retain its lead, explained Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

Meanwhile, RIM's BlackBerry operating system saw its market share decrease by four per cent, giving it just 0.3 per cent more share than Apple's iOS.

Microsoft also continued to struggle in the mobile market, despite launching Windows Phone 7 at the back end of 2010. The platform was used in just 4.2 per cent of devices at the end of 2010, but is predicted to be the fastest growing platform this year.

Microsoft cripples USB drive worms with new XP, Vista update

Microsoft yesterday started offering Windows XP and Vista users an optional update that disables AutoRun, a feature of the operating system that the notorious Conficker and Stuxnet worms used to infect millions of PCs.

The move, said Microsoft, was a response to malware's continued reliance on infection tactics that abuse AutoRun and AutoPlay, a pair of technologies that automatically launch executable files on removable media, especially USB flash drives.

Both Conficker, a worm that spread widely in early 2009, and Stuxnet, the worm that analysts suspect was developed to sabotage Iran's nuclear programs, used AutoRun and flash drives to infect Windows PCs.

Others see AutoRun as a major threat, too. Last August, Panda Software said that 25% of all worms were designed to propagate through the handy drives.

Oracle issues emergency Java patch

Oracle has issued an emergency patch for a Java vulnerability that can cause systems to hang and that can be exploited by remote attackers without authentication.

The bug causes the Java runtime environment to hang when converting "2.2250738585072012e-308" to a binary floating-point number, according to the alert. "Successful attack of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized ability to cause a hang or frequently repeatable crash (complete Denial of Service) of the Java Runtime Environment," Oracle said. "Java based application and web servers are especially at risk from this vulnerability."

A number of products are affected by the bug, including Java SE and Java for Business. A full list and links to recommended patches has been posted on Oracle's website.

Oracle typically issues security patches for all affected products on a quarterly basis, although as in this case, it also releases fixes for bugs deemed too serious to wait for the next update.

Adobe Patches 42 Bugs in Reader, Flash

Adobe yesterday patched 29 vulnerabilities in Reader, it's PDF viewer, and 13 more in Flash, the popular Web media browser plug-in, as part of an even larger quarterly security update.

It was the first time that Adobe patched Reader X, the upgrade it issued last November that includes a "sandbox" anti-exploit technology in the Windows version.

Nearly all the Reader bugs were rated "critical," meaning that they could be exploited by attackers to plant malware on an unpatched system, although for several, Adobe wasn't certain that remote code execution was possible. Two of the 29 could lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, a common tactic by identity thieves who target browsers.

Malware exploding, especially on mobile devices

Mobile malware is soaring and Adobe is the main vector of attack, according to new figures from security firm McAfee that were issued Tuesday.

Cyber criminals are adopting strategies to take advantage of more mobile device use, the report, McAfee Threats Report: Fourth Quarter 2010, claims. The number of pieces of new mobile malware in 2010 increased by 46 percent compared with 2009. The report also uncovered 20 million new pieces of malware in 2010 -- nearly 55,000 new malware threats every day.

As more consumers use mobile devices and tablets in their daily lives and at work, cybercriminals have taken note, say researchers. As a result, botnet attacks that target mobile devices are expected to rise. In Q4, some of the most active threats included the bots known as Zeus-Murofet, Conficker and Koobface. The number of potentially malicious domains also grew at a rapid pace, according to the report.

Bug bounty program reveals 22 unpatched flaws, 5 in Office

As it promised last year, on Monday the world's biggest bug bounty program released information about nearly two dozen unpatched vulnerabilities, including five in Microsoft Office, after deadlines expired.

The disclosure of 22 bugs -- some of them reported to their developers over two-and-a-half years ago -- resulted from a change announced six months ago by HP TippingPoint, whose Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) buys more bugs from independent researchers than any other program.

Last August, TippingPoint said it would enforce a six-month disclosure deadline, and would publish information about the bugs it bought if the flaws had not been patched before then. Previously, ZDI's policy was to indefinitely withhold a vulnerability after reporting it to a vendor, publishing its own advisory only after a patch had been issued.

Nine of the 22 flaws were in IBM software, five were in Microsoft programs, four were in Hewlett-Packard code and one each affected CA, EMC, Novell and SCO.

All five of the Microsoft vulnerabilities disclosed by TippingPoint were in Office applications: Four were in Excel, with the fifth in PowerPoint, the suite's presentation manager.

Microsoft Fixes 22 Security Holes - 6 Critical

On Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday" event for February, the company released a dozen patches that take care of a total of 22 security vulnerabilities, six of them ranked as "critical" – the top tier on Microsoft's four-tier severity ranking scale.

The patch drop likely means some long hours for security professionals and administrators.

Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) second patch release of the year isn't the largest that the company has fielded in recent months, but it contains fixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities that have been haunting Microsoft for the past few weeks.

One patch provides a fix for a critical Windows graphics rendering flaw that could enable an attacker to plant a booby-trapped thumbnail image, either on a site, or sent as a Word or PowerPoint file attachment in an email with the object of taking over the user's PC.

Microsoft also released a patch for another critical vulnerability on Tuesday -- this one affecting Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and 2008 Release 2 (R2), as well as Windows 7, the company said.

Conducting automated testing on the user interface early and often

“Test early and often” is the mantra of savvy analysts, developers, and testers. They know that acting on early feedback is less expensive than doing rework on last-minute feedback. UI automated testing (i.e., record/playback) provides a way to conduct repeatable testing of whether functional and nonfunctional requirements have been met. Yet there are costs to setting up automated testing. And it is very expensive to maintain automated functional tests if the tool you are using fails tests when minor interface layout and navigation changes are made. For example, some automated testing tools will fail a test if the position of a label on a GUI or webpage is even slightly change...

Click the title...

Facebook talks up its safety credentials

Facebook claims that its service is safer than email because it is better equipped to fight spam and malicious links.

Speaking on Safer Internet Day, the firm's public policy manager Simon Axten said that because Facebook controls the entire communication chain it is better able than email providers to stop cyber criminals targeting its users.

"We have an advantage as, unlike email, we control both end points of the communication, whereas with email you might send from Gmail to Yahoo or Hotmail, which are separate companies," he explained.

"On Facebook you send from one Facebook user to another or send a message from your account to a Facebook wall, so we have control over that entire communication and we can block a lot of stuff upfront and detect a lot of suspicious activity."

Axten also said that this means there is far less spam sent on the site compared with email and that Facebook is more effective at stopping what little spam does exist because of the site's social ethos.

Google adds Gmail Priority Inbox for mobile users

Google has added its Gmail Priority Inbox function for all mobile browsers that support HTML5, in an effort to help people access their most important emails quickly and efficiently when on the go.

Nathan Bullock, a software engineer at Google, said in ablog postthat the functionality provides quicker access to key messages, and is of particular benefit to those using a mobile device with a small screen.

"If you've ever cursed a phone's tiny screen as utterly inadequate for sifting through an overflowing inbox you'll be pleased to hear that the Gmail mobile web app now supports Priority Inbox," he said.

"Now, once you set up Priority Inbox in the desktop version of Gmail, you'll see Priority Inbox sections when you visit gmail.com from your phone's browser and click on the 'Menu' screen."

Bullock explained that emails will also display markers to identify the most important messages, and that the service runs on any HTML5-enabled phone such as those on Android 1.5 and above and iOS 3 and above.

Mozilla promises four Firefox releases this year

Mozilla has released a product roadmap that includes the promise to speed up releases and development time, and introduce Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 this year.

The Firefox Roadmap, which was last updated on 7 February, is authored by Firefox director of development Mike Beltzner, and stresses regular shipping goals, improved design and functionality, and support for applications and social software.

"We succeeded in re-energising the browser market, creating competition and innovation which benefits web application developers and users alike," he said.

"This newly competitive market has presented challenges for the continued success of Firefox, and in 2011 we must ensure that we can deliver a product that is compelling to users in order to continue to demonstrate our vision for the web."

Microsoft launches Office Web apps in India

Software giant Microsoft today said launched its Office Web Apps in India, which will allow users to access applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint for free.

Starting today, users can access Office Web Apps, the online companions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for free using their Windows Live ID on the SkyDrive or Hotmail, Microsoft India said in a statement.

This will allow users to create, view, edit, and share Office documents from anywhere with an Internet connection, it added.

"Office Web Apps are a key piece of Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and are designed to empower people to take their familiar productivity experience on the web," Microsoft Business Division Director Sanjay Manchanda said.

There are more than 30 million users of the beta version of Office Web Apps globally, within over six months after it was introduced.

Oracle offers file management package for cloud

Hoping to service the growing market for cloud computing systems, Oracle has packaged two file management software programs into a single integrated offering, called the Oracle Cloud File System, the company announced Monday.

The package "allows you to have a clustered file system built on automatic storage foundation," said Bob Thome, an Oracle director of product management. Such a clustered file system could be useful for organizations building internal clouds, or for testing cloud applications before dispatching them to an external hosting service, Thome said.

The programs included in the package are the ASM (Automatic Storage Management) Dynamic Volume Manager and the ASM Cluster File System. "Cloud FS is a new name for these technologies that are built on ASM," Thome said.

The ASM Cluster File System is a peer-to-peer-based file system that allows users to save material across a range of servers and to access that material from any one of those servers. In addition to being accessed directly through any node on the cluster, data can also be accessed by network file system protocols such as the NFS (Network File System) or Microsoft's CIFS (Common Internet File System).

The file system offers a number of advanced features possibly helpful for the administrator. An advanced permissions system allows administrators to specify when a file can be accessed and with what applications it can be accessed.

Files can also be tagged with attributes, such as the name of the application they are associated with. A user can, for instance, tag all the files that belong to one application and then perform some action against all those files, such as backing them up.

SAP Labs plans 'Made in India' products

SAP Labs India, the research and development (R&D) arm of the German global business management solutions firm, SAP, plans to develop two global products, end-to-end, from its centre in Bangalore.

India is the second largest R&D centre of SAP and contributes to 30 per cent of its global products. SAP would, if the move succeeds, become the first multinational company in the software products sector to come out with a product that is completely a 'Made in India' one.

Several multinationals, such as Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, AMD, NetApp and EMC, have their R&D centre in India. While these centres have done much work, none have come out with a product completely developed in India for the global markets.

Cognizant to invest over $500 M in India ops

IT major Cognizant said it will invest more than $500 million (about Rs 2,274 crore) in the next four years to expand its campuses in India. 

"Cognizant will invest more than $500 million through the end of 2014 to expand its owned campus footprint with the addition of over eight million square feet, which will have the capacity to house over 55,000 employees," Cognizant said in a statement. 

The programme will create additional software development and training facilities in regions designated as Special Economic Zones in Chennai, Pune, Coimbatore and Kolkata, it added. 

In addition to the construction of owned facilities, Cognizant, which at present has nearly 75 per cent of its total employees based in India, will continue to actively lease additional facilities throughout India to meet its future staffing requirements, it said. 

Microsoft takes second shot at fixing Outlook 2007 bugs

Microsoft will take yet another crack this month at fixing a December update for Outlook 2007, the company said last week.

The same update has already been yanked from Microsoft's update services, then subsequently reissued.

Just days after its Dec. 14, 2010, release, Microsoft pulled the update after customers complained they were unable to retrieve their e-mail or experienced long delays when switching folders.

The company reissued the update on Jan. 11, saying it had solved the problems.

Apparently not.

"We've found an issue ... which may result in users being unable to access their archive mailbox," said Bharat Suneja, a senior technical writer with the Exchange team, in a post to the e-mail server software group's blog .

Intel to ship dual-core Sandy Bridge chips on Feb. 20

Intel will start shipping its dual-core Core i5 and i7 microprocessors based on the Sandy Bridge architecture for laptops starting on Feb. 20.

The new microprocessors will draw between 17 watts and 35 watts of power and run at speeds between 1.4GHz and 2.7GHz, according to the chip maker's website. The Sandy Bridge microprocessors, launched in early January, integrate a CPU and graphics processor in a single chip.

The first Sandy Bridge processors to ship were quad-core chips, mainly for high-end laptops. The dual-core chips will likely go into end-user and ultraportable laptops, many of which were shown at last month's Consumer Electronics Show. Fujitsu said it plans to use dual-core Core i7 chips in its high-end ultraportable laptops.

Sure the cloud's insecure; It's like everything else

Worried about security in the cloud ? Fret over this instead: Last month, a hacker surfaced who claimed he can sell access to more than a dozen government, military and university Web sites €” all cracked easily because of bad programming.

Who needs the cloud for lousy security ? It's everywhere!

Consider whose Web sites were hacked and offered for sale to thieves for less than $500 each: the states of Michigan and Utah. And the South Carolina National Guard. And government agencies in Italy and Albania. And, maybe most disturbing of all, the U.S. Army's Communications-Electronics Command, which does software engineering for battlefield systems. These guys really should be getting their programming right.

Oh, it gets worse. The hacker almost certainly hijacked the sites by using a pair of tricks that have been around seemingly forever: SQL injection and buffer overflow. Those attacks don't require an expert black hat €” just a script kiddie with some time to kill.

And those attacks are easy to prevent; programmers just have to set things up so that the system makes sure any input to a Web site is valid. If a form asks for a name and the input turns out to be a snippet of SQL code or 5,000 binary bytes, it should be rejected €” not passed on to a back-end database.

Android Market's Web Store: Convenient, With a Risk of Malware

For Android phone users, the newfound convenience of installing apps remotely from the Android Market Website also opens up a security hole for malware.

Google updated the Android Market Website last week to include landing pages for every app along with remote installation, which lets users visit an app page on their computers and send installation instructions to their phones over the air. But as Sophos warns, there are no safeguards on the phone side to prevent someone from installing malicious software.

When you click the "Install" button on the Android Market Website, it's as if you had just pressed the same button on the phone's Android Market app. The software quietly downloads in the background, and a small note pops up in the notification bar when installation is complete.

So if someone gains access to a user's Google account, the user might not notice when that person installs a bunch of software that can, say, send and receive text messages or transmit contact lists.

Debian 6.0 released in Linux, FreeBSD flavors

Here's some good news for all you Debian fans: Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) has now been released.

And it's not just Linux users who should take note. For the first time, alongside Debian GNU/Linux (that's right, that's Debian's official name, and they get the "GNU"), Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is introduced as a "technology preview."

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD will port both a 32- and 64-bit PC version of the FreeBSD kernel into the Debian userspace, making them the first Debian release without a Linux kernel. The Debian Project is serious about the technology preview label, though: these FreeBSD-based versions will have limited advanced desktop features.

Whether it's Linux or FreeBSD inside, Debian 6.0 will include the usual range of desktop environments: KDE Plasma, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments will all be on board.

Of course, the Linux flavor of Debian 6.0 will be ready for a robust nine types of architectures: 32-bit PC/Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit PC/Intel EM64T/x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Sun/Oracle SPARC (sparc), MIPS [mips (big-endian), mipsel (little-endian)], Intel Itanium (ia64), IBM S/390 (s390), and ARM EABI (armel).

Cloud computing to boom in 2011

Cloud computing will be one of the fastest growing IT markets in 2011, according to analysts.

A report by research company IDC predicts that while global IT spend will increase by six per cent in 2011, spending on public cloud computing services will grow five times faster.

Speaking at the Intellect Annual Regent Conference in London yesterday, Stephen Minton, VP of worldwide IT markets at IDC, said: "This will be a big year for the cloud… It will be a change in the way companies are doing their computing in the long term."

And while nervousness about security of corporate data may stop some businesses from moving to public cloud services, companies will increasingly run IT services on private cloud platforms in 2011.

Minton said: "The real opportunity is the growth of the private cloud," adding that there would be a demand for private cloud services while businesses "moved to widespread usage of the public cloud".