Ajay, Author at IT Security and Internet

Dell announced plans Tuesday to go private in a deal that is worth $24.4 billion.

AjayFebruary 6, 2013

n a partnership involving private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft (MSFT,Fortune 500) and company founder Michael Dell, the group hopes to buy the computer maker for $13.65 a share. That’s slightly higher than where the stock closed Monday but is 25% higher than where Dell was trading before rumors of the buyout began to surface in mid-January.

If successful, the Dell deal would be one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history. Shareholders have to approve the deal before it becomes official.

The once mighty Dell has struggled to compete in an ailing and increasingly competitive PC market. Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) lost a third of its market value in 2012 and failed to keep up with rivals like Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) and Samsung, both of which have done a much better job adapting to the “post-PC” landscape with tablets and smartphones.

Dell has been trying to reduce its reliance on the PC market and shift to hot businesses like cloud computing, storage and corporate software. About half of Dell’s sales come directly from PCs, and another 20% comes from PC peripherals like monitors, keyboards, printers, computer software and services.

But the problem for Dell is that all of its competition is trying to do the same thing.

“It seems to me that the toughest issue for HP (HPQ, Fortune 500), Intel (INTC,Fortune 500), Microsoft and Dell is that they are so reliant on the desktop,” said Dan Morgan, a portfolio manager with Synovus. “I think all these companies have been struggling to duplicate the success that IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) has had in regards to focusing away from the desktop.”

Dell hopes that by going private, it can more nimbly restructure and adjust its business — without having to answer to shareholders. Going private can take a the company out of the quarter-to-quarter grind of meeting Wall Street’s expectations. But it also means Dell will have less access to funds to make large acquisitions that could help transform the company.

“I believe this transaction will open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members,” Michael Dell said in a statement. “We can deliver immediate value to stockholders, while we continue the execution of our long-term strategy and focus on delivering best-in-class solutions to our customers as a private enterprise.”

Despite the advantage of being a private company, it will still be a difficult road ahead for Dell, analysts say.

“While going private makes sense in taking the company out of the limelight and public scrutiny, we are not sure it improves the company’s fundamental position,” said Shaw Wu, analyst at Sterne Agee. He noted that the company still faces tough competition from the likes of Apple, HP, Samsung, Lenovo and others.

Once the transaction is approved, CEO Michael Dell will convert his 14% stake into private shares.

Though most analysts thought the deal would be good for Dell, not all industry experts were in favor Microsoft joining the fray. Microsoft is loaning $2 billion to Dell to help finance the deal.

“The point of going private is so you can serve your own long-term goals without having to worry about short-term performance,” said Carl Howe, analyst at Yankee Group’. “Having an outside investor — Microsoft — muddies those waters. I think Dell would have a more certain future going it alone.”

courtesy: http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/05/technology/enterprise/dell-lbo/index.html

how to remove a user from skype group chat

AjayFebruary 5, 2013

simple

/kick username

Twitter: Hackers target 250,000 users

AjayFebruary 5, 2013

A quarter of a million Twitter users have had their accounts compromised in the latest of a string of high-profile internet security breaches.

Twitter’s information security director Bob Lord said about 250,000 users’ passwords had been stolen, as well as usernames, emails and other data.

Affected users have had passwords invalidated and have been sent emails informing them.

Mr Lord said the attack “was not the work of amateurs”.

He said it appeared similar to recent attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The US newspapers reported that their computer systems had been breached by China-based hackers.

courtesy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21304049

Huawei launches Windows phone in Afric

AjayFebruary 5, 2013

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has unveiled a bespoke Windows-run smartphone exclusively available in Africa.

The customised device is being launched today in partnership with Microsoft as part of its new 4Afrika Initiative.

This includes plans to develop cheap wireless broadband in the Rift Valley in Kenya and help local people in South Africa and Egypt develop Windows apps.

Prices for the new device have not yet been announced.

“Our aim is to be the most affordable Windows phone in Africa,” Gustavo Fuchs, director of Microsoft Windows Phone division in the Middle East & Africa, told the BBC.

It will initially be rolled out in seven countries: Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Angola, Morocco and South Africa.

The phone will be marketed depending on the retail climate of those individual nations, Mr Fuchs explained.

“At first we are making the product available across the southern market.

“We’re looking at the biggest channel for each country. In South Africa, it’s operator-led, in other markets like Nigeria and Angola there’s a mixed environment and in the Ivory Coast they are only sold at retail.”

Accessibility

The phone will be connected to a customised app store including applications designed and built by Africans.

“Affordability is important but without the right local content we believe a lot of users will not see the benefit in the change from a basic feature phone to a smartphone,” said Mr Fuchs.

He said the objective of the scheme was to increase the penetration of smartphones across the continent.

“If you look at current penetration compared with the US or Europe, which is around 50%, in Africa the average is very close to 10%, less in some parts.”

The handset is a customised version of the Huawei Ascend W1 which was displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month.

It has a 4in (10cm) touch screen and 5 megapixel camera. The phone can be on stand-by for up to 420 hours between charges.

“The 4Afrika Initiative should make tens of millions of smart devices available across the continent in the next couple of years,” Mr Fuchs said.

Courtesy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21325535

How to setup an NFS share from Mac OSX Server to Linux

AjayFebruary 2, 2013

Set up the NFS share

Download NFS Manager from www.bresink.com/products.html. It’s very low-cost shareware but you can use it free if you don’t mind an occasional pop-up reminder. You could probably set things up without NFS Manager, but it makes things a heck of a lot simpler.

Using NFS Manager, add a new share, browsing for the directory you want to make available – in my case that’s /Volumes/Firewire1. Use the option to allow only specified computers access (depending on your network connection it might not be possible for random hackers to mount your hard drive remotely, but it’s best to be safe). Use the IP address you assigned to the Linux VM, in my example that is 10.0.1.100. You’ll need to hit the “Activate” button iback on the main screen to start the actual processes running.

Configure the Mac’s firewall

The NFS protocol uses ports 2049 and 111,2 and the Mac’s built-in firewall blocks these by default. Open “System Preferences, Sharing”, and go to the “Firewall” tab. You will see a list of network services that you can click on to enable or disable access – however, NFS is not on the list. Hit “New…” and select “Other” from the dropdown list. In the TCP Port Number(s) field enter “2049,111”. Enter a description such as “NFS”, and click OK.

Set up the client side

Before making any changes to your Linux VM, take a backup (or in Parallels Desktop version 3, create a snapshot).

Now in Linux as root, create the directory to use for the share. I’m going to call it “extdrive”, so I’ll enter mkdir /extdrive. Next edit the file /etc/fstab (filesystem table), adding an entry like this (I’m using my external drive example – substitute your own details for IP address and path:

10.0.1.2:/Volumes/Firewire1  /extdrive   nfs

(Confirm that Linux can see the host by pinging the specified IP address, e.g. by entering ping 10.0.1.2 on the command line.) There are other fields for entering more information, but I’m cheating somewhat by letting them all use their system defaults. (However, from checking man nfs it seems the defaults are all pretty sensible, for example if you don’t set explicit read and write packet sizes, client and server negotiate to find the optimal size both can handle.)

Now reboot Linux to make sure it worked. What you should see when you log back in is directory called “/extdrive” (or whatever you named it) mapped to the specified path on the Mac.

Notice that it belongs to “501”, which is the ID of my user account on the Mac. If I create a user and set the ID to 501, that user’s name will be shown instead.

Also notice that the invisible system files are shown (in Finder I only see app, Parallels VM and william). Obviously you’ll want to avoid messing with those. Perhaps better, share a subdirectory instead of the entire filesystem.

Troubleshooting

By default, the Linux boot process issues a mount command for each entry in /etc/fstab (“filesystem table”). If the new filesystem is not getting mounted, you can investigate what isn’t working by executing the command yourself.

The mount command can be used on the Linux command line to mount a filesystem manually. You’ll need to be connected as the root user, so either enter su - (then enter the root password), sudo su (then enter your own password), or else execute the commands as the currently connected user (e.g. oracle), placing sudo before each command, e.g. sudo mount -v /extdrive.

mount -v /extdrive (the -v is “verbose” mode) will attempt to mount the drive as you specified it in /etc/fstab. However, a common problem is that either the host Mac’s firewall or its NFS server process rejects it, and all you see on the Linux command line is the mount command appearing to hang. To check what’s going on, first go back to Firewall tab in the Mac’s Sharing preferences, and hit the Advanced option, enable firewall logging if it isn’t already enabled, and hit Open Log. This bring up a Console window showing the actual Firewall log in real time. Now go back to Linux and re-enter the mount command, and watch for “deny” entries appearing in the Firewall log. For example, when using NFS with Xubuntu I got log entries like this:

Sep 23 09:50:14 starbase-2 ipfw:  12190 Deny TCP 10.0.1.201:785 10.0.1.2:1011 in via en0
Sep 23 09:50:38 starbase-2 ipfw:  12190 Deny TCP 10.0.1.201:785 10.0.1.2:1011 in via en0
Sep 23 09:51:26 starbase-2 ipfw:  12190 Deny TCP 10.0.1.201:785 10.0.1.2:1011 in via en0

10.0.1.201 was the Xubuntu VM, and it was attempting to connect through port 1011 which I had not authorised. I added 1011 to the “TCP port numbers” list in the firewall settings to allow these connections.

If nothing is appearing in the Firewall log, then either it can’t see the host at all (in my example 10.0.1.2 – you may need to double-check that you have entered the right IP address) or else the NFS server is not authorising the connection. Go back over the NFS Manager settings and make sure that the Linux VM’s IP address is correctly specified. It should be entered in /etc/hosts, you should be able to ping it from the Mac’s command line, and it should be listed in the “List of computers or computer groups” window in NFS Manager.

Courtesy: http://www.williamrobertson.net/documents/nfs-mac-linux-setup.html