A server for the home

EASY ACCESS: The Home Server Console will allow you to manage the operating system remotely from any other machine.

 

ONE OF the most overlooked versions of Windows is Home Server and it also happens to be one of Microsoft’s best.

It is not uncommon for a home to have more than one computer, which is why having a dedicated machine with Home Server is so vital.

Firstly, Home Server will make backups of up to 10 machines in your house — we would prefer that there wasn’t a limit but 10 sounds reasonable for now.

Besides maintaining backups it can also stream movies and music, and share files across the network.
At the moment, you can’t get your hands on just a copy of the OS but instead have to buy a Home Server PC.

Acer is the only one offering such a machine here and it is called the Acer Aspire Easy Store.
Though custom building your own computer and installing Home Server would be the best option, the Acer Easy Store gets quite a number of things right.

Acer Aspire Easy Store

 

It has an Intel Atom 230 processor (1.6GHz /512K cache/ 533MHz FSB), Intel 945GC Express chipset, 2GB RAM and 1TB hard drive (upgradable to 8TB over four bays). It costs RM1,299.

Also, more Home Server PCs are expected to be available starting from the third quarter of this year. If you don’t wish to wait, you can download a trial copy at bit.ly/q85Fb and start fooling with it.

Remote access
Because the Home Server is best controlled remotely, you will have to install a client called a WHS Connector on each machine.

Even though the software is included with the Home Server disc, there is a better way to install the client over the network. Open up a browser window and type in http://servername:55000 where the server name is the name of your Home Network PC.

This should bring up the Windows Home Server Connector page which will prompt you to download the client. Once you download and install the client you’ll be prompted to input the admin password for the Home Server machine.

After that you will be presented with the Console window from which you can fully control the functions of the Home Server and how it’ll interact with the other machines.

The first tab – Computers and Backup – will show all the other computers connected to the Home Server. You can use it to schedule backups or start an instant backup.

Also, should you need to retrieve any of the backed up files, you can access the read-only virtual partition that the Home Server will create for you on your local machine.

Streaming media
The Home Server will automatically create a few standard folders for file sharing. To be able to stream to other devices, go to the Console setting and click on Media Sharing on the left pane.

You will then be able to turn on media streaming for all your shared folders.

However, the Home Server can only stream to devices that support the Windows Media Connect protocol such as a PC with Media Player and Xbox 360.

More add-ins
It’s also a good idea to update Home Server with the latest patches and security fixes. Click on the Setting button on the top right corner. Look for the Update Now button under the General tab and click it.

This will download the latest patches and security fixes. There are also a number of community developed add-ins that you should consider installing. Here are a few of our favourites.

Advanced Admin Console (home-server-addins.com)
For even better control of your Home Server, you can install the Advanced Admin Console which will create an additional tab in the Console window.

The handy tab will give you quick access to the server’s Command Prompt, Registry Editor, Start Menu, Recycle Bin, Administrative Tools and Task manager.

Disk Management (bit.ly/cCnGAX)
As good as Home Server is at managing the multiple hard disks but you’ll still want to be able to see every possible information of your storage.

With Disk Management, you’ll be able to see detailed information about each disk including its capacity, real-time temperature and activity and a 3D wireframe representation of the server.

The 3D wireframe is not only cool looking but it also makes it easy to select any part of the hard disk that you wish to monitor.

Armed with this info, you’ll know exactly which drive to upgrade or replace before it’s too late.

LightsOut (bit.ly/8mBCS5)
Home Server is meant to run 24/7 so that it is always available but you still should do your part for the planet by saving as much power as possible.

You can do this with the LightsOut add-in which can put the server in Suspended or Hibernation mode until a particular event triggers it awake such as a scheduled backup.

However, LightsOut comes in two flavours — a free but limited version and a full version which costs US22.90 (RM75).

My Movies (www.mymovies.dk)
With so many movies and songs on your hard disk you’ll want a convenient way to sort them. Enter the My Movies add-in.

This nifty add-in retrieves community generated metadata for tagging movies with info such as movie summary, director and cast information, running time, genres and more.

You’ll even get high quality movie covers so you don’t have to browse your movies by text alone.

This feature is only supported if you access the Home Server using Windows Media Centre from any other computer.

The add-in also features extra functions such as DVD ripping but this has to be unlocked with a donation to the forum.

Source: The Star TechCentral


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Surprise! The banks want to make money, Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs, one of the most prestigious banks in the world, has issued a detailed rebuttal of the SEC's accusation of fraud

 

Gordon Brown is "shocked". The notion that Goldman Sachs might have been playing off one set of clients against another to its own advantage, as alleged in a civil lawsuit filed by US regulators last week, had apparently never occurred to him, and he has called for a special investigation into the US investment bank's activities.

Give me a break. Until last week, I had never heard of the transaction in question – an unpleasant-sounding structure involving dodgy mortgages, a clever hedge fund manager and some less savvy investors – and I have no idea if the charges will stick.

I am, though, familiar with the concept that bankers in the middle of such transactions tread a fine line in order to remain on the right side of propriety. This issue is so widely understood that it has a special name: managing conflicts of interest.

It is also obvious that in the run-up to the financial crisis banks sold sub-prime mortgage products that were not, let us say, as safe as they were cracked up to be. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and UBS, for information about the marketing of mortgage products.

This is par for the course: whenever there is a financial boom, bankers peddle hot products with enthusiasm that verges on the excessive, and after the inevitable crash, investors – rightly or wrongly – seek to pin the blame for their bad decisions on these middlemen. The difference this time is the scale of the crisis and the resulting economic downturn. As a result, a restructuring of the financial system, rather than some rule tweaks, is now on the cards.

Goldman in the line of fire

Given that Goldman has been at the centre of post-crisis controversy on several counts, it is not surprising that it is in the line of fire. Wall Street's most prestigious bank has always conceded that its business model involves managing complex conflicts of interest – not only between different sets of clients, but also between itself and its clients. This is true of all investment banks, since trading inevitably creates losers as well as winners.

Of course, banks which advise companies and execute big trades for clients have an edge: they are in possession of superior information. There are rules in place to prevent abuse, but let's not pretend that doing the right thing – or even defining what is the right thing to do – is always easy.

In recent years, grey areas have become even greyer, partly as a result of the proliferation of derivative instruments, which have many useful functions, including obfuscating what is really going on.

At Goldman, the web of conflicts became increasingly tangled as the bank built its own private equity business – allowing it to invest in companies directly – and developed strong relationships with hedge funds.

How effectively Goldman was "managing" these conflicts was an issue long before the crisis. Four years ago, Hank Paulson, its then boss, rebuked his London colleagues for a controversial attempt to bid for BAA, the British airports group it was supposed to be defending against a takeover approach.

Goldman's reputation, he feared, was at risk. That risk is now acute, particularly given Mr Paulson's subsequent role as US Treasury secretary during the financial crisis, when he allowed Lehman Brothers to fail but helped Goldman and Morgan Stanley to avert disaster.

Goldman has rebutted the SEC charges, and notes that the complaint involves "disclosure on a single transaction involving professional investors in a market in which they had extensive experience". The bank also points out that it subsequently lost money on the transaction.

I don't find this to be compelling evidence either way. Most banks lost money in the sub-prime market, but it doesn't mean that their actions were misguided, rather than ill-intentioned. The individuals who structured transactions may have been awarded big bonuses on the back of deals which, at least initially, allowed banks to book profits. This represents yet another potential conflict of interests.

The widely advocated separation of retail and investment banks would do nothing to solve this long-standing problem, since some of the worst conflicts are to be found within standalone investment banks. To strip down activities sufficiently to remove all conflicts would involve reducing the financial industry to uneconomic fragments.

Furthermore, the crackdown after the dotcom crash on analysts who privately denigrated stocks they publicly recommended showed that it is possible to end such abuse, if lines are clearly drawn then policed.

The big surprise, as far as I am concerned, is that anyone was naive enough to believe banks' "clients-first" rhetoric. Clever, financially motivated employees were given powerful incentives to prioritise short-term profits.

The email reflections of a Goldman banker, which form part of the SEC's case, describe "these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades… created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities [sic]". Whatever the legal conclusion, that is a vivid indictment of how the industry operates.

 By Tracy Corrigan, Telegraph

Accountants’ input crucial for NEM, Sheng

Financial adviser calls for accountants to lead the way to K-economy

KUALA LUMPUR: Feedback from accountants is imperative for the successful implementation of the New Economic Model (NEM) and for Malaysia to transform into a knowledge economy (K-economy), said China Banking Regulatory Commission chief adviser Datuk Seri Panglima Andrew Sheng.

“Accountants play a major role in the development of the K-economy from data classification, verification, data analysis as well as business risk investment,” he told reporters yesterday at the 51st Anniversary commemorative lecture and luncheon of the Malaysian Insitutue of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA).

MICPA’s anniversary theme this year was “NEM and the Role of Accountants.”

Sheng said Malaysian accountants must continually upgrade themselves and lead the nation in the process to transform the economy.

He said accountants in the services sector play a significant role in the development of the knowledge economy and could trasform the human resources landscape.

He reckoned that the old economic model of relying on “cheap clerks” and smart partners were over, as the structure did not provide encouragement and incentives to middle managers.

“We are exporting our talent abroad due to higher overseas pay,” he noted, adding the country should instead invest in clusters of accounting talent to do high value outsourcing accounting work in Malaysia.

Sheng said there was a need to do more research in value-added accounting services, such as database management and the conversion of accounting data into business data.

“The conversion of raw accounting data into business and user-friendly language is a major business (opportunity),” he said, citing eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) as an example.

XBRL is the language used for electronic communication of information between businesses and other users of financial information for the purpose of business reporting.

“We need to develop Malaysia as a centre of excellence in accounting and information upgrading,” he said.

Sheng said servicing the financial cetres of Hong Kong and Singapore in data conversion/outsourcing alone was sufficiently viable, what more capturing new businesses in the Middle East, China and India.

To capitalise on this business opportunity, Malaysia needs to develop and promote strong research and development in accounting, he said.

By DANNY YAP, danny@thestar.com.my

Cyberattack lifted Google password system code, says report

'Chinese' hack nabbed single-sign-on source

When alleged Chinese hackers infiltrated Google's internal systems in December, they lifted source code for a password system that controls access to almost all of the company's web services, according to a report citing a person with direct knowledge of Google's investigation into the matter.

The New York Times reports that the December attack nabbed code for the system that controls single-sign-on for millions of users across myriad Google services, including Gmail and the company's online business applications. Originally codenamed Gaia - a nod to the Greek godess of the earth - it is now known simply as Single Sign-On.

According to The Times, the attack began when an instant message was sent to a Google employee in China who was running Microsoft's Messenger client. When the employee clicked on a weblink in the IM, attackers gained access to the employee's PC, and from there, they tapped machines used by "a critical group of software developers" at the company's Mountain View headquarters. Eventually, they also gained access to a software repository where source code for the Gaia system was stored.

Code was moved to machines housed by the Texas-based webhost Rackspace, The Times says, before it was transferred to some other, unknown destination.

At some point, according to The Times, the attackers gained access to an internal Google directory called Moma, which houses info on the "work activities" of company employees. This may have been used to locate specific individuals inside the company. The attackers "seemed to have precise intelligence" about the names of the Gaia software developers.

However, The Times says, the attackers "do not appear" to have lifted the passwords of individual Gmail users.

On January 12, Google told the world that Chinese hackers had stolen unspecified intellectual property from the company's internal system, and it said evidence indicated that "a primary motive" of the attacks was to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In light of the attack - and what it described as other, routine attacks on the Gmail accounts of such activists - Google said it had resolved to stop censoring search results in the country.

A little more than two months later, after talks with Chinese government, Google shut down its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, and redirected visitors to its Hong Kong-based engine, Google.com.hk, where it now provides uncensored search results in simplified Chinese.

According to The Times, Google continues to use the Gaia system, and the paper questions whether the attackers may use the course code to locate security weaknesses n the system itself. ®

By Cade Metz in San Francisco

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1077234

The Yin And Yang Of China's Housing Bubble

For some, housing is out of reach; for others there's a windfall.

Wu Junkai

HONG KONG -- Five years ago Wu Junkai had just graduated from college and moved to Beijing. When the lease came up on the flat he shared with a roommate, he was the only one who wanted to stay. "I thought why not buy the flat once and for all," Wu said.

Today, he feels lucky he bought instead of renewing the lease. He's now married with a 2-year-old daughter and works at an insurance company. His monthly mortgage payment comes to a fifth of his family income, and in 15 years, Wu expects to pay off the loan.

Even better: the apartment's value has skyrocketed amidst the real estate bubble in China.

"I paid 6,300 yuan ($923) per square meter at that time," said Wu of his 136 square-meter apartment near Beijing's East Fourth Ring. "Now it costs almost 22,000 yuan ($3,223)--I couldn't imagine it has soared so much."

But not everyone is so lucky. Ning Haixin graduated last year, when Chinese housing prices were shooting up. Though Ning works at a high-tech company and earns a handsome salary in the country's capital, he said he doesn't see buying a home in Beijing for the next five years.

 Beijing's housing price is going crazy, and people are always talking about housing bubbles," said Ning. "Most of my friends are living in rented flats. I want to wait and see if this property boom will go bust."

Zhang Xin, CEO of Soho China and one of China's richest billionaires, warned a real estate bubble in a recent Forbes interview. (See: "China's Developer Lament") Zhang said developers are rushing to build and sell more property to speculators even though there is no apparent need for more buildings, and the bubble keeps growing.

Beijing along with 69 other large and medium-sized cities in mainland China have witnessed a sizzling property market--property prices climbed 11.7% in March to a 5-year high. Real estate investment in the first quarter rose 35.1% to 65.94 million yuan ($9.66 million), according to latest government data.

Beijing is trying to cool home prices without bursting the bubble. The State Council raised the minimum down-payment required to 50% from 40% for second home buyers and to 30% for first home buyers for apartments larger than 90 square meters. The country's cabinet is also mulling an individual housing consumption tax.

When Wu bought his apartment five years ago, his down-payment was just 20% of the price--far less than Ning would have to put down if he were to buy. And today, it takes 40 years for a middle-income family with an annual income of 100,000 to 150,000 yuan ($14,649 to $21,974) to pay off the loan on a 100 square-meter flat in Beijing, according to Wen Hongwei, project director at the Beijing branch of Guangdong Pearl River Investment.

China's property stocks plummeted Monday after the government's policy to crack down on property speculation and tighten banks lending. China Real Estate Information Corporationlost 11.7%, China Vankeslid 7.2%, while Xinyuan Real Estate Companyclosed down 3.3%. Shanghai Composite Index Monday closed down 4.8%, the biggest daily drop in eight months, while Hong Kong's Hangseng index ended at a 3-week low amidst mainland property woes.

Wen remains optimistic about the mainland property market. "There may be bubbles in the short term, but after this round of government adjustment, the market will resume a healthy growing momentum in the second half of this year," said Wen.

Sun Hung Kai Properties ( SUHJY.PK - news - people ), Hong Kong's biggest real estate developer by market value, saw its net profit soar 19.7 times to HK$14.3 billion ($1.84 billion) in the second half of last year. The company predicts the mainland China property market will rise in the long run given the central government's strong economic stimulus package and reluctance to raise interest rates, according to its latest financial report. Sun Hung Kai owns of 88.3 million square feet of land in mainland China. Its shares dropped 0.6% as of Tuesday noon.

"Though Beijing is taking action to cool the country's boiling property market, its aim is to keep the market in good stable shape rather than rein in its development as the property market contributes to 10-20% of the country's GDP," said Wen. "March has already seen the country's first trade deficit in the past 6 years. The central government certainly doesn't want to halt another wagon that drives its economic growth."

Jennifer Po-ying Cheung, 04.20.10, 03:45 AM EDT
 
Source: http://newscri.be/link/1077237

For all the latest headlines visit Forbes Asia.

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Invest In South Korea, Samsung

Chinese Pigs 'Direct Descendants' of First Domesticated Breeds

 ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2010) — Modern-day Chinese pigs are directly descended from ancient pigs which were the first to be domesticated in the region 10,000 years ago, a new archaeological and genetic study has revealed.

An international team of researchers, led by Durham University (UK) and the China Agricultural University, in Beijing, say their findings suggest a difference between patterns of early domestication and movement of pigs in Europe and parts of East Asia.

The research, published April 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, looked at the DNA sequences of more than 1,500 modern and 18 ancient pigs.

Lead author Dr Greger Larson, in the Department of Archaeology, at Durham University, said: "Previous studies of European domestic pigs demonstrated that the first pigs in Europe were imported from the Near East. Those first populations were then completely replaced by pigs descended from European wild boar.
"However, despite the occurrence of genetically distinct populations of wild boar throughout modern China, these populations have not been incorporated into domestic stocks.

"The earliest known Chinese domestic pigs have a direct connection with modern Chinese breeds, suggesting a long, unbroken history of pigs and people in this part of East Asia."

The finding is part of a wider research project into pig domestication and early human migration in East Asia.
The study also uncovered multiple centres of pig domestication and a complex picture of human migration across East Asia.

After pigs were incorporated into domestic stocks in Southeast Asia, the animals then migrated with people south and east to New Guinea, eventually reaching the remote Pacific, including Hawai'i, Tahiti, and Fiji, the researchers said.

The DNA analysis also found that wild boar were probably domesticated in many places including India and peninsular Southeast Asia several thousand years ago.

As current interpretations of archaeological records in these regions do not yet support these findings, the group has referred to them as "cryptic domestications."

They suggest that additional archaeological digs and new analytical techniques may help to resolve the problem.

Dr Larson added: "Our evidence suggests an intriguingly complex pattern of local domestication and regional turnover and calls for a reappraisal of the archaeological record across South and East Asia.

"We may even find additional centres of pig domestication when we take a closer look at the picture in that part of the world."

The research is part of an ongoing research project based at Durham University which aims to re-evaluate the archaeological evidence for pig domestication and husbandry and explore the role of animals in reconstructing ancient human migration, trade and exchange networks.

The DNA testing was carried out at the China Agricultural University and was analysed at Durham University and Uppsala University, Sweden.

The research was funded by the National Basic Research Programme of China and the National Key Technology R&D Programme of China.
Adapted from materials provided by Durham University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1077253

Microsoft stealth launches 'historic' programming language

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Hidden F# strikes right note

By Tim Anderson • Get more from this author

Launching a new language is easy - getting it used is hard. The combination of existing code and existing skills is a strong barrier to adoption, and even excellent languages like Ruby and Python have struggled to break out of their niches.

What hope is there for F#, the new language that Microsoft has sneaked into Visual Studio 2010, launched this month?

"I think it's an amazing moment," says its principal designer, Microsoft researcher Don Syme, an Australian now based in Cambridge. "It represents part of the history of programming language design and development here in the UK."

Perhaps it does. But you would not know it from most of Microsoft's marketing effort for the new Visual Studio. F# tends to get lost in the fuss about other new features. I downloaded Microsoft's Why upgrade to Visual Studio 2010? white paper and not only is F# missing from the "Top ten reasons to buy" - it's not actually mentioned at all.

That is a shame. F# is a functional programming language, and there are good reasons why functional programming deserves wider use, such as its suitability for the concurrent programming required for optimal performance on today's multi-core systems.

F# is also succinct. During a talk at the recent QCon London programming conference, Syme showed a series of slides, headed Pleasure and Pain, showing how F# code can be shorter and more expressive than its C# equivalent, sometimes to the extreme.

Following his QCon talk, I spoke to Syme about the new language. How did F# begin?

"I've been doing functional programming since 1992. I had been using the ML family of languages, including standard ML and OCaml, and wanted to see that paradigm being strong on the .NET platform. We started F# as a research project. We could experiment with the functional paradigm in practice, and understand where it was most beneficial and how it would fit in."

So how does F# differ from, say, OCaml?

According to Syme: "The core language of F# is heavily inspired by OCaml. If you look back at the ML languages, the core of these languages has been surprisingly stable, from the early seventies. It's a question of what you do around that. One of the major questions is about object-oriented programming. Another question is what you would historically have called module system design. F# differs on those design decisions from other ML languages because the aim is to build a language which integrates into the .NET component development model. That means we do embrace .NET object-oriented programming.

F# can be remarkably concise compared to C#

"Another major design difference is with regard to parallel programming, where we embrace the idea of lightweight threads and what we call lightweight agents in the language and in the core language. We use techniques that come from Haskell for that purpose."



Speaking to Syme, Microsoft's main motive for including F# in Visual Studio becomes clear. Functional programming is popular in the financial community, where it is used for quantitative analysis. Finance is an important market.

"We find F# is very attractive to financial analysts and quantitative experts," says Syme, the reason being that it excels in data, parallel and algorithmic programming. "F# is attractive in places where the object oriented paradigm isn't a good fit for the kind of work that's being done," he says.

If F# is mainly intended for a specific programming niche, that would explain why Microsoft is not putting much energy behind promoting it. That said, it deserves more attention because of its suitability for the concurrent programming that has become necessary in order to take advantage of today's multi-core systems.

The Hejlsberg factor

Perhaps surprisingly, C# designer Anders Hejlsberg is an F# enthusiast, though he also plans to introduce functional features into C#. In a recent talk on programming futures, Hejlsberg said a functional programming language is easier to parallelize.

"I'm not running around modifying the state, and it doesn't matter how many threads there are because the state is safe to observe, and if two functions are independent they can be executed sequentially or in parallel and it doesn't matter ... [F#] is the first time we've seen integration of a functional programming language with an industrial-strength framework and toolset," he said.

Syme also is convinced that F# has a future that goes beyond financial analysis. He sees it as ideal for web programming, thanks to its use of lightweight "agents" that sit waiting to react to an event such as a network communication.

"We have a huge opportunity with F# to see the functional programming paradigm break out of the data-oriented kind of work, through to the modern world of web programming," he says.

The question: how to get that message through to Microsoft's marketing department? ®


Source: http://newscri.be/link/1076015
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