Technology in 2008.
PEERING into Tech.view’s crystal ball, the one thing we can predict with at least some certainty is that 2008 will be the year we stop taking access to the internet for granted. The internet is not about to grind to a halt, but as more and more users clamber aboard to download music, video clips and games while communicating incessantly by e-mail, chat and instant messaging, the information superhighway sometimes crawls with bumper-to-bumper traffic. more...

First release of perl in five years arrives.
Just in time for Christmas, there's a new version of perl, the first in over five years. The first update since 2002 to the "practical extraction and report language," perl 5.10 adds both new language features and an improved perl interpreter, according to community site Perl Buzz. more... and One view of "here's what we've done" in Perl 6.

Master Port Scanning with Nmap.
What's on your network and how vulnerable is it to a hacker attack? Having a clear picture of this is a vital part of effective network administration, and one way to build up such a picture is by network mapping using a port scanner. more... and A simple tutorial for network scanning software (nmap) and Simple usage of tcpdump.

Top Solid State Disks and TB Drives Reviewed.
Computerworld has reviewed six of the latest hard disk drives that include 32GB and 64GB solid state disks, a low-energy consumption "green" drive and several terabyte-size drives. With the exception of capacity, the solid state disk drives appear to beat spinning disk in every category, from CPU utilization, energy consumption and read/writes. more... and Solid State Drives: Fast, Rugged, and Really Expensive.

Hands-on with the OLPC XO laptop -- and loving it.
The XO laptop I received last week as part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project's "Give One Get One" (G1G1) promotion is unlike any other laptop I've ever used, both in appearance and functionality. It's smaller, for one thing. The XO weighs only 3.13 pounds, is 9 inches wide, and approximately an inch thick when closed. But there's a lot more difference between the XO and a normal laptop computer than size. more... and Unboxing OLPC's XO-1 laptop.

Team Mambo announces the release of Mambo 4.6.3!
Code name "Dylan", this minor version release features a number of security improvements and bug fixes. more...

How To Tips.

See you next Thursday 7 P.M. at 420 Cafe, 420 Washington Ave, Eau Claire, WI.

EC_LUG