Ars Technica: Old IPv4 flaws resurface with IPv6

Ars Technica talks about a security flaw - long since disabled in IPv4 but re-enabled in IPv6 - that could lead to network traffic problems.

"Source routing" isn't exactly a new invention: it dates back to the original IPv4 specification. With this option, the sender of a packet can determine the route the packet follows through the network by listing a number of stops along the way. The packet is first forwarded to the first stop, then the second, and so on, until it eventually reaches its destination.

The (IPv4) Internet community has long since concluded that this option is more trouble than it's worth, so it's almost universally disabled. Not so in IPv6, however, so an attacker can specify the path packets take through the network, possibly circumventing firewalls, ending up at root DNS servers that normally serve a different part of the Internet, or ping-ponging back and forth between two routers, wasting network capacity.

To be fair to the IETF, this isn't the first time anyone's made the same mistake more than once. For example, my twice-ex girlfriend and I are dating again.

Ars Technica: Microsoft to make Windows Home Server available as OEM product.

Microsoft's upcoming headless server package for home users is going to be available as an OEM product - meaning that we geeks will soon get home fileservers from our old computers without the need for mucking with Linux. Mucking with Linux may not seem like a big deal... until your 4 year old gets the root password.

This is a move that makes a lot of sense for Microsoft's target market, as it's much more cost-effective to reposition an older or secondary system as a home server than it is to justify purchasing an entirely new system specifically for that purpose.

EWeek: Does Google's New Tagline Imply A Shift to Enterprise Apps?

Ah, my favorite type of ungrounded speculation. Ungrounded speculation based on advertising slogans less than five words long…

While its long been speculated whether or not Google has the chops to take on the 800-pound gorilla in the desktop applications market, Microsoft, with its Office suite of spreadsheets, word processing, e-mail and PowerPoint applications, Google's tagline metamorphous may well represent a shift in the company's emphasis.

The question now is whether Google has any inclination to enter the enterprise applications market that goes beyond the desktop to backend systems like ERP (enterprise resource planning), SCM (supply chain management), and CRM (customer relationship management)?

I'm not saying it's wrong - I'm just saying that it seems like EWeek is reading way too much into a tagline - sorta like storming GE's castle with torches and pitchforks because of the phrase "We bring good things to life."