SteveOH

Tech and and auto industries lead the number of planned layoffs according to a monthly survey.

By Kenneth Musante, CNNMoney.com staff writer

October 1, 2008: 7:36 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The number of job cuts announced in September rose as the economy slowed, according to a report released Wednesday.

Positions on the cutting board rose 7.2% to 95,094 from 88,736 the previous month, and were 33% higher than the same month last year, when 71,739 cuts were announced, according to outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

September brought the announced layoff total for the third quarter to 287,142 – the largest number since 2005, according to the report.

The computer industry was the hardest hit, with 25,715 positions on the line after PC maker Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) announced the largest workforce reduction of the year, the report said.

HP said it would cut 24,600 jobs worldwide as a result of its acquisition of Electronic Data Systems Corp. But since those cuts were a result of the deal and not a consequence of the ailing economy, the report noted, HP’s workforce could gain many of those jobs back.

The struggling auto industry came in second place, with plans to drop 14,595 jobs, while the apparel industry came in third place, announcing 8,350 cuts, according to the report.

Surprisingly, planned job cuts were relatively modest in the financial sector, the report said, despite the turmoil that plagued the nation’s financial institutions during the month.

Banks wait for bailout

The data showed that finance industry had announced 8,244 job cuts in September, compared with a spike of 27,169 during the same month last year as the credit crunch began to unfold. But they did jump from 2,182 in August.

September saw a major reshaping of the financial landscape as institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500), AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Wachovia (WB, Fortune 500) and Washington Mutual were acquired, bailed out, or went bankrupt.

“While all of these scenarios are being played out, the fate of the workers remains in limbo,” John A. Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a statement.

Financial institutions are waiting to see if Congress passes the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue plan that would allow the government to buy up tainted assets in order to keep their businesses from failing.

Whether the bailout plan is approved by Congress – and what form it takes – will affect the number of layoffs that may eventually be announced, according to Challenger.

“One of the big questions is: Are there going to be more runs on banks and financial institutions?’” he told CNNMoney.com.

If there is no bailout plan, financial job cuts will likely increase, according to Challenger. On the other hand, if all banks take advantage of the government’s offer, the number of layoffs could be limited, since no one institution is singled out.

But if a bailout plan passes and is only embraced by a few institutions, that would emphasize the weakness of those companies, and we might see more job cuts, he added. 

By Alexis Madrigal October 06, 2008 | 11:00:00 PM

FREMONT, California — Solar cells have been converting sunlight into electricity for years, but scientists have been much less successful at turning that technology into money.

Now, in a staid Bay Area office park, a converted hard-drive factory with a shiny new façade has begun churning out unconventional solar tubes that could change the economics of solar power.

The highly-automated factory belongs to Solyndra, a three-year-old company that has received $600 million in venture capital and $1.2 billion in orders for its new modules, which look like curtain rods. Those big investors are betting the company’s unique product will soon blanket commercial buildings across the world.

Instead of the standard panels mounted on racks that have dominated solar for the last 20 years, Solyndra’s cylindrical solar modules collect sunlight more efficiently across a broader range of angles and catch light reflected off the roof itself. The solar cells also contain no silicon, which has been a costly component of most solar systems.

Targeted at a highly specific market — office and big-box rooftops — and with signed contracts in hand, the company, along with a small cadre of other well-funded solar startups, are racing to turn their scientific and engineering marvels into profitable businesses.

The scramble, the money, and the size of the prize — a big slice of the trillions of dollars made in energy — remind the company’s founder, Chris Gronet, of his earlier experience in the industry that became the basis for the information revolution.

“We think the solar industry or market look very similar to the way semiconductor manufacturing was 20 years ago,” Gronet, Solyndra’s CEO, told Wired.com. “We say, ‘Wow this is familiar. We’ve been through this before.’”

All types of solar power have experienced growth in the wake of increasing awareness of the risks of climate change and the rising costs of fossil fuels. A report released last week by Lux Research, a solar-focused analysis firm, predicts that the total solar market will grow from $33.4 billion in 2008 to $100.4 billion in 2013. While traditional silicon-based solar cells continue to underpin most solar systems, there is a broad expectation among industry analysts and insiders that these new thin-film solar cells, such as Solyndra is making, will experience rapid growth. While thin-film cells aren’t as efficient at using the sun’s energy as their silicon competitors, they cost less to produce.

Instead of using wafers of material, a la computer chips or traditional solar PV, thin-film solar cells use tiny amounts of material deposited in ultra thin layers along the surface of glass or metal. In Solyndra’s case, vice president of business development Kelly Truman said that their process uses just a bit more than a micron of copper indium gallium diselenide, or CIGS. Using less of the expensive photovoltaic material drives the cost of their production down.

For years, CIGS technology had appeared the most promising for cheap solar power. The National Solar Technology Roadmap, created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, states that steady efficiency improvement “could ultimately allow CIGS to achieve the lowest module costs and levelized cost of energy among all PV technologies.”

The total solar market can be broken into three main pieces: solar for utilities, residential installations and commercial buildings. Solyndra is focusing exclusively on the commercial side. What Gronet envisions is solar panels installed on your average Home Depot or Ikea, generating a substantial percentage of the company’s power needs right on site.

On the roof of the Solyndra office buildings, they’ve installed the first Solyndra array. What’s striking about the system is how simple it appears: The solar tubes look like reverse fluorescent light bulbs that generate electricity rather than using it. The mounting system is also light and small, as you can see in the image. They don’t have to be bolted to roofs because the spacing between the cylinders makes them less susceptible to wind damage than traditional flat solar panels.

But despite the industry’s high hopes, CIGS solar cells have proven very difficult to manufacture at industrial scales. Greentech Media analyst Michael Kanellos said that the risks for CIGS thin-film players have “increased dramatically” over the last few months with the worsening financial system and increased competition.

“Some CIGS will survive, but a lot of these companies might only leave a wet spot on the pavement,” Kanellos wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com.

Kanellos noted that Solyndra’s cylindrical design was advantageous, but also the most difficult to manufacture.

“Everyone else is having trouble making efficient flat CIGS panels. Curving adds another layer of complexity,” Kanellos wrote. “It is part of the reason that their contracts call for the delivery of their solar panels from now to 2012.”

Only two other CIGS-based thin-film manufacturers have managed to start cranking out actual saleable product. Nanosolar and Global Solar started selling cells last year. Solyndra, after hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, generated its first revenue in the third quarter of this year.

If Gronet and his team can work out the manufacturing challenges and navigate the difficult financial waters, their unique design and tightly focused business model could lead them to profitability, even after government subsidies in Europe phase out.

“In any unsubsidized world, which is a few years down the road, you need a cost structure that allows you to compete,” Gronet said. “Our panel, because it’s CIGS and thin film, will beat the costs of any silicon system.”

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter , Google Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on Facebook.

By ROBERT McMILLAN, IDG News Service\San Francisco Bureau, IDG

Published: July 24, 2008

Hackers have released software that exploits a recently disclosed flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS) software used to route messages between computers on the Internet.

The attack code was released Wednesday by developers of the Metasploit hacking toolkit.

Internet security experts warn that this code may give criminals a way to launch virtually undetectable phishing attacks against Internet users whose service providers have not installed the latest DNS server patches.

Attackers could also use the code to silently redirect users to fake software update servers in order to install malicious software on their computers, said Zulfikar Ramizan, a technical director with security vendor Symantec. “What makes this whole thing really scary is that from an end-user perspective they may not notice anything,” he said.

The bug was first disclosed by IOActive researcher Dan Kaminsky earlier this month, but technical details of the flaw were leaked onto the Internet earlier this week, making the Metasploit code possible. Kaminsky had worked for several months with major providers of DNS software such as Microsoft, Cisco and the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) to develop a fix for the problem. The corporate users and Internet service providers who are the major users of DNS servers have had since July 8 to patch the flaw, but many have not yet installed the fix on all DNS servers.

The attack is a variation on what’s known as a cache poisoning attack. It has to do with the way DNS clients and servers obtain information from other DNS servers on the Internet. When the DNS software does not know the numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address of a computer, it asks another DNS server for this information. With cache poisoning, the attacker tricks the DNS software into believing that legitimate domains, such as idg.com, map to malicious IP addresses.

In Kaminsky’s attack a cache poisoning attempt also includes what is known as “Additional Resource Record” data. By adding this data, the attack becomes much more powerful, security experts say.

An attacker could launch such an attack against an ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) domain name servers and then redirect them to malicious servers. By poisoning the domain name record for www.citibank.com, for example, the attackers could redirect the ISP’s users to a malicious phishing server every time they tried to visit the banking site with their Web browser.

On Monday, security company Matasano accidentally posted details of the flaw on its Web site. Matasano quickly removed the post and apologized for its mistake, but it was too late. Details of the flaw soon spread around the Internet.

Although a software fix is now available for most users of DNS software, it can take time for these updates to work their way through the testing process and actually get installed on the network.

“Most people have not patched yet,” said ISC President Paul Vixie in an e-mail interview earlier this week. “That’s a gigantic problem for the world.”

Metasploit’s code looks “very real,” and uses techniques that were not previously documented said Amit Klein, chief technology officer with Trusteer.

It will probably be used in attacks, he predicted. “Now that the exploit is out there, combined with the fact that not all DNS servers were upgraded… attackers should be able to poison the cache of some ISPs,” he wrote in an e-mail interview. “The thing is we may never know about such attacks, if the attackers… work carefully and cover their tracks properly.”

Copyright 2008 IDG News Service. All Rights Reserved.

This code does not actually delete the contacts, just flags them as duplicates using the FTPSite field. If some of your contacts use the FTPSite field, you might want to change it.  I also added contacts with no names, just for safe keeping.

Public Sub deleteduplicatecontacts()
Dim oldcontact As ContactItem, newcontact As ContactItem, j As Integer
Set mynamespace = GetNamespace(“MAPI”)
Set myfolder = mynamespace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts)
Set myitems = myfolder.Items
myitems.Sort “[File As]“, olDescending
totalcount = myitems.Count
j = 1
While ((j < totalcount) And (myitems(j).Class <> olContact))
j = j + 1
Wend
Set oldcontact = myitems(j)
For i = j + 1 To totalcount
If (myitems(i).Class = olContact) Then
Set newcontact = myitems(i)
‘if((newcontact.lastmodificationtime = oldcontact.lastmodificationtime) and
If ((newcontact.LastNameAndFirstName = oldcontact.LastNameAndFirstName) And _
(newcontact.FileAs = oldcontact.FileAs) And _
(newcontact.PagerNumber = oldcontact.PagerNumber) And _
(newcontact.HomeTelephoneNumber = oldcontact.HomeTelephoneNumber) And _
(newcontact.BusinessTelephoneNumber = oldcontact.BusinessTelephoneNumber) And _
(newcontact.BusinessAddress = oldcontact.BusinessAddress) And _
(newcontact.Email1Address = oldcontact.Email1Address) And _
(newcontact.HomeAddress = oldcontact.HomeAddress) And _
(newcontact.CompanyName = oldcontact.CompanyName)) Or newcontact.LastNameAndFirstName = “” Then
‘use FTPSite as a flag to mark duplicates
newcontact.FTPSite = “DELETEmeIamAdupe!”
newcontact.Save
End If
Set oldcontact = newcontact

Because of a protocol error, this session will be disconnected.

For some months now, I’ve not been able to use Microsoft Terminal Server to connect from my laptop to my work desktop. Oh, I could connect just fine, but then immediately (or very shortly) after logging in I’d be disconnected with the unhelpful error, “Because of a protocol error, this session will be disconnected. Please try connecting to the remote computer again.” What does that mean, and what do I do if the error happens again when I try to reconnect as it says? off to search for an answer. Nothing useful there, and Microsoft’s help for this message is complete useless. “Try connecting to the remote computer again. If you receive the same message, contact the server administrator.” Reconnecting caused the same problem, and I’m the administrator. I tried contacting myself, but I couldn’t get through. Now what?

I had already ruled out bad patches, bad software installations, and even went through a series of troubleshooting steps to “reset” terminal server. Out of the blue today, I got the idea that maybe the visual style I was using could cause this problem, as it might be a drawing issue that TS can’t handle. I was using the “sgnome” style (don’t remember where I got it but I think it was from deviantART originally), so I swapped back to the default Luna style and tried a TS connection.

It worked! Okay, verify it. Previously, the act of opening an email in Outlook could cause the error, so I tried that. It still works. Tried replying to an email, still worked. Now my TS sessions are rock solid, I’m not getting kicked with a “protocol error”, and all I did was change my style back to Luna. WTF? Well, I can’t live with Luna as it’s too boring, so I went searching for a different style. I settled on Reluna, after verifying that it didn’t break anything else.

Why did I think of visual styles? In the past I’ve had bad styles that broke other things. Most notably, I’ve had some styles that caused really bad rendering problems when opening a scheduled meeting request from Outlook. If a style can screw that up, it certainly can screw up Terminal Server. The moral of the story is to be careful when using user-created visual styles. They’re not certified by Microsoft in any way (in fact, you will generally have to hack uxtheme.dll or pay for something like StyleXP (which is what I use) to use non-Microsoft styles at all), and can do some nasty stuff. If you do run into random problems that you’ve never experienced with a previous style, switch back to Classic or Luna as part of your troubleshooting steps, and see if that solves it.