Timothy Parker Consulting Incorporated

Questions and Answers, Part 15

Q: With all the recent fuss about the Nimda virus, I was surprised to find that it can be caught through Web pages.  Is this true?

A: Nimda is a clever bit of programming that qualifies as both a virus and a worm.  A virus has to be executed as a program for you to infect your system but a worm can be executed in background on Windows and UNIX systems to infect your machine. Technically called W32.Nimda, it hit most systems in late September and is still being eradicated. There are four ways you can catch Nimda.  It can arrive as an attachment to an e-mail, either as a payload by itself or attached to another file that has been infected. Nimda can be caught through network shares (when you share a file, directory or drive under Windows or UNIX/Samba); Nimda knows to look for open shares (those without protection) and infect files in the open shares. It can also be caught through Web pages if they have been infected. What happens here is that Nimda can infect the files attached to a Web page.  Some Web browsers simply download everything attached to the page automatically, and that’s how your system gets infected by the virus.  (Older versions of Internet Explorer are very bad for downloading everything; the latest version is much better.) Finally, Nimda could infect Internet Information Service (IIS) servers running under Windows NT, using a known problem with IIS to infect Web servers. The last two methods are related: when Nimda gets into an IIS system it infects all the HTML and ASP (Active Server Page) files on that system and passes the virus on to browsers. The good news is that most anti-virus packages can disinfect your PC as long as you have updated virus definition files.

Q: I read an article about new Intel processors with hyperthreads.  What is a hyperthread?

A: Intel has been talking about a new technology called hyperthreading for the last month or two.  Hyperthreading is an architecture for a single CPU that will allow two different sets of instructions to be handled at the same time, essentially giving two threads of processing with one CPU instead of two CPUs. Intel plans to do this by creating two logical processors in a single Xeon processor.  There will still only be one execution engine, cache, and system bus, but two logical processors allowing the chip to perform two different crunching processes at the same time while using one physical chip design. Before you get too excited, bear in mind this is still not available and doesn’t double the CPU speed, as you might think.  Intel is guessing that users will see a 30% performance improvement with hyperthreading.  What is interesting is that the new Xeon processors may be able to reside in existing Xeon motherboards, allowing CPU upgrades to the new hyperthread architecture. A release date for hyperthreaded CPUs has still to be announced.

Q: I’m thinking of buying a DAT tape drive using DDS-4 cartridges.  Is this a good idea?

A: Perhaps not as good as it may have seemed six months ago.  The two primary proponents of DAT DDS-4 drives, Sony and Hewlett-Packard, have announced they will stop manufacturing drives using DDS-4. While the supply of media will continue, this move essentially will kill the market for new DDS-4 DAT drives. While the DAT drives remain a excellent price-per-gigabyte ratio compared to other media like DLT, this move would have me thinking twice about buying new DAT drives unless you plan on using the technology only for a limited time space (three or four years, say).  If you need a longer term outlook than that (most tape drives are replaced more often), consider DLT or other systems.  Or wait for the sales on DDS-4 DAT drives that are sure to crop up as the backlog of drives is cleared out, and make sure you buy lots of media!  While on the subject of tape drives, Exabyte and Ecrix (makers of a novel 80GBVXA tape cartridge device) have announced a merger.  (A review of the Ecrix unit is on my Web site at www.tpci.com.)

Q: I heard about Windows RG.  Is this a Microsoft product?

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Last modified: January 23, 2007