Novell SLED 10 will be available on the ThinkPad T61 and ThinkPad R61 with Intel Centrino processors. Operating system features include the
Firefox Web browser, RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash Player, OpenOffice, and more.

CNET News.com’s Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Next month ThinkPads with Penryn chipsets from Intel will start shipping with Linux as well.

Linux has chiefly been popular on servers and more recently has made inroads in embedded computing devices such as phones, but it’s never made much headway on desktop and laptop PCs. Nevertheless, Suse has long championed Linux on PCs, and Novell took up the mantle when it acquired the Linux seller four years ago.

In August, Lenovo announced that Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 would be available on ThinkPads in the fourth quarter of 2007. Though that didn’t happen, Lenovo finally released details Tuesday.

A year ago, in my prior blog, I discussed why it is so important to change the default router password (see Home routers can be dangerous. VERY dangerous). In brief, if your router is using the default password, your computer is vulnerable to an attack where the router is re-configured. Specifically, the dangerous configuration option is the DNS server. For an introduction to the concept of DNS servers, see my prior posting on OpenDNS.

2. If you have the manual for the router, it will have the default IP address. In my experience, the default IP address is rarely changed.

If the person that setup your router did not tell you the IP address, userid and password, they are incompetent. It’s like buying a new
car and not being able to open the hood to get to the engine. The car will run and work fine, for a while. Maybe quite a while. But there will come a time when you need to poke around the engine and you won’t be able to.

Output from the ipconfig command in Windows Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : localdomain2
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.88
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

Simply put, you’ll have to do some hunting around the website to find the page for changing the password. Every router I’ve seen has a different interface.

3. You can download an electronic version of the manual from the website of the company that manufactured the router. Again, this will have the default IP address.

This will connect you with the website that lives inside the router. This website will look and act like any other website even though, technically, it is not on the world wide web.

Step 3: Change The Password

Open your web browser and type this number into the address bar, as shown below.

Be Angry?

There are three steps to changing the password in a router:*
  1. Find the router on the network
  2. Log in to the website built into the router
  3. Hunt around for the appropriate web page

Before you can see the router configuration website, you have to provide a password and possibly a userid. Usually you can’t change the userid, so I’ll focus on the password. In the example below, of logging in to a Belkin router, there isn’t even a userid, just a password.

Malicious DNS servers can result in your visiting to a website, any website, and ending up at a phony version of the site run by bad guys. If the website is that of a bank or credit card company, and you enter a userid/password, you can kiss your identity, and money, good-bye.

Recently, in the techie Q&A column in the New York Times, someone asked about changing the password in their router. Due to space limitations, the answer by J. D. Biersdorfer was short, too short. This is what you need to know.

Logging in to a Belkin Router

Below is a screen shot of logging into a Linksys router. Note that you are instructed to leave the userid blank, and only enter a password.

4. The most reliable method is to ask the TCP/IP software running on your computer. It always knows where the router is. In Windows XP, Vista and 2000, open a command prompt window and enter the command “ipconfig” (see above). The IP address of the router is identified by Windows as the “Default Gateway”.

Update. March 11, 2008: I just set up a new Belkin N Mimo router. Not only does the new model continue the tradition mentioned above of supporting only a password (no userid), the default password is no password.

Every computer on a network is assigned a unique number. The most common networking protocol, TCP/IP, uses a 32 bit binary number which is written as four decimal numbers separated by periods (such as 192.168.1.1). The unique number for computers on a TCP/IP network is called an IP address.

If you don’t now the router password, start by trying the default one. The New York Times article mentioned two websites where you can find the default userid and password for many routers (here and here). Be aware though, that the sites are neither authoritative nor comprehensive. You can also find the default userid and password in the manual for the router.

Logging in to a Linksys Router

After changing the password, you will likely get bounced out of the website and forced to login with the new password. Do so, just to be sure the new password is working. Now write down the userid and password on a piece of paper and tape it to the router. For good luck, include the IP address too.

If your router was using the default userid/password then the person that set it up is worse than incompetent, they are guilty of negligence. It’s not inconceivable for this to result in a lawsuit someday.

If the default password doesn’t work, you are safe from malicious software changing the DNS servers. Still, it’s a good idea to know the password for your router.

Every router, wired or wireless, has an internal website used to make configuration changes. Accessing this internal website requires a userid/password, something totally independent of any wireless network passwords.

To change a non-default password without knowing it, requires reseting the router back to the factory default settings. There should be a small Reset button for just this purpose. You may have to unwind a paper clip to press the button and may have to hold it pressed for a few seconds. The manual should explain the procedure.

You can find the IP address of the router in the following ways:

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

Step 2: Find The Password

D-Link may add more complication. Their routers may have an admin password for logging in to the router and making changes, and, a separate user password for logging in to the router in read-only mode.

In a Linksys router it may be in the Administration tab. In a Belkin router, try the System Settings. In a recent D-Link router, you changed the password in the Admin sub-section of the Tools section.

1. The person who set it up tells you.

Step 1: Find The Router On Your Network

If your router was setup by a good techie, there should be a piece of paper next to it with the IP address, userid and password. I’m sure this is rare.

*Note: There may also be software for managing the router, but finding and installing the software can be a headache of its own. Also, there is no standard for how the software works.

I see the launch of SkyDrive as a key piece of Microsoft’s effort to build what some think of as a cloud OS–a collection of services that includes identity, messaging, photo management, contacts, as well as storage. Storage is probably the most straightforward piece, but important nonetheless.

The service allows for personal folders as well as ones that are shared with a select group of friends, or the public at large. Microsoft is also expanding the service to 38 countries or regions including large swaths of Europe, Central and South America, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Taiwan.

Microsoft’s hard drive in the cloud is now a reality.

While thousands, or even millions, of people regularly switch between services like Facebook, imeem, MySpace, and others, it can be cumbersome to do all that switching.

That’s what Xumii, which presented at DemoFall Monday afternoon, has set out to obviate.

The idea is that users will be able to access their various social networks through their mobile phones on a single application, rather than having to rely on computers and full browsers.

Xumii allows anyone to access friends and information from multiple social networks on their mobile phones.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

In the demonstration, the company showed how users can access a list of friends from any social network they’re part of, a list that will show each friend, the service they’re part of, and whether they’re online or not.

That’s pretty cool, and another nice feature is the ability to share photos or other files with people on that all-encompassing friends list. So, for example, a user could access their Flickr photos, select a picture, and then have it sent to any friends on their list.

Ultimately, what’s nice about Xumii is that it will allow people to take their social networks in their pocket, and not worry–as I’m sure many do–that while they’re on the go they are out of touch. This way, they can stay in touch no matter where they are, and they can continually update their friends with the latest things they’re doing, or the most recent photos they’ve taken.

Whether this is a good thing for us and our ability to detach ourselves from our computers is a question for someone else to answer.

A Chinese news story about the spread of patriotic and pro-Olympic symbolism on QQ.

(Credit: Zhejiang News Center)

The Zhejiang News Center link, auto-translated here, says the word is spreading via QQ, a top instant message platform in China.

Hexun.com carries step-by-step instructions in how to inscribe your MSN account with slogans declaring “I love the Olympics” and encouraging them to go on strongly.

This is all part of an extensive reaction to foreign press coverage on the recent events in Tibet. Other websites, including anti-cnn.com, have emerged to point out examples of sloppy reporting by foreign media. A popular mistake: using pictures of Nepalese police and saying they’re in Tibet.

The nationalist reaction online has been strong. In another example, online challenges to a pro-free-speech journalist led to a printed editorial denouncing him. But it’s unclear how much this online passion reflects the opinions of less outspoken Chinese citizens. If we took everything on 2ch to be the gospel opinion of the “Japanese people” we’d have a pretty screwed up idea. Not to mention the U.S. blogosphere.

While Sony did not unveil any new hardware at the company’s E3 press conference, new photos are beginning to show up around the Net that lead us to believe they’re hard at work on an updated version of the PSP.

Kotaku reports that forums members from PSPChina BBS have captured the rumored PSP-3000, identified by its
PlayStation logo button that would replace the “home” button currently on the original and slim PSP models. The “new” PSP also features an onboard microphone located to the right of the volume controls.

While these photos certainly look convincing, we’re still going to have to label them as rumors for now. We’ll update you if Sony ever confirms their validity.

What would you want to see from the next PSP? Built-in flash memory? Larger battery life? Let us know in the comments section.

More pictures of the rumored PSP-3000 after the jump.

When Panasonic announced its first interchangeable-lens camera, the Lumix DMC-G1, it said the camera would cost less than $800. Today it’s official: $799.95 with the 14-45mm f3.5-5.6 (28-90mm equivalent) lens.

That price puts it in direct competition with inexpensive dSLR models like the Nikon D60 and Canon Rebel XS; it’s a bit smaller compared to those, but lacks an optical viewfinder, which is a significant disadvantage. And it’s significantly more expensive than more compact, fixed-lens enthusiast competitors like Panasonic’s own LX3 and the Canon PowerShot G10. As yet, performance is a big unknown.

The other factor to take into account is lenses. It’ll take a while for a big aftermarket to develop–if a sizable one develops at all–until which time new lenses for the G1 and Olympus’ model will likely be few and far between. Costwise they seem competitive, however; for instance, the second lens offering from Panasonic, Lumix G Vario 45-200mm f4.0-5.6 is slated to cost $349.95, though street prices will probably be a bit cheaper. In comparison, Canon’s 55-250mm lens commonly costs about $275-$300. I consider that the same ballpark.

This is shaping up to be quite an interesting model. It’s slated to ship next month.

Today we are opening up the user voting on the 2008 Webware 100. This is our yearly awards program where Webware users vote for their favorite Web 2.0 apps. In the 2007 Webware 100, there were more than 480,000 votes cast. And this year we have an even stronger lineup of finalists, so we expect very active voting.

Go vote now or read on for more about the 2008 Webware 100.

As we did in 2007, this year we collected products nominations from users (using WuFoo’s online forms product). After all the nominations were in — we had nearly 5,000 eligible entries — Josh and I selected 30 products in each of ten categories to move on to the voting phase. Categorizing the finalists was a tricky task, since we were aiming for exactly 30 products in each category, but for the most part we think we found the most important webware products and put them in their best categories.

Voting will run until March 31. Winners will be announced on April 21, the day before the big Web 2.0 Expo opens. (The Expo is an official Webware 100 partner.)

We changed a few things around for this year’s awards. We have separate categories for audio and video services, for example, and we killed the “mobile” category, since mobile is becoming more of an attribute of a Web 2.0 service than a type unto itself.

Our ten categories this year are:

Audio: Music, podcasts, audiobooks. Browsing: Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines. Commerce and events: Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences. Communications: E-mail, chat, voice. Productivity: App suites, to-do lists, groupware. Publishing and photography: Blogging, content management, photo sites. Search and Reference: Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping. Social: Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests. Utility and Security: Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection. Video: Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation.

One of the issues in the 2007 Webware 100 that I wanted to address this year was the very pronounced fall-off in votes from top products in a category. For example, in the “data” category in 2007, Google got half of all the votes; the other 24 finalists in the category had to scramble for attention. This year, we’re doing something that I hope will make the races tighter: Users can vote up to three times in a category. So go ahead and vote for the obvious front-runner in each category, but also take the time to show your appreciation for other products that you like. Multi-voting will, I think, make the mid-pack battles more interesting.

We owe a big debt to PollDaddy, a 2007 Webware 100 winner in the “publishing” category, which this year is running the voting system for us. We told them we wanted this wacky three-vote-per-category system and they said, “no problem,” and went and built it. PollDaddy is not in the running for a 2008 Webware 100 award, since we couldn’t let our polling engine count votes for itself. But I did want to recognize the company for making this year’s polls work.

I also want to explain why several popular products are not in the Webware 100. It’s because we didn’t allow into the voting products that were not publicly available by January 25, 2008. During our beta testing, a lot of people asked me why Hulu and Seesmic weren’t in the 100. They were still in private beta when the eligibility period ended.

But there are certainly enough live products to make this year’s contest interesting. So go vote, and be sure to check back on April 21 to see who the winners are in the 2008 Webware 100.

Yesterday, a US federal court of appeals handed open source a significant victory. An earlier district court ruling in Jacobsen v. Katzer had put open-source licensing on shaky ground by treating the Artistic License as a contract, with some injurious readings on likely remedies under an open-source license.

As Mark Radcliffe details, the Jacobsen ruling [PDF] is a boon to all open-source licensing, and not merely those that choose to use the Artistic License:

The CAFC reversed the District Court’s decision and its reasoning is very helpful for the open source community. The court found that the limitations in the Artistic License were “conditions” on the scope of the license and, thus, Katzer was liable for copyright infringement (as well as breach of contract). The CAFC noted that the Artistic License imposed its obligations through the use of the words “provided that” which is generally viewed as imposing a condition. Although the reasoning is limited to the Artistic License and the interpretation of each open source license will depend on the wording of its provisions, this decision is a welcome change to the District Court decision. The case has been remanded for the District Court to determine if the other criteria for injunctive relief have been met, but the CAFC’s decision strongly suggests that they have been met.

A very good ruling, and a very good day, for open source. I’m not sure why there should be much confusion in the first place as to whether open-source licenses should be given a place at the licensing table, but this case at least takes us one step closer to making open-source licenses full partners in software developers’ arsenal.

In its initial incarnation, Live Mesh is mostly a file-sharing and folder-synchronization service, as well as a nice, easy way to access a PC remotely. Down the road though, it’s Microsoft’s latest attempt to find preeminence in a world in which Microsoft-based devices are just part of the mix.

The Live Mesh widget tells you what's happening with your shares and syncs. Click the image for more early screenshots.

(Credit:
CNET News.com)

As previously noted, the version that launches Tuesday is limited considerably from the broad service Microsoft envisions. (See Ozzie’s recent memo to Microsoft employees for the big vision.) Although pitched as a way to seamlessly connect various devices, for now the only devices it is synching are Windows PCs (though Macs and Windows Mobile phones are just around the corner, we’re told). For now, it’s limited to a closed beta of about 10,000 testers, though Microsoft says it plans to bring on more people over time and have a broad beta around the time of this fall’s Professional Developer Conference.

In the coming months, Microsoft hopes to bring Live Mesh closer to the product it envisions: a way for users to connect all of their key devices and keep them up to date with important data, and to further blur the line between online and desktop applications. If things are on track, we will see Microsoft add support for more devices and testers in short order.

At its core, Live Mesh is vintage Ozzie, touching on themes that go back to his Lotus Notes days such as a focus on collaboration and synchronization. The core notion is deliciously appealing. All of your data should live in the places you need it and stay up-to-date automatically.

But Microsoft’s approach holds the possibility of peril, in addition to its considerable promise. Microsoft has outlined broad visions before only to be thwarted by either technical challenges (Longhorn and Cairo) or customer concerns (Hailstorm and Smart Tags). One potential sticking point with Mesh–it requires users to use Microsoft’s Live ID for authentication, though the company said it is exploring whether it can support OpenID in the future.

Also, Microsoft faces significant competition in both what it is offering initially and with what it eventually envisions for Live Mesh. It will need to convince consumers and developers alike that its way is the best one.

As for the current stuff, there are lots of Web services that offer remote desktop or file-sharing capabilities–Box.net, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, SugarSync and Microsoft’s own FolderShare–to name a few.

Obviously Microsoft hopes to go further, looking to make Mesh a place where developers can write applications that can live on all manner of devices with data and settings stored in the cloud and changes on one device automatically synchronized with other devices and the cloud.

But Microsoft is not alone in trying to be the platform of the Web. There are consumer efforts like Facebook and OpenSocial, and business ones, such as Amazon and Salesforce’s Force.com.

In an e-mail interview, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that Microsoft was forced to respond to these other Web platforms.

“This time the centricity is the Internet which puts Microsoft on an even playing field as their desktop monopoly is negated through the network and new devices,” he said. “After a decade of using their monopoly to stop (software-as-a-service) innovation through false prophecy and rhetoric; Microsoft has relented by delivering a service that is still too little too late without the platform as a service customers are demanding to succeed.”

I guess Ozzie can’t count Benioff among the Web 2.0 developers that will add-in Live Mesh support into their applications.

“Microsoft’s answer to platform-as-a-service is just more .Net software in a world where cloud computing negates their monopolistic control of the Windows desktop,” Benioff said. “Microsoft has let us all down through their lack of innovation; fortunately, the SaaS and PaaS movements will finally release us all from their old software models and outdated business practices.”

Microsoft is trying to woo developers by letting them write their code in any number of different ways, from RSS to Atom to Javascript.

Even assuming it finds developers more willing than Benioff to bet on Microsoft, there’s also the question of business model.

Microsoft has said it is exploring several models, including paid subscriptions and advertising, though it vowed to always offer a free service with at least 5GB of cloud storage. At the moment, though, it is just a free service and a consumer-focused one at that. Microsoft said it would have more to say on the business possibilities later in the year.

We’ll have much more to say about Live Mesh in the coming days and I invite you to share your take below.

You can also check out Webware editor Rafe Needleman’s hands-on review here.

See also Techmeme for more coverage of Live Mesh

News.com’s Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.