- Mac creator Jef Raskin dies of cancer
- SOA's killer app is unveiled
- Using a BPO, look before you leap
- Firefox growth slows
- Mozilla Foundation releases Firefox security update
- UK government sets up free virus alert site
- Qwest pursues MCI while Verizon stays in the picture
- Paris Hilton hacker impacts basketball
- Opera Goes Phishing
- OASIS strikes back
February 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Mac creator Jef Raskin dies of cancer
The death of Jef Raskin marks the passing of an technology industry legend who led the design of the first Macintosh computer for Apple Computer and who also clashed with rival Steve Jobs.
Raskin, who died Saturday at age 61, was a leader of Apple during the crucial days of its development. Friction between Raskin and Jobs led to Raskin's departure in the early 1980s, his son, Aza Raskin, said Monday.
"He (Jef Raskin) started the Macintosh project," Aza Raskin said of his father. "It was canceled (but restarted by Raskin) three different times."
With a rivalry with Jobs creating tension on the project, "Jeff decided that rather than play political games, he would move on and 'do it right,' as he said," Aza Raskin recalled.
"Steve Jobs and Jeff came close to reconciling toward the end," Aza Raskin added. "When the millionth Mac was made, Jobs gave it to him with his name engraved."
Raskin had been diagnosed recently with pancreatic cancer, his family said in a statement.
Raskin joined Apple Computer in 1978 as employee number 31 and headed the company's Macintosh development team from its inception until 1982. He named the project after his favorite type of apple, changing the spelling for copyright reasons, IDG News Service reported.
Raskin is credited with significantly advancing the design of user interfaces, which in the early 1980s were largely text-based and required users to memorize complex commands. Raskin convinced his peers at Apple that to reach a wider audience, the Macintosh needed an interface that was elegant and easy to use, the news service said.
"Up to that time, at Apple and most other manufacturers, the concept was to provide the latest and most powerful hardware, and let the users and third-party software vendors figure out how to make it usable," he wrote later on his Web site.
Raskin left Apple in 1982, two years before the Macintosh went on sale, but he continued to influence the design of computers through his writing, lectures and consulting work. Soon after leaving the company he founded Information Ap-pliance, where he designed the Canon Cat computer for Canon USA, although the product was not a commercial success.
His consulting clients have included Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and many other big names in computing. In 2000 he published a book, "The Humane Inter-face," that is widely assigned at universities.
According to his family's statement: "Jef strongly believed that computers should make tasks easy for people, not the other way around. For twenty-five more years, his work focused on improving interfaces, culminating in his book, The Humane Interface (Addison-Wesley, 2000). Jef created the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces (RCHI), which will soon release a preview of Archy, a culmination and exemplar of his design principles. Archy redesigns the basic building blocks of computing to demonstrate an entirely new paradigm for computer use. RCHI will continue under the technical leadership of Aza Raskin."
Raskin's interests were not restricted to computers: He taught the recorder, harpsichord and music theory at San Francisco Community College in the 1970s, and his family described him as an orchestral soloist and composer. He also founded a company that designed and sold radio-controlled model aircraft.
Along with Aza, he is survived by his wife, Linda Blum, and his other children, Aviva and Aenea. Raskin lived most recently in Pacifica, Calif.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 28, 2005 04:59 PM
February 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Rearden Commerce has pulled off a coup: a b-to-b marketplace with elegant EBS (Employee Business Services) based on SOAs (service-oriented architectures) that may solve the same identity-based services problem Microsoft attempted but failed with its HailStorm initiative.
Tech luminaries such as Adam Bosworth and Jon Bosak, and a slew of newly-signed enterprise customers are singing the praises of Rearden Commerce as it extends enterprise purchasing control to business services and sets a high-water mark for Internet apps with its unique SOA platform.
An InfoWorld Special Report, "Rearden Commerce's services on demand," shows that Rearden's EBS, delivered through the browser, is capable of automating the purchase of many everyday services, including shipping, conferencing, meals, entertainment, and even travel.
Already onboard as of today's launch are corporate customers Cingular, Genesys, JDS Uniphase, Motorola, Warner Home Video, and Whirlpool, all of which have signed up for enterprisewide deployments of EBS.
Executive Editor at large Eric Knoor writes: "This SaaS (software as a service) application goes where no enterprise software has gone before: to control spending on non-PO (purchase order) services, all according to identity-based business rules. Moreover, Rearden has partnered with American Express and Hewlett-Packard, which will resell EBS worldwide."
Advisers include Jon Bosak, one of the creators of XML, and Adam Bosworth, vice president of engineering at Google and former chief architect of Microsoft.Net. "I think this is new," Bosworth tells InfoWorld. "I'm a fan."
Rearden Commerce CEO Patrick Grady expects companies can see a 20 percent reduction of costs and more savings in process overhead. He has struck deals with AmEx and HP, both of which will resell EBS worldwide. The deal with HP goes a step further to support HP's BPO (business process outsourcing) initiative, where HP shoulders nonstrategic business processes for its customers. "HP plans to extend the Rearden Commerce platform to create some uniquely focused BPO-based solutions," says Bob Schultz, HP's vice president of BPO.
There is a coincidence working here. This new focus on outsourcing business processes is important because business processes in general have become an innovative area where Web services, composite applications, and platforms like SAP's NetWeaver are all headed.
As Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz points out this week in his story "BPO battle heats up," Microsoft is hard at work on BPO. Additionally, HP is implementing BPO in a multistep process. In step one, HP takes a company's processes and the software that executes those processes, uses the same tools a customer has, and transitions that work to HP's datacenters.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 28, 2005 11:54 AM
February 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Using a BPO, look before you leap
BPO, Business Process Outsourcing, is the hot acronym of the week, the quarter or perhaps the year. See BPO Battle Heats Up this week for the latest details of what the providers have planned for you.
What companies are discovering is that business process re-engineering, to rid themselves of outdated workflow architectures, can be done on the cheap if they let someone else do it for them.
Back in the early 90s business process re-engineering meant multi-million dollar investments in applications like SAP.
Today, BPOs are telling the enterprise that if they allow them to do HR, accounting, finance and call centers, they can do the transformation using best practices and the latest architectures.
After all, whenever a BPO can reduce costs by automating business processes and improving performance a lot of the savings goes directly to the BPOs bottom line.
One of the decisions that must be considered carefully is how much leeway the enterprise gives the BPOs in selecting applications. It is the application that that executes the process.
The danger of application lock in is great. If you give the BPO a free hand to redo your platform, you might have difficulty changing BPOs or pulling out if it ever comes to that.
At the same time, you don't want to insist that they use all of your current applications and just make it work better. If you did that what is the point of using the expertise that the BPO purports to have.
Another important issue is over vertical versus horizontal solution providers.
True, if accounting is accounting then 90 percent of it will be the same or similar across industries, but what about the other 10 percent? Do you need a vertical solution provider or is an IBM or HP as outsourcer good enough?
Business Process Outsourcing is no longer about "labor arbitrage" as an executive from Hewlett Packard told me. If you just want to reduce costs by paying people less per hour then that's a merely a transition, with a small t. If, however, you want to change the way business is conducted, that is Transformation with a big T and it requires a great deal of thought.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on February 28, 2005 10:07 AM
February 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The growth rate of Firefox's usage share on the web has slowed in recent months, according to the latest data from WebSideStory. Firefox's market share grew just 15 percent in the five weeks leading up to Feb. 18, the latest benchmark available. In the previous six weeks before that, the browser grew at 22 percent clip. These figures compare with a 34 percent increase between Nov. 5 and Dec. 3, which coincides with the release of Firefox Version 1.0 on Nov. 9.
Firefox's browser share increased in the wake of several security holes found in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. But Microsoft has recently made several changes to the browser and announced at the recent RSA Security Conference that it increasing security features in several of its products, including Internet Explorer. At the same time, there have been some security holes found in Firefox.
One hole that Microsoft has not promised to plug - the Abe Vigoda gap. Firefox has a plug in that constantly monitors the status of the craggy-faced former Barney Miller star who is often the subject of rumors of his premature demise. So far, that plug in is not available for Internet Explorer.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 28, 2005 08:34 AM
February 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Mozilla Foundation releases Firefox security update
The Mozilla Foundation has released an update to its open source Firefox 1.0 browser. The Firefox security update, 1,0.1, is available to those who have already downloaded the free browser, the foundation said.
The update is available now on all platforms.
"Regular security updates are essential for maintaining a safe browsing ex-perience for our users," Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation, said in a statement. "The Mozilla Foundation has developed a community of users and developers who continuously provide feedback on Mozilla software, and as a result of that constant vigilance, we are able to provide quick and effective responses to security vulnerabilities."
The security update for Firefox includes several fixes to guard against spoofing and arbitrary code execution. More information is available in the release notes.
The browser has been downloaded more than 27 million times and is available in 28 languages.
The Mozilla Foundation, based in Mountain View, Calif., provides organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open source software project.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 25, 2005 05:02 PM
February 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
UK government sets up free virus alert site
The U.K. government has taken its fight against online viruses to the front
lines with a new Web site, called ITsafe, designed to send rapid security alerts to home and small business computer users.
The free service will be run by the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre (NISCC). Along with alerts, it also offers advice on protecting personal data both on home and work computers, the Home Office announced Wednesday.
"ITsafe is a government service, launched on 23 February 2005, to provide both home users and small businesses with proven, plain English advice to help protect computers, mobile phones and other devices from malicious attack," a note on the Website said.
The government will use the system to issue official alerts if the NISCC de-termines a particular virus, or other security breach, poses a serious enough threat to the public. Based on past experience, the Home Office estimates about six to 10 security alerts will be issued each year.
The U.K. government estimates that more than half of all U.K. households have a home computer with about 13 million of those PCs having Internet access in 2004.
Alerts will only be issued if the NISCC feels there is something users can do to protect themselves from a particular threat, such as updating software to close loopholes or downloading security patches from an antivirus vendor, the Home Office said. The ITsafe site will not supply patches or software.
ITsafe will send alerts by e-mail as well as by text messages over mobile de-vices to users who signed up for the service.
By IDG News Service
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 25, 2005 04:11 PM
February 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Qwest pursues MCI while Verizon stays in the picture
Qwest Communications International is continuing its dogged attempt to acquire MCI, but some experts say Verizon Communications remains the best bet for MCI.
"MCI obviously has a strong interest in surviving and Verizon has a much stronger franchise than Qwest," said Bryan Van Dussen, a Yankee Group telecommunications analyst.
Nonetheless, Qwest renewed a bold challenge for MCI this week. In an open letter to MCI's board of directors, Qwest's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Richard Notebaert, said Qwest's new offer would continue to pay $24.60 per share in cash and stock to MCI stockholders.
The deal, worth an estimated $8 billion, is the same price Qwest offered on Feb. 11. But the new bid guarantees that purchase price, unlike a rival bid from Verizon, and it would allow a faster payout to MCI stockholders than Qwest's previous bid, IDG News Service reported.
MCI executives on Feb. 14 accepted a deal from Verizon worth about $6.7 bil-lion, arguing that the larger and more profitable Verizon would be the best long-term fit for MCI. Stockholders would still have to approve that deal, the news service reported.
Qwest's new letter to the MCI board guaranteed the $24.60 as a locked-in price, called a "collar," for MCI stockholders, instead of a bid based on the fluctuating value of Qwest's stock. Qwest's offer of $15.50 worth of its stock has not changed, but its new bid would give MCI stockholders $6 in cash per share at approval of the agreement and $3.10 at closing, instead of the $1.60 at approval and $7.50 at closing.
Notebaert's letter was viewed by many as an attempt to entice MCI stockholders.
"MCI has failed to provide meaningful guidance or direction in response to the Qwest proposal," Notebaert said in the letter. "Consequently, with only press reports and lawsuits as sources of information for how the MCI Board evaluated the components of our proposal, Qwest tenders this revised proposal, the terms of which are even more compelling for your stockholders."
"It is important to emphasize that a Qwest/MCI merger would create an excit-ing and important new telecommunications company, of which MCI would become a meaningful part," Notebaert said. "The merger of Qwest and MCI would create a company with a strong market position, demonstrated commitment to superior cus-tomer service and innovative products and services, and the potential for sig-nificant value creation through cost synergies. The combination would create the industry leader in IP, with the most advanced IP-based network and compelling suite of IP based services."
MCI Chief Executive Michael Capellas said during a conference call Friday MCI has a duty to examine the Qwest offer although company executives have already accepted the Verizon offer.
"We will do our utmost to complete the (Verizon) transaction in a timely and efficient manner," Capellas said. "The board recognizes and acknowledges the in-put from our shareholders and remains committed to diligence and fulfilling its fiduciary duties. We also acknowledge receipt of Qwest’s proposal and we remain respectful of all parties. "
Qwest and Verizon are locked in a battle for MCI after rival regional Bell company SBC Communications announced Jan. 31 it plans to acquire AT&T in a $16 billion deal. MCI and AT&T have both focused on enterprise customers, long-distance service and international data networks, while Qwest, Verizon and SBC have traditionally provided local phone service, IDG News Service reported.
Ron Cowles, a telecommunications analyst for Gartner, advised enterprise IT managers to be cautious for the time being in dealing with both Qwest and MCI.
"Our advice to enterprises is that if they are in contract talks with MCI, they should put a lot of conditions in so they can exit if things go south," Cowles said. "Put in a lot of service quality conditions. If enterprises are not in negotiations, hold tight until things become clear."
Despite the current uncertainty, the current consolidation may ultimately pay off in better enterprise services being offered, said The Yankee Group's Van Dussen.
"There is an argument that this may create healthy companies that can bring out more innovative services," he said. "One of the thing I'm looking for is companies rolling out more services like Ethernet services, Ethernet-based WAN services and get rid of old frame relay services."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 25, 2005 03:10 PM
February 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Paris Hilton hacker impacts basketball
The hacking and/or information theft from Paris Hilton's sidekick nearly halted a last-minute trade among NBA teams, this intrepid reporter has learned.
How did I learn this? By listening to early morning sports talk radio. Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban, on the radio (KTCK 1310AM to be specific) defending the trade of Alan Henderson and Calvin Booth to the Milwaukee Bucks for Keith Van Horn, said he was nearly out of the loop on the trade because he had to get a new phone number because his phone number was among those found in the hotel heiress' cell phone.
If Van Horn stiffs with the Mavericks, as many fans suspect, they may wish Cuban didn't get a new phone. Cuban said he received an amazing number of phone calls once the numbers were published.
Other phone numbers found on the phone of the camera-friendly socialite include as rapper Eminem, actor Vin Diesel, actress Lindsay Lohan, singers Christina Aguilera and Ashlee Simpson, and tennis players Andy Roddick and Anna Kournikova. Dallas Mavericks owner Cuban, who made his fortune as a computer reseller and by selling Internet technology to Yahoo, said he had met Hilton at several events and she often called him for help on charity events.
Cuban, who is known for getting fined by the NBA for his rants against officials, might turn his ranting to law enforcement officials to step up prosecution of hackers. One could only hope.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 25, 2005 02:49 PM
February 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Opera Software on Friday released a second beta of the next version of its upcoming browser, one that the company hopes will provide some answers to the security debate currently raging over Web site spoofing. The new beta now allows the browser to display security information inside the address bar, which is located next to the padlock icon that shows the level of security on a site, company officials said.
The yellow security bar, which appears on secure sites, will display the name of the company that owns the certificate. Clicking on the bar gives users more information about the validity of that certificate. Such anti-spoof steps can aid users make better decisions about a given site's security and validity, Opera officials contend.
"One of the most important measures to counter phishing attacks is the use of security certificates," says Christen Krogh, Opera's vice president of engineering. "The challenge for browser vendors is to better explain the verification of certificates and to make the user more aware of this additional verification before entering into secure transactions," Krough said.
As a way to address Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) concerns, the second beta will only display localized domain names from certain top level domains (TLD). The browser will select TLDs that have established strict policies on the domain names they allow to be registered. Company officials said this better ensures that users who depend on IDN, for example, when accessing sites under .jp or .kr, will have a favorable experience.
Beta 2 is available for download at http://www.opera.com/download.
Posted by Ed Scannell on February 25, 2005 12:27 PM
February 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
OASIS has released a statement expressing disappointment with a widely distributed letter opposing the organization's new intellectual property policy as potentially undermining open source development.
Signed by dignitaries in the open source field, the letter objects to the "reasonable and non-discriminatory" license terms provision allowed by the new policy, which permits technology developers to charge royalties for use of their work.
In its statement, OASIS defended its policy.
"We are disappointed that Mr. Rosen (Lawrence Rosen, an attorney who was one of the signatories to the letter) chose to issue a press statement without first bringing his concerns to OASIS," the organization said.
"We operate under an open process and offer ample opportunities for members and non-members alike to provide input to our policies and work," the statement continues.
OASIS said its policy strengthens, not weakens,the consortium's commitment to open standards.
"The previous OASIS IPR (intellectual property rights) policy, which was written in the 90's, did nothing to require or even encourage royalty-free development," OASIS said. "The revised policy now provides OASIS committees with two options for making RF (royalty-free) mandatory."
OASIS added that to the best of its knowledge, there are no approved OASIS standards that require the payment of a royalty in order to implement software based on its standards.
Once again, I personally have to suggest that maybe the new OASIS policy should be given time to see how it plays out, instead of condemning it right from the start.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 24, 2005 04:14 PM
February 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft and Oracle: Not so different
Microsoft and Oracle may be bitter rivals in the software industry, but both have taken a bit of a heads-in-the-sand approach to the growing competitive threat of open source offerings.
In unveiling an upgrade to its SQL Server database this week, Microsoft actually raised the price of the product by as much as 25 percent. That's kind of peculiar when there are open source offerings such as MySQL and PostgreSQL that can be had for little to nothing.
Oracle made a similar move recently, upping the price of its Oracle Application Server 10g despite competition from open source alternatives such as the JBoss application server.
Meanwhile, more and more companies are looking for open source alternatives to the pricey commercial products they've been using.
Good luck to these rival companies in levying price increases in the face of open source. Something tells me, though, that the biggest benefactors of these price increases might not be Microsoft and Oracle but their open source counterparts.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 24, 2005 11:23 AM
February 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Dell has apparently given a polite, but firm "No" to AMD, deciding to keep Intel as its sole chip supplier. Dell's CEO, Kevin Rollins, was speaking at an investor conference in Phoenix and said that the company had indeed seriously considered AMD, a story InfoWorld broke in November.
AMD had gained momentum last year by introducing technologies ahead of arch-rival Intel. It also helped that Intel had a series of missteps, leading the world's largest chip producer to delay, cancel and recall several produces following design and manufacturing errors.
When InfoWorld spoke to Rollins in November, he said customers were indeed starting to request AMD chips to stay up with servers from IBM and HP that used the more powerful AMD chips. Rollins repeated those statements at the Phoenix conference, but said Intel has made up the difference and that customers are not pressing Dell to adopt AMD's technology.
According to Rob Enderle, analyst at the Enderle Group, Intel is probably out of the woods at the moment. "Intel has made gains and for Dell that's a good thing, because developing, testing and then supporting a separate chipset for AMD products would cost Dell money in a low-margin business," he said.
Enderle did say, however, that new technology was coming that might still put AMD on an equal footing with Intel in the future. "This was the closest AMD has ever come at Dell. I don't doubt they'll try again," he said.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 23, 2005 07:01 PM
February 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
FBI acts to stop phony e-mail scheme using its name
The FBI decided to publish a statement on its Website this week, cautioning the public that a phony e-mail in mass distribution that claimed to be from the agency was actually a malicious virus.
"These e-mails did not come from the FBI," the agency said in a statement. "Recipients of this or similar solicitations should know that the FBI does not engage in the practice of sending unsolicited e-mails to the public in this manner.
"Opening e-mail attachments from an unknown sender is a risky and dangerous endeavor as such attachments frequently contain viruses that can infect the recipient's computer," the FBI said. "The FBI strongly encourages computer users not to open such attachments."
The messages told the recipients that their Internet use has been monitored by the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center and that they have accessed illegal Web sites, the statement said. The e-mails then direct recipients to open an attachment and answer questions. The attachments contain a computer virus.
"Virus writers are pretty creative and they are always looking fro new ways to attract attention," said Michael Osterman, principal and founder of Osterman Resreach. "They go in trends, such as using Viagra pitches. Right now Homeland Security is a oppressing issue so now you are getting something that says its from the FBI or the IRS because it might have a better chance of being opened. There's nothing new, just a different approach."
The FBI said it has launched an investigation of the scam. Users receiving e-mails of this nature are encouraged to report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 23, 2005 05:02 PM
February 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Batten down the hatches for IM spam
Instant messaging spam has arrived and the potentially dangerous annoyance is bound to get worse.
New research released this week by Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that about 17 million U.S. adults have received IM spam, or spim. Pew conducted a telephone survey of 2,200 U.S. adults in January and February this year and found that 30 percent of IM users had received spim.
What's worse is that spim is projected to skyrocket. According to The Radicati Group, spim will grow from 1.2 billion messages by year-end 2004 to 17.9 billion messages in 2008.
IM is becoming a growing target for spam and viruses due to expanding IM usage in consumer and corporate settings and because spammers are seeking to unearth new, lucrative opportunities.
Although not nearly as common as e-mail spam, spim holds the potential to be much more dangerous than spam, said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research.
"The problem is potentially more serious because of the nature of IM spam," Osterman said. "IM spam tends to more virus-like. Instead of just getting an annoying e-mail, with [spim] you may get infected with a trojan horse. And once it gets into your buddy list, it can spread very quickly."
In the contact list set up of IM, a link sent from a trusted sender might be opened more readily than would a spam e-mail message sent from an unknown address or an e-mail virus sent from an acquaintance.
"Part of the problem with IM viruses is if one individual gets infected, everyone gets infected. If you see a message from a trusted sender on your buddy list you are likely to click on it," Osterman said.
For enterprise IM, the tipping point has yet to arrive, according to Jonathan Christensen, CTO of IM security and compliance vendor FaceTime Communications.
Major enterprise IM vendors including IBM and Microsoft are working to federate the typically centralized and closed corporate IM systems. This move will enable private IM systems to connect to IM users outside a company's firewall. While necessary to deliver real-time communications to business partners and customers, this move may exacerbate the nascent spim issue.
"The next generation of enterprise networks will include federation technologies so they can connect in similar ways [that] e-mail connects today," Christensen said. "Potentially, it [could be] SMTP all over again."
Today's enterprise IM deployments need to reach beyond their own network population to connect to other networks, Christensen said. That connectivity will deliver a more standards-based IM infrastructure, but also could introduce new vulnerabilities, he added.
"The spim problem could get a lot worse, depending on what security is embedded and the care with which enterprise IT rolls the products out," Christensen said.
If enterprises are not careful, "they will end up with a wide open architecture, [which is] where e-mail is today," he said.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on February 23, 2005 03:50 PM
February 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
It's no secret that Hewlett-Packard has had some troubles lately. The company has struggled with its servers, its storage products and its management.
But just because the company is out searching for a new CEO to replace Carly Fiorina, doesn't mean it is holding back on products. For instance, this week the company's ProCurve Networking unit has introduced a line of branch-office routers designed to provide secure communications with a headquarters site and unveiled "virus-throttling" technology aimed at stopping the spread of malicious code over a network. It also rolled out the ProCurve Switch xl Access Controller Module, designed to provide secure access to mobile users seeking to connect to a ProCurve switch at the edge of a network.
"We continue to build breakthrough solutions with advanced features at affordable prices. With this announcement, ProCurve Networking by HP is meeting our customers’ current - and future - security needs for the WAN, LAN and WLAN. Companies can now turn to ProCurve for a complete, end-to-end networking infrastructure that can easily grow and evolve with their business needs," said John McHugh, vice president and general manager for ProCurve Networking at HP.
The ProCurve Secure Router 7000dl series and theitch xl Access Controller Module for the ProCurve 5300xl will both be available in April.he Virus Throttle solution is available now and is offered as a free software download for customers who currently own the ProCurve Switch 5300xl and ProCurve Manager Plus.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 23, 2005 01:24 PM
February 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The Paris Hilton Academy of Computer Security
It's no simple life for Paris Hilton. Just a day after her Sidekick address book hack was made public, the hotel heiress is now being used as bait for two different e-mail worms.
According to experts at SophosLabs, Sophos' global network of virus and spam analysis centers, have warned users to be wary of e-mails containing references to Paris Hilton after two different worms were discovered claiming to contain hardcore footage of the privacy-challenged blonde heiress.
The W32/Sober-K worm, which is spreading in the wild, bulk mails itself using a variety of different subject lines including "Paris Hilton, pure!" and "Paris Hilton SexVideos". It can send itself in either German or English language, depending on whether it believes the recipient's email address to be owned by a German or English speaker.
The W32/Ahker-C worm sends itself using the subject line "Paris Hilton...download it!" with an attached file called "ParisXXX.zip". The worm attempts to disable anti-virus and firewall software running on the computer, and blocks access to a number of websites, potentially opening up the PC to further attack by hackers and malware.
It is no simple life for Paris and not for any user victimized by e-mail viruses either.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 23, 2005 11:50 AM
February 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Open source advocates are raising a stink about a new OASIS patent usage policy that allows for RAND (Reasonable and Non-Discriminataory) terms to be used as an option in use of intellectual property.
Dignitaries such as Marten Mickos, Mitchell Kapor and Brian Behlendorf have signed onto a letter being distributed by email that protests the policy.
The letter states, "The free and open source software community has long demanded that industry standards be freely available to all to implement without patent or other licensing encumbrances. Open standards are essential for free software and open source to thrive.
"Now OASIS, a major industry consortium that produces e-business and Web services standards, has adopted a patent policy that threatens to undermine our development and licensing model. This patent policy permits standards to be based upon so-called 'reasonable and non-discriminatory' patent license terms - terms which invariably and unreasonably discriminate against open source and free software to the point of prohibiting them entirely.
"It would lead to the adoption of standards that cannot be implemented in open source and free software, that cannot be distributed under our licenses."
So much for OASIS simply trying to be accommodating to the multiple forms of intellectual property usage terms.
OASIS, in a prepared statement, explained its logic.
"The policy clearly acknowledges the importance of creating royalty-free standards by providing two RF modes, while still allowing for work to be done under RAND terms when members prefer that option," explained Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "While nearly all OASIS Standards can be implemented today on a royalty-free basis, the revised IPR Policy helps to clarify our open standards process and assure implementers worldwide that OASIS Standards can be adopted with confidence."
Bruce Perens, one of the signatories to the letter, said in an interview he believes companies such as Microsoft pressured OASIS to allow for RAND terms.
"I think Microsoft feels that software patenting is the only way they can hold back open source," Perens said.
"The important thing to realize is that a royalty-free policy is best," providing for an even playing field for small and large companies, he said.
Microsoft and OASIS could not be reached for an immediate response this morning.
It does seem a bit unrealistic to think that all intellectual property is go-ing to be made available free of charge at all times. There are just too many players and interests involved.
While the open source advocates certainly are steadfast in their cause, it might not be a bad idea for them to lighten up and wait a bit to see exactly how the OASIS policy plays out for a few months.
By Paul Krill
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 23, 2005 11:28 AM
February 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Firefox surpasses 25 million downloads
Firefox, the open source Web browser from the Mozilla Foundation which has counted more than 25 million downloads, has become a favorite alternative browser to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. But Firefox may be destined to remain behind IE as the market leader.
Many users are happy to move away from IE, particularly from IE's porous security practices. In announcing a new, more secure version of IE last week, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates responded to the need a more secure IE.
The Mozilla Foundation said that in the less than four months since its release, Firefox has quickly become a browser of choice, offering user-friendly features such as tabbed browsing, built-in pop-up blocking and live bookmarks.
"Twenty five million Firefox downloads is a significant achievement, and we see that number continuing to grow," said Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation, said last week in statement marking the 25 million mark. "Firefox is being rapidly adopted by the mainstream, with this audience embracing Firefox as a more user-friendly Web browsing solution."
The foundation also said that Spread Firefox, the volunteer advocacy group charged with promoting the browser around the world, has grown to more than 70,000 members.
Jonathan Eunice, president and principal analyst with Illuminata, said that while the functionality of Firefox is superb, market dynamics give IE the leading position.
"The market always wants choice. Not 57 choices, but two," Eunice said. "Better security is one selling point, but Firefox is just a good product. Firefox is genuinely multiplatform. You can run it on Windows, on the Mac or on Linux. It's also a very nice browser."
"There's been a groundswell of affection for having an alternative browser," Eunice said. "But the Microsoft approach has been hugely successful. I don't see any fundamental change in market dynamics," he said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 22, 2005 04:03 PM
February 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Intel desktop chips get 64-bit support
Intel has released four new Pentium 4 processors for desktops, designed to improve performance for applications such as high-definition video and other IT uses that can benefit from large amounts of data readily available to the processor.
The company is focusing on enhanced cache that comes with an extra 1MB of Level 2 cache memory, bringing the total amount of Level 2 cache memory on the chip to 2MB.
The new Pentium 4 processors are the Pentium 4 660 processor at 3.6GHz, the 650 processor at 3.4GHz, the 640 processor at 3.2GHz and the 630 processor at 3GHz, Intel said. Intel also released a 3.73GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor with 2MB of Level 2 cache and a 1066MHz front-side bus. That chip is usually reserved for gamers or PC enthusiasts willing to spend extra money for Intel's highest-performing chip.
In quantities of 1,000 units, the 660 costs $605, the 650 costs $401, the 640 costs $273 and the 630 costs $224. The 3.73GHz Extreme Edition chip costs $999.
Intel previously improved the performance of its Pentium 4 chip by increasing its clock speed, but power leakage problems associated with the jump to its 90-nanometer process technology are preventing the company from making the chip run any faster, IDG News Service said. Last year Intel announced that the Pentium 4 processor would top out at 3.8GHz. Increasing the amount of cache memory on a chip does not require as much power as increasing the speed at which the chip processes data.
The new chips also come with support for 64-bit operating systems and applications. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, which released 64-bit desktop chips in 2003, are gearing up for the production version of Microsoft's 64-bit Windows XP operating systems, expected in the first half of this year after many delays. Linux operating systems are already available with support for the extensions technology.
"Intel continues to offer new platform features based on what people are ac-tually doing with their PCs, such as using rich media, communicating with friends or family, and being productive in the office," said Rob Crooke, Intel general manager of Desktop Marketing and Strategic Planning. "As software for the digital home and office matures and becomes more demanding, desktops with Intel EM64T are well-timed to take advantage of emerging new usage models."
The new Pentium 4 processors will give Intel and its PC customers some breathing room before the launch of its first dual-core desktop processors, expected by the end of June, IDG News Service said. The Smithfield dual-core chips are expected to arrive with new chipset technologies that will support new technologies such as virtualization.
The new processors will support the upcoming Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system and will enable users to experience the benefits of 64-bit computing, Intel said.
"Microsoft is excited to work with Intel to help lead the industry's transition to 64-bit computing," said Brad Goldberg, general manager of the Windows Product Marketing Group at Microsoft. "We are working closely to deliver a ro-bust 64-bit client platform that will help customers realize powerful new 64-bit capabilities while maintaining their investment in 32-bit applications."
Hewlett-Packard and Gateway plan to support the new desktop processors, ac-cording to company representatives, the news service reported. PCs with the 660 and 650 chips will be available on HP's Web site as of Monday, and the 640 and 630 processors will be available as configuration options as of March 9. Gateway plans to introduce new desktops with the chip in the near future.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 22, 2005 02:29 PM
February 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Cabir mobile phone virus lands on U.S. shores
The world's first mobile phone virus has arrived in the United States, and computer experts are warning cell users to protect their phones, just like their PCs.
F-Secure, an anti-virus firm, announced over the weekend that a worm called "Cabir" that has infiltrated mobile phones in other countries was found in phones in Southern California.
The virus threatens only mobile phones and devices using Bluetooth technology.
A phone infected with the virus spends time looking for another Bluetooth-enabled device, draining valuable battery power. When one is found, the worm sends a file.
If the user installs the file, the worm executes and tries spreading again.
But there is hope. Computer, or should I say electronic, security has hit "Entertainment Tonight." Paris Hilton's Blackberry has been hacked and her celebrity friends' phone numbers have been pasted on the Internet. The FBI has been busy issuing subpoenas to shut down the offending Websites.
Note that the cabir virus has also hit Southern California, so other celebri-ties could find that they can no longer use their cell phones, which for some will be worse than not being able to eat, breathe or make bad movies.
If our celebrities are being attacked, suddenly our government jumps into action.
By Bob Francis
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 22, 2005 11:54 AM
February 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
EMC issues Clariion call for iSCSI
EMC joins the iSCSI parade with a new range of Clariion arrays utilizing the internet protocol (IP) technology.
Plenty of other vendors are already offering iSCSI offerings, but when EMC joins a storage parade, you have to pay attention. It also means that IT departments should start paying some respect to iSCSI. Though it is slower than Fibre Channel, it has some strong points, particularly for small organizations and remote workgroups.
Demand for IP-based SANs is expected to grow as small organizations and remote workgroups implement the technology. IDC predicts that in 2005, nearly 20 percent of the revenue in the sub-$15,000 external storage array market will come from iSCSI technology.
EMC won't be the only one jumping into the iSCSI market, as key Clariion partner Dell will also add the product to its lineup of storage offerings. EMC rivals Network Appliance and IBM already have similar products that support iSCSI. Last year, for instance, IBM delivered the DS300, an iSCSI based SAN Storage controller. Network Appliance has also had several products in the iSCSI space for many years, according to Rich Clifton, vice president of SAN/iSAN business at the company. "I think we're basically saying, 'Welcome to the party,' It kind of validates the market we have been in for some time," he said.
The new iSCSI versions of the Clariion arrays, the AX100i, CX300i and the CX500i, will mirror the AX100, CX300 and CX500 Fibre Channel versions. Prices will be the same, but IT departments will save money because the iSCSI versions do not require Fibre Channel fabric components such as HBAs, cabling and switches. There will be a performance cost, however, as the iSCSI products have about half the I/O performance of their Fibre Channel counterparts. Check it out.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 18, 2005 04:10 PM
February 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's security strategy is still lacking despite new IE, Gartner says
Bill Gates put Microsoft's security strategy front and center this week, announcing a new version of Internet Explorer, free antispyware and an antivirus service, but his vision does not look far enough ahead, a Gartner analyst said.
Neil MacDonald, a research director at Gartner, said Microsoft's security announcements were a missed opportunity.
At the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Gates said Microsoft will release IE 7.0, which continues the hardening of IE 6 with XP Service Pack (SP) 2, in beta in mid-2005. IE 7.0 will not be available for Windows 2000 users.
MacDonald criticized the new version in a news analysis on published on Gartner's Website.
"The decision to restrict IE 7.0 to the XP platform also suggests that Microsoft wants to force users of older plat-forms to upgrade if they want improved security," MacDonald wrote. "If Microsoft wishes to be seen as a responsible industry leader in maintaining security for its products and its customers, it should provide IE 7.0 for Windows 2000 users. Furthermore, instead of making more evolutionary security improvements to IE, Microsoft should announce that it will fundamentally rearchitect IE with secu-rity in mind."
MacDonald was equally critical fpr the AV and AS announcements.
"Microsoft has missed an opportunity to clarify its strategy for the security market and articulate whether it plans to be a leader in consumer and enterprise security solutions across desktop, server and server gateway," MacDonald said. "Microsoft's overriding goal should be to eliminate the need for AV and AS products, not simply to enter the market with lookalike products at lower prices. The company's enterprise security focus will be on securing Microsoft environments and leveraging Microsoft infrastructure, such as Active Directory and Systems Management Server."
Gartner recommended that enterprises continue as planned with XP SP2, but schedule another round of testing for IE 7.0 for 2006. The company also said that enterprises should demand that their AV provider offer an enterprise-class bundled AS solution at no cost by the second half of 2005. They switch providers if this demand is not met.
Enterprises should also require their AV provider to deliver a converged desktop security product with AV, AS, personal firewall and behavior blocking at a total price no more than 20 percent higher than what you now pay for stand-alone AV.
If they have heterogeneous platform security needs, enterprises look to other vendors, Gartner said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 18, 2005 03:39 PM
February 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IBM investment trumpets client-side Linux
IBM plans to inject $100 million into its collaboration software lineup in an effort to bolster the systems' Linux support and technology options.
In the past, Big Blue has pledged billions of dollars to companywide Linux efforts across all its product lines, including PCs, servers, and mainframes.
Now IBM is driving its Linux efforts beyond server middleware toward the desktop.
"It is all about responding to customer demand," said Donald Harbison, program director, IBM software group, Linux technical strategy. "This is our decision to put the pedal to the metal and accelerate client-side computing on Linux."
In directing the Linux spotlight toward collaboration software, IBM is hoping to ride the growing momentum of Linux on the desktop.
"The investment here is focused on the IBM Workplace family. It is in response to building market demand to deploy end to end solutions instead of server managed solutions," Harbison said.
Specifically, the investment aims to expand Linux support across the Workplace portfolio, focusing on ISV support programs, channel and partner promotion, research and development, sales and marketing, and other technology integrations, according to IBM officials.
"This signals the marketplace to how serious we are: not only on R and D but also with partners and ISVs," Harbison said.
In other open source collaboration developments, IBM now supports the Firefox browser for Lotus Notes Web Access, and Harbison said the company also is developing a Workplace plug-in for Lotus Notes on Linux. More details about that forthcoming plug-in will be available later in the year, he said.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on February 17, 2005 04:55 PM
February 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
While vendors such as IBM and Borland Software are on the bandwagon behind the OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 specification for model-driven development, one critical player in the application development space remains on the sidelines.
That would be Microsoft.
If you listen to IBM Distinguished Engineer Alan Brown, Microsoft is pursuing its own agenda."What they're doing is they're trying to create their own proprietary modeling standard," through Microsoft's Application Designer technology, Brown said.
A Microsoft official, Keith Short, an architect in the company's Visual Studio group, provided an in-depth response. The company indeed has no plans to directly support UML 2.0 but is deferring to partners to provide that backing, he says.
"We've taken a slightly different view of model-driven development. What we try to do is really to look around at what developers are actually doing and see where we can add value with model-driven development," Short said. Previously, Microsoft has described UML 2.0 as being of limited interest to developers.
Microsoft's modeling approach for the upcoming Visual Studio 2005 Team System platform for architects involves four elements:
* Application Designer modeling language, to define reusable applications that can provide or use services.
* Class Designer, for code visualization.
* System Definition Designer, to package services for deployment.
* Logical Datacenter Designer, which provides a virtual picture of a datacenter.
The tools are built in accordance with the company's Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) technology for building custom designers for visual, domain-specific languages. UML 2.0 can be viewed as sort of a collection of DSLs, Short said. But UML is not precise enough to map to underlying frameworks like ASP.Net, he said.
Developers can use Microsoft's modeling technology to build UML 2.0 diagrams if they choose, Short said. That seems like a decent-enough compromise. But it sure would be nice if a leading vendor like Microsoft could directly support what many consider to be a budding industry standard.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 17, 2005 04:35 PM
February 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Intel's silicon laser promises computing breakthrough
Intel's announcement of what it called a "scientific breakthrough" using standard silicon manufacturing processes to create the world's first continuous wave silicon laser holds out promise, but remains an unrealized vision, analysts said.
The chip maker said, in an article published in the magazine, Nature, that the technology could help bring low-cost, high-quality lasers and optical devices to mainstream use in computing, communications and medical applications.
"Fundamentally, we have demonstrated for the first time that standard silicon can be used to build devices that amplify light," Mario Paniccia, director, Intel's Photonics Technology Lab, said in a statmement on Intel's Website. "The use of high-quality photonic devices has been limited because they are expensive to manufacture, assemble and package. This research is a major step toward bringing the benefits of low-cost, high-bandwidth silicon based optical devices to the mass market."
Intel researchers passed light through silicon. When infused with light from an external source, the experimental chip produces a continuous, high-quality laser beam.
The company said that, while still far from a commercial product, the ability to build a laser from standard silicon could lead to inexpensive optical devices that move data inside and between computers at the speed of light, leading to new applications for high-speed computing.
An analyst advised caution in counting on such a commercial product anytime soon.
"This is essentially a demonstration at this point," said Gordon Haff, of Illuminata. "Photonics was being talked about during the Internet boom and a lot of that went into hibernation.
"It is true that if optical computers are ever going to be a mainstream approach, its technology is going to have to enable a low-cost approach," Haff added. "Being able to use silicon rather than high-end materials will be a big step in the right direction. There is a lot of silicon knowledge and technology that lasers can be built off of.""
The chips are expected to someday power tiny lasers, amplifiers and optical interconnects that move terabytes of data around the computer and across networks, Intel said. Other uses include the creation of more affordable medical lasers so that trips to the dentist become easier and less painful for patients.
Intel described the technology thusly: "Like the first laser developed in 1960, Intel researchers used an external light source to "pump" light into their chip. As light is pumped in, the natural atomic vibrations in silicon amplify the light as it passes through the chip. This amplification - the Raman effect - is more than 10,000 times stronger in silicon than in glass fibers. Raman lasers and amplifiers are used today in the telecom industry and rely on miles of fiber to amplify light. By using silicon, Intel researchers were able to achieve gain and lasing in a silicon chip just a few centimeters in size."
The silicon photonics research team has achieved real results. In 2004, it built the first silicon-based optical modulator to encode data at 1GHz, an in-crease of over 50 times the previous research record of about 20MHz.
"We have a wide range of long-term research programs in place to find new ways of applying our silicon expertise to make life better for people," said Kevin Kahn, Intel Senior Fellow, director, Communications Technology Lab. "For example, we are developing wireless sensor networks that could be used to spot equipment failures in factories and even on ships at sea before they happen, or used to improve healthcare services for the elderly. With the Silicon Photonics program, our goal is to use our silicon manufacturing techniques to mass-produce low-cost optical devices so the benefits of high-bandwidth photonics can be used throughout the computing and communications industries."
The report on this research was published in Nature, Volume 433, dated Feb-ruary 17, 2005. The paper, titled "A continuous wave Raman Silicon Laser," was authored by Intel researchers Haisheng Rong, Richard Jones, Ansheng Liu, Oded Cohen, Dani Hak, Alexander Fang & Mario Paniccia. A copy of the paper and more information can be found at http://www.intel.com/go/sp/.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 17, 2005 03:26 PM
February 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
One of the more interesting products making its debut at this week's LinuxWorld in Boston was a data base application from Kirix Corp. that helps users to better manipulate data in a graphical environment create queries and generate reports.
Called Strata the product, which can be used with both Linux and Windows, combines some of the capabilities of a spreadsheet with those of a data base management system. Users are able to create a variety of calculations across an entire dataset and then combine that with data from other data sets interactively, thereby carrying out instant aggregate calculations on large groups of related data base records.
The product is capable of importing and exporting data back and forth from Microsoft's Access, FoxPro and xBase and text delimited files as well as ODBC, IBM's DB2, Oracle, MySQL and Microsoft's SQL Server. It also provides Unicode support.
"The idea is to have a dialogue with your data. You can make changes to the logic of your formulas and then be able to see the results immediately without having to run a long query," said Aaron Williams, the Chief Scientist at Kirix. "With this sort of quick feedback you can respond fast to what the data is telling you," he added.
The folks running IDG's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo this week also liked what they saw of the new product, giving it their Product Excellence Award in the Best Desktop-Productivity-Business Application category.
The product costs $125 per year for a subscription license or $425 for a perpetual license, plus $45 a year annual maintenance fee to pay for updates.
Posted by Ed Scannell on February 17, 2005 01:54 PM
February 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Municipal Wi-Fi debate lingers in Philadelphia
The City of Brotherly Love is divided on the topic of Wi-Fi.
Mayor John Street is pushing forward with plans to offer Wi-Fi in every neighborhood of the city. But, as The New York Times reported this morning, Philadephia's plan has enraged a debate over who should provide the Wi-Fi service.
Street's plan, of course, is met with more than mild trepidation by the phone companies -- the very organizations that stand to lose financially if the city institutes Wi-Fi.
Glenn Fleishman offers an in-depth, and expectedly informed opinion on the debate that's worth a read.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 17, 2005 10:27 AM
February 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft forced by security concerns to fix IE browser
Bill Gates announced a new, more secure version of Microsoft Internet Explorer this week in response to general public dissatisfaction with holes in the browser and to particular worries that the open source Firefox browser was emerging as a strong alternative.
Gates, Microsoft's Chairman and Chief Software Architect, said the company will release a test version of IE browser that better protects users from scams and malicious code while surfing the Web.
Additionally, reacting to a an increasing number of online scams involving spyware, Microsoft has decided to offer its antispyware product free of charge, Gates said.
The company's previous plans called for a new version of the ubiquitous browser to be included in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due in 2006, IDG News Service said. "We have decided to do a new version of Internet Explorer," Gates, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, said. The new IE 7 will "add new levels of security," he said. A first beta is due in mid-2005.
While scant on details for IE 7, Gates said the security enhancements will protect customers against phishing and other malware, the news service reported. The features will also be included in the version of IE for Longhorn. IE 7 will be for users of Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
IE is part of Windows and is used by most Web users, but it has a bad security reputation. Other browsers such as Firefox, Netscape and Deepnet Explorer are exploiting that reputation to steal market share. America Online later this week plans to release the first public test version of a new Netscape browser that offers phishing protection, the news service said.
Microsoft recognized the situation and is reacting swiftly, analysts said.
"Obviously, Gates and Microsoft in general were under a great deal of pressure to close the holes in IE," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies. "That, and the increasing popularity of open source browsers, Firefox es-pecially, caused them to move sooner than later. It was a key component of the next generation of Longhorn."
Microsoft has been working hard to harden IE, said Rob Enderle of The Enderle Group. "They are serious about security and very serious about the thought of Firefox, so they are moving their resources to address that. IE will be a better product than it was going to be."
Once IE 7 is released, Microsoft will be challenged to convince users to download the new product, said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC's program vice president for system software.
"It does look like Microsoft understands the challenge," he said. "Microsoft often had patches available that people didn't download and vulnerabilities were exploited. Or malicious parties would look at the patches and figure out how to exploit them. Microsoft may design a hardened IE, But how are they going to convince people to they should download it will be a challenge."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 16, 2005 04:27 PM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Gates makes waves with new IE version and free antispyware
SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft plans to release a test version of a new Internet Explorer (IE) browser that better protects users from scams and malicious code while surfing the Web, Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect, said Tuesday at the RSA Conference 2005.
Additionally, responding to a surge over the past year in online scams involving spyware, Microsoft has decided not to charge for its antispyware product, Gates said.
"We have looked hard at the nature of this problem and have made the decision that this antispyware product will be available at no additional cost to Windows users," Gates said. "I am very excited that we have this technology and it really addresses a burning need for our users."
Microsoft bought antispyware software maker Giant Company Software in December and released a beta of Windows AntiSpyware in January. Until Tuesday's announcement the company had not said whether it would sell the product or give it away. Other companies, including traditional antivirus vendors, offer antispyware products.
In addition to its free consumer product, Microsoft will offer a for-pay antispyware product for corporate users that will support enterprise needs for management and deployment, said Amy Roberts, a director in Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit. Roberts could not say when the enterprise antispyware product will be available.
A second beta version of the consumer Windows AntiSpyware product is scheduled to be available in the first half of this year, Roberts said in an interview after Gates' keynote.
With the increasing phishing threats and perhaps competitive pressure, Microsoft has changed its plans for IE. Previously the company's plans called for a new version of the ubiquitous browser to be included in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due in 2006.
"We have decided to do a new version of Internet Explorer," Gates said. The new IE 7 will "add new levels of security," he said. A first beta is due in mid-2005.
While scant on details for IE 7, Gates said the security enhancements will protect customers against phishing and other malware. The features will also be included in the version of IE for Longhorn. IE 7 will be for users of Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Roberts could not say when the final version of IE 7 would be available.
IE is part of Windows and is used by most Web users, but it has a bad security reputation. Other browsers such as Firefox, Netscape and Deepnet Explorer are exploiting that reputation to steal market share. America Online Inc. later this week plans to release the first public test version of a new Netscape browser that offers phishing protection.
Phishing scams are a prevalent type of online attack in which spammers send e-mail messages to dupe recipients into visiting fraudulent Web pages that look like legitimate e-commerce sites to steal sensitive information such as user names, passwords and credit card numbers.
In his keynote at the opening of the annual security conference, Gates also updated attendees on Microsoft's efforts to build a single Web site for patches for Microsoft products. A test version of the delayed patching service, dubbed Microsoft Update, is slated to be available next month, Gates said.
Microsoft Update will support Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Office 2003, Exchange Server 2003 and SQL Server, according to Roberts. A final version of the update service is due in the first half of this year, at around the same time the company plans to release Windows Update Services (WUS), she said. WUS is a free Windows Server add-on for businesses that allows users to download and deploy patches.
On the issue of antivirus protection, Gates reiterated his company's intention to buy Sybari Software Inc. and to add its antivirus engine to Sybari's server antivirus product. Gates also said that a consumer antivirus product would be available from Microsoft by the end of 2005. This will be a paid product or service, Roberts said.
Microsoft's decision to give away the antispyware products makes sense, but spells trouble for third party spyware companies, said Pete Lindstrom, research director at Spire Security LLC.
"Spyware is a huge consumer issue and it's becoming a bigger enterprise issue, but it's a desktop issue, so it makes sense for Microsoft to (give away antispyware)," Lindstrom said. However, vendors such as WebRoot Software Inc. will have to find a way to differentiate. "They're not going to be able to compete on cost," he said.
At least one attendee found Gates both more engaging and more humble than last year, when Microsoft's founder declared an intention to end spam within a year - a goal he acknowledged was not met in this year's speech.
"Instead of making promises I didn't believe (Gates) could keep, he was demonstrating substantial improvement in many areas that are important, like internal development processes," said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security.
Also on Tuesday at the RSA Conference Microsoft announced that the Enterprise Edition of its Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004 firewall and caching product should be available this March. The product was originally due by the end of last year.
By Joris Evers
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
(Paul Roberts of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.)
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 15, 2005 03:26 PM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
W3C approves internationalization plan for Web apps
The World Wide Web Consortium on Tuesday published a proposal defining a way for Web applications to transmit and process the world's languages, based on the Unicode standard.
The organization's Character Model of the World Wide Web: Fundamentals proposal was published as a W3C Recommendation, meaning it has been formally approved by the organization. "The basic idea is that people around the world need to have Web technology which can be used for their scripts and their languages," said Richard Ishida, editor at character model specifications at W3C.
Through the architectural Recommendation, specification authors, developers and content developers have a common reference to enable interoperable text manipulation of the World Wide Web. The recommendation builds on the Universal Character Set defined by the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646. Unicode provides a way to reference characters independent of the coding of the text.
W3C has further work to do on its Character Model proposal for internationalization. Models are still to be released for normalization, which involves representing text in Unicode, and resource identifiers, which provides guidelines for dealing with Web addresses. The two remaining models are expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to W3C.
The Character Model was developed by the W3C Internationalization Activity Working Group with assistance from the organization’s Internationalization Interest Group. Participants in the working group have included Boeing, IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and webMethods.
Posted by Paul Krill on February 15, 2005 03:23 PM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Blogs are all the rage at Demo today
This morning at the Demo conference several vendors trotted out new blog products for attendees to see.
InfoWorld Editor-at-Large Ephraim Schwartz is in Scottsdale, Arizona for the show, and wrote a news story covering the various products.
I'll let you read his article for yourself, but within it you can expect to find information about rapid-fire blogging software, a tool that helps bloggers target specific groups, software for creating publicly available Web folders that can be used to publish to a blog or other site, password protection for blogs, and a combination software and hardware device for managing corporate blogs before they are published.
Schwartz also reported on blogs and monitors from Demo yesterday.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 15, 2005 01:04 PM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Fiorina on everyone's lips at RSA
Security may be the name of the game at the RSA Conference, but if loose lips sink ships, the Titanic may soon have some company. The name on those loose lips is Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Many speculate that Fiorina's departure from Hewlett-Packard may have had to do with her large public profile and political involvement as much as for HP's less than stellar results. Of course, poor company performance did not hold back the political aspirations of the current White House occupant, but apparently HP's board was less charitable.
Also on everyone's lips was the question of who will replace Fiorina as CEO of HP.
Among the names leading the list of replacements are Michael Capellas, currently head of the recently acquired MCI, and former head of Compaq. The just desserts side of that speculation cannot be dismissed as the result would be that Capellas would then be head of the company that acquired his company. As a side note, Capellas was once pictured on the cover of BusinessWeek wielding an electric guitar when he was head of Compaq.
Also on the lip list are Ray Lane, former Oracle president, Ed Zander, Motorola chairman and CEO and a former Sun executive and Texas Instruments chairman Tom Engibous.
Posted by Bob Francis on February 15, 2005 12:47 PM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
AMD advances on the Opteron roadmap
AMD announced upgrades to its x86 Opteron processor line this week, while Hewlett-Packard (HP) unveiled Opteron-based systems to power a new enterprise server, blade servers and workstations.
AMD said the latest additions to the Opteron line - the 852, 252 and 152 - are processors for one-way to eight-way x86 servers and workstations.
Volume server solutions based on the 852 and 252 processors are expected to be available this quarter. The 852 model costs $1,514 in 1,000-unit quantities, and model 252 is priced at $851 in 1,000-unit quantities. The 152 processor for single-processor workstations and entry-level servers, is scheduled to be available April 30 and will be priced at $637 in 1,000-unit quantities.
AMD also announced the AMD-8132 HyperTransport PCI-X 2.0 tunnel, scheduled to ship for servers and workstations this month. The latest addition to the AMD-8000 series of chipsets, the AMD-8132 tunnel brings high-performance PCI-X 2.0 connectivity to AMD Opteron processor-based systems with increased throughput, improved RAS capabilities, data management and enhanced HyperTransport technol-ogy connectivity.
Features designed to enhance performance of the new models include support for SSE3 software instructions as well as an increase in the HyperTransport performance through an increase in bus frequency, to 1GHz.
"These models of the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture bring the newest level of performance to our customers. The platforms our partners launched ... feature the world's highest performing 4P and 2P processors for 32- and 64-bit computing," Marty Seyer, corporate vice president and general manager of the Microprocessor Business Unit, Computation Products Group, AMD, said in a statement.
Server and workstation systems featuring the Opteron processor will soon be enabled with AMD PowerNow!technology with Optimized Power Management. "This technology helps to minimize overall power consumption for enterprise IT and workstation customers by decreasing strain on datacenter cooling and ventilation systems," said Seyer.
"All in all, this represents a modicum of progress," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight64. "(The new processors) show that AMD is staying on its Opteron roadmap, which is a good sign."
The new processors will power new server and workstation platforms from HP, including an enterprise-class HP ProLiant server, the HP ProLiant DL385.
Additionally, HP introduced its ProLiant BL25p and BL35p blade servers and the HP xw9300 Workstation, the company's first AMD Opteron processor-based, dual PCI-Express graphics workstation with support for NVIDIA Quadro SLI (Scalable Link Interface).
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 15, 2005 12:24 PM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Nokia, Microsoft union on mobile digital music is not quite true love
The idea that the corporate animosity between Nokia and Microsoft is thawing as some of the news stories would have you believe because of the recent deal to partner in delivering music to cell phones is ludicrous.
See articles in the Earthtimes and also one in the Financial Times.
What it means is the two companies are willing to set aside their competitive differences in this one area.
Why? Because both currently don't have a strong presence in music players and each want to leverage the other's strengths, hoping two weak players will make one strong offering.
Time will tell on that score.
But don't count on Microsoft giving up on its Mobile OS or Nokia ditching Symbian in favor of Microsoft.
All it is, is a marriage of convenience.
By Ephraim Schwartz
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 15, 2005 11:53 AM
February 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
SBC-AT&T, Verizon-MCI mergers could result in end to price wars
The two recent telecom mergers could leave enterprise customers at a disadvantage when it comes to the price they pay for services, but there could also be opportunities for customers who can act quickly.
With yesterday's announcement that Verizon intends to acquire MCI for $6.7 billion, and that coming on the heels of SBC plunking down $16 billion to swallow AT&T, it appears the era of pricing wars may be drawing to a close, The New York Times reported this morning.
The mergers are still contingent upon FCC approval, of course, but presuming both mergers go through and the number of telecom providers decreases accordingly, corporate customers will no longer have the advantage of being able to shop around among multiple services providers competing for their business.
The mergers could, however, create some pricing advantages in the short-term, as Grant Gross of the IDG News Service pointed out yesterday in his article Verizon-MCI deal: New era of telecom giants. Gross included in his story some advice from Pete Wilson, executive vice president of Telwares Communications, a firm that advises enterprises on telecom contracts. Wilson pointed out that "businesses with telecom contracts expiring in the next year may have a window of opportunity to negotiate low rates before the SBC and Verizon deals win government approval."
Pricing is not the only change business customers should expect, as Gross reported: The two recent mergers point to a future where giant telecom carriers offer a wide range of services to a wide range of customers -- from phone, television and Internet service for individual customers to huge long-distance and data networks deployed at the world's largest enterprise businesses.
In other words, the menu that telecom providers put on the table will expand, but the prices next to each item likely will as well.
N.B. We have ongoing coverage of the telecom mergers in an online Special Report Telecom merger mania.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 15, 2005 08:41 AM
February 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, eBay and Visa join forces to fight phishing
Heavyweights Microsoft, eBay and Visa International joined forces Monday to combat phishing attacks, saying they will participate in the Phish Report Network, sponsored by endpoint security company WholeSecurity.
The Phish Report Network allows any company being victimized by phishing attacks to immediately report fraudulent Web sites to a central database operated by WholeSecurity.
Other companies subscribing to the Phish Report Network can then access the database or receive real-time notifications of known phishing sites, enabling them to more effectively protect consumers by blocking these sites in their user-facing security applications, according to a statement on WholeSecurity's Website.
"Phishing is the fastest-growing segment of spam being sent worldwide today, victimizing both legitimate online companies whose brands are being hijacked and consumers who are unwittingly providing their personal information to criminals," Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the Safety Technology and Strategy Group at Microsoft, said in a statement. "The data that the Phish Report Network will provide can help Microsoft immediately better defend our millions of users worldwide against these nefarious phishing attacks."
The announcement was made at the opening of the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
Phishing is a fraud in which scam artists try to steal the identities of Internet users by sending out emails or links to Web pages mimicking popular Web sites. These emails and Web sites commonly ask Internet users to provide sensitive personally identifiable information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, or bank account information Reports of online identity theft scams have grown steadily for more than a year.
In December, more than 1,700 active phishing Web sites were reported, a 10 percent jump from the previous month, according to data released by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), IDG News Service said.
More than 9,000 unique e-mail messages linked to phishing scams were identified by the APWG in December, an increase of 6 percent from the month before, and a 38 percent increase over the number reported in July, according to an APWG report.
The scams are notoriously hard to shut down because those behind them often use compromised computers scattered around the globe to host phishing Web sites and to distribute the spam messages advertising the sites. The average duration of a phishing Web site was almost six days in December, with some sites operating for as long as 30 days before being shut down, the APWG reported.
Visa, eBay and Paypal, eBay's online payment division, will report new phishing scams to the Phish Report Network. Those reports will be stored in a central database of phishing attacks maintained by WholeSecurity, where the information will be sorted into aggregated “safe lists” and "block lists" of known phishing sites. ISPs and other companies will then use those lists to update filters, black lists and other systems used to block traffic to and from the phishing sites, WholeSecurity said.
The participant members said there are strong reasons to join to fight phishing.
"eBay and PayPal’s participation in the Phish Report Network is one of many steps we have taken to improve security of the e-commerce experience," Howard Schmidt, eBay and PayPal's chief security strategist and former White House cybersecurity advisor, said in a statement. "As we co-develop technologies, educate online users and work with law enforcement, we can help significantly reduce the effect of cyber criminals."
"As a leader in the payments industry, Visa is focused not just on shutting down phishing sites, but preventing phishing emails from ever reaching consumers worldwide," said Brad Nightengale, Department Head of Emerging Products at Visa. "Working with the participants in this solution, Visa can play a key role in stopping this crime before it happens and in maintaining global consumer confidence online."
"As the industry consolidates to fight the phishing problem, WholeSecurity be-lieves the Phish Report Network will become the cornerstone of these efforts," said J. Peter Selda, chief executive officer of WholeSecurity. "The partnership we have formed with the founding members of the Phish Report Network is an important, groundbreaking step in reestablishing consumers’ confidence in online channels."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 14, 2005 05:59 PM
February 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, Flextronics team for mobile platform
Microsoft's partnership with phone maker Flextronics to develop a mobile platform on its Windows Mobile software for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) gives Microsoft immediate clout in the mobile devices market, analysts say.
The mobile phone platform, called Peabody, will run on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks. The platform will offer OEMs access to more than 18,000 applications for product line customization, the companies announced.
The applications are targeted at OEMs which can serve various customers, ranging from businesses looking for vertical integration applications and messaging solutions to consumers seeking the latest in music, video, pictures and gaming possibilities.
"Mobile phones will be what PCs were in the 1990s - the new platform," said David Passmore, research director for the Burton Group.
"This move is for more than phones," Passmore said. "A lot more devices will migrate into what we now think of as a phone. All the things you now can do on a networked PC will do on phone. You need a nice software platform, and Microsoft has to catch up on the action. Microsoft has to have a solution they can offer to mobile operators. They've got to have hardware as well as software."
Flextronics also announced that it is developing a product family of devices based on next- generation Windows Mobile software for deployment on GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks.
"As mobile phones become increasingly customized consumer products, OEMs are under pressure to produce low-cost, feature-rich phones that address the demands of this growing market," said Tom Deitrich, vice president of Original Design & Manufacture (ODM) Products, at Flextronics, which is one of the largest mobile phone manufacturers.
"Through ODM mobile phone platforms such as Peabody, Flextronics is providing OEMs with a cost-effective way to quickly expand their product lines and respond to market demands," he added.
Microsoft said it selected Flextronics because of its worldwide market presence.
"Flextronics' record of delivering highly integrated mobile phone platforms to markets around the world gives our joint OEM partners a strong go-to-market ally for smart devices," said Suzan DelBene, corporate vice president of the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft. "Our joint strengths allow us to deliver innovative and customizable device solutions based on the Windows Mobile platform that can be deployed quickly at competitive price points."
The new offerings were announced at the 3GSM World Congress show taking place this week in Cannes, IDG News Service said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 14, 2005 04:27 PM
February 11, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Macromedia and Nokia to bring Flash to phones
Macromedia and Nokia announced an agreement to integrate Macromedia Flash technology into Nokia's Series 60 Platform for mobile devices, including smart phones.
The companies said that the Series 60 will become a reference platform for Macromedia's mobile Flash technology, and Macromedia will implement new versions of its mobile Flash technology on Series 60.
In addition, Nokia has agreed to support Flash in its other software platforms.
The partnership hopes to foster development work to create Flash content and applications for mobile phones. There are about 1.8 million registered develop-ers in Forum Nokia and more than one million Macromedia Flash developers.
"We look forward to bringing together the significant developer communities of both companies to deliver a new generation of digital experiences to an even broader section of the mobile ecosystem," Al Ramadan, executive vice president and general manager, mobile and devices, Macromedia, said in a statement.
The agreement is part of a clear trend in which rich media is migrating to hand-held wireless platforms, said Jerry Purdy, chief analyst with MobileTrax, a mobile and wireless market research company.
For example, earlier this month, Verizon Wireless launched its V CAST streaming media service over several phones, including the Samsung a890.
"We expect additional announcements with other hand set manufacturers, carriers and rich media content providers in the next two years," Purdy said. "We are finally getting data networks rich enough (to support such services)."
As part of the collaboration, Macromedia and Nokia will also provide integrated mobile development tool sets that will enable developers to more rapidly and efficiently create compelling Flash content for mobile devices, while leveraging their existing expertise and brand assets. In addition, the companies will also collaborate on technical documentation and other technical support areas.
The Series 60 Platform, built on the Symbian OS, is licensed by mobile phones manufacturers including Lenovo, LG Electronics, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, and Siemens.
"The availability of rich Flash content and applications will help drive the adoption of smartphones and increase the operator ARPU (average revenue per unit)," Antti Vasara, vice president, Nokia Mobile Software Sales and Marketing, said in a statement. "We also welcome all Flash developers and designers to build new compel-ling applications on Series 60 and to create cutting-edge mobile content."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on February 11, 2005 04:53 PM
February 11, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, Pfizer sue to stop Viagra spammers
Microsoft, joining forces with drug company Pfizer, took aggressive action this week, filing lawsuits against spam rings that operated Web sites that allegedly sold illegal, generic versions of Viagra.
The actions, based on the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, are the latest move by Microsoft to stem the tide of unwanted spam. But experts questions whether the overall war against spam is being won.
Pfizer filed civil actions against two Web sites that allegedly promote and sell products that are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Microsoft said in a statement. In conjunction with Pfizer's suits against CanadianPharmacy and E-Pharmacy Direct, Microsoft filed civil actions against the spammers advertising for those Web sites.
In addition, Microsoft filed three suits against spammers who advertise other online pharmacies known under a variety of names, such as Discount RX, Virtual RX and EzyDrugStore.com. Together, these pharmacy spam rings have allegedly sent hundreds of millions of e-mai