- Hackers quaking over reported Spam King's arrest
- Get RSS in any in-box
- Security marriages a mouthful
- Dual-phones: no play in U.S.?
- Phishers take to VOIP
- 'Waterproof' laptop floated
- Who is Sun's new CEO?
- With McNealy out, what should Schwartz focus on?
- Let the e-ink flow
- Holy Inverse Function, Batman!! A virus for MATLAB!
April 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Hackers quaking over reported Spam King's arrest
According to an unconfirmed report, spam king Alan Ralsky has been arrested by federal law enforcement and is being held pending the release of a sealed indictment against him.
The problem: Ralsky apparently has the goods on a wide swath of the hacker underground, and folks there are really worried he's gonna spill the beans to the feds in return for a lesser sentence.
Ralsky is a near legend in the spam community -- the subject of a raft of lawsuits from Verizon and others for his shameless spamming activity. MOre recently the feds have been closing in. His home in Michigan was raided back in October. And rumor has it that a datacenter Ralsky used was raided a couple weeks back.
A DOJ official contacted by InfoWorld said he hadn't heard of the arrest and I'm waiting for more official comment. But according to "Memehacker," the underworld hacking scene is all abuzz about the arrest and indictment.
"we are worried that he will strike a deal, out the network for a reduced sentence/immunity" he told IW via instant messenger.
"they have the top guy, now they want the people doing the work," he wrote.
Ralsky's tentacles strectched far beyond the spamming scene, the thinking goes -- in his quest to make dough, he made connections across the underworld.
"He knows stuff that has nothing to do with spamming. It's just knowledge," he wrote.
According to the rumors, the Federal indictment against Ralsky is sealed for 72 hours, after which we might learn a lot more about what the govt. knows about his activities -- and the shockwaves may be felt across the Internet.
Stay tuned....
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 28, 2006 02:10 PM
April 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
I thought I was really on to something with Attensa, which is revolutionary to me because it brings RSS to Outlook in a smart way, synchronizing with its Web interface and tagging from its browser toolbars.
But as I scanned my morning feeds in Outlook I thought how I'd like to get RSS in Google's GMail because I would like to have the filtering, tagging and search features for my RSS that Gmail is known for. And I don't want to have to fire up InfoWorld's VPN just to get RSS at home.
Then I came across Scobleizer's post linking to Squeet, which delivers RSS feeds you choose to any nominated e-mail account.
Yes, the new buzz meter -- for measuring how well a post is doing from a promotion system much like Digg it seems -- is cool too, but the killer feature here is Squeet's core service: RSS pushed live to the in-box. People can also choose to get updates sent daily, weekly etc, and in HTML or plain text.
Say bye-bye to newsletters as this spreads, I predict.
Is e-mail the killer app for RSS? Let us know what you are using and why.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 28, 2006 10:43 AM
April 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Collective cries of "Who?" and "Huh?" were heard on Wall Street and in many a news room today after: Avocent's purchase of LANDesk and AttachmateWRQ's purchase of NetIQ. (So "AttachmateWRQNetIQ"? Never mind that this is almost $1 billion worth of acquisition activity that barely registered in the media (Reuters story on the NetIQ deal is all of two paragraphs), when Steve Jobs drops $12.50 on some bagels on the way to work and it's front page news.
But the match-ups are insightful:
LANDesk, which spun off from Intel, sells integrated desktop security amangement tools, like patch and asset management software and has deals with major PC makers like Lenovo. Avocent, based in the IT mecca of Huntsville, AL, sells technology for managing data centers and branch offices. Together, the companies will combine Avocent's DSView 3 management software with LANDesk's architecture, allowing centralized network- and security management of servers, desktops, and data centers.
Pretty cool -- though it looks like the newlyweds will be sleeping in separate beds, Rob and Laura style, with LANDesk preserving "its organizational identity while becoming part of a well-capitalized enterprise with excellent prospects for accelerated growth," according to a statement attributed to CEO Joe Wang.
For AttachmateWRQ, which is based in Seattle and owned by an investment group, the draw was the draw was NetIQ's systems and security management, which will be married to Attachmate's Reflection terminal emulation product, allowing companies to better manage security on LANs and out at remote/home and branch offices. I'm guessing here, but it's hard to tell from the company's press release which is filled with M&A Redi-Whip statements like "This acquisition brings together two leading companies with complementary strategic visions and technology, and a shared commitment to customer satisfaction." and "AttachmateWRQ, with NetIQ, is uniquely prepared to provide mission-critical enterprise software to enable customers to extend, manage and secure their IT infrastructures."
But look no further than the big smilies that Citrix's recent acquisition of application security company NetScaler put on that company's Q1 results, and NetIQ's sluggish Q3 numbers and you get the idea. These two are better off together than apart.
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 27, 2006 12:46 PM
April 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Want the cost savings and convenience of a single handset (and number) that roams across cellular, home and Wi-Fi? I know you do.
Today, Nokia said it was developing software with iPass to offer access Wi-FI on its new dual-mode phones.
But a new handset is just a handset without the killer app: the roaming number. Forbes.com has a good report up on why it isn't happening in the U.S. as carriers drag their heels.
Nokia, Motorola and Samsung that offer "dual-mode" technology, which enables calls using cellular networks or Wi-Fi. They will ship by the end of the year.
The report cites ABI, which projects that about 120 million dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular handsets will ship in 2010. Strategy Analytics estimates services that integrate services will generate $33 billion in 2010.
Sure, you could use a different number and get an Ipass account to make cheaper calls, but for mainstream and business adoption the, mobile carriers have to sign on to offer a universal number using a protocol called UMA, created two years ago by T-Mobile, Cingular and Nokia.
British telecom group BT has begun offering UMA services, but T-Mobile and Cingular have no such plan just yet.
No wonder, as internet telephony frightens the parent companies, which look to landlines, with cellular network and broadband driving AT&T revenue.
But the BT example is one of a wholesale shift to IP for voice, rather than the internally-conflicting shifts with U.S. carriers.
Question is, how long can they hold out? Wi-Fi will give way to WiMax, and its blanket coverage (see Unwired in Australia for an example of this rough spec in early action in Sydney now), so such network access shifts the whole issue to the spectrum space, as opposed to the telecom/PSTN/cellular landscape.
Will the U.S. carriers hold out on dual phones until they become WiMax dual phones, which could bypass the landline and cellular networks altogether most of the time?
Posted by Mike Barton on April 27, 2006 11:28 AM
April 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
updated | The latest phishing example takes the social engineering of online fraud to the next level by using Internet telephony to copy a bank's automated voice system to steal customers' passwords, and other sensitive information.
Cloudmark, which intercepted the attack, said it was a new style of attack, having started this month.
But with the low-cost of VOIP, and the fact that a bank's interactive voice response system was virtually copied, it seems this could be the next big thing in phishing as people learn not to trust links sent to their in-boxes.
The use has not been widespread, but with the concept well ant truly in the wild it seems it will be soon.
With Sender ID and other email authentication systems under way, is it time for a phishing-fighting caller ID handset that cross checks numbers in a blacklist database?
Or maybe just a dose of healthy skepticism for any phone number sent by e-mail along with any e-mail address.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 26, 2006 11:15 AM
April 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Matsushita's Panasonic will introduce a "waterproof" laptop, the AP reports. But the Japanese manufacturing giant simply says the Let's Note CF-Y5 "features a waterproof sheet and special drainage system that protects the hard drive and circuit board from light water damage," the AP reported at MercuryNews.com said.
Panasonic, a legend for its Toughbook laptops, will sell the new notebook from May 19 in Japan for about $2,300.
With a toddler in the house, I would consider one. But then again many corporate laptops such as the NX/NC series by HP-Compaq have keyboard splash guard features.
Agreed, Griffon (comment below). If I could take the notebook poolside I think it might be a bit more of a mover.
Does anyone know of a truly waterproof laptop, or one that is customized to take a dip?
Posted by Mike Barton on April 25, 2006 05:18 PM
April 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
During an analysts' conference call on April 24, Scott McNealy announced that Jonathon Schwartz would succeed him as CEO. McNealy labored to set aside speculation that his departure was not his choice, or that he might have mixed feelings about getting busted to President. "I'm thrilled to death. I think it's wonderful. I couldn't be more excited. The timing fit me to a T."
If it helps you pay attention to the meat of this analysis, which centers on Sun's future and its relevance to IT, we'll speculate that McNealy and Sun's board were forced into a showdown by Schwartz’s prospective departure. It's remarkable that Schwartz stayed with Sun as long as he has. He's the definition of a walking, talking wasted asset, and it speaks well of Sun that the board, or McNealy, or whomever finally figured out what to do with him.
Schwartz's ascent to CEO had the intended immediate effect of boosting Sun's share price going into a slow quarter. With Sun, a jump in stock price usually means analysts expect a chop in head count. Analysts might not have been listening when Schwartz practically took a bite out of a journalist who asked if staff cutbacks were part of Schwartz's plan to conduct a company-wide "comprehensive review" of everything from products and projects to real estate. Said Schwartz, "This is a comprehensive review of growth opportunities, not shrink opportunities!"
The McNealy administration was so obsessed with inventing new growth opportunities that it neglected the opportunities closest at hand. Sun was off screwing around with diskless desktop PCs, Sun-branded Java distributions and commodity 1U rack boxes when it should have been working on intelligent sensors (of which RFID is just one type), making Java the center of the embedded and mobile universe, and establishing itself as the leader in low-power, high-availability server computing. Sun had an early grip on all of these, but it let one opportunity after another fly past only to be caught by a competitor or fade from sight.
In contrast, Schwartz is a strategic genius who, whenever a little power was meted out to him, made unconventional and astonishingly good decisions, many of which have involved opening proprietary technologies that would otherwise rust away, and calling truces on old and costly feuds. For example, Solaris 10 is an exceptional OS that's the system software backbone of Sun's major enterprise installations, but the cost of distributing and supporting onesie-twosie Solaris shrink-wrap box sales wouldn't justify the revenues. So Schwartz opened Solaris to turn it into a highly-visible training ground for developers and a beehive for a word of mouth community. This will go a long way toward defusing large customers' disdain toward proprietary operating systems. And those prospects who whine about Red Hat's advantageously fat library of compatible applications will find a "yes, but..." in Solaris' ability to run Red Hat in an isolated container within Solaris.
Schwartz first came to InfoWorld's attention when he scored a strategic win by calling off unwinnable battles with Apache and JBoss over Java validation, and he's working to bury the hatchet with Microsoft. Most recently, Sun opened up the source code for its Niagara multi-core/multi-thread SPARC CPU.
The method to Schwartz's apparent madness is consistency and focus of mission. Schwartz favors slimming Sun's objectives down to one presentation slide's worth of bullet points. That requires setting aside the distractions of nurturing the ideas that should have been composted and of settling the battles that became matters of principle rather than business.
Sun can't sustain by selling and supporting individual products, Dell-style, to individuals and small businesses. Schwartz pointed to a return to Sun's original market targets, the "money's no object" major accounts in the world's corporate, institutional, government and defense markets. Trying to be all to all, to be the General Electric of computing that Scott McNealy seemed to want Sun to be, is too expensive and scatters resources too wide. Look for Sun to be getting out of the lightbulb business soon.
Does that mean Schwartz will be off on a staff-cutting spree? That decision would have to be forced on him by the board. To date, when Schwartz has judged projects unworthy of the effort to productize and distribute them, he didn't pull the plugs and send developers packing. Instead, he recycled, building the skills of Sun's developers and building community rapport worth more than the lackluster products those projects would have become (or already were). He also took to heart the open source message that one can openly share intellectual property while still owning and protecting it.
Schwartz's plan is working, but until now, his reach has been limited to software. Now he'll reach out to systems and services. Sun will change, and we think it'll be for the better.
Posted by Tom Yager on April 25, 2006 11:35 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
With McNealy out, what should Schwartz focus on?
The news that Sun's Scott McNealy stepped aside today from the helm should come as no surprise. The only thing I would be surprised at are those who think he actually stepped aside and wasn't pushed by the board.
The financial news coming out of Sun has been bleak since 2002 with estimates that the total loses since the dot-com bubble burst is about $4.5 billion.
Some say Jonathan Schwartz will complete the move to the network computer.
The question is, does the concept of a super-thin client, no hard drives, intelligent cache, running anything but Windows have legs. Can Sun under Schwartz sell it. And I mean literally sell it.
Others, like Josh Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting, has different advice for Schwartz.
Greenbaum says Sun's major failing is it has never been able to capitalize on the software leadership that it generated over the years, with Java being the best example.
There is no Java revenue stream.
Schwartz has a better sense of what the software side of Sun's future is about.
Greenbaum believes in order for Sun to survive it has to follow the lead of IBM up the food chain and offer middleware.
Hardware, as far as Greenbaum is concerned, is a deadend street -- a commodity that is going now where. "Sun has been growing wheat [hardware] while everyone else is selling bread [software and services]" says Greenbaum.
There will be a brief honeymoon as the board gives Schwartz a bit of room to show what he can do.
What next for Sun? I agree with Greenbaum that hardware is a dead end. I'd like to hear from readers what they think. Or let's offer Jonathan Schwartz some guidance. I'll post your comments below.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on April 24, 2006 02:50 PM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The ink is hardly dry on the future of newspapers, but Engadget reports that moving the dead tree scrolls to e-ink has begun in earnest.
It said that De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, has put their paper on iLiad e-ink eBook readers. The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune are among others said to be in discussions to roll out e-newspaper subscriptions later this year.
The first devices are likely to look like Sony's Reader.
The devices are monochrome now but color is coming from companies such as Fujitsu.
Timely, this news, as another Earth Day passes.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 24, 2006 01:50 PM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Holy Inverse Function, Batman!! A virus for MATLAB!
Math geeks the world over will no doubt be looking crosswise at suspicious m-file attachments now that Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure has identified the first ever self replicating virus for Matlab, the super sophisticated technical computing software by Mathworks.
According to an entry in F-Secure's blog, "Bagoly" is a virus written in Matlab, the programming language used by Mathworks products. The virus infects Matlab "m files" by adding its own replication code to the beginning of other m-files it finds on an infected system.
Fear not, this isn't spreading in the wild (read: "home grown")and doesn't do anything more nasty than spread itself around, F-Secure said.
No word yet from Mathworks on this development -- but if a computer virus writer could harness the minds of the worlds leading engineers and mathematicians, just imagine the destruction that would be caused!!
(To be continued...)
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 24, 2006 08:02 AM
April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft readies "Experimentation Platform"
Microsoft is working on an "Experimentation Platform" for innovation on the Windows Live platform.
"The Experimentation Platform will enable product groups at Microsoft and developers using Windows Live to innovate using controlled experiments with live users," according to a Web page dedicated to the effort. "Such a platform will enable testing new ideas quickly using the best-known scientific method for establishing causality between a feature and its effects: randomized experimental design."
The site, however, is a recruiting site rather than the project itself, according to Microsoft. "We are always looking to rapidly innovate on our services and platform, and encouraging experimentation is important here," a company representative said in an email. The representative said to "stay tuned" for more information.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 21, 2006 04:27 PM
April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
A state appeals court in San Jose on Thursday "appeared openly hostile to Apple Computer's attempts to pry information from bloggers that would reveal who may have leaked confidential information on a new company product", Mercury News reports.
Apple triggered the legal battle a year ago by going to court to force bloggers to reveal the identities of individuals who leaked alleged trade secrets on a product code-named Asteroid. The judge sided with Apple, concluding the company had a right to find out who stole and leaked the Asteroid documents.
In a lively two-hour session on Thursday, however, the panel of 6th District Court of Appeal justices repeatedly swiped at Apple's argument, The Merc said.
"You don't really claim this is some sort of new technology, do you?" Presiding Justice Conrad Rushing, a veteran of Silicon Valley trade secret fights, said to Apple's Riley at one point. "This is plugging a guitar into a computer."
Reports said Justice Franklin Elia swiped: "All you want, excuse me, is the snitch ... I mean, c'mon. We're not here to be the super-personnel department for your company."
Posted by Mike Barton on April 21, 2006 02:04 PM
April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Spam is a nuisance, we all know that. No more so than for the poor suckers who find their name and reputation marred by some spam or phishing attack. But a $5 billion problem? That's the contention of (surprise surprise) e-mail security and antispam vendor IronPort. On Monday, the company will release a report saying that bounced e-mail messages costs $5 billion annually in IT help desk associated costs, and make up 11 percent of "hostile mail" on the Internet.
Here's the scenario, according to IronPort:
1. Filthy spammer launches spam/phishing campaign and forges sender addresses using legitimate addresses from Acme Corp. on millions upon millions of spam messages.
2. 99% of those messages get rejected by gateway antivirus/antispam box and dropped or sent back to the "sender."
3. Acme Corp. gets innundated with the bounced messages, bogging down their e-mail server. (IronPort says more than 50% of the Fortune 500 have had this happen.) Most of the bounce messages are ignored, but...
4. Around .5% of the messages that get bounced actually make it back to an employee's mailbox.
5. Employee freaks out and assumes that their computer has been 0wn3d by a virus.
6. Employee calls IT desk to get computer disinfected.
7. IT desk diverts resources to figuring out whether employee's machine was, in fact, 0wn3d, or whether this is just a bounce message thing.
8. Company pays for IT resources and loses money/efficiency when e-mail server goes down.
Now you've always gotta wonder about these vendor sponsored studies ("Study by Cattle Ranchers Benevolent Society finds people who eat three steaks a day live longer!). Nevertheless, it's an interesting statistic. I've asked IronPort for more details. Stay tuned.
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 21, 2006 08:30 AM
April 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The United States has retained its title for top spam offender, according to the security firm Sophos' latest spam-relaying figures.
While its share of the deluge has declined from 2004, when almost half of all spam came from the US, almost a quarter of all spam (23 per cent) between January and March this year was relayed from servers in the U.S., Silicon.com reports.
China and Europe are said to be catching up fast.
Australia is at the forefront of clamping down on spammers by introducing a code of practice for companies providing or enabling e-mail services.
Internet service providers must by July 16 address the sources of spam within their own networks under the new rules.
But jurisdiction ends at countries' shores, and the growth in China and parts of Eastern Europe signals that it will be harder to can the spam because enforcement is lacking in those regions, experts have noted.
The OECD has this week called for more international cooperation to tackle spam, but the future looks set for e-mail authentication systems to hold the growing tide of spam at bay -- despite slow progress on the technology, as noted this week at the a major e-mail authentication powwow in Chicago.
Microsoft used the gathering to heavily promote its Sender ID e-mail authentication architecture, and its new MSN Postmaster Services, a new program to provide tools and best practice guidance for ISPs to manage their e-mail infrastructures.
Microsoft said Sender ID adoption increased threefold among Fortune 500 companies, from 7 percent in July 2005 to 21 percent.
The power of e-mail is that it is open, but some spam experts say, with spam expected to grow from 50 percent to 80 percent of all e-mail traffic, a conditionally open system may be what we have to accept to save it from a tragedy of the commons.
What do you think needs to be done about spam? Talk back to us below.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 20, 2006 04:46 PM
April 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Borland Software on Thursday said it has completed its acquisition of Segue Software, a maker of software quality and testing products.
The $100 million transaction was announced in February. Borland is integrating its application lifecycle management products with Segue's Silk and SilkCentral product lines.
Borland plans to introduce an integrated software quality solution in the third quarter of this year featuring the Segue technology. The offering is expected to help customers solve the root cause of quality issues and identify problems from the beginning, as opposed to reacting to symptoms later in the process, Borland said.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 20, 2006 01:38 PM
April 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Things are looking good for Apple Computer. Then again, maybe they aren't. The company yesterday reported a healthy $410m profit on revenue of $4.36 billion, the second best quarterly sales in the company's history. Much of that was driven by the sale of a whopping 8.5 million --with an 'M' -- iPods. That's 61 percent more than last year!
Macintosh sales are a up a bit too --4 percent, with around 1.1 million shipped in the quarter.
While the company's nearterm fiscal outlook is good, the next couple years may not be so rosy on the security front. After years as a security afterthought, Apple's products are beginning to attract the attention of security researchers and earn the company negative press around security.
Apple's decision to move to the Intel platform and its promotion of technologies like BootCamp, which will allow machines to boot both the Windows and Mac OSs, has got enterprise malware authors going "hmmmm..."
All this is just speculation, of course, but the interest of folks like Tom Ferris in Apple apps can't be good news for the company we all love to love. Ferris is a security gadfly who's loathed in places like Redmond and even gets a luke-warm response among his peers in the freewheeling vulnerability research community. (Judging by some conversations I had at a recent hacker conference.)
Using the handle "badpack3t," he's discovered and promptly disclosed a number of holes in Internet Explorer and Windows XP, often in defiance of Microsoft and the software industry's responsible disclosure policy.
Lately, Ferris has turned his attention from Windows to Apple's software, fuzzing OS X applications -- basically a process of tweaking applications until you make them crash.
Judging from his Web site, Security Protocols, Ferris appears to have found some stuff -- mostly non-critical heap overflows in OS X, but also some holes in Apple's Safari Web browser that Ferris claims are serious. The holes were reported at the "begginning of the year" but Ferris isn't waiting for the patch to tell us about them.
Of course, finding overflows and other security holes is nothing new - most security researchers will tell you that, of course, there are lots of holes in Apple applications, just like there are in every software application. The difference is that, up till now, nobody cared enough to look far beyond Windows. At long last, that may be changing.
Microsoft security guru Stephen Toulouse recently gave Apple a tongue lashing over security. My guess is he might also have some advice for dealing with "badpack3t," too!
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 20, 2006 07:14 AM
April 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Text messages over Skype are the latest to join the censored list in China.
EBay's Skype joint-venture partner in mainland China, Tom.com, said it edited messages containing words considered politically sensitive by China's government.
Among them were "Falun Gong" and "Dalai Lama", the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
SMH.com.au reports: "Skype, the revolutionary online telecoms service, has defended its mainland partner's censorship of text messages in China, saying the company was obeying local laws."
.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 19, 2006 02:08 PM
April 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The open-source project OnMac, which first claimed the ability to boot OS X and Windows in the same machine, has now added Linux to the Boot Camp camp, reports say.
Dubbed Triple Boot, the tweak for Macs on Intel hardware running Boot Camp is reportedly not for the technically faint-of-heart, because it "chainloads" Linux from an already-installed copy of Windows XP using the LILO bootloader.
People must first boot the Mac into Windows XP, before LILO allows them to choose to boot Linux.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 19, 2006 09:20 AM
April 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
RFID travel cards' privacy threat
Homeland Security is promoting the use of travel documents embedded with an RFID chip that is readable at distances of up to 30 feet.
As reported by cNet, Jim Williams, director of the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program, said Tuesday at a smart card conference that "tracking chips could be inserted into the new generation of wallet-size identity cards used to ease travel by Americans to Canada and Mexico starting in 2008."
(As previously reported by InfoWorld, the Bush administration has already declared that RFID chips containing personal identification information will begin appearing in U.S. passports starting in October 2006.)
Homeland Security envisions the travel document, called PASS (People Access Security Service), as a "vicinity-read" wallet-size card that allows the cardholder's picture and other biographic information to be captured from a distance and automatically displayed on border agents' computer screens.
In an RFID procurement notice, the government requires that "IDs be read under circumstances that include the device being carried in a pocket, purse, wallet, in traveler's clothes, or elsewhere on the person of the traveler." Elsewhere the requirements state: "The solution presented must sense all tokens carried by travelers seated in a single automobile, truck, or bus at a distance up to 25 ft while moving at speeds up to 55 mph."
All this raises the question, what's to prevent these tags from being read and personal information stolen by hidden sensors in the hands of criminals or terrorists? The EEF has weighed in on the issue, declaring the new U.S. passports will serve as terrorist beacons.
What say you? Is Homeland Security really making you more secure by pushing the use of remotely readable RFID-enabled travel documents?
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 19, 2006 08:15 AM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Social networking (SN) is not just for tweens any more, as evidenced by the $17 million in second round funding for enterprise SN firm Visible Path.
BW online reports it is not the first SN play, in "How LinkedIn broke through".
Visible Path is aiming squarely at the enterprise with its SN/collab service, rather than the individual, however.
BW writes: "Visible Path looks different from other social-networking sites. Users don't create home pages or profiles on Visible Path. The site instead keeps tabs on whom its users communicate with by e-mail or through other means. And it ranks the strengths of those relationships based on how often people communicate. Then it helps users find common sources and contacts so they can approach one another to do business."
Seems to me, and VC folk obviously, there's a great opportunity to seize on collaboration in business yet and get people off e-mail for group communications and project work. But the more these enterprise SN plays can integrate with e-mail and exisiting apps, or shift work to them to capture ideas etc, the better for their acceptance as additional value as a tool is weighed down by another app on the menu.
Enterpise wikis such as Social Text are on a roll, and others are sure to follow as the technology use gels. Social Text's newish Miki, or mobile wiki, is an example of how to weave the tech into an increasingly mobile workforce - and make you wonder how email has lasted as the dominant collaboration tool for so long.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 18, 2006 04:26 PM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Mercury: AJAX has its drawbacks
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) may be all the rage as a scripting technology for Web applications, but it is not without its drawbacks, according to an executive at Mercury Interactive.
"AJAX is incredible where people are starting to adopt it and it immediately causes a lot of problems because it's not very structured," said Rajesh Radhakrishnan, vice president of Application Delivery at Mercury. Several Mercury executives met with InfoWorld editors at Mercury offices in Mountain View, Calif. on Tuesday morning.
"We've seen tons and tons of problems," with AJAX, Radhakrishnan said. In testing for functionality and regression, Mercury has seen an increased number of regressions in AJAX, said Radhakrishnan.
As a workaround, Radhakrishnan suggests using AJAX for the cutting edge part of UI development, to enable interactions between the client and server in which the server is able to respond to client requests later. "For the rest of it, you don't really use AJAX,""Radhakrishnan said.
"So far in general, when we've gone into AJAX shops, it's been a ton of pain," he said. Security, however, has not been much of a problem with AJAX, said Radhakrishnan.
Also during the session, Radhakrishnan noted the uptake in agile programming. "We're seeing customers asking us for templates for agile and extreme [programming] and we are absolutely providing that to them," Radhakrishnan said.
One Mercury executive said developers in general are not fond of application testing, but SOA is requiring it. "The truism is developers don't want to test," said Jonathan Rende, vice president of product marketing in the Application Delivery group at Mercury.
"The thing with SOA is they're being forced to because the service is going to be reused. We are investing in that area," Rende said.
Meanwhile, Mercury is not losing sleep over the possibility of open source projects encroaching on its domain. What is done in Eclipse and open source really does not affect Mercury's business, said Christopher Lochhead, Mercury's chief marketing officer.
Mercury is much more about validating business functionality; freeware and open source software for developer testing do not impact Mercury much, Lochhead said.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 18, 2006 04:14 PM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
More than one in four mobile phone owners worldwide have browsed the Internet on their wireless handset, the research firm Ipsos Insight said Tuesday.
The move marks the shift away from the personal computer as the dominant platform to access the Internet.
Internet access via the mobile phone outpaces wireless access from a notebook PC in many of areas of the world, driven mainly by the ubiquitous mobile phone, and advancing wireless networks, according to firm's "The Face of the Web", an annual study of Internet trends, reports RTO Online.
"Accessing the Internet on a wireless handheld device is no longer a novelty for consumers in the major global economies. It’s becoming a common, everyday occurrence for many people," Senior Vice President & Managing Director of Ipsos Insight’s Technology & Communications practice said, RTO reports.
"In the long term, many of today’s PC-centric online activities could be complemented through the mobile phone or migrate to the mobile phone altogether, due to greater convenience and faster connection speeds," Cruikshank added.
Witness the recognition of this with two recent mobile pushes: Microsoft's Picture2Search and Google Voice Search.
Faster and faster wireless broadband will spur this along.
I think Microsoft is on to something with its Origami push for UMPCs, however, because the higher speeds will only be realized by fuller keyboards for input.
What do you think: What does the mobile computing future hold?
Posted by Mike Barton on April 18, 2006 02:52 PM
April 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Microsoft is looking to seize the rich information for its Photo2Search, which it said today will return Web pages with information about the places in the photos sent from cell phones.
Microsoft writes:
Take a photo.That handy gadget you've been coveting is on sale at the mall. How does its price compare to those offered elsewhere?
Snap a picture.
A new, blockbuster movie arrives at your local theater. Thumbs up, or thumbs down?
Point and shoot.
It can't be that easy, can it? Xing Xie, a researcher for the Web Search and Mining group within Microsoft Research Asia, says that, yes, it can...
"At that time," Xie recalls, "the idea was very simple: Use a camera phone to do a Web search. This is very interesting, because inputting images is much more convenient than inputting text queries on a small device."
Photo2Search works like this: Seeking information about something seen, a user takes a photo of the object and sends the photo, via e-mail or Multimedia Messaging Service, to a Web-based server, which searches an image database for matches. The server then delivers database information—whether it be a Web page featuring the object in the photo or information associated with the object—to the user, who can act on the information received: read a menu, enter a gallery, book a hotel room, make a purchase
The move follows the granting last week of a patent to Google for voice-based search.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 17, 2006 03:41 PM
April 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
On Security, Windows '98 dies with a whimper, not a bang
Microsoft took another turn with that little dance called "damned if we do damned if we don't" this week when it announced, once again, that it was cutting off support for the Windows '98, Windows '98 SE and Windows ME operating systems. If you forgot, they tried to pull the plug on these dinosaurs back in 2004, but changed their mind after listening to a lot of yelling, especially from enterprise IT managers that were still running the operating system.
But this time it's for real and, come July 11, the ranks of Win '98 users will be pushed out of their caves, blinking, onto the brightly lit streets of the 21st century.
Microsoft's reason for pushing the Windows '98 birdies out the nest at long last -- security. According to their post:
"Microsoft is ending support for these products because they are outdated and these older operating systems can expose customers to security risks. We recommend that customers who are still running Windows 98 or Windows Me upgrade to a newer, more secure Microsoft operating system, such as Windows XP, as soon as possible."
Sounds like a convenient cover -- I mean, when you get right down to it, what move can't be justified by invoking the need for greater security? But are Microsoft's claims that Windows '98 and ME machines pose a risk to security to be believed?
Yes, says Johannes Ullrich of the SANS Internet Storm Center - but probably not for the reason you think.
Windows '98 and ME machines are mere "background noise" in the MegaDeath concert of attack data that SANS operators enjoy every day. But the problem isn't that Windows '98 is so insecure -- it's just that all the software you would use to secure it no longer runs on Windows '98, he said.
"I think what's going on is that if you've still got Windows '95 or '98, you're not going to have antivirus software that's up to date," he said.
"If you don't have the money to upgrade your operating system, you're probably not going to be upgrading your antivirus software either," he said.
Windows '98 and ME customers can still get by even without security patches from Microsoft -- especially if they don't engage in high risk activities like, say, sending or receiving e-mail, Ullrich said. That will probably be the case at the thousands of companies that still run Windows '98, usually for the benefit of custom applications that can't run on anything else.
Come July 11, Ullrich doesn't expect much to change in terms of the overall security of the Internet. As for Windows '98 and ME users, however, the timing isn't great. Microsoft is, of course, cutting them off well shy of the release of Vista, the next version of Windows, which isn't scheduled to be out until the end of 2006 -- at the earliest. Barring any more nasty 0days that affect '98 and ME machines, Windows customers will have plenty of time to flip through Dell catalogues and figure out just what they need to buy to take advantage of those cool Aero graphics.
As for whether Microsoft is doing the right thing -- fuhgettaboudit, says Ullrich.
"Certainly, Microsoft has the right to cut them off," he said.
I mean, come on. This is an eight year old operating system we're talking about!!
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 14, 2006 01:58 PM
April 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Palm Infocenter reports that EQO Communications has introduced EQO Mobile for Skype.
With the release Treo owners and other Palm users can finally join the Skype revolution like users of Windows Mobile.
The report says you need a Skype account, a Palm OS device with internet connectivity, and a Windows XP/2000 machine with broadband connection. EQO says the Treo 650, 600 and 700w are supported.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 13, 2006 05:27 PM
April 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
IE patch breaks some users' browsers
The IE security update released this week has apparently left some users with temporarily broken browsers.
The MS06-13 update patches 10 vulnerabilities in IE, including the nasty TextRange () bug reported last month, but also makes non-security changes to ActiveX. Those changes -- made as a result of a $521 million judgment against Microsoft in a patent lawsuit brought by Eolas -- mean that on some Web sites, users may now have to click through extra steps when using dynamic content like Flash animation.
Mike Murray, director of research at vulnerability management vendor nCircle, is quoted in Information Week as saying customers "are at the point where they're pulling out their hair."
Microsoft has posted a "compatibility patch" that undoes the ActiveX changes in MS06-13 and gives customers more time to prepare for the update, but nCircle's Murray logically asks why Redmond didn't "deploy it as a separate patch or roll it into a service pack."
If enterprises follow Microsoft's advice -- deploy MS06-013 and its ActiveX changes first, then follow up by installing the compatibility patch -- they'll be faced with a secure, but possibly-broken browser, at least temporarily, Murray said.
Having your own problems with the latest IE security update or compatibility patch? Let us hear from you.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 13, 2006 08:12 AM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
With only two days left to enter, Mozilla has released the first set of Firefox Flicks, the grassroots 30-second videos that are vying to become part of the marketing campaign for the up-start browser.
Mozilla says of the first release: "These are some of the 150+ community generated Firefox ads submitted since the Flicks project launched in late December. More to come every couple of days."
The winner will be announced this month at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Of the three up now, Drama Queen looks like a contender.
See the Flicks Backstage blog for the latest on the contest.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 12, 2006 04:16 PM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Reports say "a recently published patent provides further evidence that Google is developing a voice-activated search engine".
Google Voice Search has been no big secret on the Google Labs Web site for more than a year, but Patent No. 7027987 was filed Tuesday.
The patent involves "a voice interface for search engines. Through the use of a language model, phonetic dictionary and acoustic models, a server generates an n-best hypothesis list or word graph."
IBM was touting voice-in, text-out as the way to go beyond the limitations of ever smaller cell phones in 1999, and the Google is not the only one to be working in the area.
News.com reports a voice-activated Internet system works with speech-to-text conversion software called Maestro was unveiled in Israel in May of last year.
Maestro is said to convert spoken search requests into a text of query-friendly words which are relayed to a search engine and then returned to the searcher audibly.
A Google spokesman told News.com that "prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications", but this is too huge in terms of general appeal to believe it would not happen.
Just think how awkward it is to use a conventional cell phone for Web searching, or any text input for that matter. And, despite smart phone design advancements, who wouldn't want a smaller phone?
Watch this space, as Tech Watch will be watching for you.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 12, 2006 02:44 PM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sun partly opens dev tool source
Sun Microsystems is making elements of the Sun Java Studio Enterprise development tool open source as a project at NetBeans.org.
The project is being released as the NetBeans Enterprise Pack and will feature an API-level development tool to run on top of the NetBeans 5.5 IDE.
The feature set includes:
- A two-way UML (Unified Modeling Language) modeler for architecting and reverse-engineering enterprise applications.
- XML infrastructure and visual editing tools.
- Orchestration and SOA tools for building composite applications.
The NetBeans Enterprise Pack is due to be posted on NetBeans.org shortly.
Sun will hold its NetBeans Software Day on Monday, May 15, in San Francisco, in conjunction with the JavaOne conference.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 12, 2006 01:15 PM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
U.S. lags in high-speed Internet
The U.S. has fallen to 12th in global ranking of high-speed Internet connections. We now lag behind many other industrialized countries in Europe and Asia, according to a recent survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that shows Iceland overtaking longtime leader South Korea for the top spot.
This is not news that U.S. businesses or Washington policy makers should shrug off lightly. This isn't just about bewailing our inability to download music and videos quickly. Without investment in our communication networks, U.S. businesses will soon be at a significant competitive disadvantage in developing new products and services and in creating new markets.
According to a story in today's WSJ (subscription required to access) the FCC's chairman has protested that the OECD's rankings do "not tell the full story" because the low population density of the U.S. made comparisons with high-density countries like South Korea unfair. But Iceland, Norway, and Sweden -- all of which ranked higher than the U.S. -- have even lower population densities than the U.S. and yet have obviously surmounted that obstacle to wider broadband access.
As recently as 2001, the U.S. ranked 4th in the OECD's survey, but since that time governments in many of today's top-ranked countries have aggressively promoted the next generation of broadband over fiber optics that will travel many times faster than DSL or cable. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, with its "unbundling" provisions, was meant to foster competition among Internet providers. But U.S. phone and cable companies have lobbied vigorously to roll back those requirement, claiming regulation is no longer necessary.
Tell us what you think is the right approach to this problem. Should the U.S. government be investing heavily in the country's communications infrastructure just as they would in a public utility like highways? Or is de-regulation of the telecommunications industry going to be sufficient incentive for the laying of fiber for a next-generation broadband?
Tell us -- and your legislators -- what you think.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 12, 2006 06:58 AM
April 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Supply Chain Management and the end of the world
For most of the last decade, "virus" has meant one thing to those of us who cover the IT sector: computer viruses -- malicious programs that propagate between machines connected on a LAN or, more recently, on the Internet. You know what I'm talking about -- all the dudes with the funky names: W32.Blaster, W32.Slammer, W32.Sobig. But the folks over at MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics have some new letters to wrap your brain around: H5N1. H5N1, as you know, is the virus that responsible for the recent Avian Influenza outbreaks that have killed untold numbers of our feathered friends in Asia, Africa and Europe, as well as some humans -- mostly among farmers and those who work with poultry in countries like Vietnam, China, and Turkey.
Why are a bunch of academics who study logistics interested in influenza, you ask? Well, if you think H5N1 is tough on chickens, you should see what it will do to your supply chain! At least, that was the message from the CTL's event today in Cambridge, MA, entitled "At the Crossroads of Supply Chain and Strategy: Simulating Disruption to Business Recovery.
In a fascinating session moderated by Mary Pimm, who runs Intel Corp.'s Corporate Emergency Operations Center, executives from Intel, EMC and Arnold Communications war gamed a simulated H5N1 and its impact on an imaginary mobile phone company, Vaxxon Corp., which gets sucked into an media-epidemiological (explitive) storm after workers at a Vaxxon supplier in mainland China begin dying from H5N1.
As the simulation played out on stage, executives from the participating companies, representing their imaginary counterparts on Vaxxon's CERT team, struggle to deal with a string of expected and unexpected events -- which starts with one sick employee, but quickly snowballs to include quarrantined shipments of the company's promising new SlimPhone, quarrantined and scared overseas management, ravenous reporters anxious for news, a panicky public and shortages up and down their supply chain after their Chinese supplier is shut down.
The presentation interspersed convincing and breathless TV news bulletins from a fictional CNN look-alike called "CTL," as reporters and company executives wrestle with conflicting information on the outbreak: Did it pass from human to human or just poultry to human? Could the virus survive on cell phones shipped from the plant or not? Is this a problem limited to workers at the Chinese supplier or a wider outbreak?
In one of the more amusing anecdotes, CERT try in vain to reel in a rogue executive from Vaxxon who may have been exposed at the supplier's factory, but ignores requests to stay put, touching off a minor civil emergency back home after he returns to work in the U.S. -possibly infected with H5N1.
It was great stuff -- and the folks who played Vaxxon execs (almost all from Intel) seemed familiar with the exercise. But it raised more questions than answers. Even with a well-rehearsed disaster plan and cool headed actors, executives at Vaxxon still had a tough time responding to the convulsive nature of the H5N1 outbreak -- as first one worker gets sick and dies, then another, then another. Unsure of how big the outbreak would get, executives were caught between big picture, long term responses and short term, stomp out the fire type responses. Should Vaxxon do whatever it can to get those SlimPhones to market in the U.S. or just give up the ghost and focus on its core corporate values -- being a good corporate citizen and keeping employees and customers safe, protecting its business relationships? Executives seemed to go back and forth, while Tony Sundermeier, who is Intel's Logistics Manager and played that role on Vaxxon's imaginary team, struggled to keep product flowing through the company's shattered supply chain.
While SCM technology was clearly there in the background, as Sundermeier and other executives begin researching ways to work around the shuttered Chinese supplier, those solutions seemed more like long term solutions to the H5N1 problem than the kind of "turn on a dime" fix you might imagine after reading the PR from SCM vendors.
The exercise was useful for all kinds of reasons. And, as one attendee from a company that distributes TamiFlu noted, an H5N1 outbreak is just a way to bundle up a lot of ordinary disruptions that most companies face week in and week out -- absenteeism, supply shortages, software ills, PR firestorms, and so on.
All the same, while bugs like Blaster and Slammer certainly have caused their share of headaches in IT departments around the world, but those outbreaks will pale in comparison to the disruption caused by a real bug like H5N1, should it ever figure out a way to start spreading from human to human.
pfr
Posted by Paul Roberts on April 11, 2006 01:44 PM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
JBoss's surprising acquisition by Red Hat, announced today, opens up new possibilities and raises questions.
Speculation, of course, had centered on whether Oracle would buy JBoss. It seems, however, that the marriage between Red Hat and JBoss, two companies reliant on and rooted in open source technologies, makes more sense for the open source movement than having a commercial software company like Oracle buy JBoss.
The consequences of this merger will unfold in coming months.
Rival BEA Systems, for example, says it may be able to blend in some JBoss technology into its own product or even contribute to JBoss if the JBoss software contribution model expands, said Franz Aman, vice president of audience marketing at BEA.
"It really depends on, is that community going to be opened up and is the IP (intellectual property) model going to change," Aman said.
Aman also asks what the merger means for IBM, which has had a close relationship with Red Hat but also has offerings rivaling JBoss. IBM, for its part, is not commenting at this time.
In the wake of the merger, BEA officials are promoting their company as the only remaining independent vendor of application servers, not tied to a particular OS or database.
JBoss has been a colorful company, the upstart taking on giants like IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems. The Red Hat-JBoss partnership should provide a formidable combination in the open source arena.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 10, 2006 03:57 PM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Google's SF Wi-Fi plan stirs privacy advocates
TechWeb is reporting that "privacy advocates have raised concerns over Google's proposed free Wi-Fi service in San Francisco, which would target users with advertising based on their location."
"Most troubling is the potential of tracking where people go on the Web based on the user names and passwords they use in signing on to the network. If that information is stored in a database, then government or private lawyers can subpoena it later in criminal or civil matters," TechWeb reports.
The EFF has recommended people be allowed to surf anonymously on Google's wireless network.
Google fought the DOJ to protect its users' privacy, but the issues highlighted people's sensitivity to the matter.
Would you risk your privacy for free Wi-Fi?
Posted by Mike Barton on April 10, 2006 03:20 PM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Text-to-speech podcasts awarded
The Arizona Republic has been awarded for best practises for use of text-to-speech technology to auto-read news stories for its podcasts.
Reminds me of the first time I heard text-to-speech on a Mac Plus, I think it was.
I have just started podcasting for InfoWorld, doing the news segment for the Storage Sprawl Podcast, and was thinking how I don't sound terrible but how a radio person might judge my performance.
But now compared with auto-readings I think I am safe. You be the judge and weigh in on if you'd rather have a voice robot read the news.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 10, 2006 10:04 AM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
AJAX startup JackBe has landed three Java/SOA engineers from Sun Microsystems.
These include: John Crupi, a Sun distinguished engineer and former CTO of Sun's Enterprise Web Services Global Practice, who becomes JackBe chief technology officer; Deepak Alur, a Sun principal engineer, who becomes JackBe vice president of engineering, and Dan Malks, a Sun principal engineer who will be vice president of application platform at JackBe.
JackBe is shifting its strategy from being an AJAX toolkit vendor to being a strategic partner that will build AJAX solutions for clients. The stature of AJAX as a prime solution for developing Web applications certainly is reinforced with these Sun officials signing on to JackBe.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 10, 2006 09:45 AM
April 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sun Microsystems on Friday championed its SOA platform at a press "Chalk Talk" session in San Francisco and took a few obligatory potshots at IBM and BEA Systems along the way.
Describing SOA as a technology enabling users to reuse existing services, build new ones and save money, Sun officials hailed their own technology stack. Key to this stack is the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (CAPS), which features technology acquired when Sun bought SeeBeyond last year.
The platform is available as part of the Sun Java Enterprise System infrastructure software package or separately. Version 5.1 of CAPS shipped two weeks ago, featuring an enhanced portal.
Version 5.1.1, due later this year, will offer performance and quality improvements while version 5.2, due in a year, will boost Web services interoperability and productivity. CAPS version 6, planned for release in two years, will offer support for the Java Business Integration specification and the Service Component Architecture.
Sun officials said their own offerings are more integrated than IBM and also questioned IBM's claim of having 1,000 SOA installation.
"Just within IBM, you have three application servers that are incompatible with one another," said Mark Bauhaus, senior vice president for the App Platform and Identity Management Software at Sun. IBM's application servers referred to included the enterprise version of WebSphere, WebSphere Express and the Gluecode product.
"It's integration by brand, not in actual technology," said Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for SOA and integration platforms at Sun.
Sun also does not need a services organization the size of IBM Global Services to provide professional services, the Sun officials said. BEA, meanwhile, does not have a unified code base, the Sun officials claimed.
Sun delivers a multiplatform offering for SOA that functions with both Sun's Solaris OS as well as with rival platforms such as IBM AIX. It also works with multiple application servers such as WebSphere or JBoss, according to Sun.
Microsoft and Sun, meanwhile, plan to announce at the JavaOne conference in May some news pertaining to Web services interoperability.
"We'll be showing the next chapter of Web services interoperability," Bauhaus said. He declined to elaborate. Sun and Microsoft have been working to make their technologies interoperable as part of a 2004 agreement.
Prior to then, the two companies competed with dueling Web services specifications such as Sun's Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) technology and the Microsoft- and IBM-driven driven Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) specification. BPEL won that battle.
These days, WSCI is "dropping by the wayside, frankly," Bauhaus said.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 7, 2006 03:39 PM
April 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Apple's move to enable Windows to run on its new Intel-based computers was a no-brainer ... Nothing to lose - Give the people what they want.
But the idea is only half-baked, and the move is highlighting virtualization to run the rival OSes simultaneously.
Wired News reports: "Virtualization, by contrast, allows Macs to run Windows and Mac OS X not just on the same machine, but at the same time, with only a slight drop in performance."
"Although Apple says it has no plans to create a virtualization product for the Mac, the advantages of this approach are strong enough that a number of rivals are rushing to market with Mac virtualization products even as Apple offers its dual-boot option."
Microsoft is said to be evaluating an Intel-native version of its Virtual PC product, and its not hard to imagine that with Apple machines equipped with much faster hardware, and the two OSes only a partition apart, running them simultaneously could soon be reality with little loss in performance.
Parrallels has Thursday released a free public 30-day beta trial of Parallels Workstation 2.1, "the first virtualization software that gives Apple users the ability to simultaneously run Windows, Linux or any other operating system and their applications alongside Mac OS X on an Intel-powered Apple computer."
So, the options are flowing. For gamers, booting natively in Windows is going to be the way to go, but for day-to-day computer use, virtualization is looking like a better option.
If you try out Parallels Workstation 2.1, we're curious to hear how it works so drop by and let us know how you are finding its performance.
Posted by Mike Barton on April 6, 2006 03:57 PM
April 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Net neutrality takes one on the chin
A Republican-controlled House subcommittee has defeated a Net neutrality amendment that would have prevented broadband providers from offering higher-speed services to partners or affiliates. (For a dispassionate definition of "net neutrality," try wikipedia.)
Supporters argued that a net neutrality amendment to a telecom bill was needed to protect Internet users from large broadband providers that want to charge extra to give some Internet services priority over everyone else. But the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee voted 23-8 to pass the bill without the amendment, dismissing net neutrality concerns as vague and overblown.
The amendment had the support of companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, but was opposed by broadband providers such as AT&T and Comcast, as well as by conservative think tanks.
The fight has been brewing since late last year, and will also see a showdown in the Senate, where net neutrality legislation was introduced last month by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
Does this spell the beginning of the end for a free Internet and the dawn of an era where users must subscribe to all sites to get acceptable bandwidth?
Or are supporters just so many Chicken Littles protesting the sky is falling? Would customers in fact get a better experience were content providers to pay to make sure their bits move faster, thus giving network providers incentive to build out their networks to accommodate them?
What about the potentially stifling effect on small startups trying to offer services on the Web, or the prospect of premium prices for faster networks slowing SAAS adoption?
Tell us where you stand on this important issue.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 6, 2006 07:21 AM
April 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Will Boot Camp turn XP into the enemy within?
As far as I'm concerned, Boot Camp, the Apple software that will allow the new Intel-based Mac's to run Windows XP, is the equivalent of the Trojans opening up the gates to bring in that beautiful wooden horse. See "Apple puts Windows XP on the Mac."
Big mistake.
Why would any company want to promote its arch rivals product? It doesn't make sense. What is left of the Mac value-add if it has an Intel chip and now it runs Windows? I might as well buy a cheaper PC.
Speaking of cheap PCs I asked one of the most well-known marketers of cheap PCs, Stephen Dukker, founder of eMachines and now chairman of a company called nComputing that makes low-cost thin clients, what he thought.
Dukker says Apple only did it to accommodate its fans who were hacking a Windows solution to run on the Mac anyway.
"If a customer can get the OS anyway Apple probably decided they might as well support it," Dukker told me.
Whatever the reason, it does not bode well for Apple. Buying a Mac so you can have access to Windows applications is not a very logical decision.
If that's what you want then buy the PC. Windows apps running on the Mac will have to be compromised in some way, performance or an inability to run all of the programs or features within programs.
Will you be able to use Windows plug and play hardware? Doubtful.
You would more likely buy Mac devices. So now it gets schizophrenic with Apple hardware add-ons running Windows applications. No way.
My guess is that after the novelty of having a dual-boot system wears off, most people will either want one or the other, not two opposing brains living inside one skull. Too confusing. To fraught with potential errors.
So there you have it. My humble opinion. Oh yes, and a message to Mac users: For your convenience you can send me hate mail by entering a comment below.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on April 5, 2006 03:40 PM
April 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft official cites quality as offshoring priority
Although many believe that moving software development offshore is all about saving money on developer salaries, this is not the case, based on what one Microsoft official said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a Software 2006 panel session entitled, "Product Development Outsourcing - the Next Wave," Vijay Laxmi, a Microsoft program manager responsible for courting foreign-based ISVs to the Microsoft camp, said quality is the top priority.
"For Microsoft, cost is never the first thing," Laxmi said at the conference, in Santa Clara, Calif.
"We are looking for good engineers no matter where they are," she said.
"We're looking for quality, not the quantity," said Laxmi.
But another panelist, James Maury, director of engineering at OpenWave, did emphasize the financial benefits. "If you're not looking at an outsourcing strategy, you're probably missing out on some margin," Maury said.
Still, panelists said the productivity of Indian-based developers is not quite what they can get from U.S. developers. But the margin is narrowing.
Panelist Puranik Ranganath, a senior director of Motorola's networks business, said Indian developers are about 90 percent as productive as U.S. counterparts. Panelist Warren Smith, a vice president with Mirapoint, put the number at 80 percent. He cited cultural issues and communication barriers as preventing full equality in productivity.
"I'm very happy with 80 percent, by the way," Smith said.
Maury said productivity of Indian developers is between 70 percent to 90 percent of U.S. developers.
Comparing India to China as an offshoring center, Ranganath said China is important but trails India in terms of expertise. "Indian engineering is ahead in terms of program management experience and the ability to deliver features at a complexity level," said Ranganath. But raw talent is comparable between the two countries, he said.
Pricing pressures, though, are the factor in considering offshoring alternatives to India, said Maury. Vietnamese developers, for example, have expertise in Web applications and their sub-$2,000 monthly salaries are far below the $4,200 paid to Indian developers each month, he said.
Maury advised companies using offshore resources to spend time overseas. "I highly encourage you spending time in country with your ODC (offshore development center) vendor. You'll learn a lot," Maury said.
Posted by Paul Krill on April 4, 2006 05:55 PM
April 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
If you think we are covering Apple too much now, what if Microsoft were to buy Apple, as TechNewsWorld's veteran gazer Rob Enderle opines.
He writes it "may be time to explore the notion that a little cooperation could reduce, or solve, both firms' 'impossible' problems."
"I spent a lot of time last week reading the Microsoft employee blogs and apparently there is some reasonably strong feeling among many folks who work there that the wrong 'Steve' is running the company...," Mr. Enderle says.
There's something to this scenario, in which he suggest a takeover would never be allowed but a broad partnership could work.
Just something to mull over... Did you ever think Bill and Co would embrace Linux?
Posted by Mike Barton on April 4, 2006 05:28 PM
April 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
News yesterday that Microsoft would support Linux and make its Virtual Server R2 free has shocked the industry.
The Motley Fool writes of the software giant's open source bear hug: "Do me a favor: Check your backyard. Are cats and dogs playing a mild-mannered game of tiddlywinks? I only ask because this morning's news has me convinced that the apocalypse is upon us."
As Motley notes, it may be hard to understand what has brought this on, but it says recent data from IDC may help. Last year Windows surpassed Unix as the top server operating system, accounting for $17.7 billion in 2005 server sales versus $17.5 billion for Unix boxes, March report said. Linux came in third at $5.3 billion. It is the first time Windows has occupied the top spot since IDC began tracking server market share in 1996.
Motley opined: "Here's the problem: Mergers and acquisitions are on the rise. As much as culture clashes can cause issues, merging tech infrastructures is often the biggest pain. Offering compatibility across platforms is the only way to reassure nervous IT managers afraid of betting on the wrong horse. This new Virtual Server may offer a measure of assurance to those who like the tight integration between Windows servers and PCs, but who also have Linux clients to worry about. (Or vice versa.)"
Posted by Mike Barton on April 4, 2006 02:02 PM
April 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
In writing my column, Budgeting for Security Breaches, online this week, the space limitations of the print version prevented me from going into any detail on House Bill 3779, the "Financial Data Protection Data Act of 2005", which is supposed to protect consumers against credit card number theft.
Randy Gainer, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine law firm called it a "pro-busness piece of legislation," meaning I take it that it is not pro-consumer.
It depends which side of the fence you sit on whether you think this is good or bad. Either way, I thought I would relate in this blog, where there are no space limitations, what Gainer had to say.
Twenty-two states have laws that require companies to notify consumers whenever consumers data is exposed to an unauthorized person. The laws vary, but are generally consistent in that they require written or e-mail notice so consumers can protect their id's from fraud.
In some states when credit card data is lost or stolen, the law requires a credit freeze, meaning credit agencies cannot give out information without the consumer's permission.
Obviously, once a consumer gets notice they can notify their bank.
Some states even provide that a consumer can sue a company if they believe the data was not protected well enough.
However, House Bill 3779 waters the notification process down.
First of all the House bill pre-empts state laws.
"It wipes them off the book," said Gainer, and substitutes a different standard and threshold for notifying consumers.
Many states say any unauthorized loss of data must trigger a notification. The House bill says only if there is a substantial risk of harm. So, if your data is lost it gives the business the right to decide what a substantial risk is.
It goes further than that. It excludes the necessity to change a financial account number or closing a financial account as substantial harm.
Therefore, what will be left under the proposed Federal statute in terms of required notification would be notification only if an ID thief masqueraded as somebody and opened a new account.
Is the bill too pro-business? Talk back to us below.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on April 4, 2006 01:22 PM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Apple iPhone launch imminent: analyst
Australia's iTWire reports the US market research company Visiongain "is tipping Apple to launch its much-rumoured iPhone mobile phone to co-incide with the launch of Helios, a US mobile virtual network operator with which it has close ties."
According to Visiongain, Helio CFO Todd Tappin has said that Helio plans to sign about three million customers and generate more than $US2 billion in revenue by 2009.
PC World Editor in Chief Harry McCracken wrote late last month on earlier rumors: "I'll believe it when Steve Jobs pulls it from his jeans pocket at a keynote and pronounces it incredible, but it does seem like a logical move: I'm not sure if there's a single phone in the world that's at good at doing what it does as the iPod is at doing what it does. A terrific music phone could be the kind of game-changing product that's Apple's core competency."
iTWire writes: "The iPhone will most likely be produced in South Korea by an existing handset maker, and made available exclusively through Helio," Duffey predicted, adding "the iPhone will likely be as disruptive to the existing carrier market as the iPod was to the mobile music industry. When the iPhone adds VoIP capability, it will be even more disruptive to carriers."
Posted by Mike Barton on April 3, 2006 05:36 PM
April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Lucatel: big deal for big biz?
The primary reason for "Lucatel", according to a joint Alcatel-Lucent statement, is to tap the market opportunities for next-generation networks, services and applications, reports say.
But analysts say the impact of the deal could be years away.
"On paper, there is a good strategic fit between these two companies," said Bertrand Bidaud, vice president of carrier operations and strategy at Gartner in an earlier report.
It would give the new mega-player a toe-hold in nearly every telecom market, but it won't be the leader in any just because of its size. Bidaud said the enlarged company now needs to formulate a strategy that uses that scale to its advantage.
Networking pipeline blogger Dave Greenfield opines the deal is no Cisco killer, as neither of the to-merge giants hold a sizeable enterprise presence within the US neither in routing nor in PBXs nor in any of the areas of security, switching, and infr